Epiphany 7C
In the name of the God who
creates us, the Christ who ties us together, and the Spirit who is the
bond. Amen.
By this point in my ministry,
I’ve been a priest a little over nine years.
I began preaching about 13 years ago.
And one of the great joys of starting to get this bit of experience
under my belt, is that now, when I encounter a text for preaching, it’s almost
never the first time I’ve been called on to preach about it. Through quirks of the calendar, there are
still some odd days that don’t appear in our 3-year cycle very often, so it’s
not like “I’ve seen it all”, but more and more, I’m finding that I’ve seen it
before.
Sometimes that can be a challenge
– how does one find something new to say about what can sometimes feel like “the
same old thing”. But sometimes, through
whatever inspiration strikes – be it the Holy Spirit, or perseverance, or
experience, or some blend of that and whatever else – sometimes, the “same old
thing” takes on a new life.
If you’ve had very much
experience in church at all, you’re likely to have heard the leading words of
this morning’s Gospel lesson at some point or another: “Love your
enemies”. It’s one of those defining
notions of what it means to be a Christian.
Our Presiding Bishop talks about it as “The Way of Love”. The recognition that the main message of
Jesus, and as such, of the Christian movement, is about love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. Like the old song says, “Looking for love in
all the wrong places” – that’s what we, as Christians, are called to do. Not just to look for love where it comes
easy, or where we expect to find it, but in all those “wrong places”. In the unexpected places. In the unlikely places. Because that’s where God’s love is – in all
the unlikely places. Everywhere we
expect, but also everywhere else.
Truth be told, it’s an easy
sermon to preach, even if it is, sometimes, a little predictable.
But this week, though I’ve
encountered these words who knows how many times throughout my preaching life –
let alone the rest of my life – this week, these familiar words took me
somewhere else.
My mind went back to Africa. My first time ever to travel abroad was a
trip to Ghana, in West Africa. It was
during seminary, when I took a course studying the origins of African American
spirituality as related to their roots in indigenous religious practices in
Africa. Like a lot of people from
European-descended cultures, one of my first epiphanies from that experience
was around the African approach to community.
I now realize that it’s sort of cliché for a white guy to talk about
learning about community from African or Native American cultures, but symbols
communicating the importance of interconnectedness are practically everywhere
you turn there. One of my favorites is a
woodcarving that Michael and I have displayed in our home. It’s the image of three individuals, leaning
back in a circle and looking in at one another.
It moves – it can be stored in a more compact form, or rest in its open
form. But the amazing thing about it is,
though it represents three individuals and they can each move independently,
they’re also inseparable, because they’re carved from a single piece of
wood. In addition to being a beautiful
piece of folk art, it’s also a profound representation of the
interconnectedness we all share. For an
American who has been steeped in the culture of pulling oneself up by the
bootstraps, and individuality, and uniqueness, this carving represented a radical
social statement. A radical social
outlook.
But the thing is, I was also
raised in the church. I grew up hearing
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you.” I grew up
hearing “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will
not be condemned. Forgive, and you will
be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”
These all represent a radical
social outlook, just as surprising as that which I saw represented in the
woodcarving.
The thing is, love can’t be done
alone. I mean, you can love
yourself. You should love yourself. But
most love takes other people. It takes
something or someone outside of ourselves to give and to receive. If the message of Jesus really is the message
of love, as we all so easily say, then maybe the message of Jesus is really the
message of community and interconnectedness.
Maybe the message of Jesus is really closer to that African woodcarving than
it is to the dominant American ideal of self-reliance.
As much as our culture pressures
us to find self-reliance, none of us really have. We need others in very real and physical
ways. We don’t exist on our own and we
didn’t get to where we are on our own.
We learn from others. We are nurtured
and nourished by others. Our spirits are
fed when we teach, and nurture, and nourish others.
One of the gifts we have in the
church is that this is one of the increasingly few places in our world where
true community can remain an ideal. You
may not be encouraged to look for the greater good in business, or in school,
or even in many of the ways we entertain ourselves when we’re not working. But in the church, at least for a little
while each week, we get to spend some time not just on our own, but in striving
for community. And we can stretch our
minds and our hearts to try to redefine community in bigger and better ways, to
reach farther toward the ideal of God.
To pull ourselves into something beyond ourselves.
It may be the “same old thing”,
but we need it anew each day. May God
grant us the vision to see ourselves as more than just ourselves; and may God
grant us the courage to give ourselves over.
Amen.
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