Sermon preached at Joy MCC—November 1, 09
We begin in prayer: Creator, on this day when we remember all the “saints” in our lives, we remember, most of all, the sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus. Quiet our hearts and our minds. I pray that you will speak through me and infuse our thoughts with Your grace. Amen!
This is All Saints’ Day—a day to remember those no longer with us. And we all do that in different ways. In whatever way you choose to remember those significant people in your lives, may you be blessed because those whom we remember already are. Because it is both All Saints’ Day and another regular Sunday in that long stretch between Pentecost and Advent, there are some interesting choices for texts today. It’s a strange time in my life to be preaching on this Sunday…What an amazing God we have who always knows how to use our openness to push us along in whatever process we are currently engaged in. When one experiences the passing of one close to you as I just have, you have at least two options—one is to focus on death, on mortality, on some “cosmic” meaning of it all. Wonderfully, and I have shared this with some of you, God’s Holy Spirit has led me instead, into a gloriously intense exploration of the fullness of life. And so, I chose the texts for today that require us to look at those things deemed most important by Yahweh and then by Jesus, in the living of our lives as Children of God.
“Shema Israel!” This is the beginning of the most important Jewish proclamation in scripture. Our devout Jewish friends remind themselves many times each day—every time they pass a Mezuzah (that small holder of these words and the Torah attached to the doors of their houses). At one point in my upstate New York journey, I lived right smack in the middle of the Borscht Belt—an area marked with a conglomeration of resorts, camps, and little villages populated every summer by the Jewish families who fled New York City for the peacefulness of the foothills of the NY mountains. By the time I lived there, many of these resorts had fallen on bad times. Mostly they were used for training events and conferences. I remember attending one of these events and walking up and down the halls amazed at the wonderful variety and beauty of these mezuzahs on each door. It was impossible to go in the door to your room without noticing…what a beautiful reminder of our never-changing need to declare who our God is. “ Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.” Jesus knew this commandment well—he was one of the Jewish children who had learned it over time, in the temple, in His home, in the very streets and roads of the lands that he walked as He grew up. And so, when He is asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel”. Jesus doesn’t stop there, however, He continues: “The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
It is profoundly important to look at both of these scriptures: In the first instance, that is, in the Old Testament text, the command to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength was accompanied by a promise—the promise of long and good lives in the promised land. In the second instance, there is no such promise attached because Jesus IS the promise—these words are spoken directly to us, the direct heirs of the Old Testament promise made manifest in Jesus Himself. No more need for promises, the promise has arrived.
We intuit that Jesus added this second commandment because of His understanding of the central role of love and inclusivity in His ministry. There is, in current church talk, right now, a lot of space given to “radical hospitality”, a concept which surfaced as well-meaning churches and theologians began to discover that most traditional outreach seemed to bring in more folks that looked “just like us” and failed to reach those persons outside the circle of average notice. Rev. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, an Episcopal Priest and teacher in Massachusetts, describes churches committed to “radical hospitality”. “Congregations committed to breaking from the status quo are called to develop a sense of “radical hospitality”. Rather than seeking out like members for mutual support, they seek people who consider themselves beyond the reach of organized religion. [This] has not only social, but political and economic implications; it is the act of extending community beyond the margins to those unserved by church, synagogue, or mosque. … This model seeks to transform both the believer and society as a whole. “ We know that Jesus modeled this for us in His own ministry—a ministry to the most outcast of the earth.
We are, historically and ethically, a church called to engage in the practice of “radical hospitality”; nevertheless, today, I want to explore a practice which I believe is a theologically based pre-requisite to “radical hospitality”. Based on both our scripture passages, I would describe this practice as “uncommon compassion”—compassion that exceeds the common—a compassion that grows from the unmistakable knowledge of God’s place as primary in our lives and the love extended to us, our love for ourselves, and our love for neighbor. Only then are we able to understand the radicality of a hospitality that includes those most marginalized, shunned, and ignored.
Jesus had a way of putting things in context. The first commandment serves as the backdrop to the second. Even though the questioner did not ask Jesus if there was another commandment, Jesus made it clear that the two were connected. The second commandment which, according to Jesus, is “like the first” is to “love your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus knows that we find it difficult to understand how to love God and gives us the answer before we even formulate the question. We love God by loving our neighbor as ourselves. Not so fast…do we even begin to know what that means?
