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OT: Exodus 24 Gary Trudeau, in his Doonesbury comic strip, has one of his characters, a homeless man, in line for a free meal in Lafayette Square one Thanksgiving. A journalist comes along and interviews the homeless man. "You’re getting a free meal today," the reporter says, "but afterwards… afterwards, what do you hope for?" And the homeless man replies, "seconds." The newsman persists: "No, no," he says, "I mean in the long term." The homeless man pauses. "Dessert," he finally replies. "Definitely dessert." When we consider Paul’s message in today’s Philippians reading, where he talks about the prize of a heavenly eternal life, we may not find that seemingly long-term vision of our eternal relationship with God any more relevant than the homeless man did, facing the questions from the reporter. It’s easy to be preoccupied with "seconds" here on earth, and maybe dessert is simply a happy retirement. Certainly those of us who have a more intimate acquaintance with death may give the Biblical promises of heaven more serious attention; but doctrine and creed notwithstanding, the days in which eternal life - either heaven or hell - the days when this theme is the focus of sermons and theology are at best on the wane. For better or worse, I fall into this pattern, and so at the outset of this sermon I want to set aside two things I believe to be true, and having done so, to turn to Paul’s vision of the prize in a way that speaks not of the eternal life but of this moment. I want first to affirm that I believe the promises of God through Christ Jesus of "the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting." I want second to affirm that life everlasting comes not through our acts but through our faith. I need to say this, for as most of you know, I have been associated most of my adult life with faith-based justice advocacy, and people like me talk a lot about doing, and we fall prey sometimes to the suspicion that we are on the side of works in that persistent faith-and-works debate that has been around ever since James wrote his little four-page letter found in our New Testament. I think I have some understanding, feeble though it may be, of grace, and I think I accept that I cannot by my works earn the prize about which Paul speaks. Having set aside those two important theological issues, what I want to talk about this morning is of a vision of prize that is now. What draws me to this theme is the way Paul talked about the prize in his letter to the Philippians. Notice that Paul did not simply declare that he had the faith - which, as unhappy as we may be about this strange man, in its essence he probably did - and that he would soon acquire the prize of heavenly life - which despite some of our less charitable wishes, he also presumably did. With those two messages we could be done with the subject. Instead, Paul talked in today’s passage about "straining forward to what lies ahead;" he talked about "pressing on towards the goal;" he talked about suffering; he talked about loss. I’m left thinking that the prize would truly be his - and ours - when faith is truly and deeply and intensely lived. "Straining," "pressing on," "suffering," "losing" - these are words of intensity, and I think there is a reason why they are there. The issue all of this raises, it seems to me, is whether we, and any community of faith, are pressing on toward the prize by living our faith, with intensity and risk. Such a quest captures our very being because through it we know, really know, Christ. I want to suggest three ways in which we may do that. There are many other options; but mine are these: Discovery, mercy, and intimacy. By discovery I mean that we struggle to see our world as God calls us to do. Some of our Global South partners especially have given this the phrase, "discerning the signs of the times." Seeing and listening are what this is all about - seeing our world in all its richness as well as all its suffering, broadening our experience to break out of the parameters we have set for ourselves so that we may discover the realities of others; listening, truly hearing, especially the stories of those who are not like us… so that we appreciate more deeply that our world is far distant from the reality of what God intends for God’s world, and so that the barriers we have built to keep us safe from that world fall away. Of all that angers and discourages me about our president and his administration, it is this: That he and they fail, tragically fail, to hear and see the realities of the world. I won’t dwell on that today. But just consider this: During the time it takes for me to deliver this homily, 68 African children, women and men will have died from AIDS. Every day 6,575 Africans die of AIDS. Last year 2,400,000 Africans died of AIDS. This year it will be more. Next year, more again. And yet in the unveiling of the president’s budget this week, our national priority is to be safe from an unfriendly world, not to engage that world in a manner that, in solidarity, we confront together the needs and hopes of people beyond ourselves. When our nation - wealthy beyond imagining, even in this economy and even with today’s crises - cannot contribute its share to efforts to relieve the suffering of peoples throughout the world mired in poverty and overwhelmed by disease, we aren’t seeing, we aren’t listening…. Since I started talking about AIDS, another five Africans died. … Discovery. The second way to press toward the prize of having Christ found within us is mercy. Knowing is one thing. Feeling as a sign of empathy is another. But to find mercy is profound. Mercy within us and mercy expressed is a second element in our quest for a faith that captures our very being because through it we know, really know, Christ. Eugenia Gamble, a Presbyterian pastor whom I wish was known beyond the confines of her own community and communion, told a story a couple of years ago of an experience when she was a pastor in Colorado. "There was," she said, "a woman who lived in the alleyways near [their] church, and she had everything she owned in a shopping cart. She was difficult. You would come into church, and she would spit all over you, and she would curse at you. You couldn’t do anything for her or with her, but she was just there. She was this presence," Eugenia said, "this indictment." "There was one thing that the church did that she loved. Every year the church would have a mission fair. The youth would have a hugging booth where they would raise money for missions. And whenever the signs would go up, this woman would start panhandling all up and down the street to get quarters for the hugging booth." Eugenia "remembers one time the woman had collected about $7 worth of quarters. Hygiene was not her thing, so these kids are in this booth, and she would keep lining up and passing out those quarters and getting her hugs. Finally this one young man couldn’t stand it any longer, and he said, ‘Why are you doing this? You know you’re throwing your money away.’ (Like she was going to turn her life around with seven bucks.) She looked at him, and she had this wonderful moment of clarity; she looked at him and said, ‘Son, nobody hugs somebody like me." "What really touched me," Eugenia said, "was when I realized that I had never hugged that woman for free. In that moment, it was as if I could see our two faces superimposed over one another" - talk about straying from Philippians into the Transfiguration! - "I could see our two faces superimposed over one another, two broken down people, oppressed by one affliction or another. It was a moment in which I realized that we have to know our need for mercy to give it. When we know our need for mercy, we will find ways to do it, with honor and integrity." I have no idea how we do mercy. What I’m trying to say is what I learned from Eugenia, that mercy is not a sentimental kind of compassion but is rather "non-judgmental love, which levels the playing field and results in concrete, specific, personal acts of care for all who are broken, with no expectation of reward or gain. Mercy is an active thing. It is an ethical thing." Mercy. The third way I see to press toward the prize of having Christ found within us is intimacy - not that which we usually tend to mean, of relations with lovers, soul-mates, companions on a journey, but that which implies an intense connectedness with our world. If we truly discover our world rather than protect ourselves from it, we will find compassion, and with compassion, we will do mercy with those and toward those whom we meet on our journey. And with discovery and mercy, my prayer is that we will be propelled into a deeper and more intimate relationship, a connectedness, with the world beyond ourselves. Jesus revealed such an intimacy, I’d say, when he spent his time with, and talked about, those who were marginalized, alienated, broken, sinful in some pretty glaring ways, and there he was, not observing them from a distance, not analyzing, not lecturing them from above, but seated with them, sharing with them, eating with them. I believe that this kind of intimacy is what we need if we are to proclaim Christ in any meaningful way to the community beyond ourselves. It’s a different kind of vision of human relationship from that of our national leadership, where $400 billion in annual military expenditure offers quite another understanding of what it means to be human, created in the image of God. Intimacy. Verna Dozier once wrote that "God has paid us the high compliment of calling us to be co-workers with our Creator, a compliment so awesome that we have fled from it and taken refuge in the church." If we have done that (even in part), my call to us today is to look again at our faith journeys, to ask ourselves how we may more fully discover God’s world, how we may more deeply find within us the mercy to be expressed in God’s world, and how we may then, through such knowledge and feeling, enter into an intimacy with our world that reveals to those beyond our doors that Christ is within us. That, to me, is pressing on toward the prize. That’s straining forward. That’s suffering and losing… for by Christ having made us his own, we can free ourselves to live with such intensity and risk, for his sake… and leave the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus to take care of itself. Amen. |
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