Sermon: "Mockingjays and Chameleons, or, the Case of Codependent Peter" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 2/6)

"Mockingjays and Chameleons, or, the Case of Codependent Peter" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 2/6)

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

9 June 2013

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 1.10-12, 2.1-16

~

-Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Gal 1.10)

-Ever since I was a little kid, my mom often told me that I was a “chameleon.”  And not just because of that phase when I bought baggy shorts and started wearing long sleeve t-shirts under short-sleeved ones like all the skater kids – despite not actually owning a skateboard!  Or when, after college I made the horrible mistake germane to young white activist types of trying to dreadlock my hair. 

-No, see, I’ve always been good - am still good - at assimilating the styles of those around me (even if someone else’s cool wallet chain looked ridiculous with my Abercrombie and Fitch khakis!).  On the postivie note, I think I am deeply atuned to particular nuances and stylistic and tonal particularities, which enables some great impressions, creative musical improvisation, and is a virtue when it comes to reading and interpreting texts.  It’s served me well as I’ve always had a diverse group of friends, and can adapt to a number of circumstances and situations.  As St. Paul says elsewhere, “I become all things to all people.”  Being a chameleon is a major asset for ministry.

 

-And also a major curse.  Because if there’s one thing every pastor knows, if only secretly in their heart, it’s that one of the main incentives for taking on such a challenging and otherwise borderline insane calling is our almost universal need for three things: admiration, affirmation and approval.  Being able to change colors to fit the color scheme at hand is also convenient for giving people what they want to hear – though not always what they need.

-And it’s hard to remember who you are after so many changes.  Redefining myself to achieve other people’s ever-shifting standards of approval ultimately means that I am always allowing myself to be re-defined by what I think are their standards.  The message my life speaks, then, is not something distinctly me – not what God gifted to me in my creation.  I am like that Mockingjay bird in the Hunger Games – a mutation of separate creatures spliced together, able to imitate, but ultimately, easily employable and influenced by the deceptive and destructive forces of the Capital.  I’m still a slave to power outside of myself.

-I share all this because if I’m honest, I really feel for St. Peter in today’s reading from Galatians.  Peter, Jesus’ number one discipline, his right-hand man, the person many believe was commissioned by Christ to be the universal head of the new church movement and beyond – he hasn’t really changed much.  Because in so many ways, it feels like he is a fellow chameleon too.

-Because after being called by Jesus, witnessing the life death and resurrection of Jesus, and performing miracles and preaching in Jesus’ Name, Peter is still, after all that, struggling with his need for approval.  He’s a biblical poster-child for codependency.

-Just look at his bio.  When Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is, Peter’s the first to have the right answer – “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”  A few verses later, when Jesus is talking about being crucified, Peter speaks the group’s (understandable) trepidation at being mutilated and killed, only to be called “Satan.”  He’s ready to walk on water to Jesus, but he freaks out when he sees the waves, and calls out to Jesus for help.  At the Last Supper, when Jesus corrects him for trying to avoid having his feet washed, Jesus promptly rebukes him, leading Peter to request a full body washing!  The man can’t hold his own to save his life.

-And then, of course, who could forget Peter’s big low – denying Jesus three times on the night of his darkest trial, because he was afraid of what the guards and servant girls might think about him?  Or, as he and John walk along the seashore with the resurrected Jesus, and Peter is told he will be crucified one day, and Peter promptly asks, “well, what about the other guy?”

-This is the same Peter – the already saint still sinner Peter – we meet in Antioch, who is also the brunt of a major butt-whooping by a very unhappy St. Paul.  Because now, after having approved of Paul’s somewhat unorthodox ministry to the Gentiles (read: non-Jews), a ministry Jesus himself gave and the “watchdogs” at Jerusalem approved, Peter’s at it again.  He’s in Galatia, and instead of backing Paul – instead of making a powerful statement, as the head of the church, of Gospel inclusion, Peter’s decided that it’s best for him to eat with the Jews – the other circumcised folks.  They DO have the power, after all.  And after a lifetime of fearing other people, why should he let go of his codependency now?

-And I wonder – are any of us really that different than Peter?  Have we desired approval and security and a sense of self so badly that we’ve allowed ourselves to be defined, not only by other problematic folks, but also, at the expense of those who are already on the ropes?  Whether in the high school locker room, or in the pseudo-safety of facebook and blog comments, or in our work environments or our families, have you, like Peter and me, betrayed your deepest beliefs and convictions of what you know is just and right…because you were afraid of losing approval?

-And see, I wonder why we really desire approval so much at all.  Aside from the whole being-included-with-the-winning-or-the-cool-side of things,, or the desperate need to be known and accepted and understood, or just the desire to get ahead and find security and safety, I think it gets down to something more.  I think we seek the approval of others because, secretly, we don’t really approve of ourselves.  We deny approval to others as well – get mad when others don’t meet our standards, want to be like us, give us their approval – because, honestly, we are as harsh on ourselves as others are.  Tied to their conditional love, we practice conditional love against ourselves.  And then, turn that on others.

-And it’s because, I think, we forget the Gospel.  That simple, yet profound truth, that we are not justified by any works of the Law or anything we can be or do on our own.  But are claimed by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and given an unshakeable identity, because in through the lens of the cross, we are able to see ourselves for who we truly are: God’s beloved.  God’s always-already claimed children.   Defined by God alone, and God’s work in Jesus Christ.

-Jesus, the one who came, not seeking our approval, but seeking to give us the approval we could never find from one another.  Who was disapproved by us – rejected, because he forced to play our idolatrous codependency games, and placed in a position of utter disregard and scorn: crucified, outside the city walls, in the place of a criminal, a traitor, an outcast.  Jesus, who offered to us and proved to us the original approval, the “it was good!” of God’s original creation.  Jesus, who by the cross, crucified codependency, and gave us back ourselves.

