Somebody said to me last week that she was still
getting used to the idea that Christians can be strong in their faith and yet
not exclusive of other people who might have a different faith. She found it refreshing that we here at
Incarnation refuse to waste our time worrying about whether or not Jews or
Muslims or Buddhists or Atheists are going to hell – but she admitted that it
was a hard to fully trust it – that we can really be Christians who also respect
and love and learn from other spiritual paths.
She reminded me that, just because it’s obvious to
those of us who have been Episcopalians for awhile, we can’t assume that it’s
obvious to everyone. The power and
influence of exclusive forms of Christianity has been so great that we can unconsciously
find ourselves reading the Bible through their
eyes, rather than through the eyes of the people who originally wrote it.
A good example is this statement in John’s first
letter, which we read this morning:
God abides in those who confess that Jesus is
the Son of God, and they abide in God. (1 John 4:15)
When we read this in Scripture, a lot of us can’t
help but interpret it as the evangelical Christians have done, which is this: if
you say, out loud, that Jesus is the Son of God, then you will abide in God and
be saved. I mean, that’s what it says,
right?
But I think what he is actually saying is this: “Those
Christians – you know, the ones who confess Jesus
as the Son of God? Those ones? Man, they really abide in God.”
It’s like saying, “Those folks who live around
Harvard Square? Wow, they’re really
smart.” That may be true as a general
statement – but what it doesn’t mean is that moving to Harvard Square will
raise your IQ!
Just saying the words
“Jesus Christ is the Son of God” does not necessarily make you a better person. I grant you, it’s an excellent start – but
God knows the world has seen its share of people confessing Jesus as the Son of
God who are clearly so afraid of the rest of the world that they find it nearly
impossible to love it.
Apparently this was a problem in the earliest days
of the Christian community as well.
Apparently there were members of the early church who not only failed to
love their neighbors – they actually hated
them. So much so that the disciple John has
to call them out: “Those who say, "I love God," and hate their
brothers or sisters, are liars.”
The problem, John says, is that we are afraid of
one another. But “perfect love casts out
fear…, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (1 John 4: 18)
Last week I talked about one of my favorite
writers, Marilynne Robinson; I talked about how I had gone to a writing
conference in Michigan and she had given a couple of talks that were quite
inspiring. So I was tickled by the fact
that, this week, our readings include the very phrase that she based her
keynote speech on: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Apparently the Holy Spirit wants me to talk
about her just a little bit more.
Robinson’s point in the talk was to challenge the
culture of fear that she sees all around her.
She talked about the professional fear-mongers who seem to be cropping
up everywhere these days; people telling us to be afraid of the immigrants; be
afraid of the liberals; be afraid of the President. The most extreme things are being said
nowadays about our neighbors that if you were to believe all of it, you’d think
America is populated by teeming hordes of brown-skinned homosexual atheists
intent on depriving us of our lives, liberty and happiness. She said that we can’t seem to get over the
idea that we are under attack:“We’re stuck in psycho-emotional bomb shelters,” she
said, when, in fact, we Westerners are
more free, safe, and stable than most people throughout the world and
throughout history have ever hoped to be. “Why not enjoy it?” she said. “If there have ever been people on earth who
should have been able to take a deep breath and say, `Thank God,' we are that
people.”
She referred to the folks who feel it necessary to
carry guns around with them, and that people are feeling so “justified in fear”
that they see nothing wrong with shooting a man simply because he felt
threatened. And so people with no
training in police procedure and no sworn oath to protect and serve,
accountable to no one, are allowed to carry guns and shoot other people simply
because they felt frightened.
“We’ve begun to rationalize preemptive defense,”
she said. “People feel justified in fear
that they can take preemptive violence….
Who do you want to shoot? Which
image of God has been getting on your nerves lately?” I mean, let’s face it, “There are a lot of
people who are not good judges of the degree to which others are a threat to
them.”
This is what happens when people start to believe
in fear over faith. When we’re afraid,
she points out, we are no longer objective observers of reality. People who are afraid have a distorted view
of the world. And so, the more we let
fearful people make our public policies, the more we’re letting the inmates run
the asylum.
So: what do we, as Christians, need to do to make
a difference in this world? She said the
first, we need to “Talk ourselves out of our crouch of fearfulness. If you’re frightened, you’ve already given
in.”
As Christians, it’s our job to risk respect. “What about risking respect of everyone,” she
said.
“If you’re frightened, you don’t trust God. God told us he would protect us. Trust God and abandon fear.”
This, of course, is much easier said than
done. Fear is not something that we can
just will ourselves to overcome. If
we’re afraid, we’re afraid – and sometimes that fear is justified; sometimes
fear really is nature’s way of saying, “Hey, eyes open. Be careful.”
A few days ago, I was in here with the band,
rehearsing for today. And the front
doors were open and during the rehearsal a guy wandered in; he was obviously
drunk and disoriented. At first I
watched him, and thought I’d just keep my eye on him. And he seemed okay at first. But then he started interrupting the
rehearsal and saying crazy things so I explained to him that this was actually
a closed rehearsal and he would have to leave.
Then he started getting belligerent and so I started over: I introduced
myself as Fr. Matt, and I said, “What’s going on with you?” And suddenly he opened up; he gave me a hug;
he poured out all his troubles and concerns.
I prayed with him and blessed him and sent him on his way.
It was only later that we realized he had stolen
the saxophone player’s wallet, which had been left on one of the pews!
So as Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but
verify.” We don’t have to be afraid of
the ones we seek to serve – in fact that will make it impossible for us to
serve them. We are called to have the
deepest respect for every person who comes in these doors. But at the same time, well, you know, keep an eye on your wallet...
Jesus would have us challenge our fear every step
of the way. When the food servers at
Open Table decided to come out of the kitchen and interact with the men and
women who come here for food, not only did they send a life-giving, gospel message
of love to the folks they were serving – they also radically decreased the
chances of violence actually breaking out.
As we demonstrate respect and civility, we find that other people are
grateful to follow our lead.
And the second thing we can do is just turn off
the TV or the radio. This Lent Rose and
I cancelled our TV cable service. We
killed our TV. And I think it has helped
us to see and appreciate the respectable reality around us, rather than having
it interpreted for us by people who make enormous amounts of money off of our
fear. It is unbelievable to me how often
we mistake reality for the reality represented on the TV. The TV is not reality. Nothing in there has much of anything to do
with truth. God is truth; God is not
Bill O’Reilly and God is not Stephen Colbert (as difficult as that is for me to admit).
God, in other words, is all around us, right
here.
Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the
branches. I think of how the branches in
a vineyard go laterally, parallel to the ground, not vertically; they look like an altar rail,
traveling across the field. That's how we find God - not so much by looking up at the sky, but by looking around us. God travels
along the horizontal plane.
God is in the miracle of life that turns those
vineyards green; that miraculous combination of water and sun and earth and
photosynthesis and millions of years of evolution. and that spark of life that is God. God is in the miracle of life here, turning
oxygen into life-giving red blood cells, giving us strength to serve, and
courage to lead.
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