Sacred Place 9
BFC 2016
2 Kings 5:1-15
October 16, 2016
As you have heard me relate, my
youngest son is now in Benin, Africa, working with the Peace Corps in economic
development. We have seen him learning
African dance (even in some colorful African apparel), he has related how
people in Benin strangely take three showers a day (he is learning because of
the heat and humidity), and he is already a little on edge about the lack of
diversity of food and the incredible amount he is expected to eat. He is a month in and the language is tough,
the culture is very different, and he doesn’t know how he’ll make it with the
food.
I
was in much worse shape than Abe was when I spent time as a missionary in
southern Mexico. One of my early
embarrassing stories was when I went looking for the guy who was to be my
supervisor, Bishop Ruiz, and everywhere I asked they kept talking about some
guy named Don Samuel. Who is this Don
Samuels guy and what has he done with the Bishop? I went to the seminary, a logical place, to
find him. I asked, “Donde esta’ Obispo Ruiz?” The
kind and patient person would respond, “Don
Samuel no esta’ aqui.” So I would
slow it down a little bit, enunciate a bit better in case my Spanish was a
little too high class for this kind and patient gentleman, “Donde esta’ Obispo Ruiz?” Same answer: “Don
Samuel no esta’ aqui.” Drat. Don Samuels again!
Little did I know that “Don” was a formal
title in Spanish, and Samuel was the first name of the Bishop, Samuel
Ruiz. I told this story to the two
Catholic sisters who befriended me, Sister Luci and Sister Clements, at my
farewell dinner the last week I was in Chiapas, and they nearly busted a gut,
laughing at the ignorant guy from the United States. I too often learned the hard way during my
time in Chiapas.
Abe
has also found out that all the skill, talent, accomplishments, and well-meant
enthusiasm he was bringing to this experience may mean nothing in the wider
context of Benin. After all, doesn’t
everyone in Africa want to learn from someone with an international economics
degree from a Big 10 university? As I
learned, there is wisdom, and magic, and learning in every spot around the
globe. But it just may not be found in
the usual haunts we inhabit in our privileged world. I had to learn to see the world with new
eyes, strip myself of the pedigree I thought I had, to see the gifts, learning,
and wisdom intended for me. I had to
learn that power could be found in the sacred and strange waters of another.
Working
as a law clerk in China and as a short-term missionary in Chiapas, Mexico, are
already helping Abe to be patient about what he will learn in this new
place. I’m grateful that he has the
foresight to not force what Benin has to teach him but to be open to the wisdom
and learning a new place brings. I am a
little worried that he wants to use that economics degree to tell the people
from Benin what is what in economic theory as a way of bringing salvation to
their nation. Several hundred years of
African colonialism will not be suddenly solved by one University of Illinois
graduate. It might take two.
Seriously,
my hope and prayer is that he continues to grow and develop his courage as he
makes his way into the world.
Robert
Kegan, a developmental psychologist at Harvard, retired this year after
teaching for 40 years at Harvard. Kegan
wrote one of my favorite texts for understanding Christian education and
formation, titled, Evolving Self. Strongly
influenced by the movement against the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights
movement, he believed our tasks as human beings are to make meaning, the
activity of making sense of experience through the discovering and resolving of
problems. Kegan believed this was a
life-long process, beginning in infancy and evolving into more and more
complexity throughout our lives. As I
read, I became convinced that Kegan’s categories defined religious faith.
Kegan
believes that we move between the tension, an arc of being connected, attached,
and included to (moving the arc to the
other side) to being independent and autonomous and back again. For Kegan, evolving and growing become about
resolving that tension in every greater depth as we begin by swinging in great,
wide arcs from the strong dependence and connection as an infant to a want for
independence as we grow and evolve back to dependence and connection, always
back and forth. As our growth and wisdom
deepen, the arc back and forth becomes less pronounced until we learn to hold a
perfect tension between independence and connection in a state and process of
interdependence.
Kegan believes that we learn,
generally, from places of embeddedness, described almost like a womb. Places of embeddedness are safe places. We may learn from these places of
embeddedness, but it is some dissonance, some disquieting experience,
understanding, or knowledge, which moves us out of the safe place to swing in
an arc to a new place. Poetically, we
might say that this process simplified is that, in the human condition of
meaning-making, we need both roots and wings.
I
believe what we do in faith is try to make meaning of life. And every major faith tradition has markers,
symbols, and teachings that are to help remind us that other individuals,
communities, and peoples have walked the path before and that we do not walk
the path alone. Even in danger, peril, and fear, God through faith
seeks to be that safe place so that we are not afraid of the dissonance that
will move us through learning and growth.
Faith says, “Your ancestors have been here before. This is not new. As they stepped out with trepidation but
courage, so you can step out.” Faith
says, “You have sisters and brothers who will hold your hand. They are not sure of the way either. But knowing you are not alone, you can step
out with them.” We say, even through the
toughest of times, that others have been this way and walked faithfully through
them or shown us a path of wisdom and courage.
And the roots in our faith allow us, sometimes call us to courage, so
that we may spread our wings and fly.
It
is one of the reasons I so strongly believe in an intergenerational, diverse
church. We need to know that other
people, other ages, other people not like us have walked or are walking the
road and can draw courage from historical saints, saints in our midst, or
sisters and brothers who hold our hand and stay connected as we spread our
wings.