-Jesus was the ultimate chameleon - taking on our humanity and everything with it, and giving to us God's divinity, and everything with it.  Death and disapproval and destitution and codependency - for grace, truth, joy, peace and love.  

-See, that’s why I think it’s so crucial that, as we learned last week, Paul leads with his own story.  Paul has no delusions about needing approval from the Galatians like Peter does.  Because Paul is unafraid to tell his own death and resurrection story.  To share how the Gospel has worked in his life.  He has no secrets, has no qualms, and so, is able, with brutal honesty and seeking reconciliation and restoration, to confront Peter.  And to confront him publicly, in order to restore him to the truth of how reality really is.

-Because in Christ is revealed the true nature of the world.  That we were made for relationship, with God, and with one another.  Not to be chameleons, always changing along with everyone else’s changes.  But resting in the unchanging, always and forever love of God for God’s creation.  Not seeking approval from others, or seeking to give our own fickle approval to those seeking it from us – but, having known ourselves as definitely approved by God – a deal signed in the blood of the cross – we are free to simply share with others the Gospel that they too are claimed by God.

-And we are given freedom. Freedom to eat with Gentiles, and enemies, and outsiders, and unexpected guests, and the weak, and the absolutely worthless in others’ eyes.  Free from using church as a vehicle for political causes, or denominational battles – all of which, in the end, are also covert battles for approval and acceptance in culture and in halls of power.   Free to stop trying to fit people into an unstable system of our own devising – and instead, to discover, with wonder, uncertainty, risk and delight, how each of us, as unique and unrepeatable manifestations of the creative love of God – fit into the story, God’s story.  The story of reality.  Whether we approve it or not. 

-And we’re free to confront one another in love too.  Free to tell the Peters and Matthews and chameleons and mockingjays in our communities that we are backsliding.  That we are falling under the spell of the lie.  That the way we are living is proclaiming, not a world approved by God, but a God approved by the world, and a sense of self utterly at the whim of the crashing waves and driving currents of turbulent waters on which we should be walking freely, rather than sinking desperately.

-The Gospel gives us a true sense of who we are in God.  It gives the gift of boldness.  Of a willingness to be radically honest.  To stand up for those who are disapproved, regardless of whether we are approved of or not.  We need to hear it again and again.  Because all of us are, in a certain sense, mockingjays and chameleons.  We are made in the image of God, and so, are called to reflect God’s colors.  Called to sing the songs of humanity back to one another in such a way as to sing them in the key of grace. 

-We can do so, bringing others with us as together we strive for freedom, because we know ourselves in Christ.  As approved, accepted, affirmed, and admired by the one who alone needs no approval from anyone.  But delights in sharing it with everyone.  With you.  With me.  With all. 

-In Jesus’ Name, Amen.  

Sermon: "Magna Carta Holy Grail (of Christian Freedom)" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians 6/6)

"Magna Carta Holy Grail (of Christian Freedom)"

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

7 July 2013

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 6.1-10, 14-16

~

You get to feel so guilty, got so much for so little

That you find that feeling just won't go away

You're holding on to every little thing so tightly

Till there's nothing left for you anyway...

You hurt yourself, you hurt your lover

than you discover

What you thought was freedom is just greed...

-U2, "Gone"

-We’ve reached the end of Galatians, the letter that Martin Luther once called the “magna carta of Christian freedom” (he'd add "holy grail" if he'd been around to rap with Jay-Z).  Last week, we heard Paul proclaim that “it was for freedom Christ has set us free,” and then, looked at two apocalyptic visions, one of slavery to the Sarx (flesh), and one of the liberty of the Spirit’s fruits flowering in us.  

-But as we conclude, we still haven’t really answered a pressing question: what, in simple, human, 21st century terms, exactly is Christian freedom?  What are we freed from? What are we freed for? And, just as important, how do we live this freedom?  

-Thankfully, for once, Paul makes it pretty clear here in chapter six, just as he’s wrapping up his letter.  He seems to lay out three basic recommendations for what Peterson’s Message translation calls “living creatively:"

1) Be a community that restores one another and bears one another’s burdens with gentleness

2) Focus on your own load, rather than another’s

3) Boast in nothing but the cross of Christ, which has won us a new creation

-In many ways, that’s the ethical distillation of the entire letter.  All that discernment of Idols and Gospels, of Sarx and Spirit, of Includers and the Included, Jews and Gentiles...it all comes down to this way of being community - an Israel of faith - with God, and with neighbor.  

-But if Paul has taught us anything, it’s that even Gospel community - especially Gospel community, can be used for slavery if it falls into the wrong hands.  Enter me.  On the Fourth of July.  A perfect time to reflect on freedom.  

-See, every year around the Fourth, we join Leah’s family up on Lake Ontario at the Lighthouse Christian Camp for a week-long family camp.  The setting is beautiful, with tiny cottages nestled right along the shore of the lake.  The sunsets make your heart sing.  There’s space to talk, to pray, to recharge, and to skip stones.  Lots of stones.  Family stories are shared and remembered as families work together to remember and grow in the story of our faith.

-And, for this community, a big part of both family and faith stories is the story of America.  On the Fourth, there’s a huge worship service in the tabernacle.  Red white and blue balloons line the aisles.  Giant flags are projected behind the praise lyrics.  Veterans and parents of soldiers are venerated and thanked.  As I walked by, I heard a soloist practicing a song with the lyrics “one nation under God.”

-Except this Fourth, I was walking away from it.  See, Leah’s cousin Matt and me, being the enlightened progressive Christian pacifists that we are, have made a tradition of holding a prayer service before the tabernacle service, to pray for America’s enemies.  Then we skip the service.  Our way of saying that we belong to the Kingdom first, and only then, to this country, and her history of genocide, pillaging and war.