There is an interesting poem entitled “Outwitted” by Edwin Markham written in the early 20th Century. I believe that a few lines may speak to our dilemma here.
He drew a circle that shut me out—…
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
What would it look like if every time someone drew a circle that shut us out of their lives, we lovingly drew a circle that enlarged our view and priorities and re-included the very ones who shut us out? I believe that this is where “uncommon compassion” comes to bear. It is my belief that most of the time when people draw us as individuals or community out of their circles, it is because we have missed what is most important to them to have IN their circles. When we fail to love others or express our love in ways that they cannot hear, we must acknowledge our need to learn to love anew. Mahatma Gandhi challenged us as we think about living the love of God in the world when he said: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Am I able to accept that for those fundamentally hungry people, that nothing I have to offer them EXCEPT BREAD will do? This is uncommon compassion—granting the priority to the other’s need and setting out to enlarge the circle of what I have to offer to ensure that I can meet the other’s need. This is the love of God, lived in the world—allowing the other to tell me what my ministry and lifework needs to be.
As we enlarge this circle, as we learn to love differently, placing the neighbor’s need as crucial to who we are. And this is, of course, hard—Hear Marge Piercy’s words:
Learning to love differently is hard,
Love with the hands wide open,
Love with the doors banging on their hinges,
The cupboard unlocked…
How do we unlock the cupboards of our hearts and, more importantly, our priorities when it comes to loving our neighbors as ourselves. Uncommon compassion challenges us to redefine who are neighbors are. Can we bring ourselves to accept every living being and the earth itself as our neighbor? This is not simply a question in a sermon, it is essential to our understanding how we are to love God.
Uncommon compassion leads us to question how it is that we love? How do we include others in our circle? When my partner and I first started living together (my apologies up front to Terri for telling this story), I set out to learn those things about her that I would need to know in order to live together well. First of all, I discovered that she is very easy to live with and almost nothing bothers her. However, I also learned that she is, what I thought to be, unusually invested in the state and status of the toothpaste tube; that is, one must always flatten out the tube so that it is ready for the next use. Now I will admit that I was just a teeny bit less committed to that practice than she was. One day, while she was lovingly and quite humorously, I thought, talking to me about the toothpaste, just to mess with her, I inquired, “Why is it that we can’t compromise on this?” She replied, “We can compromise, you can have your own tube!” It has, of course, become one of “the stories” that we laugh about as it defines who we are in our relationship.
However, while a story about toothpaste tubes can be funny, the principle of compromise by “each person doing their own thing” is not quite so humorous when applied to the really important things in life and, more importantly, in church. But we do it all the time! Entire denominations and movements were founded on that very principle! I know that I engage in this kind of “get your own toothpaste” thinking when I resist change, when I resist losing those things about our services and ministries that are comfortable for me. I know that I run into others’ “get your own toothpaste” thinking when I suggest change or look for ways to make some of what we do more inviting to those who do not currently feel welcome.
Jesus, on the other hand, would agree with Ghandi, who I quoted a few moments ago. Can we as individuals and as a church, discover what each person is hungry for and appear to them as God? If it is bread, we become filling bread. If it is acceptance, we become unconditional acceptance. If it is belonging, we become a welcoming belonging. We have spent the last month or so talking about gratitude for what we have and using those talents, abilities, abundance and time to the glory of God. This uncommon compassion is the natural and even logical outcome of that gratitude. Uncommon compassion defined as love and concern that generates acts of welcome and invitation that exceeds what we commonly hold as acceptable will push us as individuals and as a church to experience the radical hospitality that God extends to us and will enable us to open wide the doors of our hearts, souls, and sanctuary to draw a circle around the very persons who shut us out.
The Venerable John Henry Newman prayed this prayer concerning loving one’s neighbor in the 19th Century. On this All Saints’ Day, 2009, we have much to learn. Will you pray with me in his words: “Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that my life may be only a radiance of yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up, and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise you in the way which you love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach you without preaching, not by my words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. Amen and Amen.
