Circles of Peace and Healing

 

 

          Years ago, I heard a poem in a sermon that I remember to this day. It goes:

          He drew a circle that shut me out—

          Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

          But Love and I had the wit to win:

          We drew a circle that took him in.[1]

Even though the truth of this little poem resonates with what we know of the Christian message, we still somehow resist living out its promises, don’t we? I had dinner with a new neighbor recently—one who no longer attends a church—and his main question for me as a priest was “What on earth keeps Christians divided into so many different groups?”

His question reminded me of my favorite confirmation class lesson plan. To engage the kids in church history, I give the teens each a handful of old Playmobil figures. Like the real Church, these figures are a motley crew: some hold props like guns and canoe paddles, some are missing body parts, and some are faceless adults and children. The task for the confirmands is to move these figures in and out of groups as I outline the history of the Church.[2] As we go from a small community of persecuted Christians, to a church split between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, to the divisions and wars of the Protestant Reformation, to the fragmentation within the Protestant Churches that creates all of our present-day denominations, the kids frantically try to keep up. As the communities in our story fight and morph, divide and dwindle, the teens move the Playmobil figures around the table. At the end of the exercise, we are always left with tiny groups of pitiful Playmobil figures, clumped in irrelevant little circles all over the table, with their guns and canoe paddles and missing limbs. It’s hard not to shake our heads in sorrowful self-recognition at the sight. I’ll never forget the comment of one wise middle-schooler: “Why can’t all these groups just concentrate on what they have in common, instead of on the things they disagree about?” Jesus couldn’t have said it better.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are nearing the time when Jesus will face crucifixion. He doesn’t have much time left to communicate to his followers how they are to live into God’s Kingdom. To top it off, the disciples, like us, just don’t seem to understand. Right after Jesus explains to them that they are to seek humility and love, rather than greatness and worldly power, they want to close off Love’s circle by rebuking Christians who don’t do things their way. Poor Jesus!

Like a parent worried sick for her wayward child, Jesus hollers at them! He needs them to stop and hear him now. That’s why he uses the “over the top” language that we read in today’s Gospel. Using frightening hyperbole, Jesus warns his followers that it is going to take all that we have and all that we are to live lives of Christian discipleship. Rather than asserting our own superiority, our attention needs to be on caring for the little and the least. We need to watch out for the series of roadblocks that litter the path of a Christian life, a life that even our own hands and eyes and feet can pull dangerously off course from one moment to the next.

All the talk of “hell” in this passage might cause us squeamishly non-hellfire-and-brimstone-Episcopalians to squirm and shut our ears. That would be unfortunate. “Hell” here is not Dante’s Inferno of eternal fire that we imagine when we read Jesus’ words. And this “Hell” is certainly not for other people, for the people we deem unfit for our circle. This “hell” in the Greek text is “Gehenna.” Gehenna is a real valley near Jerusalem where, at once point in the history of ancient Israel, human sacrifices were once offered to a foreign god. As such, it was always known as a defiled and unclean place. In Jesus’ day, Gehenna was a garbage dump for the city, a place where burning trash smoldered night and day. What a fitting image of desolation and decay![3] If you want life in God, Jesus cries, you need to rid yourself of everything that is a stumbling block, even if it seems as essential to your present life as your hands and feet and eyes. If you hang onto your stumbling block, it will burn away your time and your will. You will smolder in the garbage dump of living death, until nothing is left but dust and ashes.

I shared an article with the Vestry last month that talks about how our society has moved from “The Age of Association” to the “Age of Authenticity.”[4] From the 1700’s until the 1960’s, our society gathered in groups of people who worked together for a common good. There were Masons and Rotary Club, Garden Club, Scouts, and Labor Unions. And churches, full and thriving churches. Affiliating with communities was the thing to do. I’m sure many of us here remember these times.

Beginning in the 1960’s, though, and accelerating in recent years, our society no longer places such emphasis on associations. We now live in what some scholars call “the Age of Authenticity.” We avoid making commitments and seem lacking in “any collective capacity to prioritize the common good”[5] as battles over mask mandates clearly illustrate today. We also resist “joining” churches and clubs. Instead, we promote individual success and reward, being the “best that we can be,” “living my best life.” We are disillusioned with the role of government and institutions in solving our problems. Identities are understood not as ascribed but as constructed. Economic and social responsibilities are displaced from institutions onto individuals. Think of the replacement of traditional pensions with 401Ks and the rise of the gig economy.[6]

We church folks, though, are still stuck in structures that were successful in the old Age of Association. Our church communities find ourselves now on the margins, relics of another time. We scratch our heads and struggle to find our place in a society that has moved on. After reading today’s Gospel, though, I wonder if this isn’t an opportunity to cut off old stumbling blocks, the ones that didn’t make sense to my new neighbor or to my former confirmand. Maybe it's time to concentrate on what we have in common: God's love for the world. Perhaps God wants to expand the circle that we have each drawn around ourselves.  Perhaps Jesus is giving us another chance to include the “least of these,” to include those who are different from us, to refuse to shut our circles against anyone who spreads the love of God.

