Do you have a junk drawer in your house? A bursting closet, storeroom, basement, or attic? Don’t we all? Depending on how long you’ve lived in your present house, over the months and years, you’ve probably been tossing all kinds of things into your junk drawers, or closets, or storerooms, or basements, or attics. Maybe you’ve finally convinced yourself that you absolutely have to do some clearing out. These days magazines like Woman’s Day, the AARP magazine, and USA Weekend, to mention just a few, harp on our need to declutter – perhaps to make room for what we’ll acquire during the holiday shopping season! These articles also acknowledge that decluttering is difficult. Psychologists tell us that we should begin the clearing out process by asking ourselves what keeps us from getting started. Do we feel overwhelmed by all our stuff, is it difficult to find the time to begin, or do we fear the negative emotions we might dredge up? More pragmatic organization experts suggest a sorting approach, i.e., taking our kitchen implements, clothes, books, mementoes, pictures, whatever, and sorting them into at least three piles: 1) love it, use it, look at it, or wear it all the time; 2) use it, look at it, or wear it occasionally; and 3) haven’t used it, looked at it, or worn it for at least a year. The things in category 1 go back to their places to continue to be used or treasured. The still-usable items in category 3 go into a donate-to-charity box, and the useless items get tossed. The items in category 2 are carefully examined again, and finally are either kept or discarded. Such sorting is not easy, but for most of us it is a needed and ultimately freeing exercise.
How about the rest of your life? Do you have a spiritual junk drawer, or closet? Our Scripture lessons today, especially our Gospel lesson, bid us also to take an honest look at our spiritual lives and consider whether and where spiritual sorting may be called for. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus has triumphantly entered into Jerusalem – an event that we remember on Palm Sunday. Filled with zeal and anger, Jesus then charged into the temple and made all the money changers and animal sellers get out. No wonder the religious leaders wondered where Jesus had gotten the authority to do what he did. Wouldn’t you have, in their shoes? Jesus flung their question back at them with a question of his own about the role of John the Baptist. Of course, Jesus was alluding to John’s identification of him as the Messiah, thus implicitly answering their question. But Jesus also reminded the religious leaders that John had called for all people to repent, to change their way of thinking and the way they lived their lives.
Then Jesus told a little story about two sons. After initially refusing, the first son did what his father had asked. After initially agreeing, the second son did not do what his father had asked. Jesus forced his listeners to choose between the sons. Of course, they gave the right answer: ultimately what matters is what we do in response to God’s call, not the beliefs we profess or the long prayers we intone. Yet I wonder. Isn’t it a little too easy to think that people can be identified and grouped this way? Perhaps Matthew’s community saw the first members of the Kingdom of God as those, both Jews and Gentiles, who had followed Christ, and saw the Jewish religious leadership as lesser members. But again, I wonder. It’s so easy to be judgmental. It’s so easy to see one group as redeemed and another group as unworthy, so easy to think that we are among the redeemed – because we’re of the right gender or ethnicity, or because we have a beautiful liturgy, or we profess the right beliefs, or we give generously to the poor – and to think that others who don’t share our identity, practices, and views are cast out.
Brothers and sisters, the truth is that today’s readings, and especially the story of the two sons, invite us to take a both/and approach. Aren’t we all sometimes and in some ways like both sons? Aren’t there times when we promise what we can’t or won’t, or don’t have the will to deliver? Conversely, aren’t there aspects of our lives that we deeply regret, that we are striving to bring more closely into line with God’s expectations? Our Gospel story suggests that both sons actually need to repent, to change their lives. And the good news is that we can repent. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, God assured the Israelite exiles that repentance was always open to them: “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” In Jesus’ little story we are reminded and reassured that we are not bound by the past. We are not saved by our past promises, but neither are we determined or condemned by our past deeds. We can all repent, we can all turn around, and we can all change, with God’s help.
