Red Bison Faith: Akbaakuxshé: Sermon, March 8, 2015, Third Sunday in Lent, Becoming fully human to become Divine

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Sermon, March 8, 2015, Third Sunday in Lent, Becoming fully human to become Divine

B Lent 3 BFC 2015

Psalm 19

March 8, 2015

The great New England poet, Mary Oliver, speaks of how her much-loved poetry began with walking in the woods, notebook in hand, scribbling things as she listened to what the cycles, rhythms, and routines of the created order told her. Sometimes she would enter that wooded world with a mountain of books that fed her mind and heart. But often she was in motion—walking, listening. She refers to it as listening deeply, listening convivially, listening to the world, knowing that the Divine speaks through the “wild, silky part of ourselves.”[1] For Oliver, this walking in the woods and scribbling notes in her notebook, became a regular spiritual discipline, a practice--that opened her up to wisdom and mystery taught by the good earth God created. She referred to this practice as gathering food. Mary Oliver writes, “The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.”[2]

Sit down with these words from Mary Oliver and a Bible sometime. Read Psalm 19 and then turn to Oliver’s words. Lean back into the resonance that you find in beauty after beauty.

With Ash Wednesday, we began the journey, the pilgrimage, that is the hard road of Lent. With the beginning of journey, we are asked deep questions about what it means to be human (of grounded and material substance of the earth) and what it means to be Divine (of ultimate worth and value). Within the Judeo-Christian narrative, what is human and what is Divine are not necessarily poles on opposing ends of the spectrum. There is a sense in that narrative that the Divine must be lived and struggled and loved into through becoming fully human. So it is that when we come to grips with our grounded and material substance, fully human, we learn to live and struggle and love into what is of ultimate worth and value, our Divinity. We become the people God has fully appointed us to be. “From ashes and dust you were made, to ashes and dust you shall return.” And you reply, “I was made in the image of God.” It is the hard road of Jesus and his followers—to affirm our humanity on the road to our divinity.

So it is then, we ask, “When did Jesus become Divine?” New Zealand heretic, Lloyd Geering, recognizes that there is an objective and a subjective answer to “becoming.” He likens an understanding of these two answers to how one ascends to high-ranking political offices. For example, we might ask, “When did Barak Obama become President of the United States?” The objective answer would be that Barak Obama became President of the United States when he defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination and then won the necessary votes that gave him the necessary electoral college numbers to defeat the Republican nominee, John McCain. Barack Obama then took the oath of office in January of the next year to become President of these United States.

The subjective reality has to do with how myth and objective process intertwine to win over hearts and minds. Some might say that Barack Obama became President of the United States when he stood before the Lincoln gravesite in Springfield, Illinois, fully aware of his place in history, and announced his candidacy. Others might say that Barack Obama became President of the United States with the release of his popular autobiography or after his speech at the Democratic National Convention long before he announced his candidacy. Those mythological moments, filled not only with history but also how people made meaning out of them, some might argue, sealed his future, made his rise to the presidency seem inevitable. Others might say he became President only because he is Black and created sympathies among a league of voters who became galvanized with his candidacy. Still others might say he became president when it was clear he would not continue the policies of George W. Bush. Or when the liberal elite among the media fell heads over heels, romantically in love, with his candidacy. Hear in every one of those answers a subjective value system.

It is like the Biblical King David who foreshadows being the Shepherd of all of Israel through his beginnings as a shepherd boy, who shows his ability to conquer nations greater than Israel by slaying the giant Goliath. Subjectively, the Biblical storyteller might say, you could see David was destined to be king by who he was as a child. For the Bible is not a history book. The Bible is always, warts and all, a book seeking to make meaning.

Objective answers refer to events that happened. Subjective answers can be no less true but are value judgments made by a wide array of people. What Christianity has seen is a diversity of subjective answers interpreted into objective affirmations by later generations losing the difference between subjective and objective.

Since we have no literal history of Jesus’ life and ministry, and there is no political office like Messiah, Christ, or Son of God, we receive a wide variety of subjective answers for when Jesus lived, struggled, and loved into these divine titles. But we can only receive subjective answers.