After all, it’s not like the world no longer needs Jesus. So many people in this Age of Authenticity are lost, isolated, anxious, divided, weighed down by guilt and shame, and burdened by trying to invent themselves. They are hungry for healing and hope in a culture that seeks the good without God.[7] Rather than trying to get people in our doors to follow our ways, Jesus might just be inviting us, once again, to join people where life is being lived in today’s world: inviting us to form relationships; to listen to the longings and losses; all while drawing deeply on the rich and varied traditions of Christian theology and practice to help people make spiritual meaning.[8] Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to season the salt that has lost its flavor. “Have salt in yourselves,” urges Jesus, “and be at peace with one another.” To avoid the trash heap of history, we need to unburden ourselves of whatever is preventing our Christian community from being a place of deep responsibility, a place of total commitment to the healing of our siblings in need.

I have a challenge for us today that I will also put in The Buzz to help us remember. I invite everyone—all ages—to brainstorm a list of five new small, concrete things that we could do at St. Ambrose that would do both of the following: bring God’s healing grace to the world outside of our circle and use the salt of your passions or skills. Be as wild and crazy as the Holy Spirit inspires you to be. Brainstorm as if all stumbling blocks are gone. Send me your wisdom, and we will get to work.

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[1] Edwin Markham, from Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, 1913.

[2] Thanks to a lesson plan from Confirm not Conform.

[3] Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to St. Mark (Blacks New Testament Commentaries, 1991), 232.

[4] Dwight Zscheile, “From the Age of Association to Authenticity.” August 11, 2021. Found at https://faithlead.luthersem.edu/from-the-age-of-association-to-authenticity/

[5] Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice A Common Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 114.

[6] Zscheile.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Sticks and Stones and Words

 

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” My mother taught me that rhyme the first time that I came home from school in tears over a classmate’s mean words. I was supposed to repeat it as a jaunty reply that would put the bully in her place. I don’t know if I actually ever used it, but I do think that knowing the rhyme brought me a comforting sense of power over my tormentors. We have all heard this little phrase, so common on the playgrounds of America. We learned it from our parents and our teachers. But it’s a lie.

Words do hurt, sometimes more than sticks and stones and even broken bones. They wound, and they lead astray. Words can exaggerate and tear down. Think of the misleading words that have convinced millions of Americans not to get a Covid vaccination or wear a mask. Think of the violent, angry words that saturate all of our social media feeds: the horrible insults that we adults type so easily into our phones; the destructive, bullying comments that teens are tempted to share over the Internet. The power of these loaded words is destroying individuals and tearing up the fabric of our society. Vice-President Harris recalled in her 9/11 speech yesterday that the spirit of willing teamwork on that plane heading to Pennsylvania twenty-years ago is sadly lacking in today’s world. Today, planes are full of insults and disdain, rather than cooperation. Today’s Epistle from the book of James cries out to me a stark truth about words that I don’t find in the well-known playground rhyme.

James starts by addressing teachers. As a teacher and a preacher, I am well aware of the precarious position that I take every time I stand before you, with my throat wrapped in the white collar of divine authority. The little prayer that I say before every sermon is probably my most heartfelt of the entire week, because I know all too well the likelihood that my words might wound, that they might cut too close to someone’s heart, that they might damage someone’s faith in God, or at the very least, that they might fall flat and useless to the ground. I bet that there isn’t one of us here today who can’t remember the pain of some stinging word from a priest or teacher. I bet that there isn’t one of us here today who can’t also remember the bright joy of a life-giving word from such a mentor.