And yet we know that repentance is difficult. Just like decluttering, repentance requires of us a deep, self-examination, a true clearing out of spiritual junk drawers and closets. What keeps us from engaging in this kind of honest appraisal of our lives? What keeps us from following through on our best intentions and responding to God’s call to a more honest life? Do we think that our drawers and closets are already spotless? Are we like those who are sure of their own righteousness, certain that they have nothing of which to repent? Or conversely, are our lives, like our overflowing closets, such a mess that we feel overwhelmed by the prospect of even beginning? Are we afraid of the time such self-examination might take? Or are we afraid of what we might find if we do begin the process of self-examination?
Perhaps we need to follow the organization gurus. Perhaps we need to begin by taking baby steps, or breaking the task down into small manageable parts. Perhaps we can look first at our beliefs and prejudices. Perhaps we can engage in a kind of sorting process. What do our social or political beliefs look like? Where did or do we get them? What should we keep, what discard? Do we have positions on issues of which we are still absolutely certain? Are there positions which we’ve inherited perhaps but don’t agree with anymore? Do our views on some issues, capital punishment, abortion, immigration, health insurance, global poverty, or peace need rethinking? What about our spiritual beliefs? When was the last time we truly examined what we believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, evil, salvation, prayer, the sacraments, other religions? Of which of our long-held convictions are we still absolutely certain? Are some of our convictions out of date? Do they need to be discarded? Which beliefs bear closer examination? Should we perhaps engage with others in examining what we think we believe?
Perhaps our practices also need the same kind of sorting approach, both for us as individuals and for us as a parish. Can you take a hard look at your traditions as a family? Are some to be cherished, and others to be changed, now that your life circumstances have changed? Don’t we often find that holiday traditions need to be examined closely as our circumstances change? What about our personal spiritual practices? Can you take a hard look at them? What should be kept, what discarded, what rethought? What about our worship life here? What should we keep, what might we stop doing, what do we need to examine more closely?
Taking a hard look at our spiritual lives is often difficult. We know that, which is why we are often so reluctant to engage seriously with spiritual issues. And yet, God through the prophet Ezekiel and through Jesus in today’s Gospel asks us to think, to ponder, and to reflect. Today’s readings offer us hope that honest self-examination, repentance, and change of life will bring us closer to one another and nearer to God’s kingdom. They also remind us that we must continue to look at our lives carefully, regularly, perhaps even daily. Even ten minutes a day, as we say our last prayers, will help us to begin the process of self-examination. As we let go of unneeded aspects of our lives, as we declutter our spiritual lives, God, who is “slow to guide and swift to bless,” will move in to graciously direct more and more of our lives. As our paths become clearer and freer of unneeded burdens, we become more and more the person that God created us to be, and our feet are ever more firmly fixed on the path that leads us into the Kingdom of God. May Jesus ever give you a clearer vision of the way into the Kingdom.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
No Arm So Weak
Peter had a question, a legitimate question. Perhaps we have the same question. A rich young man had just asked Jesus what he had to do to obtain eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything he had, give his money to the poor, and join Jesus’ band of disciples. No surprise, the rich young man wasn’t ready to do that – who is? – and he went away disappointed. Then Peter piped up. “Say, what about us, Lord? We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will there be for us?” Jesus reassured Peter that all who had made sacrifices for him would be rewarded. Then, to drive home his point, Jesus told a provocative story.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...,” Jesus began. Then he went on to tell about a vineyard owner who practiced the most bizarre form of labor relations and economics. Certainly there were day laborers in ancient times hired on an as-needed basis. But hiring people throughout the work day, even as late as an hour before sunset? Paying the last to arrive first? Paying those who worked hard all day the same as those who worked only one hour? What was this vineyard owner thinking? Weren’t those hired first right to complain, “You have made them equal to us”? Treating those hired first this way wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense in Jesus’ or in Matthew’s time. And when we hear it, all we can do is shake our heads and wonder. Treating workers this way is totally contrary to anything we might do.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel didn’t preserve it, in order to instruct us in correct labor relations. Neither Jesus nor Matthew was sitting at the bargaining table advising either labor or management. Jesus told this story, and Matthew recounted it for his community, and by extension for us, in order to remind us of God’s true nature and to give us a vision of the new realm into which we are incorporated through Jesus.
