Sermon: Nobody’s Perfect–not even God

PENTECOST 3 | MARK 4:35-41



Elie Weisel in his book THE TRIAL OF GOD, tells about an actual trial he witnessed as a young man in the Auschwitz death camp. The adults around him were frantic as they watched their fellow Jews being marched out to the gas chambers, and they wondered aloud how God could possibly have betrayed them so utterly. For the Jews, the terms of their covenant were very simple. We will worship only you as our God, and God, in turn promises to protect them. 



What happened? They wondered. Why had God forsaken their covenant? Why did he not protect them now? The prisoners decided to have a formal trial, to try God for his indifference–apparently in absentia. 



A judge was selected, as well as other roles, and the trial began. Numerous possible defenses for God’s abandonment were put forth–was it a punishment for straying from the Law? Was it a purification, as in the flood of Noah? Was it a sacrifice, as in the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham? Or, like the same story of Abraham, was it all just a test of their faith? Perhaps, they reasoned, it was simply a consequence of free will. 

The debate raged for hours–it may have gone on for days. Eventually, however, the arguments were exhausted, and the judge announced his verdict. Guilty. God was guilty of breaking the covenant. One rabbi complained that he was not surprised. God had never been GOOD. He had simply been on our side. And now he had, apparently, made a deal with another people, the Germans, whose banners proclaimed, “God is with us.”



The Trial finished, the prisoners. dissembled–and what do you think they did next? They went to pray.



Even in the midst of war, in the face of death, in the event of God’s apparent abandonment, these Jews did not abandon THEIR side of the covenant–they prayed. What they did, in fact, was take God AS HE WAS. A turncoat, maybe. Indifferent, apparently. A traitor, decidedly, but they still accepted him, AS HE WAS.



Lisa and I were discussing this story this week because I had been struck in our Gospel reading by a curious line I had never noticed before. It’s near the beginning of the passage, where the evangelist says, “They took him, just as he was, in the boat.”



What can this mean? In context, Jesus has been teaching people all day. He was exhausted, he was probably more than a little bit cranky. And yet, even though it was early in their association with him, they didn’t say, “Well, aren’t you full of yourself? Enough of this!” and walk away. Instead, they took him, AS HE WAS, in the boat with them. 



I find it fascinating that, as I go about my daily business, when people I meet discover I am a priest, they instantly start confessing. Not formally, of course, but ACTUALLY. Within moments of discovering my vocation, many people just launch into these baroque justifications that I didn’t ask for and the situation doesn’t require. It’s the oddest thing. 



But they do it nevertheless, and frequently the content is the same–either God has disappointed them somehow, or the church has–or they believe that they have somehow disappointed God, and turned away from him in shame. 



What is clear in these situations is that these people feel hurt–by God, by God’s people, by circumstances, by their own choices, and by the estrangement from God and from sacred community that results.



I always feel profoundly sad when this happens, because it is clear that someone has indeed failed–but I usually pin the blame on my fellow clergy for not adequately, clearly, and forcefully proclaiming the Good News that Jesus came to offer us in the first place.



I understand the ministry of Jesus as one of deep and profound reconciliation between people and God. And the way Jesus did that was usually by modeling that reconciliation in his own relationships. He took people AS THEY WERE. He loved them AS THEY WERE. And he assured them that God loved them the very same way.



When Jesus called his disciples, he called them as they were–smelly fishing clothes and all, with all of their personality quirks, all of their failings, all of their failures, all of their problems, even all of their sins. He loved them just as he found them.



Little wonder, then, that as Jesus stumbled aboard their boat, tired and grumpy, scripture says that they took him exactly the same way. 



Look, I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, if scripture and human experiences are any indicators, God’s not perfect, either, and neither is Jesus. 



Thank God. Nobody likes the perfect guy, and frankly, I have little use for a perfect deity, either. The Jews are certainly convinced that their God has his bad days, and yet they still cling to him. And the very mystery of the incarnation is that Christ left by his glory and joined our lot, wholly and completely uniting himself to our imperfect state. 



And if the Gospel required that we be perfect, that would be Bad News indeed, and not the Gospel at all. As I’ve said often before, perfection is a fiction that exists nowhere in the phenomenal universe, not even in God. The only place it exists is in the human imagination, where it proliferates like a raging virus, leaving nothing but emotional, spiritual and social wreckage in its wake. 