-As I made my way past the sights and sounds of passionate patriotism, I felt the sweet sensation of self-righteousness swell within me.  Surely, this was a community of Christians in need of being restored, in line with Paul's Point One.  Surely, with my advanced sense of the Gospel and my keen eye for Idolatry, we could free them from nationalism and unwrap the Bible from the flag.  Help them find the Truth.  

-Which is just about when the Truth found me.  Because I realized: I was the one in need of restoration.  Because, like the Judaizers requiring circumcision of the Galatian converts, I was making my acceptance of my fellow Christians - albeit distant cousins - conditional of them meeting my standards of progressivism.  And, in the end, I was isolating myself from community.  And ultimately, was no more free from sin than anyone at the camp.

-See, Paul’s first recommendation says that we ought to restore one another with gentleness, and that we should bear each other’s burdens.  Instead, I took out my Hipster glasses and switched on the ‘ol Flaw-O-Matic my generation has ingrained in me.  And I started to critique and judge.  Outraged by a nation built on warfare, I was unwittingly, hypocritically, and not at all gently, waging war on my own family.

-And that’s where I was hit by Paul’s second recommendation - namely, verse 3: if someone thinks we he is something when he is nothing, he is deceived...but let each test his own work.  Or, in psycho-babble terms: stop codependently trying to control and manipulate others, and focus on your own s-h-i-t.

-For me, maybe it meant just going to my own prayer meeting and doing my best to do what I felt called to do: pray for enemies - not praying against others.  It also meant, I think, focusing on the warfare in my own heart.  The ways that, through violent speech, and selfish thinking, and neglect of my own spiritual life, I tried to isolate myself from God, from accountability, and so make myself god over other people.

-In reality, I couldn't go in that service, not because of any moral outrage or zeal of the Kingdom, but because I couldn't stand to experience my own resentment and critical judgement.  I wonder what would have happened had I walked up to the pastor, took responsibility for my own struggle, admitting "I struggle with solely focusing on patriotism - could we also pray for our enemies?"  Who knows?  Maybe the whole camp would have ended up praying.  And I might have been humbled more gently too.  

-But see, if you’re like me, then even on the short walk to church today, you’ve probably slipped into the whole god-complex in any number of ways.  Perhaps it’s indulging in the fleeting and ironic joy of using the Flaw-o-Matic to make critical remarks of others.  Maybe there’s a person in your life you desperately want to fix, and you think about fixing them all the time.  Maybe you are feeling trapped and enslaved by someone else’s manipulations, and are stockpiling nuclear weapons in the silo of your heart.  And it feels like slavery.   

-And if you’re like me, you are being called out of slavery for Gospel freedom.  Freedom from the need to always critique.  From the need to fix others.  From the need to manipulate or control circumstances other than your own.  From the impulse to react, to pray or preach or do anything good AT people, rather than FOR them.  From the quiet desperation of needing to be god, or ending up as nothing.  

-And, you are also being called to Gospel freedom FOR something.  FOR right relationships.  With God.  With your neighbors.  And with yourself.  FOR the wholeness, the peace, the Shalom described in those fruits of the Spirit.  FOR what Paul calls the “new creation.”  

-Now, like me, maybe you’re wondering: how am I supposed to focus on my own load AND carry my neighbor’s burden?  Doesn’t that seem a bit contradictory?  

-Seems? Yes.  Actually? Not so sure.

-See, Paul’s first two steps are not in opposition.  I think they’re two sides of the same coin.  See, the Greek word for “burdens,” those that we must help our neighbors with, this word denotes something really oppressive.  Usually, a set of requirements laid down by others that weigh on one’s soul.  It's something take cuts one off from community.  And drains away life.    

-The word for “loads,” on the other hand, is the same word that Jesus uses in the Gospel of Matthew when he says, “my yoke is easy and my load is light.”  It’s still very difficult stuff.  It’s hard work.  But it's work that gives us life.  That is us acting out of our Spirit center.  And, as Jesus notes, like oxen, we are not yoked alone.  In fact, we are able to do this work only because Christ has bound Himself to our very hearts, and so animates us with his grace and love.

-The end goal of each work is different.  One, "burdens," oppresses; the other, our "load," enlivens.

-So what I hear Paul saying is this: the first task of our Christian community is to restore one another when we have fallen into the grip of sin and death.  Which means, not punishing or guilting or controlling or fixing.  But speaking the truth of who we are in Christ.  Literally re-clothing our brother or sister with the garment of Christ Jesus, and with it, the promise of the Gospel that they are no one’s slave, and so, do not need to carry oppressive requirements, or guilt, or expectations, or anything else that is not God.  This is always gentle, because it must reflect Jesus’ own gentleness.  How we restore will be part of the reminder of what we are restoring them to!

-But to be the kind of community that can heal with the soothing balm of the Gospel, we also need to carry our own loads.  Do our own work.  Not work that seeks to earn the free gift of salvation.  But the work of growing in intimacy with Jesus, the one who has joined Himself to our hearts.  We cannot simply know the Gospel with our heads.  We must work so that it can sink into our hearts.  It must become a part of us.  The soil must be prepared so that the seeds of the Spirit fruits may grow.

-So, in some ways, our load is very personal.  It might mean recommitting to a discipline of regular prayer and of listening to the Scriptures.  It might mean letting God reveal our idols, so that God can cleanse us from the works of the Sarx, and make us open to be channels of the Spirit.  It also might mean taking time to delight in God, to be in God’s world, and among God’s people, being refreshed through worship, and play, and celebration.  But point is, it’s a relationship.  Christ has set us free for relationship.  And the ultimate freedom of a relationship comes in the discipline of commitment.

