The Wisdom of Christ
Matt 15:21-2
February 21, 2010
The Rev. T. Richard Snyder
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a time in which we acknowledge and repent of our sins. Thirty some years ago, the psychiatrist Karl Menniger asked the troubling question, “Whatever became of sin?” Certainly it is not something we hear much about nor is it a subject most of us seek out. We’re not much of a “sackcloth and ashes” people. But Lent invites us to look hard at ourselves and acknowledge where we have failed to be faithful to our high calling. If I were preaching a full Lenten series, there are any number of sins that would probably be worth our attention and were I to preach about them, I’m certain we could successfully reduce the number of persons attending by a significant number. But, lucky you, I have just today so I’d like to focus on what I consider to be one of the most tragic failures facing our world today, the sin of division.
We live in a world that is deeply divided. Tribal divisions have led to unimaginable genocides. Religious divisions have led to wars and terrorism. Economic divisions have resulted in abject poverty and death. Ideological divisions have left our nation mired in distrust and balkanization We are witnesses to a federal government that is paralyzed by political separation so severe that it has resulted in the failure to put the common good first. It is not a pretty picture.
February not only brings us Lent, it also brings us Black History Month. It is perhaps fitting that the two coincide, since we are reminded of the painful legacy of a nation divided by the sin of racism. Tragically, racism has been part of the warp and woof of our national fabric since our beginning and, despite significant gains, remains one of the most pressing issues confronting our nation today.
But it is not only the tragedy of racism that we acknowledge this month, it is also the courage and vision of those who have fought for equal justice for all--none more so that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the heart of his extraordinary courage and tenacity was a vision of what he called “the beloved community.” Despite the lynchings, the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombings, and the beatings, King’s vision was for a society in which all were treated with respect as kin to one another. In a book written near the end of his life, entitled, Chaos or Community: Where Do We Go From Here? he said, "all life is interrelated…We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
The sin of division calls forth the vision of a beloved community. But what would the beloved community look like?
Everyone needs community because we are social beings. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we often seek for community among those who are pretty much the same as we are.
Since the earliest days of our nation’s history, people have been separated by ethnicity, religion, race and class. One of the most egregious of these separations was that between whites and blacks for which there were laws prohibiting blacks from living where whites lived, from congregating where whites congregated, from attending schools where whites studied, from eating where whites ate. Then came the civil rights movement and the end to legal segregation.
Unfortunately, that did not end segregation. In the more than fifty years since Brown versus the Board of Education ended segregated schools, more children today attend segregated schools than ever before. The reason for this is that even though there is no legal segregation, the majority of whites have tended to live separate from blacks and other people of color.
The consequences of segregation for both blacks and whites have been devastating. For blacks, it has meant second class citizenship resulting in poverty, fragmented community and nihilism. For whites is has meant cultural deprivation leaving us with stereotypes, an unfounded sense of superiority, and fear.
In the shadow of that legacy, I’d like us to catch the vision of the beloved community. And rather focusing on the terrifying international divisions that confront us or the systemic racism that remains endemic to our society I’d like to bring us home here to Maine and the Midcoast region that we all have claimed as our community. How can we share in building the beloved community right here?
A year and a half ago Scott Stossel reported in the NY Times that during the last decade, 100 million Americans have moved—my wife and I as well as some of you are among that number. Interestingly, they point out, a significant number of those who move cluster in increasingly homogeneous communities. We moved from metropolitan New York, with its immense diversity to this whitest of states and to the mid-coast where we find ourselves among those who are similarly privileged economically, educationally and culturally. Unfortunately, this tendency toward homogeneity is a troubling development that is driving us farther away from the Beloved Community.
Jill Saxby put me on to a very interesting recent book that analyses this phenomenon. It’s entitled, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. “We have built a country,” the authors write, “where everyone can choose the neighbors (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don’t know, can’t understand, and can barely conceive of ‘those people’ who live just a few miles away.”
The result of this separation, they say is that “Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.”
Clearly our current political scene underscores the dysfunctionality and dangers of this kind of separation.
But is the problem just “them”? Let me pose the question, Is this church part of the problem? Am I part of the problem? Are you part of the problem? Do we live with the same kind of myopia and closed minds that Bishop and Cushing describe in The Big Sort?
When I ask the question of myself, in all honesty I must admit that I am far more comfortable being with like-minded folks. I tend to watch MSNBC but not Fox News. I read the Nation but not the National Review.
