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.
[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.
No comments:
Post a Comment