-So as we grow more deeply in our love with God, we will be given the freedom from self to love and restore and support our brothers and sisters.  Growing in the knowledge of how much God loves us and has forgiven us feeds us so that we can extend this restorative love to others.  And, in being a community that openly shares our struggles, and practices gentle Gospel healing and restoration, will ultimately provide a safe and nurturing space, a greenhouse, if you will, in which the fruits of the Spirit can flourish.  In which the New Creation is incubated.  In which we can fully live and grow together.  

-Which is why I think Paul ends with his powerful third recommendation: “But for my part, may I never boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ - for nothing else matters, except the new creation it’s given us!" We are given the freedom to be a community with a singleness of purpose - to be known by God deeply and intimately, and so to know one another deeply and intimately, and then, healed by the Gospel, to offer that Gospel to the still enslaved and suffering.  We do not need to affiliate with any political party.  We do not need to solve the deep issues of the day.  In many ways, we do not need to worry what America is doing, or what the Jews are doing, or what the Evangelicals are doing, or what anyone else is doing.  It’s not about them.  It’s not about us.  It’s about God.  

-We are called to boast only in the cross of Christ.  The proclamation of the Crucified God.  Who brings healing to the broken.  Who brings love the excluded.  Who brings freedom to the slaves.  Who brings an end to death, and begins the new creation.  Nothing else matters.  Everything else is just our practice of bearing the burdens of others, and so fulfilling our mission as a church - the mission of telling the story of the Good News of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.  That God forgives us.  That God has liberated us.  That God is for us, with us, and loves us.  And God wants so much more for God’s children then we ever imagined.

-I have another Fourth of July story I'd like to leave you with as we leave Galatians together.  Later that day, Matt's wife Jess suggested a practice for us.  She recommended we take a bucket of stones.  That we go to the waters' edge.  And we cast them into the deep.  And for each one thrown away, we shoudl name out loud a barrier that kept us from God.  A kind of dramatic form of confession.

-As I listened to Leah throw her stones, and then had to name and throw my own, I was struck.  The things I was naming, they could have been written on the stones I threw at the patriotic tabernacle service.  The things I most hated in myself, the chains of my slavery, were the demons I tried to cast into others.  And instead of making them weapons, they became instruments.  Not just of confession.  But also, of play.  Skipping them off into the distance, to sink into oblivion, where God will remember them no more.  It's setting down a heavy burden.  And freeing the hands to carry a load.   

-And I think that's Paul's message of grace in Galatians.  I'm thankful to him for having lived it and passed it on to us.  Thankful for you, walking and stumbling with me through this series.  Thankful that we at the South Wedge Mission have been given this work to do - this Mission of bearing burdens and carrying loads.  And we've been given the Gospel - and the God - to take our place in the new creation.  Praise be to God.  That's all.  That's everything.

-Amen.     

Sermon: "SARX WARS, or, How the Apocalypse Stole My Fruits" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians 5/6)

"SARX WARS, or, How the Apocalypse Stole My Fruits of the Spirit" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians 5/6)

Preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
30 June 2013
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 5.1, 13-25 (NRSV, Message)

Click here to listen to "Guided by the Spirit," a simple song I wrote for worship, inspired by the work of Organic Faith's "Devotion" service.

~

-So, after four weeks of theology and idolatry and time-traveling apostles, we seem to arrived at something that feels a lot more...practical.  In today’s reading from Galatians, we’re given two lists: works of the flesh, and the fruits of the Spirit.  FINALLY!  Clear.  Simple.  Practical.  God bless lists.    

-And of, if only the preacher would just focus on what to avoid so we don’t do wrong, and what to do so we can do good!  Kindness, patience, gentleness, joy, peace, generosity, and love!  You can’t go wrong with that!  And Paul says there’s now Law against these things!  So can’t we just get down to the business of talking about living the faith, about what we need to do?

-Of course...not!  And, lest you string me up and run me out of church, please allow me to blame it on St. Paul.  No, seriously, it is all Paul’s fault.   With a little assistance from our good old friend, the old self/idol-maker, the Ego.  Because, see, Paul isn’t ready to give us the to-do’s yet.  (That’s next week, I promise!)  But where a book of the Bible holds out a list, the Ego in us is ready to be be taken in, like a toddler running full speed at a clear glass door.  The ensuing result can be pretty hilarious - but also, is a case in missing the point!

-Because, see, Paul is still telling the story.  The same story he’s been telling this whole letter.  The Gospel of Freedom.  The Good News about how Christ has come to set us free.  Free from all the ways in which we ourselves, and others, try to define who we are by standards other than God’s promises, and how Christ comes to reclaim us from deception for Himself.  It’s important enough to him to tell it one more time.  Except, this time, on a massive, epic, even COSMIC scale.  

-But first, let’s recap.  See, Paul started out with the story of the Gospel.  The cross.  Then showed how it changed his own story.  Then how it challenged the story of the early church, particularly between codependent Peter and Paul.  And then, he showed how it changes each of our stories, as Christ comes to dwell supernaturally in our hearts.  THEN, he showed how all of our stories are part of Israel’s story - the story of an exodus from slavery into freedom.  And now, for the grand finale, the final cosmic confrontation.  The Last Battle.  The End of Time. (WARNING: Excessive Sci-fi referencing ahead)  

-Now, you might be wondering, if it’s all so cosmic, then where exactly are all the, you know, cosmic thingies?  Shouldn’t there be X-Wings and Death Stars, or Cybernetic Archangels and Demon Hunters and Klingons and Daleks and the like?  