In the Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel authored, Jesus is proclaimed Messiah and Son of God in the first chapter, first verse. But those titles are used as frames. The author of Mark has those titles announced and confessed at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, by Peter almost exactly dead center in Mark’s center when Jesus asks who people say that he is, and, to frame the Gospel of Mark, by the Roman centurion upon Jesus’ death. Matthew and Luke intend to make Jesus Messiah as announced by angels in Bethlehem through their birth stories. John, the latest of all the Gospels authored, makes divine claims for Jesus not from the beginning of his ministry, or even his birth, but from the very beginning of all time. Later and later gospels make earlier and earlier claims to Jesus’ divinity. Those claims also move from Jesus as political liberator and king in the titles Messiah and Son of God, to the fully Divine title as one with God, as God. In the beginning, John declares, was the Word and the Word was not only with God but was God.

Finally, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles has the apostle Peter, in a speech on Pentecost Day, declare that Jesus became Lord and Christ in his death and resurrection. Acts 2:22-36.

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst . . . you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless man . . . This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses . . . Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

In his resurrection, God has made him both Lord and Christ.[3]

So which is it? When did Jesus “become” Divine? Even the Gospels have various answers.

In the Gospel of Mark and in this passage I read from the Acts of the Apostles, is this clear Jewish understanding that Jesus is living and struggling and loving into his divine appointments by becoming fully human, in walking the hard road that is before him.

As someone who is often failing but struggling to live into the Divine myself, Mark and the Acts of the Apostles are the subjective answers I treasure.

This back and forth of what it means to be human and divine was captured so well in the back and forth between Buzz and Woody in the animated “Toy Story” movies. They are wisdom stories we have heard over and over again in our Biblical narratives. When humankind seeks to be god, we lose our ability to be fully human. When we recognize our necessary limits and boundaries to be fully human, however, we become incredibly Divine.

In using the voices of familiar actors like comedian Don Rickles, as Mr. Potato Head, Cliff from “Cheers”, the actor John Ratzenberger, as the plastic piggy bank, Hamm; Annie Potts from “Designing Women” as Bo Peep; Joan Cusack from Saturday Night Live as the cowgirl, Jessie, and the Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks as the good-natured cowboy and toy community leader, “Woody”, we are aware that all of these toys are a community of diverse personalities available for the child in their life, Andy. One might even say they function as a church community. The rules of the toy world seem to be that when no person is around to observe them, as we all might suspect, they come to life and interact with one another. Every parent who has ever put toys away and comes back later to find them scattered throughout the room knows this reality. When unobserved, the toys are free to go on adventures, have romance, and do what every church does, hold meetings. My favorite toy is the large, plastic green dinosaur called, of course, “Rex,” given voice by the great actor, Wallace Shawn. The humor is found in the contrast between one of the greatest real-life predators the world has ever known, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the plastic Rex who is always wringing his hands in anxiety over the smallest of things. I laughed out loud the first time Rex said, “I don’t like confrontations.”

In the first movie, comes the brand spankin’ newest toy, Buzz Lightyear whose gadgetry and technology threaten to unseat the group’s leader, Woody, the ole cowpoke, and his favored relationship status with the child, Andy. Will Andy forever choose Buzz over Woody? Heck, it seems Buzz is even moving in on Woody’s girlfriend over there. That is not cool. Or will Woody find a way to “off” Buzz so that he can continue his role as “Andy’s favorite” and leader of the toy community? Did Woody really push Buzz out the window or did it happen by accident? That is so not cool.

One of the great debates that the new Buzz Lightyear, Saturday morning cartoon character that he was, brought to the toy room was what it means to be a “toy.” It rhymed with many of the theological conversations we have about what it means to be “human” and “Divine”, an important understanding and way of moving through the world during Lent.

Buzz Lightyear, unaware of his “toy” status, thinks he can fell people with the lazer found on his spacesuit (which amounts to an annoying red light), thinks he can fly with high pressure space wings (which are really just pop out props), thinks he can fight with his karate chop action, and thinks he can communicate with Space Command with his locking wrist communicator. Woody, trying to disabuse Buzz of his superhero status, tells him that Lightyear is just, just and only, a child’s plaything. Woody is only half right.