Jesus told this story first of all to remind us of God’s unbelievable, immeasurable generosity. This was not a new theme in Scripture. The Exodus stories, the psalms, and the writings of many of the prophets also stress God’s generous love. Even the story of Jonah, the end of which we heard in our first lesson, emphasizes God’s gracious care and concern for all people, including the Ninevites who would eventually be enemies of Israel. In this provocative story, Jesus reminds his disciples and us that God is still a generous God, freely offering salvation to all who have made sacrifices for Jesus’ sake. We do not need to work to earn God’s free gift of salvation. Indeed there is nothing we can humanly do to earn God’s gift of true life. If we have been fortunate and have accomplished great things, or if we have been unfortunate and have stood idle most of the day, God still offers all of us salvation. Whether we have been an achiever or an idler, whether we were baptized as infants or adults, whether we have worked hard for the church all our lives, or whether we have come late to a life of devotion, God cares for us so much that God still generously offers us the gift of eternal life. And we all receive the same wage – the gift of a generous God, not a reward for hard work. Salvation is for all of us, no matter how long we have spent in the church. God’s gift is ours simply because we have shown up to claim it.
God’s gift of deeper life, Jesus also reminds us, is not just for us as individuals. God also invites us into a community in which all are loved. A few weeks back, our Gospel reading reminded us that the point of confronting someone who had hurt us was to preserve the bonds of community, to “retain that one,” if at all possible. Here we are reminded, or perhaps reassured, that the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm, is one where all are needed to bring in the harvest. The Kingdom of Heaven is a community where all, regardless of their skills and abilities, regardless of their time in the saddle, are assured of their worth in God’s eyes. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are needed, and where all know that they are valued and beloved by God.
Do our Christian communities look anything like the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this parish a community that appreciates God’s generous gift of new life to all of us? Our liturgy helps us to embody our understanding that all of us share God’s generous love. Following our confession of sin, all receive the same absolution. There are no gradations of absolution. Whether we are repenting of sin for the first time, or whether we have had a lifetime of daily confronting our shortcomings and failures, God offers us the same absolution. When we come up to the altar rail in the Eucharist, we all receive the same piece of bread, and we all drink from the same cup. Jesus offers his Body and Blood to us all, whether we were baptized today, or whether we have been lifelong disciples.
And when our liturgy is over, what then? What does our parish community look like then? Do those who have spent a lifetime in the church wonder about those who have just come in? Do those who have been longtime members look askance at newcomers? Or are all welcome? Are all valued? Are the contributions of all recognized? Make no mistake, no one is superfluous. All of us are valuable and beloved in God’s sight. And all of us are needed for the spread of God’s Realm.
During the summer of 2006 I did a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. I was assigned to a floor that concentrated on respiratory illness. There were always children with cystic fibrosis. There were also a number of severely disabled infants, as well as some severely disabled older children. The severely disabled children always raised questions for me, as I wondered what kind of life they would have, and how their families would care for them. In one or two cases, it seemed as if their families had abandoned them. In others, their families were totally devoted to them, even to older children who could not care for themselves at all. I observed all these families, and like Mary, I “pondered these things” in my heart all that summer. I even befriended the mother of an infant who was born blind and deaf. But I didn’t come to any conclusions.
And then I read an article by Amy Julia Becker entitled “An Hour with Penny.”1 Two medical students on pediatric rotation came to Becker’s house to learn about children with disabilities. They wondered what it would be like to have such a child. They spent their first hour on the floor playing with Becker’s three year old Down syndrome daughter. Later at dinner, they shared with Becker, her husband, and her mother, how encountering Penny had changed them. “They had been humbled by the opportunity to come to value another human being, in this case a human being with Down syndrome,” Becker tells us. A few days later, Becker read the story we just heard of the laborers in the vineyard. And she herself had a revelation. “I could envision Jesus at our kitchen table,” she says, “telling those students that for all their hard work and good grades and accolades, he didn’t consider them any more important than this little girl with an extra 21st chromosome, with glasses, a speech delay, and a hearing loss. I could envision Jesus explaining that they each had something of equal worth to contribute to God’s work in this world. The kingdom of heaven had come among us, for just a moment, when those students saw Penny as a gift.”