-Well, there is.  Not Daleks, sadly.  But believe it or not, Paul finally peels back the curtain of the present moment to reveal the greater drama going on, in, behind and through every day events.  What we call “apocalyptic,” which is just Greek for a “revealing.”  He’s just waited all this time, because he wanted us to make sure we understood the stakes in our own lives and the work of Christ, before rocketing us into the next realm.  Cause frankly, if he led with Daleks, I would have been just fine staying there.

-The cosmic battle is against something far more insidious.  It’s called “the Flesh.”  Or, in Greek, the “Sarx.”  Throughout much of the history of Christianity, it’s been common to identify the Sarx with the body.  Or, rather, for people who have it in for the body to identify them.  Particularly when people dislike or want to control the particular color, gender, sexuality, or ethnicity of that particular body.  Or, just want to make it seem like Christianity hates bodily things.    

-Which is just plain nonsense in light of Christ’s Incarnation.  Jesus takes ON flesh - not Sarx with a capital S, but actual flesh and bone and muscle.  Jesus becomes human, thereby redeeming and transfiguring material reality.  So even if unhealthy humans have often been rather masochistic towards their bodies, it’s not something that came from the God who shaped bodies from dust, kissed them with the breath of life, and called them Good.  

-En contraire, for Paul, Sarx is something quite different.  Sarx is more like a kind of cosmic power, an entity, a disembodied shadow thing that is everywhere present and nowhere visible in itself.  The Sarx is a kind of Matrix, that human beings have created, continue to fuel, and cannot control.  It is a power that is fundamentally opposed to God.  

-But it’s not a demon or a Satan or the Dark Side.  More like a Frankenstein monster, or a Terminator, or Neo’s machines.  That’s key.  Its the collective consciousness of our self-focused, self-made, self-perpetuating works.  It is an idol.  The Idol.  And it is an Idol that has stolen a life of its own.  From our lives.  Stolen power.  Out of the ruins of our freely surrendered freedom.  Assimilated us into the Borg collective.  Turned us into Darth Vaders.  Half-human; half-machine.  Fully enslaved.     

-We know it is there, claims Paul, because its works are evident.  And I think that the Eugene Peterson Message translation really captures this poignantly.  Let’s hear it again: 

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness;  20 trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits;  21 the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

-We know it is there, in other words, because it pretty much describes the broken world that we all live in.  The broken world that we ourselves have made in our own image.  The broken world in which power is about competing and controlling one another.  The world that seems so real and immediate, and yet, feels so fake, and so fleeting, so unfulfilling.  The world that is a mirror of our own darkness.  

-Sort of like a prison.  Or a Matrix.  The Sarx is what happens when we take the image of God in us - the capacity for limitless and bountiful creation in community - and we turn it to our own devices.  When we make reality all about us, when we create idols and then believe their promises.  It’s a prison.  And in trying to make each other into each other’s slaves, we all end up slaves of the Sarx.

-And the Sarx grows and becomes more its own entity because it feeds on our actions.  It can only exist, in fact, by the unrestrained actions of self-serving human will.  If we all suddenly stopped being selfish, it would vanish.  It would be powerless.  But we cannot stop.  And the more we struggle to overcome it by trying to be “good,” the more we create its power.  And with it, its systems of oppression, and of slavery, of abuse, and of destruction.  We are the human batteries that keep the Matrix turned on.  

-Pretty bleak, right?  But see how it’s cosmic?  How Sarx and Sin are so much more than simply character defects that keep us from being existentially fulfilled?  The power of the Ego, of Idolatry, and of Sin, it spoils the story.  From the most personal life to the farthest-reaching corners of the cosmos.  It takes good things, good gifts, like sex, and food, and beverages, and words, and relationships, and joy, and celebration, and community - and twists them all into chains of shame and self-seeking.  It takes life, and turns it into a desert of isolation and loneliness.  

-Paul puts it quite bluntly: if we bite and ravage one another, in no time we will annihilate one another. Consume each other.  Exterminate one another.  I’d definitely take the Daleks over that.  

-But see, I wonder if there’s another reason Paul has held off on the whole cosmic Sarx thing until now.  Because, see, if all along we could just blame some cosmic baddie like the Sarx for all of our problems, we probably wouldn’t have listened to the other stuff.  About salvation.  And our desperate need for it.   

-I wonder if Paul wanted to help us see how we were powerless first.  On our own, ordinary, every day terms.  That our lives are unmanageable, our anti-creations beyond our control.  And the story of the Sarx, portrayed here - it’s like that scene in a sci-fi movie when a character gets a glimpse of the ravaged future.  “This is where your will takes you” says the guide or mentor.  This is the end.  You live in the moment before the end.  But this desolation - that’s the result.  It’s where we’re headed.  

-Because with Sin and Ego, with Sarx and Self, we are playing with power we do not understand.  Our actions have consequences and responsibilities to them far beyond the scope of our comprehension.  Like bad karma channelled into a dark crystal and then placed in the heart of a chaos bomb that will consume individuals, friendships, communities, histories, ecosystems, worlds, the entire cosmos.  And what we thought was freedom to do what we wanted "as long as it doesn't hurt others" - that's the Sarx too.  Playing us with the song of self that we first sang.  A song that has become a dirge.  

-But that’s not all that Paul has given us.  Because he’s also given us the story of the resistance.  The way out.  The story of God’s very nature in Christ Jesus, coming to dwell supernaturally within us.  Paul’s given us the Gospel, the story of how when we were powerless - not powerful - Christ came to set us free.  And with Christ, the Sarx has been crucified and defeated.   

-The battle cry.  “For freedom,” he declares, “Christ has set us free!  So do not submit!  Do not give back your power and your lives and your freedom to the Sarx!  If you haven’t gotten it by now, then look at this final, apocalyptic vision, and take the better path.  The path, not of Self and Ego.  But of Love.  And Faith.  And Joy.  And Patience.  And Gentleness.  And Kindness.  And Generosity.  Take the path that I am giving to you.  The path that leads to the fruits of the Spirit."   

