| Sermon
for All Saints-by-the-Sea, Proper 19, September 14, 2008 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – Amen. One day four years ago, I went to get my haircut. I had a favorite barber shop then, around the corner and down the street from my little apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There were charcoal drawings of Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra framed on the walls, and the Italian brothers who cut hair next to each other would sing old standards while they worked. There were various newspapers, car magazines and sports magazines—as are found in every barber shop across the globe—heaped in a small pile on the table beside the row of chairs along the wall. As it was four years ago, it was election season, and things were heating up. I was only a few minutes into my badly needed haircut when somebody came into the shop. He plopped himself down on one of the chairs—an old friend of the barbers it seemed. He was not in for a haircut but was just passing the time—it was that kind of barber shop—and he saw one of the headlines on the newspaper beside him. He got a little heated, and he said something awfully provocative about the latest development in the campaign. The guy cutting my hair took a deep breath, looked at his friend, and with quivering emotion in his voice said, “You’re talking to the wrong guy, buddy.” He gritted his teeth, apparently hoping that his friend would drop the issue. But no—he continued, even more forcefully. The two got into a little yelling match, and I just sat there, half-way into my haircut, stranded in the barber’s chair (and incidentally, in passionate disagreement with the man holding the scissors.) *** I wonder, have you found yourself caught in any arguments this week? Have you felt the temperature rise in the room when certain topics have been raised? Have you been surprised at the opinions of any of your friends or relatives, or have you been upset by any magazine covers or newspaper columns you have seen? I hope you haven’t been a part of any heated email exchanges, (though I know for a fact that a few of you have.) I have seen some big fights going down, and perhaps you have, too. Friends have said things that they’ve had to later apologize for. It’s been that kind of week. *** I may have lost a few of you here. Your minds may have wandered off already into political thoughts. But please turn back from those thoughts for a moment at least. Put down your position, whatever it is, for a second, and turn your attention back to this space, this gathering. We are a diverse community at All Saints. We have a lot of different points of view represented, and they are represented passionately and articulately. But as a wise priest once said, we don’t come because we all agree with one another, but to love one another, and to worship God together. We may even come here in order to remind ourselves that we are people of God—who is bigger than any of the things that may divide us *** In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he addresses people who are among the first generations of Christians, and who are still sorting out how to live as Christians. Paul stands outside of some heated arguments, coaching and encouraging, helping these people who don’t see eye to eye. Paul speaks of the “weak” and the “strong.” The so-called “weak” cling to dietary restrictions—eating only vegetables, since they fear that any meat they might buy could have been used in pagan sacrifice before coming to market. They are afraid that if they eat what is unclean, or what is connected to worship of false gods, they will risk their salvation. The strong have a more complete understanding of God’s total, redeeming love. They know that it is not what we eat, or what goes into our bodies that makes us clean or unclean—but rather it is what comes out of us that matters more. However, these so-called “strong” are apparently not so strong as to be above getting into it with their weaker brothers and sisters. Paul says: “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions” – that is, don’t pick fights with people who will be easy to topple. To do so is to raise yourself, to raise your status, to feed your ego, and not to pursue the greater good. Paul says that it is not about living to ourselves, nor dying to ourselves, but living and dying to the Lord. A profound statement! What might that mean? Karl Barth writes – “There is no such thing as life in itself: there is only life in relation to God. . . . There is no such thing as death in itself; there is only death in relation to God. That is to say, there is only death as both barrier and place of exit; the death of that which we call life.” *** It is about perspective. A couple of nights ago, I was pulling Zoe, our two-year-old daughter, out of her car seat, and the moon was shining very brightly. I pointed to it, and asked her what it was, and she said “Light.” I said that yes, it is a very bright light, but asked her if she knew what kind of light it was. She just said “Light” again, and looked at me as if she was wondering what I was getting at. I then explained to her that it is called the moon, and it is something very, very far away. It is a very big light. It was made by God, and not made by people. She kept pointing, and tried out the word, for the first time in her life, “moon.” It was a small reminder to me of our place in God’s creation. In the midst of a world where almost everything we see was made by human hands, it was something made by God—a reminder of just how big God is. We are not the masters of this world. The divisions that we feel right now—be they along party lines or other man-made barriers—are an illusion. These divisions are a distraction from the true division, which is separation from God that we fall into when we lose our perspective. *** On Wednesday evening, after the Eventide service, we had a talk by Brother James Dowd from Mt. Calvary. He spoke of forgiveness. He said that we are corporate sinners, and that is to say that we suffer a distance from God. And when we recognize that we are in need of forgiveness, that is the only way we can truly be free to forgive those who sin against us. When we live to ourselves alone, and lose sight of our relationship with God and our need for forgiveness, we end up being people who cannot forgive—and that is when we create hell on earth.
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Each of us stands before the Lord equally—what will he be looking for in us? Did we win our arguments and look good, or did we reach out to help those in need? Were we fighting for our self-interests, or were we brave enough to be self-less in our lives? The Gospel reading this morning is clear: forgiveness is asked of us just as it is offered to us. This gospel story has a harsh, jarring ending. The slave who cannot forgive, even as he has been forgiven, is sent to be tortured until he can repay. And we are told that this is what the Lord will do to us if we do not forgive. But I believe that it is really we who do it to ourselves. The “torture” that we enter into is what it is like when we have hearts that cannot forgive. *** On Thursday morning of this past week, the morning of September 11, I got an email from Bill Tully, the rector of a church I used to be a part of in New York City. Here is what Bill wrote: “I knew what day it was when I woke up to a thoughtful 9.11 story on the clock radio. I took some extra quiet time and tried to connect the daily scripture with the event. On the walk to work, my New York crowd sensor told me the foot and vehicle traffic was lighter and slower than usual. “But I wasn't prepared for what happened as I stepped into Starbucks next door to [the church]. A polite staffer closed and locked the door behind me. It was 8:47 a.m. They cut off the music, stopped the steamer, and the crew chief politely asked us to observe a minute of silence. “A minute is longer than you think. Surprised as I was, I was grateful for it. And just as in church when we declare significant silent time, I felt the self-consciousness of the patrons, a slightly rising anxiety. But we did the silence. “To my left I saw a woman, power dressed and familiar to me from many other hasty coffee encounters, dab a tear. To my left, through the window I saw outside that the bustle was relentless as usual. A line of puzzled customers waited outside the locked door…. “I don't know which honcho in the [Starbucks] hierarchy decreed the moment of silence, but good for him or her. Attention must be paid. “In the ongoing life of the church, this dynamic clash of the important with the merely urgent is at the heart of how we see life. “It's the energy behind regular worship. “It may seem self-conscious at first, or when re-entered after a lapse. But what we do-daily, weekly, solemn, joyful, passionate, powerful worship-stops the world, whether we or those heedless crowds know it or not.” *** Our true identity goes deeper than our party allegiances. Our true identity goes against the heedless rush of the world around us. Our true identity is that we are people of God. We live and die to the Lord. When we know who we really are, we become free to forgive and free to love. Amen.
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