We too are invited into that kingdom. We too are invited to be thankful to God for all of God’s gracious and generous gifts to all of us, most especially the gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We too are invited to see each member of our own families, our parish family, of our surrounding communities, of our diocese, of the whole church, ultimately of all humanity, as valued and beloved. And we too, regardless of who we are, what we possess, how much education we have, how old we are, what the state of our health is, or how long we have been here, we all are valued and invited to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.
1. Amy Julia Becker, “An Hour with Penny,” Christian Century, January 12, 2010 (Vol. 127, 1)
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like ...,” Jesus began. Then he went on to tell about a vineyard owner who practiced the most bizarre form of labor relations and economics. Certainly there were day laborers in ancient times hired on an as-needed basis. But hiring people throughout the work day, even as late as an hour before sunset? Paying the last to arrive first? Paying those who worked hard all day the same as those who worked only one hour? What was this vineyard owner thinking? Weren’t those hired first right to complain, “You have made them equal to us”? Treating those hired first this way wasn’t fair and didn’t make sense in Jesus’ or in Matthew’s time. And when we hear it, all we can do is shake our heads and wonder. Treating workers this way is totally contrary to anything we might do.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel didn’t preserve it, in order to instruct us in correct labor relations. Neither Jesus nor Matthew was sitting at the bargaining table advising either labor or management. Jesus told this story, and Matthew recounted it for his community, and by extension for us, in order to remind us of God’s true nature and to give us a vision of the new realm into which we are incorporated through Jesus.
Jesus told this story first of all to remind us of God’s unbelievable, immeasurable generosity. This was not a new theme in Scripture. The Exodus stories, the psalms, and the writings of many of the prophets also stress God’s generous love. Even the story of Jonah, the end of which we heard in our first lesson, emphasizes God’s gracious care and concern for all people, including the Ninevites who would eventually be enemies of Israel. In this provocative story, Jesus reminds his disciples and us that God is still a generous God, freely offering salvation to all who have made sacrifices for Jesus’ sake. We do not need to work to earn God’s free gift of salvation. Indeed there is nothing we can humanly do to earn God’s gift of true life. If we have been fortunate and have accomplished great things, or if we have been unfortunate and have stood idle most of the day, God still offers all of us salvation. Whether we have been an achiever or an idler, whether we were baptized as infants or adults, whether we have worked hard for the church all our lives, or whether we have come late to a life of devotion, God cares for us so much that God still generously offers us the gift of eternal life. And we all receive the same wage – the gift of a generous God, not a reward for hard work. Salvation is for all of us, no matter how long we have spent in the church. God’s gift is ours simply because we have shown up to claim it.
God’s gift of deeper life, Jesus also reminds us, is not just for us as individuals. God also invites us into a community in which all are loved. A few weeks back, our Gospel reading reminded us that the point of confronting someone who had hurt us was to preserve the bonds of community, to “retain that one,” if at all possible. Here we are reminded, or perhaps reassured, that the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm, is one where all are needed to bring in the harvest. The Kingdom of Heaven is a community where all, regardless of their skills and abilities, regardless of their time in the saddle, are assured of their worth in God’s eyes. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are needed, and where all know that they are valued and beloved by God.
Do our Christian communities look anything like the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this parish a community that appreciates God’s generous gift of new life to all of us? Our liturgy helps us to embody our understanding that all of us share God’s generous love. Following our confession of sin, all receive the same absolution. There are no gradations of absolution. Whether we are repenting of sin for the first time, or whether we have had a lifetime of daily confronting our shortcomings and failures, God offers us the same absolution. When we come up to the altar rail in the Eucharist, we all receive the same piece of bread, and we all drink from the same cup. Jesus offers his Body and Blood to us all, whether we were baptized today, or whether we have been lifelong disciples.
And when our liturgy is over, what then? What does our parish community look like then? Do those who have spent a lifetime in the church wonder about those who have just come in? Do those who have been longtime members look askance at newcomers? Or are all welcome? Are all valued? Are the contributions of all recognized? Make no mistake, no one is superfluous. All of us are valuable and beloved in God’s sight. And all of us are needed for the spread of God’s Realm.