-For freedom Christ has set us free!  And along with a vision of armageddon, Paul also paints a more powerful portrait of freedom, of a kind of Eden, in which human beings follow the Law of Love, and so, share the Fruits of the Tree of Life and of Knowledge.  The Fruits of the Spirit.  The practices of community with God and neighbor.

-And see, that list of “fruits of the Spirit” - it’s not just a check list of how to be a good person.  Even if it were, the Sarx would just find a way to use it to compare, and to hold power over others.  “Well, if HE really believed in God, then he’d show more patience,” or, “look at how I’ve collected seven of nine fruits!  Can’t wait to complete my full set!”  As I hope we’ve learned by now, Paul is far too clever for that.  Besides, it’s not exactly a revelation to be “kind,” right?

-Rather, I think the Fruits of the Spirit, as a kind of vision of paradise, are there as enticements.  As sweet temptations.  As a lover’s promises, set before us like a dream just about to come true.  They are what God is making us into.  Because they are, first and foremost, not about us.  They are not the Fruits of Good Deeds and Devotion.  They are the Fruits of the Spirit.  Rooted in the very character of God, shared with humanity.  

-Because it is first God who is love, love without end.  It is first God who takes joy in God’s creation and beloved children.  God who is patient and gentle and kind to us, even as we are impatient and violent and towards him, repaying God’s generosity with a cross and a collection of idols.  And, in Christ, it is God who is peace, and has given us peace, and desires peace for all.  This is the character of God, revealed in the Incarnate flesh of Jesus.  And shared with us in our hearts and lives by the gift of the Spirit.  

-It’s a picture of who God is making us.  A promise of what we will be.  Hear the Message again: 

He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments,  23 not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

-And it’s also a pathway.  To follow in the footsteps of the Lover.  Or, if you like, a collection of clues, foretastes, bread crumbs.  Eucharist crumbs.  Hints of heaven.  Fruit snacks.  So that it’s not so much “did I achieve kindness today,” as it is, “I seemed to be able to exhibit kindness to the guy who was pissing me off, a kindness far beyond my ability.  I wonder where that came from?  I’ll follow where it leads.”

-As you may have heard, fruit grows from seeds.  And see, in giving us the Spirit, God has planted, not so much full-grown fruits, as tiny seeds.  Or, in a way, a Holy Kudzu, Benign Viruses or White Blood Cells, that are slowly but surely eating away at the cancerous chains of the Sarx’s slavery.  Grace is downloaded into our Sarx-systems and, day by day, step by step, and failure by failure, is transforming us.  Making us free.  Making us God.

-And that’s where the sailboat analogy comes back.  Us positioning our sails to catch it.  Because it’s not just a vision already achieved.  It’s also a present work.  Hard work.  But it’s not a chore.  Not something we should see as a tedious struggle of achievement.  Granted, it will be challenging.  As Rilke once wrote, nothing of value is without challenge.  It's learning to see the Sarx for the Matrix it is.  It's also discovering the true beauty of embodied reality, as if for the first time.  And it's a hell of a ride.  

-Like early sobriety, as addicts can tell you.  The fruits of the Spirit are the steps we take towards spiritual recovery and sobriety.  Towards a new freedom and a new happiness.  They are what is given us when we finally come to see that we are powerless to overcome this anti-creation we have spawned, this Sarx.  When we cease struggling.  And start letting God do what we cannot do for ourselves.  Then, we are given the power to take up the promises of God, and to embrace the discipline of becoming who we really are.

-And it is a discipline.  But not like punishment, which is fear-driven.  It is a discipline that leads to freedom.  That leads to fruits.  A training.  A commitment.  Just as daily weeding and watering leads to a fruitful harvest, so in our lives, the journey of commitment, into community with God and one another - of risking gentleness and generosity, faithfulness and self-control, and believing that joy can come where power is abandoned - these disciplines give us freedom to live freely, animated, guided by the Spirit of Life itself.  Commitment and submission to God and one another in prayer, worship, community, and service - that’s the freedom of love.  

-And we will find that, in fact, the whole thing is not a cosmic battle after all.  Because God is peace.  And rather than eradicate the Sarx, God is actually seeking to reclaim from the Sarx the goodness of creation.  Starting with you.  And with me.  And then, our gifts and talents and joys.  And yes, sex, and celebration, and especially, a family.  A community grown from the compost of our Sarx.  Pulling from the fertile soil of failure the blessings of the body.  Our bodies.  Our world.  And offering them back.  As gifts.  So that we may be gifts to one another.  

-So, in many ways, I can think of nothing more practical than Sarx and Spirit.  Because it is the story of us all.  Reminds us that slavery really is slavery, however good it feels in the moment.  That we really were slaves of our own making.  And that Christ truly has set us free.  Placed us on a different path.  That Christ is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  It’s less a check-list of to-do’s.  More of a promise of the Power by which we can actually do good things.  The Power that makes us good.

-And that's why we cannot make this part of Galatians into a list.  Because God is not giving us the fruits of the Spirit so we can be better than others.  God is giving them to us so we can be more like God.  And so, better for others.   

-So do not submit!  Do not obey the Sarx.  Do not return to slavery.  Live free, guided by the Spirit.  Because once we have tasted life - true, abundant, completely free life - then believe me, nothing else will ever be the same again.     

-Amen.  

Sermon: "Notes from Underground (Railroad), or, How Slaves Teach Us Freedom from Being Inclusive"

"Notes from Underground (Railroad), or, How Slaves Teach Us Freedom from Being Inclusive"

For South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
23 June 2013
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Day Text: Galatians 3.5-29

Note: The sermon came out a disaster on Sunday night.  This manuscript represents the proclamation as I intended it.  I am glad to share it more broadly in a more fully realized form.  Thanks for your patience, as always. 

