Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
The Religion of Jesus: Breaking Down Walls Humans Create
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church, Reading
Celebration of Full Communion, May 6, 2001How sweet it is -- don't worry about the numbers: people take time to catch on - how sweet it is when sisters and brothers live together in peace. It is a joy and a privilege to greet this assembly in the name of the Risen Christ.
We meet as two churches with roots in the Reformation movements of the 1500s, and as two churches who revere the catholic tradition of the one Church. We have rich musical and liturgical traditions, and believe that the ordering of the church is part of God's will. So what do we have to give to each other in this new relationship into which we are beginning to live?
Generalizations are dangerous and inaccurate things - but that won't stop me. Some days it seems to me that Lutherans may be counted on, and my authority here is your great Garrison Keillor, Lutherans may be counted on to express the Gospel with great theological precision and great persuasion, but they aren't always very happy. Episcopalians on the other hand, and here my authority is my own observation, Episcopalians are often quite happy, but without much clue as to why.
Well, I don't know how much of that is true, but it is a way into a more serious consideration of the gift there may be in all this fuss. Anything that takes us out of our cultural comfort zone is probably good. I say this for theological reasons.
As all four gospels tell it. Jesus was a real irritant to the good people, the people sincerely trying to play by the rules, people who loved God. He came to seek the lost sheep of Israel - and that's exactly what he did. He was seen in public eating and chatting with people who for one reason or another were living outside of the Covenant. The very worst sort of people - until we understand that, we've missed it.
By being with them, sharing food, and telling of the Father's love, Jesus made life with God possible for them, even if they were Samaritans or Romans. After his resurrection, he put Saul of Tarsus in charge of making that a worldwide push to bring in all kinds of people. Repeatedly in the last few weeks our lessons from Revelation have shown us pictures of all of humanity reveling together at the throne of God. Together they sing, worthy is the Lamb who was slain.
You can say then, especially if you are a fan of St. Paul, that from day one, the religion of Jesus has been about breaking down the walls humans create to keep people in their places, to keep people away from the money and the power, to keep people away because they are different and frighten us.
That struggle has been inside the Church since day one, too, unfortunately. It's increasingly evident to historians that the early Christians had women leaders, and that as Christianity became more like its surroundings, a stop was put to that. It is beyond argument that the first Christian community was split by ethnic jealousies -- whose widows were getting the best deal? -- so the Apostles appointed deacons to make sure that the Church was just as well as compassionate. And so on. Even Saint Paul, who is self-contradictory on the relationship between the sexes, uttered the famous words that in Christ the differences between people disappear.
So the struggle the Church has had over the years is the struggle we have as individuals and communities. The self-preservation instinct runs amuck, and the commitment to inviting everyone to the kingdom of heaven has been accepted with the proviso that they should always keep in their places on earth. Do we see the ever-expanding circle of God's love as actually making people equals?
There have been great disruptions in that notion that religion shouldn't interfere with keeping people in their places. Not many, but powerful. We are all familiar with the Reformation from which our churches sprang. The problem is that its revolutionary principles now often reinforce a dogmatic conservatism that does not set lots of people free. Closer to home, our society signed on to the abolition of slavery, but we still have a long way to go in building a society that honors racial and ethnic diversity.
In the last 115 years people with power have cut themselves enormous slack in terms of sex, birth control, and remarriage in ways that would have astounded all of our forebearers - but the irony is that they have done themselves this favor while still managing to marginalize and disable sexual minorities with the familiar tool of demonizing what frightens us. (There has also been a bit a demonization going on in our struggle to find full communion, but let that pass on this glad and happy day.)
I don't know if this still happens anymore, but when I was young we knew people who got a little too concerned about protecting their living room carpet and furniture. Kids grew up hearing a parental voice in their head threatening all kinds of violence if they were caught in the living room. Not a lot of living was done in those living rooms.
The problem is that when you are a child, you not only obey parental instructions, especially if they are a little threatening - you will generalize from them. How many adults walk around thinking that it is basically ok for people to tell them not to go into the best parts of life? Thinking its basically ok for spouses to control each other by verbal abuse or worse, thinking it is ok to live in the shadows. Every time we treat rich people or famous people with more respect than we treat street people, we dig our own graves. And we don't know it. The idea here is not to find a rich person and be rude...
To hear and believe the gospel is to believe that where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation - and then to LIVE that way. When the Christ reaches out to us in the word, in baptism, and at each eucharist, that's permission -- no, that's energy -- to come into the living room. Encouragement to enjoy all that you have maybe put off because you didn't think you deserved to sit in the living room. As long as you stay in the recreation room, the family room, the closet or the kitchen, and out of the living room, there is an extent to which life will pass you by.
The gospel comforts and frees, but it is about mission, too. Along with encouraging us to take all that life has to offer, Christ's calls us to share all that life has. That vision of all nations standing as equals at the heavenly throne challenges each of us to make sure that what we do and say will communicate to other people their value in God's sight and ours - and invite them into the living room of life.
On Good Friday each year the letter of the Hebrews reminds us to "provoke one another to good works." Jesus prays today that we might be one. That's about the best work of all. It will happen when we do the good work of loving God more than what we say about God; of loving God more than how we say what we say about God. That will happen when we do that good work of transcending our inheritance of tribal warfare, giving up the idea that there only one way human speech can reflect the miracle of Christ's grace. It will happen when we do the oh-so-good work of seeing Jesus Christ in the face of each of God's children. Those good works take plenty of practice, plenty of encouragement, and they don't leave much room for arrogance about our particular ways of doing things. Perhaps as people who are so much the same and so very different, we can in Christ make our relationship thoroughly enjoyable but even more than that, make us really provoke each other to good works.
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