Leaving in Order to Love

If you really want to know what’s central to a culture, look at the way it thinks about its margins. How do we imagine what’s “out there” on the borders? How do we talk about what we call “the frontier?” I know there is a lot of talk about borders in the United States just now. Perhaps you will thank me for not wanting to discuss that at this moment. I don’t want us to talk about right now, at least not just yet. I want us to think back to the golden age of Westerns.

In 1953, George Stevens produced and directed the movie Shane, a pitch-perfect—actually kind of corny, but that’s pitch-perfect in this case—a pitch-perfect story about a brave, manly, good-looking gunslinger who wanders into the home of some brave, God-fearing settlers and changes their lives for a while. The family he meets out in a jaw-droppingly beautiful valley in Wyoming is the Starrett family: Joe Starrett, his wife Marian, and their boy, Joey. All three are drawn to Shane immediately, and who wouldn’t be? He is improbably handsome, impeccably neat in what looks like a runway version of a fringed buckskin shirt and pants, and he carries a shiny, menacing gun but never takes it to town unnecessarily. With his improbably clean, wavy blond hair and his keen blue eyes, he is a real white American 1950s heartthrob. Joe Sr. loves him because he helps around the ranch in a grinning, manly way. Marian loves him for reasons she keeps to herself, though there is never a whiff of impropriety between them. Little Joey loves him because he is everything a real man should be. Nobody says so, but it’s clear that they all three wish Joe Sr. could at least look a little more like him, though Joe Sr. is a good man in his own less glamorous way.

Well, you guessed it: Shane ends up having to shoot Jack Palance and a number of other bad guys, and then he has to leave town, because a gunslinger has no place in the world of God-fearing homesteaders. And the scene of Shane’s leaving is pure Hollywood history. If you’ve seen the movie, and you should, you’ll remember this moment: Joey runs after Shane to witness the final gun battle, and when Shane finishes up with the shooting, he speaks kindly to Joey about having to go. “A man’s gotta be what he is,” he tells Joey. “You can’t break the mold.” And he asks Joey to return home to his mother and father and “grow up to be strong, and straight.” Perhaps that last word registers a bit differently for us now than it did for mainstream audiences in the fifties, but the message is clear. Joey will become a man, not like Shane—no one can be like Shane—but at least like his own good, solid, unglamorous father. And yet Joey seems unconvinced. As the music swells, Shane rides off into the hills, with Joey’s little voice echoing across the valley: “Shane! Shane, come back! Pa’s got things for you to do! And Mother wants you—I know she does!” It’s hilarious now, maybe, but it’s wonderfully poignant. When you see it, it stays with you.

We could name a bunch of other stories like this, stories about taking leave of civilization and riding off into the hills or lighting out for the territories. Think of John Wayne in The Searchers, or Huck Finn. There are stories for girls, too, even if they don’t involve the wild west and guns. Remember Jane Eyre heading out across the moors to defend her virtue from Mr. Rochester? No question: we love a good tale about leaving behind domestic life. There is an inescapable romance about being the one who has to go.

And in spite of my best efforts, when I hear Jesus tells us to leave everything and everyone behind and follow him, I get pictures of Shane in my head. I don’t think I’m the only one: somewhere in his writings Thomas Merton talks about how every man who goes into religious life imagines that when he is in the monastery there will be a woman left behind at the gates, pining for him. It’s the Shane story, all over again. We love a good tale about how we have to get away from civilization and family life in order to fulfill our destiny.

Here’s what I want to say about that: sometimes we do have to go, but Jesus isn’t in love with the picture of human longing and separation that Hollywood conjures up for us. Hollywood conjures that image up for us so we will have a big hole in our hearts, and we’ll fill it with popcorn, soda, and other movies. Hollywood teaches us that our character is our tragic destiny, that people can’t change or compromise, and that we have only ourselves to ride with as we head for the hills.

Don’t hear Jesus saying that. Jesus is different. He’s telling a different story. Jesus only wants us to go if that’s what we have to do in order to be able to love with our whole hearts. We may indeed have to take distance from mother or father, sister or brother, or indeed from husband or wife or child in order to be true to God’s love. But we aren’t heading for the hills or for some tragic, lonely, self-imposed exile. We step away at times because that’s what it might take for us to find each other in Christ. We step away to join community, to join the body of Christ, even in our solitude. We set limits with each other so that we can love each other more, not less. So that we can find the space we need to forgive and change. So that we can hold another in prayer and love, even if we need distance, allowing them to change and grow and find a way forward without us and our misguided attempts to correct them.