One of my worst parenting failures happened in my role as a teacher at the school my children also attended. Part of my job was to teach the eighth graders how to write their first research papers. When my daughter Maren was in the eighth grade, she had chosen to do her paper on some aspect of Shakespearean drama. I had gathered the whole 8^th grade class into the auditorium, where the librarian had arranged a variety of books and resources on the stage. I was waxing eloquent on how to choose the right materials to begin research. That’s when I spied a book on Shakespeare in the pile before me. I quickly grabbed it. Talking a mile a minute, I exulted, “Maren, look! Here’s a book for YOU!” Unfortunately, the whole title, which I hadn’t taken the time to read, was Shakespeare for Dummies.  The whole class roared with laughter, and my daughter was wounded to the core. I hadn’t meant to insult her or to embarrass her, but my foolish words on that stage carried a sharp edge that my later protests and excuses couldn’t soften. “We who teach will be judged with greater strictness,” indeed.

Gossip, too, is a less public weapon, but equally impossible to withdraw, once it has escaped our mouths. There is such a fine line between sharing news and sharing judgments. It’s so easy to let those harmful little stories and rumors float past our lips: at Coffee Hour, on the prayer chain, in the kitchen, around the water cooler, in the parking lot, at clergy gatherings.  The Church, despite our good intentions, is so often a breeding ground for gossip. 

I’ll never forget the sermon scene from the film Doubt. The priest tells about a well-known gossip who is directed to go up onto her roof with a feather pillow and a knife. Slashing open the pillow, she watches as thousands of feathers fly up into the wind and fill the sky above her head. Her priest then directs her to go and pick them all up and put them back into the pillow. “That’s impossible!” she gasps, “They’re everywhere.” “Such is gossip,” answers the priest. “You can never take the words back once they’ve spread.” Flying feathers ... just like James’ tongues of flame leaping wildly from tree to tree in a forest fire: Such images make clear the destructive and unstoppable force of our most poisonous words.

What are we to do with our words, then? Where is the good news in James’ rant against the human tongue? Are we supposed to remain silent, perhaps? When my son Alex was in preschool, the teacher approached me with concern about my son’s delayed speech. I was surprised. His speech seemed developmentally on track to me. The teacher, with the kind and patient voice used for parents in denial, informed me that Alex almost never spoke. Instead, he only expressed his needs by pointing. Later, I asked Alex why he didn’t talk at school, and he looked up at me with big, worried eyes. He confessed with a sigh: “I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, bad words will come out.” Apparently, another child had been getting in trouble for using inappropriate language, and the teacher’s reaction had made a big impression on my sweet 3-year-old. Is my young son’s guilt-stricken caution what James is asking of us?

Quiet introverts like me might wish it were, but silence isn’t what God wants from us. Words, used rightly, are precious. Writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel tells the story of a young Jewish boy who asks how the world could remain silent during the horrors of the concentration camps. Wiesel responds to this boy’s question by promising never to be silent when and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim,” he writes. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” In the face of evil or oppression, we need words to stand up for what is right. Yes, we we’ll make mistakes when we speak. We should own those mistakes and apologize for them. But we shouldn’t let our fear keep us from intentionally and deliberately choosing words that express real solidarity.[1]

Language, after all, is a gift from God. By the power of the Word, God made and still sustains all that is. “’Let there be light!’ God said. And there was light.” “In the beginning was the Word …. And by the Word all things were made.” Made in God’s image, we too are given the power of words, the power to name the rest of creation, the power to testify to what God has given us, the power to bless and even to create. The psalmist sings: “the words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” I’ve never seen precious metals being refined, but I know that only intense heat and mighty flame can transform ore, melting it, changing its form completely, and allowing it to float freely to the surface.

It’s no coincidence that the Word of God, the Christ who creates and gives life, must pass through the crucible of the Cross. It’s no wonder that Jesus preaches in today’s Gospel that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering before he rises. It’s no wonder that Jesus tells us, too, that to follow him, we must deny ourselves and take up the cross. Our best words are those that float upwards through lives that have been tried in earth’s furnace, through lives that have been burned and bruised in the fight against oppression and want. Without lives broken and refined in the service of justice and mercy, open to the pain of our neighbor, our words grasp at a power that they can never truly own. Writes one preacher, “I found myself wondering what the world might look like if we spoke to each other …[in words filled] with our mortal fragility, resolute with reverence for the aliveness in us and in each other, this grand shared mystery.”[2]

In a world so divided by hatred, so filled with misunderstanding, so free to lash out in cruelty, maybe we should be teaching our children to chant, “Words can burn and bones can break, but Love holds on forever.”

 

 

 

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[1] Terri McDowell Ott, “Looking into the Lectionary: 16^th Sunday after Pentecost.” In The Presbyterian Outlook. Found at https://pres-outlook.org/2021/09/16th-sunday-after-pentecost-september-12-2021/

[2] Ibid.