Sunday "Rooted Lives" Jeremiah 17:5-10 Luke 24:13-35 |
|
We have heard this morning how crucial it is for us as parents and adults to provide the good guidance, teaching, and discipline for our children, that their lives may truly take root and grow and bear fruit. And, importantly, we recognize that this best takes place in community: for us what we call the Beloved Community of Jesus Christ.
How do we do this kind of nurture in our rapidly changing society? A recent survey indicated that the number one worry of parents for their children today is not sex or drugs. The worry is the unprecedented and uncontrolled access that children have to media and the technological revolution. Parental control? Probably not possible.
Our biblical tradition teaches that we must root our lives in God. We must be like trees firmly planted beside the river of life. Deeply rooted in rich soil. To not be so rooted is to be like a shrub in the desert, through which the dry wind whistles. This is the perennial biblical message. Jesus also talks about being like a house built on a rock, not upon the sand. Same message. Today, how do we enable our children to withstand all the pressures of a society that promises happiness in the pursuit of excess and lead rooted lives?
We do it in community. The Beloved Community. That Beloved Community offers an invitation into discipleship, a new identity to stand over and against the false identities that mass culture offers. Communities are always about identity. That’s why scouts wear uniforms. When a young boy or girl wears a uniform, it is a reminder of all the important values the organization stands for. When a soldier wears a uniform, she or he is told to honor it and care for it with pride. It indicates what you are to embody. Religious groups of all stripes prescribe some kind of spiritual uniform - perhaps invisible, but still real.
Who am I? is the basic identity question. When a child asks the question “Who are we?” how will a parent answer? The Sacrament of Baptism offers an answer: “We are followers of Jesus.” Our Beloved Community seeks to welcome people of many identities and embrace them within a larger identity – the Body of Christ. Our Open and Affirming and Anti-Racist statement in worship, printed in our bulletin, and read in worship, stresses inclusion – especially the inclusion of those groups who are suffering exclusion in the broader society. You’ll note we have made a change in ours, with the addition this Sunday, of transgendered people, to make it consistent with our Open and Affirming Statement, and the orientation of some of our members at CCC.
So the Beloved Community is about putting on a new inclusive uniform, what St. Paul called the garments of righteousness. And, again, the goal is to root our lives in the promises of God by following Jesus. The wisdom of this is that if we do it, we are blessed with fruitful lives. Know who you are and you will be happy.
And yet, having said all this, it is only half the story. For even as we affirm knowing who we are, establishing a clear identity, prospering and bearing fruit, there is also the sense in which this is not enough – in fact, the unreflective embracing of an identity can be dangerous and destructive to self and others. Here Jesus offers a fierce challenge. In the scripture from Luke, Jesus is blunt. He says, blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who are grief-stricken, who are unpopular. That is going to change. But then, unlike Matthew, he adds, Woe to you who are rich and full and happy and popular. That’s going to change. Why this harsh message? I think Jesus is saying Woe to you who use your identities to become an in-group. Woe to you who believe that just because you think you know who you are, that it means you are “somebody.” Jesus, as he always does, forces us to recognize the dark side of having a clear identity. That dark side includes a high sense of entitlement, a disconnection from the suffering of others, and the oppression and exclusion of the outsider. And in religious terms, it is the arrogant and self-righteous attitude that God sees how wonderful we are, naturally loves us the best, and blesses us in just reward.
As a church, we are always interfacing with the world, in dialogue with the culture in which we find ourselves. This morning we are unashamedly celebrating the scouting movement and the richness of our long relationship with the scouts. And, at the same time, we recognize that the national policy of exclusion of GLBT leaders and scouts is troubling. At the local level we can be proud, as the chartering organization of Cub Scout Pack 275, that we and scout leaders and parents have made a careful and concerted effort to work together, affirming CCC’s Open and Affirming core value. I want to personally thank Kelly Kilmer and Christopher Lewis, in particular, for how seriously and responsibly they have taken this matter. This important dialogue needs to continue.
“Who I am” is a question that cuts both ways. The spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello tells a story familiar to anthropologists about how certain rain forest tribes punish wrong-doers by excluding them permanently from the life of the village. Ironically, though the exiled person has developed all the skills to survive in the forest, he quickly dies. This is because his identity has been lost – an identity too narrowly defined. By having a limited answer to the question, “Who am I?” he has doomed himself. While we need to understand his fall with compassion, de Mello stresses that we also need to see it as a personal and collective spiritual failure.
The perennial sin of Christian identity is believing that the rewards of life – money in the bank, a full refrigerator, happiness, popularity – are signs of God’s approval and God’s endorsement. This so-called “prosperity gospel” is everywhere. To me, that is the deepest meaning of the term original sin. Sin is not just the occasional bad choice. Sin is our clouded understanding, our bonding to totally wrong assumptions – assumptions that lead to arrogance and self-righteousness and destruction. And it is that original sin that fuels sectarian strife around the world and hubris at home. It is shaped by how you answer the question “Who am I?”
Discovering and embracing one’s tribe is important, especially for excluded groups. Black History month is a great opportunity to learn. And what a terrific gift to celebrate the contributions of our own Tina Lincoln! Identity is important. But, at the deepest level, I believe that everyone’s story is exactly the same. The externals will vary from person to person, and from group to group. These differences are what make us interesting and unique, after all. But, in our very hearts, each of us is on the same journey. It is the journey of attachment, loss, pain, the yearning for a love that doesn’t fail us, and people we can trust. It is the journey of how we usually make things worse for ourselves and others and have to learn the hard way. And ultimately it is about a grace that reaches out to us when at last we come to realize that we simply can’t do it on our own. That’s the universal story. I believe that what it comes down to is the necessity to transform the identity question “Who am I?” to the spiritual question “Whose am I?”
During his final days of imprisonment by the Nazis as he awaited his execution, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a prayer. He entitled it: Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!