During the summer of 2006 I did a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. I was assigned to a floor that concentrated on respiratory illness. There were always children with cystic fibrosis. There were also a number of severely disabled infants, as well as some severely disabled older children. The severely disabled children always raised questions for me, as I wondered what kind of life they would have, and how their families would care for them. In one or two cases, it seemed as if their families had abandoned them. In others, their families were totally devoted to them, even to older children who could not care for themselves at all. I observed all these families, and like Mary, I “pondered these things” in my heart all that summer. I even befriended the mother of an infant who was born blind and deaf. But I didn’t come to any conclusions.
And then I read an article by Amy Julia Becker entitled “An Hour with Penny.”1 Two medical students on pediatric rotation came to Becker’s house to learn about children with disabilities. They wondered what it would be like to have such a child. They spent their first hour on the floor playing with Becker’s three year old Down syndrome daughter. Later at dinner, they shared with Becker, her husband, and her mother, how encountering Penny had changed them. “They had been humbled by the opportunity to come to value another human being, in this case a human being with Down syndrome,” Becker tells us. A few days later, Becker read the story we just heard of the laborers in the vineyard. And she herself had a revelation. “I could envision Jesus at our kitchen table,” she says, “telling those students that for all their hard work and good grades and accolades, he didn’t consider them any more important than this little girl with an extra 21st chromosome, with glasses, a speech delay, and a hearing loss. I could envision Jesus explaining that they each had something of equal worth to contribute to God’s work in this world. The kingdom of heaven had come among us, for just a moment, when those students saw Penny as a gift.”
We too are invited into that kingdom. We too are invited to be thankful to God for all of God’s gracious and generous gifts to all of us, most especially the gifts of forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We too are invited to see each member of our own families, our parish family, of our surrounding communities, of our diocese, of the whole church, ultimately of all humanity, as valued and beloved. And we too, regardless of who we are, what we possess, how much education we have, how old we are, what the state of our health is, or how long we have been here, we all are valued and invited to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.
1. Amy Julia Becker, “An Hour with Penny,” Christian Century, January 12, 2010 (Vol. 127, 1)
Sunday, September 11, 2011
How Often Should I Forgive?
It was lunch time in London on September 11, 2001, breakfast time in New York. Elizabeth Turner had just finished chatting with her husband Simon, who was heading off to a meeting at the World Trade Center.1 Seven months pregnant with their first child, and heading out for lunch, Elizabeth was wondering what kind of baby carriage to buy. When she returned from lunch, Elizabeth discovered to her horror that the life she had known was now buried with her husband in the rubble of the twin towers. In the chaos and madness of the next days and weeks, Elizabeth endured visits from the press, the police, and social workers. Family and friends kept a twenty-four hour vigil with her, lest she go into premature labor. The birth of her son plunged her into even deeper grief, shock, and fear, as she realized that her husband had died for reasons that had nothing to do with her or her family, and that their son would grow up without his father. To save her son, she knew that she had to get beyond the cycle of violence and hatred, but she also knew that “choosing to stop the cycle is just as difficult as choosing the other path of anger and hatred.” Books, therapists, and pouring out her heart to family and friends gave her little help. Finally, through Reiki, a holistic form of healing, Elizabeth was able to empty herself of all the negative emotions, including the need for bitterness and retaliation, and find peace within. “From then on I was able to reengage with life,” she tells us, “I wasn’t normal again but I was able to laugh and be a whole parent.”
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Where Two or Three Are Gathered
In 1973 psychiatrist Karl Menninger published a book with an arresting title: Whatever Became of Sin? In it, Menninger argued that, in our rush to identify all wrongdoing as illness, we have almost totally lost our sense of human sinfulness. Today, it almost feels quaint to talk about “sin.” Even our wonderful 1979 Book of Common Prayer, a product of the 1960s and ‘70s, downplays human sinfulness.