Last
week I shared the sacred place of home—that place of connection and attachment
and inclusion. But we certainly know
that we cannot stay in that sacred place if we are to evolve and grow. As with the Navajo Hogan, home is the point
of departure, the womb by which our courageous selves experience rhythms of Sabbath,
find resolve, and develop curiosity to take the road less travelled..
Hopefully, home is also the first place that we learn diversity as a positive
value. So that when healing is offered
in a place that is other than home, we will not be too scared or stubborn or
ignorant to receive it.
This
would appear to be our national sickness, right. We are so caught in the certainty of our own
spiritual power, that we should not venture out beyond the farm, the gated
community, or the neighborhood, the English language, that we could not
possibly imagine that healing might be found in the sacred waters of a
stranger.
We
need the sacred place of dissonance—the waters of a stranger—to help us evolve
and grow spiritually. One of my
colleagues at Eden Theological Seminary, Samuel Lubonga,
from Kenya, used to tell me the importance of international mission trips,
“Because, Mike, if you never leave your own country, you think only your own
mother cooks well.”
Naaman
is the perfect example of someone who is in charge, has nothing to learn, as he
is a strong, military man. He is a
conqueror. Power resides only in his
weaponry and in the sacred story of his rivers.
But his leprosy does not allow him to believe that everything can stay
the same in his world. He requires
something outside his familiar waters for new-found wisdom and healing. The invitation to something outside himself
comes from the most humblest of places, as it usually does, a slave girl from
Israel. Naaman will have to leave home
to encounter this healing. So he packs
his bags and heads for Samaria. He has
to leave home and crosses borders into the land of Israel, looking for the
prophet. In Samaria, he is not some bigshot military commander. He is a guy seeking to have his leprosy
cured. If he tries to control the
situation, dictate how things will go, he will not receive the healing. His power is now displaced by a slave girl
and a prophet outside his own country.
And
let’s be clear. Naaman can choose to
walk away and not receive the healing.
This opportunity may never come to him again, but there are still
choices before him. He will have to
humble himself, recognize he does not have all the answers at his fingertips,
to receive new wisdom, new growth, and healing.
With his healing, his perspective changes. Naaman cannot be the same once he has washed
himself in the healing waters of a stranger.
If he is to hold himself accountable for the experience or interaction,
his relationship with this stranger, the prophet Elisha, and Elisha’s God can
never be the same again.
The
invitation to the sacred place of a stranger’s waters almost always come from a
humble place. To encounter this sacred
place, we need to leave home and perhaps cross borders to get there. Such a journey can be risky and we can often
lose whatever status we have to get there. Whatever power we leaned on in our
conventional world view, gets displaced for a power that requires us to hear a
more humble wisdom.
In
that different place, it can feel like all the rules have changed. Where we might have had some power or
influence when we were home, the sacred place of a stranger’s waters often
requires that we recognize we are not in control or in charge. If we must have that control, sometimes we
miss the gifts, wisdom, or healing that is intended for us. And those gifts may never be offered to us
again. The choice is before us. Humble ourselves in favor of receiving the
gifts, wisdom, or healing or walk away with our pride and status intact. If we do choose to receive the gifts, wisdom,
or healing, and hold ourselves accountable for that experience, we must then
realize that our relationship with the stranger and God can never be the same
again.
I
think that will be the most glorious and most difficult part of Abe and his
Peace Corps experience. I suspect that
not only his perspective on the world will change as he evolves and grows, but
that he himself will be a changed person when he returns. For me to remain in relationship with Abe, I
am convinced I will have to change.
In
the end, I hope and pray that our church can be a sacred place which holds the
tension of being a spiritual home for so many people but also holds open the
possibility for people who are not like us, to offer something definitively
different, the sacred waters of a stranger—something that creates dissonance
for all of us. For I believe, in offering that, I think we
all learn and grow into an interdependence that deepens our faith and helps us
to make meaning in a powerful way. We
all need to learn that, eventually, the waters of a stranger intersect with our
waters as a way of representing a God who is far broader and deeper in love,
wisdom, and growth than any of our waters alone. We may even discover that God’s power resides
in a place that requires our transformation.
During
that dinner with Sister Luci and Clementina in southern Mexico, they were
gracious enough to share with me when they were missionaries as young nuns in
the backwaters of rural Mexico. They
flew in on a rickety plane to Tila, a little fishing village in Chiapas. Being the good Catholics that they were, they
informed the people of Tila that their nakedness was an offense to God and
proceeded to make them clothes as the first order of business. The people of Tila thanked them for their new
clothing and off Luci and Clements went to their next assignment—a job well
done. When they returned to Tila,
however, the people once again were naked.
Sisters Luci and Clements inquired why they had abandoned their
clothes. Because, the people of Tila
told them, when we went into the river to fish, the clothes would get wet, and
weigh us down and we were unable to catch many of the fish we need for our
daily food. Luci and Clements laughed at
themselves, learning why clothes in Tila were not the most important accessory
to their faith walk.
May
we all enjoy the good home cooking that reminds us of our roots. But may we also have the wings to fly and
learn and grow and evolve so that we do not think that it is only our own
mother who cooks well. Amen.
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