This is the wreckage I witness whenever I hear one of these impromptu confessions. People either run or are pushed away from God when they just don’t measure up to some arbitrary standard of alleged perfection. But just as often, people turn their backs on God when God does not measure up to their expectations. How many of us run away from God because God has let us down?



I guess what I’m saying here is that not only does the Good News insist that we give ourselves a break, but shouldn’t we give God one as well?



I mean, if the Jews can forgive Auschwitz, might not you or I be able to forgive God the hurts we have suffered? If the disciples could accept Jesus as he was, even when he was being Mr. Grumpy Pants, why can’t we? If we so desperately long to be forgiven by God, should we not perhaps try to do the same for him?



And remember, forgiveness and acceptance don’t preclude confrontation, exhortation, or correction. Jesus accepted his disciples, and loved them, even though he was probably a little miffed for their lack of faith in our reading. He probably didn’t appreciate being awakened and was without a doubt suffering from low blood sugar and resurgent grumpiness at that moment. That’s okay, and it was okay for him to scold them a little. Just so, it’s possible for us to love, forgive, and accept, and still speak up when we feel let down, or abandoned, or hurt. We can even call God out for such things. 



Because that’s what people who really love each other DO. That’s what REAL relationship is about. And that’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. It’s the kind of authentic relationship in community that we ought to have with one another. 



Because everything ISN’T rosy. People AREN’T perfect. God isn’t perfect and neither are you or I. A perfect person wouldn’t really need anyone else. The rest of us, though, need each other to correct us, to love us, to uphold us, and to forgive us. And we do the same for them. 



The disciples “took Jesus as he was.” Wouldn’t we be better off if we could do the same? If everyone could? The Good News is only good, after all, when it is put into action. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are being called to a great circle of Grace, where forgiveness and acceptance are offered to friend and foe, the living and the dead, to humans and the Divine. The question before us is–do we want IN? Let us pray…



God, in Jesus you reached out to us just as we are.
Help us to accept ourselves in the midst of our imperfections, and help us to extend that grace to others in return–to our friends, to strangers, to those that bless us and those that hurt us.
Help us to extent it even to you.
Help us to live into the Community of God you call us to be, in our families, here in our church community, and in the world,
as we seek to live out the Good News proclaimed to us by your son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON: Great Things for God…

PENTECOST 2, 2009 | MARK 4:26-34

I’ll tell you another parable: Once upon a time there was a young man, an Evangelical Christian, who was sitting in church one day, and suddenly felt convicted to surrender his life to the proclamation of the Gospel. So great was his conviction that he instantly rose, went to the altar, took the pastor by the hand, and confessed his call. He stood before his congregation that day, and told them he believed that he had been called to do great things for God. The people approved of his decision, and over coffee hour, made much of him.

 

And despite the fact that the young man was really sincere, real life seemed to get in the way. He went to college, he met a wonderful young woman that he wanted to marry. Soon there was a child on the way and rent to pay. Every now and then during the altar call in church, he would feel a little twinge of guilt, that he didn’t seem to be getting around to doing those great things for God, but he didn’t see any other way ahead given his commitments. But he was young, he told himself, he had time.

 

Until the time ran out. In late middle age, he had a heart attack. He didn’t die, but he realized he would have to take things a lot easier, now. He realized he would probably never do anything great for God. There was no one around, so he was able to let go, and he quietly sobbed.

 

This was how his pastor found him. He surprised the man when he came in and laid a hand on his shoulder. But by this time, the man’s grief was so great, and his sense of guilt so acute that he poured his heart out without reserve. He told his pastor about his call to do something great for God, and how he had just never gotten around to it; how he had wasted his life, how he had failed.

 

His pastor was overcome with compassion, and shushed him. “But look at what you’ve done,” his pastor said. “You’ve had a very happy marriage, you have raised two beautiful children, at the top of their class, you founded your own business and you employ many people. You teach Sunday school and support the ministry of our church with your time and your money. Everyone who knows you admires you. You’ve done everything God requires and then some. What makes you think what you’ve done isn’t great, or that it hasn’t been pleasing to God?”

 

Which is just the sort of infuriating thing a pastor WOULD say. But consider for a moment the truth of it. It’s true, the man did nothing unusual. In fact, it’s so “normal” that it’s hard to care about. It was really, really tempting to end the story by adding,”And then zombies crashed into the hospital room, entangling themselves in the IV, and feasted on the pastor’s brains.”