The question of whatever became of sin is part of a larger and more provocative question: whatever became of Church discipline? First of all, do we as Christians in the Anglican tradition hold to any clear statements of belief? Has any of you actually ever looked at the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Catechism, both of which are in the back of the Book of Common Prayer? Perhaps the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed provide clear statements of belief. Who understands what they really say, and what those ancient statements have to do with life in the twenty-first century? Secondly, do we as Christians strive to keep a holy lifestyle? Do we even care about basic morality and civility? Do we acknowledge and repent of our sins? Do we respect marriage and other sacred vows? Do fasting and feasting have any meaning for us? Has the tithe gone out with buggy whips and high button shoes? Do we feel obligated to worship regularly or keep the Sabbath? And finally do we as Christians care anything about the other members of the Body of Christ in this place or any other place? Or do we feel like disparate cogs who gather for our Sunday fix – when we feel like it – and then run away to our various separate pursuits? Are we all just a voluntary association with no accountability to God or to each other?
When we look back at the history of our churches, it’s not hard to see the shift from church as controlling community to church as a collection of people for whom almost anything goes. In the ancient, medieval, and early Reformation worlds, the church, regardless of denomination, was a core social institution that exercised control over almost every aspect of life. Even as late as the nineteenth century in this country, church communities could enforce on their members rules of doctrinal confession, social behavior, and mutual care and concern. In many places, woe to anyone who didn’t accept Scripture as God’s literal word, or who went dancing on Saturday night, who drank alcoholic beverages, or who didn’t keep the Sabbath, or whose womenfolk cut their hair. Even into the 1950s, many churches exercised decisive and significant control over their members’ lives. In today’s world, perhaps only the Amish and a few other marginal sects embody such all-embracing communities.
The 1960s of course were the turning point in this country. Since then, we’ve replaced our sense of sin with a belief in illness, as Karl Menninger so rightly observed. As church, we’ve succumbed to the extreme individualism of American life. Indeed, most of our Christian communities are as socially fragmented as the rest of American culture, as Christians sort themselves out according to political affiliation, approach to the interpretation of Scripture, musical tastes, age, or social class. More important, I am quite sure that everyone here has a strong sense of personal moral autonomy and privacy. You would not expect the church to maintain the disciplinary standards of even Rotary or Kiwanis. You would surely never expect your clergy person to say anything – and God forbid not in a sermon – about divorce, addiction, workaholism, conspicuous consumption, domestic abuse, or a host of other sins. I suspect you would not even want me to suggest that you had a responsibility to address the sins and shortcomings of any other member of the parish family. Indeed, it’s a great irony that now, in the Episcopal Church at least, only the clergy are subject to church discipline. We have clear canons as to the reasons for which clergy may be deposed or otherwise relieved of their clerical responsibilities, and lay persons are encouraged to bring potential concerns to their bishop. But no such standards exist for lay people.
So are we just another voluntary association? Are we no better than, perhaps not even as good as, Rotary or Kiwanis? God forbid. In this country, we may have lost a clear sense of what we believe, we may have a weak sense of personal sinfulness, and we may have no idea what holy living looks like. Perhaps, like the earliest Christian communities, we too struggle with the question of how much to accede to the demands of the culture around us. Some of us may even wonder whether it isn’t time to again become a counter-cultural community, at odds with the wider culture, like some of our new monastic communities.
My brothers and sisters, despite our ingrained sense of extreme individualism, despite our struggles and questions, we are not another voluntary organization. Regardless of our size, whether we are a mega church or a handful of souls, we are a community devoted to, led by, and embodying Christ. We have been called together, called out of the world, by the Holy Spirit to be a new family, a family not based on blood, but on inclusion in Christ. We are a community, a Body, in which each member is needed and valued. We are not an association of like-minded, discrete individuals, we are a fellowship of believers united with one another in Jesus Christ, under his headship. And we are a community with two governing principles. The first principle is to love God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, in other words to do all that we can, as often as we can, to strengthen our bond with God and with God’s Son. The second principle is to love our neighbors as ourselves – all of our neighbors. For, love is not only the fulfillment of the law, as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading. Love is the means by which we imitate Jesus. Indeed, the world should know that “we are Christians by our love,” And so, we are also a community of mutual interdependence, a community whose members care for and about each other, a community whose members are mutually accountable to each other.
We are also a community of sinful, fallible human beings. Despite our best efforts to love God and our neighbors, inevitably there will be conflicts among us that threaten to destroy our community. These conflicts arise perhaps from grievances of one person against another, or perhaps because one of our members has gone too far down the path of sin. Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us a way to address our conflicts and demonstrate our concern for one another.