~

-Last week, it rained in Rochester.  I know, shocking right?  

-So we decided to take the kids to the Rochester Museum and Science Center.  Now, I’ve been going to camps and field trips there to see the Mastodons and the Iroquois longhouses ever since I was five years old.  So its always pretty special to go back, not just to see my progeny following in my footsteps of discovery and wonder, but also, to get to take my own trip down Nostalgia Street.  

-And to discover new things myself.  When we made it to the third floor, I was drawn to the fantastic exhibit telling the story of Rochester’s role in the Underground Railroad.  Which, as it took me awhile to learn, was not actually a steam-engine-driven subway from the deep south to Canada, but a network of houses, churches, tunnels, hollowed out trees, and folks willing to risk the vulnerability of radical hospitality in order to help others reach a place where their humanity was no longer placed in doubt.

-And it was particularly cool to see a map charting out the various routes folks took through the area.  To find out that some of the routes that ran through my hometown of Fairport actually closely mirrored my running routes in high school.  Or that, when I often drive to Honeoye Falls to supply preach at the Episcopal Church there, I am following in the footsteps of midnight travelers on the star light express.  And, of course, there was Frederick Douglass’ house - literally two blocks from here, where School 12 now stands, right here in our own neighborhood.

-Not only does Rochester boast a rich history of radical inclusivity on many fronts - but that, just like the railroad, it’s always been there, running underground, in the roots and soil of the places of my own life.  Hidden in plain sight.  Whispering from the past, like a family of nervous pilgrims, singing softer than a breath the lyrics to “Wade in the Water” from a hollowed out tree.

-But see, if I’m honest, I think the history, this amazing story, remains hidden from me for another reason.  Because as a Yankee who’s spent extensive time in the South, I’ve had to learn the hard truth - that in so many ways, we’re no more free of slavery than 150 years ago, when on Juneteenth, the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the entire country.  

-It’s written in the story the statistics tell about Rochester.  Only 44% of high school seniors graduate here.  We also boast the 8th highest rate of child poverty, and despite being the richest county in New York State, over 20% of our population lives in poverty.  The great way-station of the Underground Railroad is, today, one of the most segregated cities in the country.   

-And yet, we continue to applaud ourselves on our progressive history.  My chest swells with pride, not just at what I saw at the RMSC, but also every time I walk by School 12 and think of Freddy D.  We name our bridges and our streets after him, and Susan B Anthony.  And yet, just a few weeks ago, a highly qualified candidate was denied appointment as school superintendent because he was openly gay.  

-And see, it kind of exposes the seem in our so-called “inclusivity.”  Because if you’re like me, than you like to be the Includer.  The one who knows better than those close-minded conservatives and so benevolently works to welcome everyone.  I haven’t seen a church yet that does not include the word “welcoming” or “affirming” in their mission statement.  You see, we’re blind, not only to the depth of our history, but also to the dreadful reality of the present, because of how we see ourselves.  As magnanimous progressives.  As good people who mean well.  As if that erases the color line drawn in red around the southeast quadrant of the city.  As if good intentions erases the problem of our privilege.

-Which is why, I think, it’s crucial to pay attention to what St. Paul is doing in today’s reading.  Because while it might seem like all this talk about Israel, and Abraham’s seed, and being heirs to the promise, and all that messy circumcision talk, has nothing to do with us - that it’s culturally irrelevant, that we should just get to the good ethical stuff so we can keep being “good people” - it’s actually quite vital to our transformation.

-Because, see, the great blow to our ego that white people in particular have gone to great lengths throughout history to avoid, is that we aren’t, and have never really been, the Includers.  Or, if we’ve been in that role, we are Includers more in the cast of Pharaoh, seeking to enslave others.  Or like Columbus, using religion and the rhetoric of progress to subjugate and subdue.  Or like the Nazis, who like us were well-intentioned Lutherans - they even founded a peace corp! - and yet, had to have a scapegoat.

-We are quick to use our self-proclaimed status as Includers to place the requirement of a certain circumcision - a mutilation of colored bodies and souls - for inclusion.  Except that inclusion is most often made in our own image.  Stacked in our favor.  A benefit to our own power and privilege.

-And, at the heart of it, is a basic forgetfulness of a Gospel truth that Israel’s story tells us.  That we are not, and never have been, the Includers.  That’s a role we give ourselves, and we are not good at it.  What Israel’s story tells us is that we are, in fact, already always the Included.  

-And here we are, back in our study of Galatians at our themes of idolatry and Gospel, of identity before action, of promises centered on the black hole of our egos, rather than pouring forth from the burning star of the cross of Christ.  Because guess what - like the Judaizers, our privilege makes us quite skilled at manipulating the promises of God to suit our own ends.  And it is always at cost to the community.

-See, the story of Israel is definitely about inclusivity.  But it’s always about being Included.  I don’t think its coincidence that here, precisely here when he is hammering his point home, Paul invokes the most fundamental family story of the descendants of Abraham.  That’s when God promises Abe that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars, and called him to become an illegal immigrant to a foreign land, all on the basis of trust in God’s promise.  And as a sign of the covenant of love between God and God’s people, circumcision was given.  Not as a requirement, but as a sign, a reflection of an Inclusion already accomplished.  A mark, like a brutal wedding ring, sealing the Chosen People as Chosen.  As Included, called to proclaim to the nations the story of the Creator as the great Includer of all nations in the blessings of the good world.  