Leaving isn’t a romantic story. It isn’t picture-perfect. It doesn’t always work, if by “work” we mean solving a problem or changing someone else’s behavior. But it’s true that sometimes we have to do it. When that moment comes in our lives, and it usually will at least once, let us pray that we have the grace to know what we are doing. Leaving each other is important enough that Jesus warns us specifically not to set out unless we are really ready, not to go unless we really want to pay the price for going.

And even when we stay—maybe especially when we stay—let us take a kind of sacred leave of one another that allows the Holy Spirit to act in our lives without our misguided interference. Maybe you will stay in your marriage forever, but you won’t do so without letting go of your plans to change your partner and rearrange his or her priorities. You won’t stay without having to admit sometimes that you don’t know what’s best for the person you love most. You won’t stay without having to give her room to grow and change, and without needing that room yourself. You won’t change your children or your siblings, but in God’s holy love you may find a way of letting them live their own lives. You may stay in this parish forever, but not without letting go of your fellow Christians to some extent, letting them be who they are and learning to rejoice in what God is doing in them that isn’t according to your own plan.

The leave-taking we do as Christians is not in essence tragic, even when it involves pain and loss. The leave-taking we do when we have to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is a letting go that sets us free to love with open hands and open hearts. It’s a love that sets us free from resentment and control. It’s a love that allows us to marvel, maybe, and maybe sometime way down the road, at the power of God to do for others what we can’t do ourselves. It’s a pure, costly, acceptance of God’s will, and it’s based in hope, not despair.

Taking up the cross and following Jesus, even when it’s really hard, is not tragic. It’s a sign of deep faith, hope, and love. Sometimes we leave because the resurrection is real in our lives and we are willing to act like we believe it. Sometimes letting go is the first sign of resurrection life.

It’s tempting to want to imagine what Shane is thinking to himself as he rides across the gorgeous valley toward the sublime mountains and Little Joey’s anxious calling begins to fade from his ears. It’s tempting to me to want to misquote him, as his fans so often do, to speak the words he never actually speaks in the film: “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

In our own scenes of leave-taking, when they absolutely have to come, let us replace Shane’s tragic words of rugged individualism with the words that our church, our community, our long tradition, teaches us to say this morning: Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

September 4, 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Right 10%

In 1966, the American Council on Education conducted a study of college freshmen. They were attempting to create a set of national norms for college students – where they had come from, what they were like, and what they wanted to be when they grew up. The ACE survey has been executed every year since. The questions have changed a bit; for example, in 1966 the first possible answer to the question “Where were you raised?” was “On a farm.” In 1966 the freshmen were offered only four choices for religious affiliation; in 2015 they were offered 24. The 2015 survey asked questions about the students’ gender identify and sexual orientation; the 1966 survey asked them how likely they would be to listen to New Orleans’ Dixieland jazz. But one of the most interesting differences is the result for the question which asked these students how they compared themselves academically to their peers. Did they see themselves as above average or below? In 1966, 56.4% of students said that they thought they were above average academically. Interesting, but not entirely surprising. But in 2015, 73.5% of students claimed to be above average – and not just above average, but within the top 10% of their peers. 73.5% thought that they belonged in the top 10%. That must be a tight top 10%!

Now I am no expert in statistics, nor am I an expert in the emotional or academic lives of freshmen on our college campuses. I’m sure if you were to read the full report on the survey or to talk with Mother Johnson or another of the professors in our midst, you would learn a lot more about how these numbers actually work and what they can tell us about young people in our society. I just found myself fascinated by that image – of 73.5% trying to squish into that top 10%. Of 7 out of 10 people claiming the label of extraordinary. Of 7 out of 10 people expecting that special seat, the highest chair, the most exclusive place at the party.

This must have been what Jesus saw at the gathering we hear about in today’s Gospel reading. He had been invited to dinner at the home of a leader of the Pharisees – not exactly the recipe for a relaxing evening. For this was no ordinary dinner; it was a dinner on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees were watching – watching him closely, or, in the words of another translation, watching his every move.* Suspicion was in the air, and the Pharisees were scrutinizing Jesus’ every move as if they thought he might steal a salt shaker or break Grandmother’s fine china.