But it goes further. I have sometimes demonized George W. Bush and Dick Cheney whom, ironically, I criticized for demonizing others. I have often reduced those who advocate for the free market to be simply greedy people who don’t care about the poor. I have found it difficult to find common ground with religious fundamentalists who believe many things I find inconceivable or even deleterious. I am infuriated by those who stand in the way of gay marriage, immigration reform and environmental protection and consider them to be out of touch with the pain of the oppressed. And in my rejection of those with whom I vehemently disagree I have often refused to even consider that they might have something to offer that is truthful or helpful for the common good. I could go on, but you get the point.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not a free market advocate, I don’t even care very much for the Democratic Party and consider myself more of a democratic socialist. I am not a fundamentalist but rather a rather free thinking seeker of truth within the broad Christian tradition. But that does not mean that I have all the truth or that I do not need those who disagree with me in the search for the common good, for the beloved community, for a world community of peace, justice and equality. I do need them. And they need me.
The problem is not just me, or us, of course. It takes two to tango and the barriers have been erected by those on the other side of the divide as well. But if we simply remain barricaded against the onslaughts of our adversaries and those with whom we strongly disagree, can there be any hope?
If we never listen to one another, never put ourselves at each other’s disposal, what hope is there?
That’s why I love the story we read this morning about Jesus and the Canaanite woman who came to him seeking healing for her daughter. The Jews and Canaanites were historic enemies. The stories of the exodus tradition in the Hebrew scripture portray Canaan as the land to be conquered by those who escaped bondage in Egypt and the Canaanites are portrayed as the mortal enemy of the Jews. So when Jesus is approached by a Canaanite woman to heal her son, he completely ignores her, as if she were invisible. His disciples want to go one step further, asking him to send her away, to openly reject her. Jesus then tells her that the reason he won’t help her is because he cares only about the Jews. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When the woman persists, he insults her, telling her it isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. To refer to her as a dog was a brutal insult. But her response turns Jesus around. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. He then recants, acknowledges her faith, and heals her daughter.
If you look at the movement in this short story you see that Jesus begins as one caught up in the ideology of his culture—the Canaanites are our foes and we should not engage with them. But instead of remaining silent, he shares what he believes—I’m only to be concerned for Israel. This opens up the possibility of further dialogue from her as she pleads her case. His disappointing response is to insult her and deny the legitimacy of her request, but because they are at least talking, he is able to hear her more clearly and is moved by her further words. In the end, they come together in concern for the sick girl. Because they overcame their separation, healing could occur.
One of the more powerful films I’ve seen in a while Is Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela’s strategic plan to unite the bitterly divided whites and people of color of South Africa by galvanizing the nation around the World Rugby championship. What is most clear throughout the story is the way in which Mandela was willing to listen to those who disagreed with him—indeed, even those who imprisoned him and killed his people. At the same time he forthrightly sharedd his own commitments even when others disagreed, and he did not give up when easy solutions did not emerge. It is a remarkable and unfinished story and I encourage all of you to see it, or better still, read the book on which it is based, entitled Playing the Enemy.
So let’s bring this home. How can we as a church break out of our safe haven and reach out to those with whom we are in disagreement? If Jesus can open himself to the Canaanite woman, if Martin Luther King can claim even those who revile him as his brother or sister, if Mandela can embrace the Africaners who oppressed his people for decades, can we find ways to reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Can we find ways to try to begin conversation with those churches that are against gay marriage without relegating them to hell? Can we find ways to work with those whose response to the economic crisis is to cut benefits? Can we reach out to those who support the Zionists or military expansionism?
The tradition of Judaism and Christianity tell us we ought to try. The book of Leviticus says that we are to love our neighbor as our self and Jesus says that all the law is summed up in two commandments, love the Lord your God with all you heart and your neighbor as yourself. What would it mean to love the neighbor we don’t know, or fear, or with whom we vehemently disagree?
Simone Weil said that “the love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid? What if we tried to understand their heart, to understand why they feel and think as they do? What if, instead of “what’s the matter with you?” we asked, “what are you going through?”
To do so does not mean giving up what we believe and care about. But it does mean being open to listen, to learn, and possibly to change. As a radical activist in the sixties, the police were pigs to me, Castro could do nor wrong, the South was a land of unmitigated racists writ large, and all those who agreed with me were the good guys.
Perhaps one of the reasons why I responded so viscerally against Bush’s division of the world into good and evil was that it touched a chord within my own history.
This isn’t easy, of course. There are psychopaths. There are policies and ideologies that harm people. There are practices that must be stopped because they bring death. To love our neighbor does not mean tolerating evil. Nor does it mean not standing up for what we believe and hope for. But it does mean treating even those with whom we disagree as kin rather than as “other”. Most of us can imagine that were a spouse or parent or child were contemplating or involved in some horrible act we would be compelled to try to prevent them, perhaps to even call in law enforcement. That is precisely what the father of the man who attempted to blow up the airplane in Detroit at Christmas did. He warned of his son’s potential behavior. But that did not stop him from loving his son, from trying to understand his motives, or from seeking his healing. The admonition to love our neighbor as our self requires that we treat them with the same love and respect and care as we would a beloved relative.
