In Word and Deed
25 January 2015
Epiphany 3B
8:00 a.m. said and 10:00 a.m. sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Early in the week, I was sharing
Eucharist and visiting with a parishioner who has difficulty getting out of her
home. She told me of one of her
children: “He likes to dip his toes in
church, but not dive in. He likes
sermons when they are gentle, honest, and informative. He loves good Church music. But he doesn’t like the idea that you have to
sign on to this or that teaching. He says
his reservations about the Church are summed up in a single phrase in the
Creed. When we talk about Jesus, we say,
“the only son of God.” He wonders at that: aren’t we all God’s sons
and daughters? And aren’t other faiths
good and pleasing to whatever God there might be? One faith, one God, one Lord, one savior, one
baptism: It’s just too exclusive for him, and seems frankly disrespectful of
others.
If you feel this way at times, that’s
O.K. God knows I do. It sees the ugliness in the way a whole lot
of Christians over the centuries have understood their faith. But such an understanding is wrong. Scripture and the wisdom and spiritual
traditions of the Church have struggled against it again and again.
Belief is not signing on to a
program of teachings. It is opening
one’s heart and placing trust. The
commandment is “Thou shalt love God with all your heart,” not “Thou shalt
firmly accept the intellectual proposition that God exists.” When Jesus says the way to life is strait and
narrow, he is talking about how hard it is to let go of baggage that keeps us
from connecting with God and pursuing God’s justice and love. He is not saying that one size and only one
size fits all.
When the Creed says “only Son of God,” it uses a Greek word, monogenes, that is often
misunderstood. St. Jerome mistranslated
it into Latin as unigenitum, or “only
begotten.” But that is not what it
means. Monogenes is a garden variety Koine Greek word meaning
one-of-a-kind. The fathers at the
Council of Nicea were saying that Jesus was unique, even though in many ways he
was like the rest of us. They made this
claim based on their experience of the living Christ, and their belief that
after Jesus’ horribly unjust death, he rose victorious. This is not to disparage others, but to find
joy in Jesus.
Today’s scriptures are all about evangelism,
spreading the good word, missionary work.
Jonah, after his unsuccessful attempt at running away, relents and helps
the people of Nineveh to forsake their unjust ways and come closer to God. Paul, that missionary par excellence, says we
have to stop living our normal lives because the great day of God is coming
soon. The Gospel says that right after
the murder of Jesus’ forbidding mentor John the Baptist, Jesus begins to
proclaim broadly the happy news of the arrival of God’s Reign and calls
followers to help him spread the good news.
Often, we confuse the call to
evangelism with a demand that we participate in partisan or sectarian
recruiting. Such a vision is part and
parcel of the wrong-headed exclusivism so rightly criticized by the son of my
elderly parishioner. The idea is that
there is only one true way, one true savior who can save us from our sins if we
but intellectually assent to the true teaching. So we must spread the word
about Jesus so that people may be saved or condemned by God on the basis of how
they react to the message.
I don’t believe any such thing, and
I don’t think you need to either. When
scripture says things like “Jesus is the only way,” it is expressing the how
reliable the writers have found Jesus, not calling him a jealous God. The call
to evangelism is a call to spread happy news, joy, not make a sales pitch that
will send someone to heaven or hell depending on whether they buy it. Jesus was constantly telling people that what
matters is your love of God and of others, not correct religious practices or
belief systems. In fact, he judged
religious practices or belief systems on how they fostered a spirit-led life of
compassion and service or hindered it.
The problem with believing that you must
convert the world to your way is that such a view has the outward form of love
and compassion—who would not want to save people from certain doom?—while it
denies the inner power of compassion and love.
You place your understanding above all others’ understandings, and make
yourself or your group first. The world
is broken into us and them, the pagans and the believers, the saved and the
damned.
Evangelism is sharing our joy, our hope,
and the experiences and reasons that lead us to find hope in Christ. Our baptismal covenant charges us to proclaim
the good news in Jesus Christ in word and deed.
St. Francis said that we should at all times and places be ready to
proclaim the Good News, and open our mouths to do so only when needed.
This isn’t about browbeating people
and giving them a hard sales pitch to get them to assent. This is about letting our joy leak through,
and it means listening to others and truly listening to their stories
also.
This last week we saw the death of
Marcus Borg, the Biblical Scholar and progressive theologian whose
popularization of modern historical Jesus research has rewritten the faith of
many, and given many others a new lease on life in faith. Marcus was here in Ashland last year, and I
think those of you who interacted with him saw that for all his erudition and knowledge,
he was an unassuming and generally humble man, one willing to engage others in
respectful dialogue even when they differed from him on key points. I believe
this very openness was key to his effectiveness. And he only got better with time—that’s one
of the great things about sharing your faith—it forces you to sort through what
you think and feel, and come to understand what really matters for you. This is one of the great blessings I have had
as a priest: preaching forces you to be honest about where you put your heart
and what you actually believe.
Sharing our faith, telling people
where our heart is, is risky. It makes
us vulnerable. They might reject it, or
belittle it. But that is no reason to be
shy. Acting out our faith, and living as we believe
the spirit leads us is also risky. This
last week I also saw beloved friends criticized for doing something
their faith led them to, a beautiful act of compassion and self sacrifice for
someone who was suffering terribly because of really bad choices previously
made. And now they are taken to
task for that compassionate act.
No good deed goes unpunished, it would seem.
But Jesus calls us to act out the
spirit-led life, the life of compassionate concern for others, especially those
on the receiving end of society’s opprobrium.
And Jesus calls us to share our faith.
As in so many other things, it is a matter of heart. It is a matter of feeling comfortable in doing
what’s right. It’s a matter of opening
ourselves to God and to others. Do justice, love compassion, and walk humbly
with God.
Here at Trinity I have seen
wonderful scenes of people sharing their faith: a men’s group where people
opened up and talked about what they experienced when sharing in the Holy
Eucharist; a women’s sewing group where people talked about how they got
through hard personal times. Evangelism
is just seeing moments when people are listening and hungry to hear such stories,
and then telling them. When Jesus calls
us to fish for people, he is just saying expand the circle of the people you’re
willing to risk sharing with. It’s part
of his open table fellowship and pursuit of compassion, rather than
purity.
This week, let’s find ways to better
open our hearts to others, whether in deed or in word. A thought experiment would be “what do I
really truly believe? And why?” And a
practice is to actually bring compassion for others into our daily routine,
whether shopping for groceries, driving in traffic, or in our prayers.
Let us proclaim the good and joyful
news at all times and places, and occasionally actually open our mouths to do
so.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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