The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany

Proper 17, August 30, 2009

Gracious God, all of the delights of love and light, beauty, goodness, and truth comes from your hand and is your will for us. Place in our hearts all that is of lasting value; give us a desire to please you and fill our minds with insight into mercy, compassion and love, so that our thoughts grow in wisdom and our actions and effort be filled with your peace. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I'm a cradle Episcopalian, but I had experience with a very fundamentalist tradition, because my grandparents belonged to a Southern Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas. I loved my sweet grandparents, but I remember times being in their church where being a Christian was not an experience I found very inviting. No dancing, no playing cards, never having a beer or glass of wine; all that was sure to send you straight to hell. The Bible was understood in an absolutely literal way which can be pretty confusing and pretty scary. I've heard people express that their conception of heaven that they have learned from their Christian upbringing really seems quite uninviting, boring, certainly not something that they would want to experience eternally.

My father's response to this kind of upbringing was to reject the "institutional church" altogether. In fact when I hear people saying, "I believe in God, but I don't like institutional religion," this is the kind of thing they are often objecting to. They usually say they object to the hypocritical nature of what they have experienced there. The late psychiatrist and Christian, Scott Peck, wrote in his book Further Along the Road Less Traveled about modern Christian heresy. He spoke of spending a weekend with a born-again couple "whose every other sentence was God did this and God did that, and God would do this and God would do that, interspersed with nasty gossip about who was sleeping with whom and who wasn't going to church and whose children had gone sour. " He noted that this is really what it means to "take the Lord's Name in vain." Taking the Lord's Name in vain, Peck said, has very little to do with cursing; it has to do with trivializing God.

Peck goes on to make the point that all religions have their heresies. Mostly that means not walking the talk. This happens when the self is put in the place of God, when a person's major concern is how they look in the eyes of others, rather than a concern with pleasing God. But pleasing God, what does that mean? Some people believe it calls us to a life of drudgery. This belief is also a heresy. But the secular world has its heresies as well. Peck sights the ethic of rugged individualism as the best example; this ethic leads to isolation of people from each other. "This leads to terrible pain - people sitting next to each other in the same pew, hiding behind their masks of composure, pretending they've got it all together, because we're told we ought to have it all together. But in fact, nobody's got it all together." And I've noticed that the secular world often wins out, with people rejecting religion altogether, because the secular world seems, well, more interesting, more enjoyable.

Even though people tend to truly admire a holy person, they really don't want to strive to be one, because their conception of a holy person is of someone who has denied him or herself all the fun and pleasurable things in life. In fact, many Christians have a difficult time conceiving of Jesus laughing, joking, and having a rollicking good time. Because a holy person doesn't laugh and joke and have fun, and certainly Jesus didn't.

But I think he did. I think Jesus was a man who enjoyed life and was a delight to be around. Yes he was also serious; he was compassionate and was dedicated to helping and healing the pain of others. Yes he had a very important mission from God. But first and foremost his mission was to demonstrate a disposition of hospitality. Hospitable people are enjoyable to be around. That is what Jesus wants to open our hearts to. He came to show us that "our God is a God who longs to nurture us. He wants to give us the finest wine and choice meats. He wants us to come to the banquet to be nourished. God comes into the world in the person of Jesus, longing for everyone to recognize what he desires to give."

Heaven? The delights of the Song of Solomon, this is what God longs to give us. This is what heaven is like. The heresy of the Pharisees that Jesus was responding to was the idea that God's main concern and demand is that we do the right thing that we perform perfectly. He was rejecting the religious disposition that we have to be squeaky-clean before we will be accepted by God. That is a human demand, and what makes us squeaky-clean are human precepts. This is not the disposition James had in mind in his letter. James was speaking of walking the path of growth and transformation that only God can make possible and longs to give us. It is the path of integrity, and it leads to an abundant and joyful life. Here's what Scott Peck had to say about integrity: Integrity refers to the integration of your practice with your belief system. As Gandhi said: 'What is faith worth if it is not translated into action?' Obviously, we have to integrate our behavior with our theology in order to become people of integrity. Too often that is not done, whatever the religious belief."

To be a holy person is not to be squeaky-clean, but to be a person of integrity. James said in his letter that we must keep from being stained by the world. What did he mean? Well, the fundamentalist tradition that so turned my father off said we had to obey a lot of rules and regulations to accomplish that, and a few might even be able to abide by them perfectly. But doing so is frankly a pretty rigid way of living. And I don't think it necessarily pleases God, especially if it takes away all the joy of life that God wants us to experience.

But if we understand what Jesus was saying in our Gospel reading, we are called to something quite different. Jesus wants us to refrain from the things that turn our hearts to stone. Refrain from those things that close our hearts to hospitality, compassion, generosity, forgiveness, love of the other, and love of God. How do we do that? Scott Peck maintained that we are all to one degree or another narcissistic. Our challenge is to grow out of narcissism and into true love of self, of others and of God. Growing out of narcissism is what James was referring to when he said: "For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act�they will be blessed in their doing."

James was speaking of a growth process out of narcissism into integrity. We enter this growth process by trusting that God wishes to give us a life that is deeply and richly enjoyable. When we are mainly concerned by how others see us, as the Pharisees were, we are remaining in our narcissism. Religious leaders can be the most narcissistic people of all. At all cost a narcissistic person will do anything to preserve and maintain how others see them. If there is any evidence around them of their own imperfection they will do all they can to exterminate that evidence. That is why Jesus was ultimately exterminated.

Jesus in modeling sacrificial-love did not reject self-love. "Mature self-love implies the care, respect, and responsibility for, and the knowledge of, the self. Without loving one's self one cannot love others." However, loving ourselves doesn't mean that we will always feel good about ourselves. It means seeing ourselves truly. And we can only do this with the knowledge and trust that we are treasured by God, and trust that God gives us a lot of room to grow. As we become more and more like Jesus, we become more and more "other" oriented and less and less self oriented. A holy person is "other" oriented and they are a delight to be around.

A holy person is a generous person, because they are unafraid of lack or scarcity. They have come to trust in God's abundant providence, no matter how things appear.

A holy person is a good listener, because everything is not all about them. Being "other" oriented they are slow to speak, because they know what they say matters; what they say makes a difference for good or for ill. They understand that words have incredible impact. So they bridle their tongues.

A holy person is slow to anger. This doesn't mean they never get angry, but like Jesus' anger when he cleansed the Temple, their anger has to do with injustice and hypocrisy and not so much with the pricks to their own ego. A holy person doesn't take offense easily.

A holy person is a person of integrity who walks their talk; they are radically open and radically trust God's mercy and love, and they desire above all else God's transformation of their hearts. They know without a doubt that the transformation of their hearts will bring eternal bliss. Amen.