But I restrained myself, and for a good reason. Just look at this man: He didn’t go to Africa to do AIDS relief, he didn’t spearhead a religious reformation, he didn’t found a homeless shelter. He wasn’t faithful in what we normally think of as a heroic, dramatic way. He DIDN’T do A GREAT THING. Instead, he was faithful in small, inconspicuous ways. He did many, many GOOD things, and that goodness added up to a life well-lived.

We live in an age where we project everything to comic book proportions. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love comic books and popular culture as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that it very often feeds us a pretty warped view of reality. So much so that even I, the guy who wrote this parable, had to fight pretty hard to keep the zombies out of it. Why is it that the quiet heroism of a life lived faithfully day after day is not enough for us?

In our Gospel reading today, we read the very first parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Mark. And since Mark is our earliest gospel, this is the very first, the earliest parable of Jesus’ in the canonical scriptures. And, for a first parable, it’s not bad. It’s really clear that Jesus has a long way to go, though. It doesn’t have the power or the punch or the clarity of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. Okay, it’s a little weak. But we know he gets a lot better, and it’s always interesting to trace an artist’s development.

One of the reasons it’s weak is that it’s so opaque. Who does the farmer represent? God? Us? Agribusiness? What is the crop? Who does the harvesting? None of this is clear. If he had continued in this vein, Jesus would have gained a reputation for being “Mr. Cryptic” rather than for being a great teacher. Fortunately for everyone he improved. But one thing about stories that are obscure is that they are also malleable.

What it said to me, as I meditated on it, was that even though it seems we are sleeping, growth is happening. Even though we are not doing much, great things are getting done, slowly, often imperceptibly from day to day. A mustard seed, invoked in the companion parable in our reading, grows into the largest of shrubs, but if you looked at it every day, you would hardly notice, because the change is taking place so slowly. Yet a great thing is emerging from this small beginning.

Saints and superheroes work miracles and wonders, they do impossible things that inspire us. We wish we could be them, we wish we could be even half as great as they are. But on this planet, there ARE no flying men in spandex, saints work more miracles in legends than they ever did in truth, and zombies rarely feast on the brains of the clergy–even though many of them deserve it, and I have met some that made me wonder….

Instead, it is as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “Do not underestimate good, thinking it will not affect you. Dripping water can fill a pitcher, drop by drop; one who is wise is filled with good, even if one accumulates it little by little.” THIS is how God actually works. Not dramatically, as in the comic books, but quietly, slowly, often imperceptibly, growing goodness like the unfolding of a plant.

We can see this in our own lives, right here in our own community. The word “Salvation” comes from the same root as “salve,” an ointment for healing. Salvation is the healing of souls, and there are few of us whose souls are NOT in need of healing. Salvation rarely happens quickly, despite the dramatic conversion or healing stories peddled by the televangelists. Instead, it happens slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly. It happens by being in community, where, free from our family of origin pressures, we can learn to love others in healthier ways than we were taught, and where we can allow ourselves to be loved. It happens through the sacraments, through which we admit our dependence on God through our participation in such signs and symbols, and through which we receive grace according to the measure of our faith. It happens through our experience of God’s faithfulness, day after day, in the smallest things, through events that inspire faithfulness in us, again, in the smallest of ways. Through these things we slowly transform from the hurting people we were into the kind of people God is calling us to be. Through the slow, quiet work of grace, we are healed, we are saved, and we, in turn, do the work of God.

But this work isn’t great by the estimation of the world. It IS great, however, by virtue of the cumulative effect of millions of seemingly insignificant acts of faithfulness. “Do not underestimate goodness,” don’t think “it will not affect you,” as the Buddha says.

I needed to be reminded of this, this week. I was feeling like a failure as a pastor because I have not been able to spark the dramatic growth in this parish that we have all hoped for. I feel responsible, I feel like I have let you, myself, and God down. I know I’m probably not alone. We have all been working very hard. We’ve put a lot of love, a lot of sweat, and even a few tears into this parish, and even though most of us are proud of the many things we’ve accomplished, it hasn’t been as dramatic as we hoped for. We aren’t flooded with new parishioners, people are not abuzz about our unique, interfaith approach to the Gospel.

Instead, God has been doing something else, something harder to see, something quiet, something true. He has been healing us. For most of us come to this parish with scars inflicted by other churches, with hurts from past relationships, some of them inflicted by our own families. We come to this table tentatively, afraid of being burned again, yet willing to trust just one more time.