Certainly, the three-step process outlined in today’s reading could be useful for many communities. I want to highlight just two aspects of that process. The first is that our most important goal is always to preserve community. Our translation obscures the fact that Jesus’ instructions begin with a reminder that a Christian community is a family: the Greek actually says, “If your sister or brother should commit some wrong against you…” Any approach to a fellow member of the community must preserve the dignity of that person and must include an honest expression of the issue at hand. And please note: we are not asked to deny conflict, or grievances, and we are certainly not asked to condone violence or abuse. But our goal is always to “regain that one,” to assure repentance and reconciliation. Secondly, even at the last, where a person is treated as a “Gentile or tax collector,” our goal is to maintain connection. If Jesus is our model, then no one can ever be written off or permanently shunned, for Jesus himself welcomed sinners, Gentiles, and tax collectors. Jesus was always ready to forgive and welcome back. We are not a voluntary organization. We are a community called together, called out, called to care for one another and for the world, and called to care for each others' souls in the bonds of love.
Presbyterian pastor Richard Henderson reminds us that our passing of the peace is a liturgical expression of the bonds of love that tie a Christian community together. Despite what you may think, the Peace is not an empty social ritual or a chummy greeting. Before and after church, in coffee hour especially, is when we can catch up with other socially. The Peace is rather an ancient part of Christian worship. It is a way of praying for each other, of asking Jesus to bless the other person and give that person peace. It is also a way for us to clearly demonstrate that we bear no grudges against each other, that we have been reconciled with each other. God willing, when we greet each other in peace in this place, we will recognize the bonds of Christian love that bind us, despite our sins and conflicts.
We are not a voluntary association. We are a community whose foundation is Jesus, and we are called to live in such a way that we too show forth Christ to the world.
The question of whatever became of sin is part of a larger and more provocative question: whatever became of Church discipline? First of all, do we as Christians in the Anglican tradition hold to any clear statements of belief? Has any of you actually ever looked at the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Catechism, both of which are in the back of the Book of Common Prayer? Perhaps the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed provide clear statements of belief. Who understands what they really say, and what those ancient statements have to do with life in the twenty-first century? Secondly, do we as Christians strive to keep a holy lifestyle? Do we even care about basic morality and civility? Do we acknowledge and repent of our sins? Do we respect marriage and other sacred vows? Do fasting and feasting have any meaning for us? Has the tithe gone out with buggy whips and high button shoes? Do we feel obligated to worship regularly or keep the Sabbath? And finally do we as Christians care anything about the other members of the Body of Christ in this place or any other place? Or do we feel like disparate cogs who gather for our Sunday fix – when we feel like it – and then run away to our various separate pursuits? Are we all just a voluntary association with no accountability to God or to each other?
When we look back at the history of our churches, it’s not hard to see the shift from church as controlling community to church as a collection of people for whom almost anything goes. In the ancient, medieval, and early Reformation worlds, the church, regardless of denomination, was a core social institution that exercised control over almost every aspect of life. Even as late as the nineteenth century in this country, church communities could enforce on their members rules of doctrinal confession, social behavior, and mutual care and concern. In many places, woe to anyone who didn’t accept Scripture as God’s literal word, or who went dancing on Saturday night, who drank alcoholic beverages, or who didn’t keep the Sabbath, or whose womenfolk cut their hair. Even into the 1950s, many churches exercised decisive and significant control over their members’ lives. In today’s world, perhaps only the Amish and a few other marginal sects embody such all-embracing communities.
