C Proper 7 12 Ord OL BFC NH 2019
Galatians 3:25-28; Gospel of Thomas 77
June 30, 2019
The Bible is not the be all end all
but today I want to begin by asking us to think of a Scripture verse you might
consider a life’s motto or sums up the meaning of Christian faith. Let’s take a minute of silence to reflect and
then share. A life’s motto found in a
Scripture verse or a Scripture verse that you think sums up the Christian
faith. One minute of silence.
A life’s motto found in a Scripture verse or a
Scripture verse that you think sums up the Christian faith.
One
of the Scripture verses I might use to summarize Christian faith is found in
Paul’s letter to the Galatians for today.
Paul writes in about the year 50 C.E., and Paul is clearly quoting
something that pre-dates that. It was
used by early Christians in their baptisms and it conveys just how radical
early Christianity was. There is no
distinction between those of different racial, ethnic, national, or religious
stripe (Jews and Greeks). There is no
distinction between those of different gender or sexuality (male or
female). There is no distinction between
those of different social or economic background or status. (slave or
free).
I
think it is critical that we hear what a radical statement that was not only
for the 1st Century but for the 21st Century. Sometimes we wrongly assume that we have to
bend and twist our tradition and Scripture to make some moral progress, to find
a Christianity that is open enough, loving enough, and just enough to meet us
where we are. Sometimes that faith is
calling to us from the ancient world to be much more radical than what we
are. This broad, baptismal statement
tells this open and affirming congregation—with beautiful and wise and
courageous leaders and participants from all across the LGBTQAI spectrum—that
our work together, our ministry together, our lack of distinction in love, is
central to the beginnings of the early Christian Church. It is time we stop acting like we have to
apologize for our faith. By our identity
and work in Billings and in Montana, we are at the heart of the Christian
tradition, affirmed by its earliest creed, when we find spiritual power,
divinity, God or Christ in diverse and various peoples, places, and
voices. This is who we are.
I
was drawn to an article from CNN this week about Australian musician and songwriter,
Nick Cave. Cave’s music is characterized
by its raw intensity, and, historically, its unflinching dark subject
matter. He cultivated an aloof and
menacing persona. Things changed
somewhat, however, when Cave and his wife tragically lost their 15 year-old
son. Several years ago he began a
dedicated search for a deeper faith, something less vengeful, and became
witness to a Jesus who was a man of sorrows, sadder, softer, more introspective. And seven months ago, Cave began a
conversation with his audience in concerts and on the internet which has him
revealed as a wisdom-giver. He
encouraged people to ask him anything.
When asked what God sounds like, Cage responded by saying, "I hope
the voice of God would be something other than booming, authoritarian and
male," Cave answered. "Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise?" He reflected on his time in the recording
studio, how various and diverse voices can come together to produce something
like what he thinks God’s voice must sound like. He went on.
Perhaps,
God would have the combined voice of all the untold billions of collected
souls, an assembly of the departed speaking as one -- without rancour,
domination or division, a great, many-layered calling forth that rings from the
heavens in the small, determined voice of a child, maybe; sexless, pure and
uncomplicated -- that says 'Look for me. I am here.’[1]
Before
The DaVinci Code became popular, the movie Stigmata was released,
using the present verse from the Gospel of Thomas as its centerpiece. The movie suggested that the Roman Catholic
Church was preventing the Gospel of
Thomas from going public because it suggested that we did not need the church,
a pastor or a priest, to know spiritual power, the Divine, God or Christ. The divine was accessible to us by looking
under a stone or splitting a piece of wood.
Church authorities didn’t want you to know that divinity was so readily
available to you because church giving and attendance might bottom out.
If
you did not know this truth, I hope you hear it loud and clear now. In Christ there are no distinctions. God and God in Christ are actively trying to
be known to us, to say, “Look for me. I
am here.” Maybe we have missed out
because we have been waiting for God from on high, in the powerful and the
mighty, the large and impressive, to emerge from the sky. Meanwhile, as the Gospel of Thomas relates,
God has been active from below underneath the stone or from within, inside the
log in the small and often unnoticed.
Perhaps it is not the stone or the wood that lead to answers but the
lifting and the splitting that bring it about.
What lifting up a stone and splitting open wood requires of us is a
strenuous searching.[2] Christ is found in the strenuous seeking from
below, underneath, and from within—the small.
I
invite you to take a look at the photo on the front of your bulletin. There lies a split log. Looking in the log we find a skink: a small lizard. Skinks are very beneficial to a garden
because their prey includes grasshoppers, snails, slugs, cockroaches and even
small mice. Who would guess that such a
small, active creature might be found within the split log, a manifestation of
the divine?
In
her book, Emergent Strategies, Adrienne Maree Brown shares how we, as
communities, can harness the strength of the small for spiritual power by
paying attention to the patterns and the rhythms of the created world. We should be like the fungus mycelium that
grows underground and interconnected to create healthier ecosystems. We should be like ants who act collectively
and cooperatively, relying on the work of others. We should be like ferns who repeat at scale
to impact a whole system.[3] We should be like a murmuration of starlings—chaotically
yet beautifully finding ways to avoid the predators of the world by keeping the
right distance apart while keeping our connectivity to move together as a unit.[4] We should be like dandelions—hard to uproot,
medicinal and healing, able to spread like wildfire over the best of
lawns. We are resilient, resistant,
decentralized, and regenerative.[5]
Were
you told or taught that God makes distinctions such that your race, nation,
ethnicity, or religion disqualifies you from receiving goodness, kindness, and
love, and the material bases of life?
That distinctions about your gender or sexuality left you outside the
circle, with Christ unable to be found?
That distinctions about your social or economic status or lack of noble
birth and noble name somehow made you less than? It is a lie.
A bold-faced lie—so that others might limit, abuse, torture, claim
superiority over you and with their persistence make you believe it. Were you told or taught that spiritual power,
the divine, God or Christ was not available to you? It is a lie.
A bold-faced lie—to keep you in line, to make you forget your own power.
I
say to you on this day. Stop seeking God
in palaces and in the velvety robes of kings and sovereigns, in the halls of
presidents or congress. Even more so, we
are seeking to create a church and a movement that is not confined to the four
walls of a church or is confined and boxed in a sanctuary. In this congregation and out in this
beautiful earth are the wonderfully diverse gifts of God. Give
your muscle and sinew, your seeking and activity to find God beneath and
within, in the small and the hidden. God
wants to be found. “Look for me. I am here.”
Seek!
It
is a bold-faced lie to suggest that there are distinctions, to say God or
Christ is not available to us. As the
Islamic Sufi mystic, Rumi said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”[6] No distinctions made. God’s power is made available to all of us in
the small. This is our tradition. May we be like a murmuration of starlings, in
boundaries and connection, chaotically and beautifully making our way. Amen.
[1] Daniel Burke, “A rock star was asked what God's voice
sounds like. His answer is beautiful,” CNN, June 29, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/29/world/nick-cave-god-religion/index.html.
[2] “Early Christian Writings: Gospel of Thomas Commentary,” http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas77.html
[3] Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds, (Chico,
CA: AK Press, 2017).
[4] Julian Scott Campbell, “Earing our place on the
planet: an interview with adrienne maree
brown,” Longreads, April 2018, https://longreads.com/2018/04/24/earning-our-place-on-the-planet-an-interview-with-adrienne-maree-brown/.
[5] Brown, “Emergent.”
[6] “Emergence #3: nine practices into a new future,” Great
Lakes Commons, October 5, 2018.
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