Comments for Jim Other sermons.           

I am sometimes asked what I learned on my sabbatical stay in India. One was the discovery that religion in the West is mostly about what you believe. Religion in the East is about knowing God. Of course this over-simplifies, but practically from the beginning of Christianity there developed a concern about doctrine. And it is so to this day. In the East the primary purpose of religion has been practice. How you find God may involve many paths for many people, but ultimately it is the experience of God that counts.

Personally I think that knowing God is the purpose of all religions, East or West, and that our biblical religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, also have that goal. Unfortunately the emphasis on right belief has obscured this and fostered conflict, within religions and between religions.

On my father’s side of the family, the Todhunters were Quakers back to 1600’s England, and I am enjoying reading from the journals of George Fox, the 17^th century founder of the Friends. Fox, an uneducated layman, was a genuine mystic who knew his Bible well and had a solid grasp of Christian theology. For him everything was about knowing God and loving one’s neighbor. The organized religion of his day was appalling to him. He relates the story of a time in which he was dragged before the civil authorities and interrogated.

They put me in and out of the room from the first hour to the ninth hour at night in examinations, having me backward and forward, and said in a deriding manner that I was taken up in raptures, as they called it.
At last they asked me whether I was sanctified. I said, "Sanctified? Yes," for I was in the paradise of God.
They said, had I no sin?
"Sin?" said I, "Christ my Saviour hath taken away my sin, and in him there is no sin."
They asked how we knew that Christ did abide in us.
I said, "By his Spirit that he has given us."
They temptingly asked if any of us were Christ.
I answered, "Nay, we are nothing. Christ is all."
They said, "If a man steal is it no sin?"
I answered, "All unrighteousness is sin."
And many such like words they had with me. And so they committed me as a blasphemer and as a man that had no sin, and committed another man with me to the House of Correction in Derby for six months.

This is interesting. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing unorthodox about Fox’s theology. In the Christian system, Christ died for our sins, the world has been reconciled to God, and we have the opportunity to lead guiltless and sanctified lives. Then what is the problem and why is he in trouble? Fox is saying that God is not to be found in a system of belief or organizational structure, but that God can be known directly - now. For Fox doctrine and organizational structures had become barriers, not means (Which is precisely what Jesus said in his day.) Why did the authorities grill George Fox? I think they couldn’t stand the idea that this country bumpkin - this clod, was a spiritually realized person. His very presence revealed what hypocrites they were. It is the same charge, blasphemer, that was leveled at Jesus.

In his powerful Letter to the Galatians, Paul says:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The Prophet Micah says there is one requirement of us, and that is to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God." And in Psalm 16 we read, "I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me." While right belief has its place, the scriptures are saying that the practice of religion comes down to meeting God by the path of love. Instruction comes from the heart. The one commandment that matters is to love.

Lest this be a platitude, think about it. I am commanded to love. But my love for others and for God is the one thing I cannot control. I can’t will it. Can you decide who you will love? The answer is "no." Now, of course, you can decide who you will treat decently and respectfully; you can decide to be an ethical person; you can choose not to act on feelings of hatred; you can honor covenants; you can respect the laws of the land, etc. But that is not love. The Bible is clear on this. Love comes from the heart. And I know the old saying, "The Lord said I had to love people, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them." I think that is a cop-out. If it doesn’t come from the heart, it is not love. And, if I cannot love my enemies from the heart, I am failing Jesus’ most important commandment.

Just sit with this paradox. So how is it that we are commanded to do that which we have no control over? As a matter of fact, St. Augustine wrestled with this very question. He saw the paradox at once. Knowing his own heart as he did, he readily admitted his inability to love God and neighbor as himself. And he concluded, that it is only by the grace of God that we can love at all. It is through God alone that we can love. George Fox said, "We are nothing. Christ is all."

I believe that if we stay with the paradox of this impossible commandment, we can be led to a deeper understanding of God and love. How can we love someone when we know we do not have the capacity to love that someone? By recognizing that it is not we who love, but God in us who loves. It is God in us who is loving our neighbor and loving our enemy every minute, irrespective of how we feel about them. God is keeping no score of wrongs, remembering slights, or deriding differences. We do that. God’s love is just pouring out like a mighty fountain, or like the gentle aroma of a rose. How do we love those we don’t like? By getting ourselves out of the way. By erasing ourselves, effacing our egos, setting ourselves aside, and letting God be. St. Paul said that, in Christ, he simply ceased to exist apart from Christ. God’s love coming from us can be like a steady signal, an unbroken radiance, and it keeps coming no matter what we are thinking and feeling. Just get yourself out of the way, and watch what God can do.

Gerald May has written this about love.

All human beings are created in and from the love of God, with an inborn love for God that continually arises from God and constantly seeks God. This love is meant to flow for all people and all creation. This is our true human nature. It is who we are…And it is, finally, impossible to distinguish precisely whether this love at our center is our love of God, or God’s love of us, or our love of ourselves and one another, or God’s love of God. (The Dark Night of the Soul.)

So how do we love one another with such a love? How do we let go of our self-centeredness and stop obstructing the love of God that is always there? Well, that’s the spiritual journey, I guess. It’s about letting go, prayer, surrender, service. But let me close with a modest practical thought. Jesus said that meeting God happens when we serve others. How do we do that? Both Jesus and Paul taught that the more we obsess about following the rules and keeping the requirements, the more pride and ego take control. Paul said that you can do wonderful deeds of great sacrifice, but they don’t add up to a hill of beans if they are done without love. Self-righteousness is always lurking around the corner from conscious self-sacrifice. But let me suggest this. Particularly in a world where we all have a rather high sense of entitlement, I believe that the spiritual journey involves cultivating what I would call a simple and unaffected sense of duty. I don’t mean duty in some high-blown and self-aggrandizing sense. I don’t mean assuming the duties of privilege on the one hand, or the sullen resignation and drudgery of servitude on the other. I don’t mean duty in the context of systems of domination and submission. What I mean is a gentle and self-effacing sense that in much of our lives we are called to simply do our duty: our duty as mothers and fathers, as citizens in our community and our world, as members of a religious community, as employees, as students. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the mother who, morning after morning, had to pound on her son’s bedroom door to get him off to school. Day after day. "Son, you’ve got to get up and go to school." "I don’t want to go to school!" "Son, you’re going to be late!" On and on it went. Then one day she beat on the door. "Son, you’ve got to go to school." "Ma, why do I have to go to school?" "Because you’re the principal, that’s why!"

Simple duties that are performed because, well they just need to be done. And, our duties include the effort to love one another. I see our responding to God’s commandment to love as something you just do. Not for earthly recognition or heavenly reward. You keep at it because you can trust that God is there to help you. Just do it and let go of it. That will be enough. AMEN.

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