So let’s come back to the Big Sort. Are we living in the Big Sort. Does this congregation welcome and even seek those who are not just like us? Do we know what is going on in the lives of the family in the run down trailer just a mile or two away? Do we know why our impoverished neighbor whom we just know would benefit from raising taxes, votes the other way? Do we know why some of our neighbors who are the most harmed by pollution are opposed to environmental protection? Do we know why some members of the church ignore us or treat us perfunctorily? Do we know why the people who swear at those protesting our war policies are so belligerent? Or do we just know that all these people are wrongheaded and we need to set them straight?
Let me repeat the words of Simone Weil.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those in this congregation and those in the community with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid?
What are you going through?
The goal of the beloved community begins with this small question.
First Congregational Church, U.C.C. 55 Elm Street, Camden, ME 04843
Phone: 207-236-4821 Fax: 207-236-4822 EMAIL: conchurch@verizon.net
Rev. Kevin M. Pleas
Luke 13:1-9 March 7, 2010
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, 'Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them-do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.'
Then he told this parable: 'A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?" He replied, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down." '
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Garry Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury comic strip, once gave a commencement address at Wake Forest University (May 19, 1986). During his speech, he told a story about a man who came to his doctor father complaining of an ulcer.
My father asked the pertinent question. Was there some undue stress, he inquired, that might be causing the man to digest his stomach? The patient, who was married, thought about if for a moment and then allowed that he did have a girlfriend in Syracuse, and that twice a week he'd been driving an old pick-up down to see her. Since the pick-up frequently broke down, he was often late in getting home, and he had to devise fabulous stories to tell his wife. My father, compassionately but sternly, told the man he had to make a hard decision about his personal priorities if he was ever to get well. The patient nodded and went away, and six months later came back completely cured and a new man. My father congratulated him and then delicately inquired if he'd made some change in his life. "Yup," the man replied. Got me a new pick-up."
I'm sure that wasn't quite what the doctor thought he had ordered. It's a funny story though, and like most funny stories, it comes with a punch line that isn't what you'd expect. The guy ends up happy as a clam, keeps his wife and his girlfriend and gets a new truck in the bargain. He seems to have completely missed what was really causing his stress, but as long as his ulcer isn't acting up he thinks he's solved his problem. If this were reality, I'd imagine that sooner or later this guy would get exactly what he had coming to him. His wife and his girlfriend would find out about each other. They'd both take baseball bats to his new truck and he'd be lucky to get out of town with his skin intact.
Of course, we've all been around long enough to know that people don't always get exactly what they've got coming. Cute stories aside, some people don't suffer the consequences they deserve. Others suffer things they don't deserve at all. I don't know about you, but I'm personally not real happy that in our current financial crisis, some of those who have been most responsible are also least effected. On the other side, the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile provide abundant recent examples of suffering that is not deserved. One of the earliest lessons we learn, but never quite get over, is that life simply isn't always fair.
It was something along these lines that must have motivated Luke to include this morning's passage in his gospel. As I've been telling our confirmands this week, one of the prominent themes in the stories of Jesus is that a lot of the people in Israel were hoping he would prove to be a great military leader. They were looking for the kind of messiah who could inspire the people to rise up in rebellion and cast off the yoke of Roman oppression. When Luke says that some people came to Jesus and told him about some Galileans who'd been killed by Pilate, mingling their blood with the blood of the sacrifices, we can be certain that they were hoping to inflame Jesus's righteous indignation.
Jesus, though, had a different agenda. He was a man in a hurry, but not because he wanted to throw Rome out of Palestine. He believed that the Kingdom of God was at hand, immediately at hand, and in light of that, the political situation with Rome was pretty much beside the point. When the people tried to get him excited about Pilate's atrocities, Jesus simply turned it into a theological discussion. Do you think the people Pilate killed died because they deserved to? Was God punishing them because their sins were worse than average? Or how about those people who were crushed by the tower of Siloam when it came down? Did they deserve that? Then he answered his own question. No they didn't, but what's really important is, if the same thing happened to you, would you be ready?
I've been ragging on Pat Robertson a bit lately, not that he doesn't deserve it. But for today's message, he makes a perfect example of the kind of thinking Jesus was arguing against. Did the people in Hatit deserve to be hit by an earthquake? Robertson seems to think they did. But doesn't it seem pretty clear that Jesus would have said, No? It does to me. In Jesus' day, most everyone believed that if something bad happened to you it was because you or someone in your family had earned the wrath of God. Jesus disagreed, but apparently some of his most vocal followers think they know better.