Of course, we’re not a perfect community–what would be the point of a perfect community, after all? I certainly wouldn’t be welcome in such a place, with all of my flaws! We are, however, a GOOD community, healthier than most, and one in which the Spirit of God is active, if we only take the time to notice it. We are not doing GREAT things, as defined by the world, but many, many GOOD things are happening here, quietly, slowly, truly, the way God actually works.

As we plan for our future, let’s keep this in mind. God may not be calling us to be GREAT, in some cartoonish, dramatic way. It may be that God continues to call us as he has been doing, calling us to be faithful, calling us to love one another, calling us to the healing of our souls, calling us to reach out–not to thousands, but to one or two people at a time–to touch them with healing, to love them back to wholeness, to provide them safe space to reclaim their spirituality, their faith, their soul once again.

This is not an insignificant calling, and it’s something we do really well. And perhaps the vagueness of Jesus’ parable is helpful. We thought at first that we were the farmer, but perhaps we are the grain. God seems to be sleeping, but he is not. We are growing, not in numbers, perhaps, but in soul. Healing is happening. Community is happening. We are slowly, quietly, often imperceptibly, becoming the kind of people God is calling us to be. And that, my friends, is GREAT. Let us pray….

God, what are you doing, here? It’s hard for us to see it, even harder for us to understand it. Help us to continue our journey in faith that you are working in us, even when we cannot see it, even when it seems like the motion is so slow we seem to be going backwards. Inspire us, by thy Holy Spirit, to be faithful in every small matter that confronts us, even as you are faithful to us, so that, step by small step, we may be transformed into the people you intend us to be. For we ask this through Jesus, who told little stories that continue to yield great fruit. Amen.

SERMON: Frustrated Guy…

TRINITY SUNDAY 2009

I hate email. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are good things about it. I enjoy its speed and ease of use, BUT there is something about it that I really hate. It, like no other medium, brings out my bad side.

Just the other day I had received a book cover revision from a designer. Now, about a month ago I had received the first draft of the cover and had sent back my requests for fixes. So when I opened my email and saw the “revised” cover, I was…annoyed. Almost none of the changes I had requested had been made. It still looked amateurish. Without bothering to count to ten first, I hit “reply” and let loose.

Now, I do not consider myself to be a typically immoderate man in temper. No one could accuse me of being a rageaholic. And indeed, by the time I finished the email I had cooled off some, and combed back through the letter, removing every “hot spot” I could identify.

Was there, I asked myself when finished, just a hint of snarkiness left? There was. Just the smallest bit. But I WAS annoyed, yes? Is it such a bad thing to allow a whiff of that through, so long as I am not lashing out? I hate spending a half hour massaging two paragraphs–it eats up SO much time. I glanced at my TO DO list, said, “Enough!”, and sent that puppy off.

Almost instantly I panicked, rushed to my OUT box and reread the note. Yes, all of my frustration was clearly apparent, despite my editing efforts. And indeed, when the designer replied, his annoyance was on full display as well. (Sigh…)

I hate acknowledging that I have Frustrated Guy inside me, I hate it even more when he pops up, takes over, and embarrasses me. Some people simply should not be allowed to come out and play, especially if they don’t play well with others.

Fortunately, Frustrated Guy isn’t the only personality I have going for me, but I sure struggle with him. Perhaps you know what I mean. I always WANT to put my best foot forward, I always WANT to come across as patient and kind and helpful. It’s who I consider myself to really be, on the inside. And then boom! Frustrated Guy takes over and mucks everything up. Frustrated Guy…FRUSTRATES me. Now THERE’S a vicious circle for you.

The Poet Rilke once said, “We contain multitudes,” and that certainly seems to be accurate in my experience. I have certainly observed it in my friends as well. We’ll be sitting there, having a lovely conversation, and then all of the sudden, Angry Girl shows up out of the blue. Was it something I said? And that, of course, is when Victim Guy makes and appearance. It’s enough to make you schizophrenic, except that it’s happening to all of us, all of the time. Sometimes when I think about how hard it is to surf my own emotions and those of the people around me, it makes me appreciate the relative stability of animals, and it is tempting to run off and live in a cave.  A cave with cable…

This multiple personality phenomenon even seems to show up when we encounter God. Christian tradition has even named these personalities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I say, why stop at three? But there’s no quibbling with the Nicene Council, and I’m getting too old for the banishment thing, anyway. The early church fathers even divided history into dispensations during which one of God’s multiple personalities held sway. The long stretch before the coming of Christ was the Age of the Father, the relatively brief Age of the Son lasted only thirty years while Jesus was kicking up trouble, but the Age of the Spirit has had a good long run, starting at Pentecost and continuing on to the present day.