Buzz will have none of it, until, sadly, he sees a commercial which confirms his toy status. Buzz’s attempts to be a superhero are not only comical but put the rest of the community at risk and threaten to destroy his relationships with the rest of the toys. When not only Buzz, but all of the toys accept their necessary gifts and limitations, they are more than just toys. Buzz uses his innate leadership ability to complete tasks with and for his cohorts. Buzz uses his laser, not to harm others, but to temporarily blind his adversaries. And finally, by using momentum, angles and height and his pop-out props as wings, Buzz flies. He soars. By accepting who he is as a toy, Buzz becomes, well, he becomes nothing short of a superhero.

In knowing himself to be a toy, Buzz becomes more than a toy. He knows who he is. He knows his strengths. He knows his limitations. It is in keeping with that saying posted in my locker room in high school, “To know thyself is the ultimate form of aggressiveness.” We can walk into the world boldly. And to know ourselves is something we must live into, struggle into, love into, attentive to the sheer silence of God, the collective wisdom of our community, and the way our individual and communal experiences have shaped and formed us.

We might say, “What glory is there in being just ‘human’?” And God responds, “That is the glory of who I created you to be . . . as my shadow upon the earth.”

In a culture that values individual freedom and achievement and ambition, Lent is an all too infrequent call to know the limits and boundaries to which God has appointed us; to know that God’s providence is sometimes found in knowing that we cannot do it all and are not expected to do it all. These are gifts, our glory, in our relationship with God, our relationship with the earth, and our relationship with each other.

We see this in the Psalm that is before us for today. It begins with seeing how God’s glory is found in those places in creation that keep their appointed routes, limits, and times. The sun rises and sets. In fact, the sun dawning is like a marriage partner bounding out of the bedroom after good sex on the wedding day. No lie. A sunrise may never be the same for you again. Our Whole Lives indeed!

I love these lines from Psalm 19: “Day to day pours for the speech. Night to night declares knowledge. There is no spoken word that gives this speech or knowledge. There are no words which can share its wisdom.” It is the psalmnist saying that nature is an example, in running the created courses and cycles given to it, becomes divine. So as we live out the circuits, courses, and rhythms, the limits and boundaries that are appointed to us as human beings, become fully human, we become something more. We become divine.

That is why the Our Whole Lives training and curriculum is so central to the mission of this church. We learn and teach the necessary limits and boundaries to define healthy circuit, course, and rhythm. We want our children growing into adults and bounding from their bedrooms with their partners to say, “Mmmm, that was as good as the sunrise.” It is why “Not in Our Town” is such a defining experience and truth for our congregation. We recognize the necessary limits against the freedoms of others so that nobody believes that “hate speech” and action directed against other peoples, which denigrates and demeans, is the appointed cycle, circuit, course, and rhythm. And now, the challenge is before all of us, to remember how creation teaches us to not exceed our limits and boundaries so that creation itself does not lose its balance, circuits, courses, and rhythms. The atmosphere, the environment, all of God’s good creation is begging us to remember who we are as human and not God, so that we might join in the Divine processes given to us.

It is why the author of Psalm 19 can refer to the Law as desired more than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey. To know our place in the world, where we are healthy, blessed, kept, and held by a structure and form is perfect freedom. We can stride boldly into that place for we learn how far we can go. We know how far is too far.

There is a necessary testing of boundaries and limits found in community so that the still-speaking and working and moving God will not be confined by ways which discourage the flourishing and growth of the earth and of humankind. But I believe, in this day and age, we too often find ourselves caught in a stage of perpetual adolescence where we collectively thumb our nose at the ways God has always worked and think we can continue to get away with it.

As a planet, as a people, as God’s created order, I believe we are being taught that we must learn to love the limits and boundaries God has given to us so that we might know we are held and kept and blessed, or we may soon perish. Those debates are going on right now in Washington, Helena, and Billings. We must, like Mary Oliver, find regular practices that put us, as individuals, covenanted partners, and communities, in touch with our wild, silky selves, bounding out of the bedroom, fully human. For those regular circuits, courses, and rhythms have much to teach us about what it means to be Divine. Oliver the poet writes: "I go down to the shore in the morning / and depending on the hour the waves / are rolling in or moving out, / and I say, oh, I am miserable, / what shall— / what should I do? And the sea says / in its lovely voice: / Excuse me, I have work to do."[4]

May we be the wild, silky things God intended us to be, fully human with necessary limits. So that we might be, flying, soaring, bounding~Divine. Praise God. Amen.