The 1960s of course were the turning point in this country. Since then, we’ve replaced our sense of sin with a belief in illness, as Karl Menninger so rightly observed. As church, we’ve succumbed to the extreme individualism of American life. Indeed, most of our Christian communities are as socially fragmented as the rest of American culture, as Christians sort themselves out according to political affiliation, approach to the interpretation of Scripture, musical tastes, age, or social class. More important, I am quite sure that everyone here has a strong sense of personal moral autonomy and privacy. You would not expect the church to maintain the disciplinary standards of even Rotary or Kiwanis. You would surely never expect your clergy person to say anything – and God forbid not in a sermon – about divorce, addiction, workaholism, conspicuous consumption, domestic abuse, or a host of other sins. I suspect you would not even want me to suggest that you had a responsibility to address the sins and shortcomings of any other member of the parish family. Indeed, it’s a great irony that now, in the Episcopal Church at least, only the clergy are subject to church discipline. We have clear canons as to the reasons for which clergy may be deposed or otherwise relieved of their clerical responsibilities, and lay persons are encouraged to bring potential concerns to their bishop. But no such standards exist for lay people.
So are we just another voluntary association? Are we no better than, perhaps not even as good as, Rotary or Kiwanis? God forbid. In this country, we may have lost a clear sense of what we believe, we may have a weak sense of personal sinfulness, and we may have no idea what holy living looks like. Perhaps, like the earliest Christian communities, we too struggle with the question of how much to accede to the demands of the culture around us. Some of us may even wonder whether it isn’t time to again become a counter-cultural community, at odds with the wider culture, like some of our new monastic communities.
My brothers and sisters, despite our ingrained sense of extreme individualism, despite our struggles and questions, we are not another voluntary organization. Regardless of our size, whether we are a mega church or a handful of souls, we are a community devoted to, led by, and embodying Christ. We have been called together, called out of the world, by the Holy Spirit to be a new family, a family not based on blood, but on inclusion in Christ. We are a community, a Body, in which each member is needed and valued. We are not an association of like-minded, discrete individuals, we are a fellowship of believers united with one another in Jesus Christ, under his headship. And we are a community with two governing principles. The first principle is to love God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, in other words to do all that we can, as often as we can, to strengthen our bond with God and with God’s Son. The second principle is to love our neighbors as ourselves – all of our neighbors. For, love is not only the fulfillment of the law, as Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading. Love is the means by which we imitate Jesus. Indeed, the world should know that “we are Christians by our love,” And so, we are also a community of mutual interdependence, a community whose members care for and about each other, a community whose members are mutually accountable to each other.
We are also a community of sinful, fallible human beings. Despite our best efforts to love God and our neighbors, inevitably there will be conflicts among us that threaten to destroy our community. These conflicts arise perhaps from grievances of one person against another, or perhaps because one of our members has gone too far down the path of sin. Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us a way to address our conflicts and demonstrate our concern for one another.
Certainly, the three-step process outlined in today’s reading could be useful for many communities. I want to highlight just two aspects of that process. The first is that our most important goal is always to preserve community. Our translation obscures the fact that Jesus’ instructions begin with a reminder that a Christian community is a family: the Greek actually says, “If your sister or brother should commit some wrong against you…” Any approach to a fellow member of the community must preserve the dignity of that person and must include an honest expression of the issue at hand. And please note: we are not asked to deny conflict, or grievances, and we are certainly not asked to condone violence or abuse. But our goal is always to “regain that one,” to assure repentance and reconciliation. Secondly, even at the last, where a person is treated as a “Gentile or tax collector,” our goal is to maintain connection. If Jesus is our model, then no one can ever be written off or permanently shunned, for Jesus himself welcomed sinners, Gentiles, and tax collectors. Jesus was always ready to forgive and welcome back. We are not a voluntary organization. We are a community called together, called out, called to care for one another and for the world, and called to care for each others' souls in the bonds of love.
Presbyterian pastor Richard Henderson reminds us that our passing of the peace is a liturgical expression of the bonds of love that tie a Christian community together. Despite what you may think, the Peace is not an empty social ritual or a chummy greeting. Before and after church, in coffee hour especially, is when we can catch up with other socially. The Peace is rather an ancient part of Christian worship. It is a way of praying for each other, of asking Jesus to bless the other person and give that person peace. It is also a way for us to clearly demonstrate that we bear no grudges against each other, that we have been reconciled with each other. God willing, when we greet each other in peace in this place, we will recognize the bonds of Christian love that bind us, despite our sins and conflicts.
We are not a voluntary association. We are a community whose foundation is Jesus, and we are called to live in such a way that we too show forth Christ to the world.
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