"Then he told this parable," it says. A man planted a fig tree but it didn't bear fruit. He told his gardner it was a waste of soil and that he should cut it down. But the gardener argued for mercy. Let me loosen the soil, water and fertilize it and see what happens. If it's still barren this time next year we'll pull it out.
In the context of Jesus' earlier comments, one of the easiest ways to understand this story is that God is the vineyard owner, Jesus is the gardener, and you and I fit in best as the tree, all of whose efforts to date have been fruitless. You might think the message is that if our lives turn out to be unproductive in God's eyes, eventually we're going to be torn out by the roots and cast into the fire. I suppose you could look at it that way if you like. There are plenty of people around who do. As far as the story goes, being unproductive and sinning are more or less the same thing, and if you're one of those people who think there is a direct line between sin and punishment you would probably be forced to conclude, self righteously, that being cast into the fire is exactly what unproductive trees deserve.
But what strikes me here is that, left to its own devices, it doesn't seem likely the tree will bear any more fruit in the future than it has in the past. Left to its own devices. That's the key. According to the story, it is only the intervention of the gardener that holds out any promise that the future might be different than the past. It is only the promise of the gardener's care and tending that makes it at all likely that the tree will eventually begin bearing fruit. Jesus' message here is essentially the same as the one from John's gospel: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing."
Now, maybe we don't like that message. Maybe we are completely committed to the idea that nothing we do counts unless we do it all by ourselves. Maybe we'd rather not bear any fruit at all than do it with anyone else's help. That's certainly the way a lot of people seem to think. But that kind of thinking, to put it simply, is not Christian. Really, if you want to get right down to the heart of the matter, the wisdom of Christ boils down to one thing: all that we are is what we are in God, all that we can be is what we can be in God. Apart from what we are in God, we aren't anything at all. It really is that simple. We recoil at what we think is the underlying message of parables like this. Bear fruit or you'll be torn out by the roots. But that's not the point Jesus is trying to make, I don't believe. The point is, whatever part of us there is that imagines it can survive apart from God amounts to nothing any of us would feel was worth saving. Which means that casting it into the fire isn't punishment, so much as simply the pruning back of something that has ceased to have any life in it at all. All that we are, is what we are in God. It really is that simple.
What Jesus is arguing for is that we realize that and begin to live our lives accordingly. If all we are is what we are in God, then having God at the center of our lives is the only thing that really makes sense. It is what allows us, once and for all, to both get and keep our priorities in order, rather than constantly losing sight of what's really important. Along these lines, there's another story I like that makes an interesting point.
There once ruled a king, according to a fable, who ruled a little kingdom tucked away in a pleasant corner of one of those European regions that used to have little kingdoms tucked away in its corners. He was a very benevolent fellow, loved by his people. One day an army came and overran the castle, making off with half the treasury. The king decided to tell the people he must increase taxes to make up for the loss. He called in one of the court wise men. "How can I break the news without inciting a revolt?" he asked. The wise man ... came up with a gentle way of explaining the theft as a tragedy for the entire kingdom, imploring the people for their support. It went over well.
Time passed, and once again the neighboring army raided the castle, this time carting away much of the food stored for the winter. Once again, the king called [the wise man.] "What can I tell my subjects this time?" the anxious king asked. "They will lose confidence in me if I can't defend the kingdom's food and money." Again the wise man pondered. He advised the king to be frank about the loss, but to say only that it had gone to a neighboring kingdom that seemed to need it desperately. And the king told the people, and asked them to work even harder on the year's harvest. And they did, and all was well.
A short time later, the neighboring army struck again, hauling away horses, hay and other foodstock and most of the royal jewels. Once again, the king called in the wise man for advice. "They raid the treasury. They take our food. They steal our livestock. What shall I do?" The wise man hesitated, and then spoke. "I think, your majesty … I think the time has come for your highness to put the water back in the moat."
We get so wrapped up in this idea of who deserves what and why. We like to think that life should be fair and are frustrated when it isn't. I think it was Gandhi who said something like it would be nice if we were as frustrated about how unfair life is for others as we are about how unfair we think it is for ourselves. But if we're going to understand Jesus, we need to get our minds around the notion that he really did have a whole different set of priorities. Like the king putting the water back in the moat, we need to do the one thing that is really necessary. We need to do the one thing that will make everything else we do successful. We need to open our hearts to God, and let the gardener do for us what we need in order to live fruitful lives.
Amen.