Sounds like the Son got the short end of the stick, there, but I’ll let Jesus fight his own battles. My point is that, if scripture is any witness, we might rename these three periods the Age of Angry Guy, the Age of Wise Guy, and the Age of Mostly Absent Girl. The point is that even God “contains multitudes,” and indeed, these three simply do not exhaust our experience of God. There’s also Hero Guy, Mr. Faithful, and Comfort Lady in there, among many others. I think the Hindus have it right. For them, God has a million faces, each of them a valid personality, an expression of the divine that is somehow both unique and true.

A transpersonal psychologist by the name of Roberto Assagioli made the identification, awareness of, and integration of subpersonalities an important part of his therapeutic method. So long as we are unaware of our subpersonalities, they can “take over” and control us. But once we become aware of them, name them, recognize them when they surface, then we can give them permission, or not, to come to the fore and direct us. All of us have them, these subpersonalities–apparently even God. The question is, do they have US? Do they control us, or do we control them?

We aren’t born with all of them in place, either. They develop–some of them as a result of healthy and nurturing relationships, some emerge as coping mechanisims. Too many emerge as the result of trauma. Others can emerge as a result of epiphanies, experiences of wonder, or spiritual awakenings.

In both our readings from the Sutra and from the Gospel of John this morning, we are told something very similar. That as a result of religious instruction, a person can be “born again.” As Jesus tells Nicodemus, this is not a physical rebirth, but a spiritual, metaphorical rebirth. A new personality is engendered as a result of a spiritual awakening. The question is, will this new personality flourish, or will it be stillborn? St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, speaks about the Old Man–the personality of the person we used to be before we had our spiritual awakening–and the New Man–the new spiritual personality. Paul talks in a very similar way that Assagioli does about controlling these competing personalities, and he exhorts his readers to be aware of the struggle that is happening within them, to reject the impulses of the Old Man and to encourage the growth and strength of the New Man.

This is a lot of work, though, as most worthwhile things are. It requires diligence. It’s tedious to always be aware of what personality is driving you at any given moment, and exhausting to always be questioning and editing them. But unless we want to let Nasty Guy rule the world, that’s what we’ve got to do.

We’re heading into a very difficult time as a parish. We have some hard decisions to make, and it might mean we will, at times, feel scared, or insecure, or angry. It will be tempting to leap to conclusions about what so-and-so said, or what they meant, or what their “real” motivations are. It will test our ability to be a loving community, but it’s precisely when times get tough that we discover whether we are a REAL community or not. If we are going to navigate these waters safely, we’ve got to be aware of when Fearful Girl and Angry Guy are taking over. We can listen to what they have to say, of course, but then we should discern carefully whether they are the best representatives to communicate our thoughts. It might be that Compassionate Guy and Patient Chick may present your case with much more diplomacy and efficacy. It’s not going to be easy, but it will go much more smoothly if we can all discern and monitor the multitudes that are swarming inside us all.

There is an old Indian story that says that there are two wolves inside each of us–one wolf is a lone predator, prowling about thirsting for blood, and the other wolf is noble, nurturing to those in its pack and extremely loyal. The two wolves are constantly contesting with one another. It’s hard to tell which one will win. On the other hand, it’s not hard to predict at all. The one that will win is the one that gets fed.

Let us, in the months to come, carefully discern the personalities within us. Let us not reject those personalities that we dislike, the ones that embarrass us or make trouble for us. Let us make a place for them at our inner council table, and let us listen carefully to their wisdom. But let us also be careful about who we allow to speak for us, who we allow to take over. Let us be conscious of who is being fed, and how much. For we all contain multitudes. But we DON’T have to be controlled by them. Let us pray…

God, you know us inside and out. You know all the personalities we harbor within us, and you love every part of us. Help us to likewise love ourselves, but to cultivate within ourselves the kind of discernment, awareness, and self-control that will enable us to be the kind of people we want to be, the kind of people you call us to be. Help us to love one another, even when it gets hard, even when we are angry or frightened. Help us to recognize when Angry Guy is taking over, and to hand things over to Compassionate Girl when it is appropriate to do so. And we WILL need your help in this. Empower us with your Holy Spirit to be your loving presence, both to the world, and to one another, and perhaps especially, to ourselves as well. For we ask this in the name of Wise Guy, your Son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.