-Incidentally, circumcision is a lot like baptism.  A sacrament, often done to us, before were even aware or able to act out of our privilege, marking in our flesh and hearts that we are claimed and loved by the Including God.  Pretty sweet, I think.  And thank God we drew the water card, rather than the moil!

-But see, Paul pulls one over on his readers.  Because he claims that in fact, the heir to the promise, the one who is to become the true Includer, is not the Judaizers, who have taken that mantle on themselves.  It’s not even the Jews, who as the Old Testament makes clear, are not unlike us in their repeated failures to include, turning inclusion into exclusion and warfare and genocide.  

-No, the true Includer is the One Jew, Jesus Christ, who on the cross, fulfills the mission of Israel in reconciling and gathering to the God of Israel all nations and peoples.  See, the basis of inclusion in Israel’s story is always the action of God.  It is always God, first through Israel, and ultimately, Incarnate in Christ Jesus, who shows us what Inclusion looks like.  It looks like becoming nothing.  Letting go of the privilege of being the Creator of the Universe.  In order to take on the form of a slave.  Dying.  Being emptied of power.  Being utterly excluded by self-proclaimed Includers.  For the sake of making the Excluders into the Included.

-And see, in both circumcision, and in the other Jewish sacrament, the Passover, the Jewish people remember themselves again and again as the Included.  Frequently in the telling of stories around the sharing of a meal that tastes of the freedom of liberation from slavery in Egypt, they remember that “a wandering Aramean was our father,” and remember God as “the one who called us out of Egypt.”  Their fundamental identities?  As former aliens and slaves whom God, and not humans, Included and blessed.

-What I’m trying to say is this: in remembering that it is in Christ that the Including God is making us the Included, we must remember, with our Jewish brothers and sisters, the hard fact that we are always already included by a power greater than ourselves.  A power and a love that makes nonsense of our delusions of progress and our myths of magnanimity.  Because Christians didn’t invent this thing.  Neither did Jews.  Through Christ, we outsiders, we gentiles, we sinners, are Included into Israel’s song - and Israel in turn has been Included in that song by God.  

-And we are made the Included for the sake, not merely of including others, but of witnessing to the story of the God who has always already included others.  That’s one reason why, in the Mission’s inclusivity statement, we tried to put the emphasis on God’s action: God’s family already includes people of all races, genders, sexualities, ethnicities, classes, ages, etc.  We’re just trying to catch up.  Because the emphasis in our witness is never on what we do or how good we think we are.  It’s on the objective and indisputable goodness of who God is and what GOD has done.  

-And see, when Paul writes that beautiful declaration of freedom - that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus” - it is not an option.  It’s not a choice.  Not something dependent on our slave-making other-excluding privileged inclusivity.  It is not arbitrary, and people’s identities are not up for a vote or tied to our level of enlightenment.  They are hidden in Christ.  No election, referendum, court decision or prejudice can change this truth.  

-We are free because, like the Hebrew slaves led out of Egypt and like Father Abraham, an alien called home, God has acted for us.  We are children of God.  That is who we are.  And nothing, nothing in all of creation can altar that fact.  It is a promise and a covenant from the Creator of the Universe, signed with the mark of a cross in the blood of Jesus.  We are all named as the Included.  Or Christ died for nothing.

-Which, I think, means a very different stance on the very practical issue of inclusivity.  Because I wonder what the church would look like that writes in its mission statement: “we are the Included, and so are you,” rather than “we are inclusive and welcoming,” when we aren’t.  What it would look like to declare, not the beauty of our own inclusivity or the generosity of our own benevolence, but rather, to proclaim, again and again without apology, the Gospel of God’s grace, love and God’s claiming of God’s children, through God’s own Exclusion from us.  If the focus was, in other words, on the promises and the actions of God, rather than on our own promises and failures.

-It might look a lot like having way fewer words and ideals and phrases.  It might change where we live, who our friends are, and who befriends us.  It might upset us and our pride.  It might reduce us to fear and awe.  It might just lead us to get in trouble with the powers as we testify to the basic humanity of ourselves and others.  Because in affirming this truth in them, we must also affirm it in ourselves.  

-But it also does this: because the story of Israel is our story, hidden underneath our well-trodden paths of Christianity and social gospel and good intentions, just as the Underground Railroad was hidden from me at home.  It’s always been there.  And I’d wager that those who risked their lives as conductors on that railroad, I like to think that while they welcomed the stranger and the slave with radical hospitality, that they were also blessed.  Blessed by the songs that the slaves sang, of Abraham, and of Moses, and of the Exodus, and of freedom.  

-And I like to think that, it wasn’t so much Includers saving the outcasts.  Maybe it was more like a people who, freshly aware of the freedom of being Included by a God of Justice and Love, sharing this Good News in spirituals and in their very bodies, a reminder to the privileged that they too were Included.  They too could remember the stories of Israel.  Their story.  They too were slaves who were freed.  They were being liberated by the Gospel witness of colored bodies they had once tried to hide.  That on the Underground Railroad, freedom worked both ways.  Because, bound by chains of privilege and ego, we were slaves too.  

-And I wonder if, letting go of the idols of our own need to feel inclusive, might allow the church in Rochester to reclaim both histories.  To become Gentiles included into the story of the freed slaves of Israel.  And so, to allow our communities to become Underground Railroad stations once more, on the Gospel line of grace, guided by the North Star of the Magi towards a new freedom and a new happiness.  Where we seek, not to be Includers, but simply allow ourselves to be, as Included.  Singing the songs of the slaves, from Israel to the United States.  Running an underground movement of joy and liberation ready to share with others the path to a new creation.  And, in welcoming them, to be reminded of this path ourselves.  

-There’s a freedom train a-comin’.  Get on board, get on board.  That’s underground.  That’s radical.  That’s the promise of God in Christ to us.  Let’s sing it.   

-Amen.