They were so intent on spying on him, in fact, that they neglected to notice that they, too, were being watched. They didn’t see that Jesus was also watching them – steadily, intently, observing where they went and what they did. He saw them – not all of them, but some of them – cozying up to the host, bringing him an extra drink, a napkin when he dripped wine onto his robes. He saw them ignoring the man standing in shabby clothes in the corner, ashamed that he had nothing else to wear. As the time for dinner approached, he saw them as they swarmed closer and closer to the host like so many ecclesiastical gnats. And when the host sat down, Jesus saw some of them dive for their places like some ancient near-Eastern version of musical chairs, elbows jabbing, hips checking, bellies bumping. He saw it all, and when he took his seat at the last place, next to the man still blushing over the worn patches in his robes, he decided to tell them what he’d seen.

And what Jesus offers them is sound practical advice, an echo of wise counsel from the book of Proverbs. When looking for a place to land, better to underestimate than to overestimate. If you choose to sit in the bottom 10%, imagine how wonderful it will be when someone tells you to please, move up. You’ve placed yourself too far down; you belong up here, with the elite. But if you try to squeeze yourself into the top 10% and you don’t belong there, imagine how humiliating it will be to have someone call you out on it. You there, leave space for the truly exceptional. Make way for the truly deserving, you know, the right sort of chair sitters.

So humble yourself, Jesus says. Aim low, and you might just end up being surprised. It’s good advice for not embarrassing yourself in social situations. But Jesus isn’t just giving etiquette advice here; he’s telling all who will listen about a fundamental truth of God’s kingdom. There is no earning the top 10% in the Kingdom of God.  The high place at the table is always freely given, unmerited and undeserved. So there’s no need to throw elbows for it; instead, we should be reaching out our arms to those who imagine that they don’t have a place at the table at all, those who stand alone in corners, feeling ashamed and unworthy. Those who claim that last 10% show the world what it is to truly be a follower of Christ, a disciple who views all gifts with wonder and gratitude, who gives thanks for everything with joy and delight.

I wonder what Jesus would see if he were watching us now? Or, more accurately, I wonder what he does see as he does watch us right now. Does he see us throwing elbows, trying to get ahead by some standard that only this world can measure? Does he see us casually ignoring those among us who don’t seem to belong? Does he peer into the dark corners of our minds and see the complex inventories we make there – well, she’s smarter than I am, but I have better legs. He’s not nearly as well-liked as I am at the office, even if he does seem to come up with all of the best ideas. I may not have her generous heart, but at least I’m secure financially. Does Jesus look into our hearts and see humility there, or only insecurity and fear wrought by the constant comparisons we make to each other, by our constant need to try to earn acceptance, peace, love?

But what if Jesus were to see us claiming a seat in the bottom 10%? What if he saw us choosing to sit down with those who are needy, or unsure, or troubled? What if he saw us looking for ways to help others move up higher, to invite others to the feast, to welcome a stranger and perhaps entertain an angel unawares?  What if he saw us loving our neighbors instead of comparing ourselves to them, letting God be the arbiter of justice? What if he saw us truly humbling ourselves in our prayer, confessing our sins, acknowledging our ongoing need for Grace? What if he saw us giving thanks for the bottom 10% instead of gunning for the top 10?

You know, we never hear what happens with the seating arrangement at the Pharisee’s dinner. There’s no line in the Gospel that says, “Then the Pharisees realized the error of their ways and invited Jesus and his shabby friend to sit at the head of the table.” For all we know, Jesus stayed right there, at the tail of the table, in the bottom 10%, with the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind. And really, that is right where he wants to be. "For Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."**

You know, in the Kingdom of God, below average is just fine. In the Kingdom of God, the bottom 10% is brilliant. For it is there that we are more than likely to find Christ. It is there that we are more than likely find real gratitude. It is there that we are more than likely to find ourselves no longer so distracted by all of the ways that we can get ahead. In the bottom 10%, we can truly see the people around us, and see Christ in them; we can truly strive for mutual love. In the bottom 10%, we can be content with what we have, which is nothing less than the never-failing love of God, a God who gives us his own Son, born in human likeness, who reaches down to us, to the very bottom, and says, you are mine, please, come up higher. When we have all of this, how can we not be content with what we have? For we have a seat at the table with Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is everything, all we need. 100%.  

* From Eugene Peterson's The Message

**Philippians 2

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

28 August 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Right Time

I heard a story once about a boy who was alone with his father when news came over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.  The father heard the news, turned to his son, and said, “Just don’t tell your mother.” 

It sounds crazy now, doesn’t it?  She was bound to find out.  It’s clear to us now that even the most delicate and sheltered wife would sooner or later have had a look at the papers and would have figured out that World War II was happening.  All these years later we can see that that man was in a state of shock, and that his attempt to keep his wife from finding out about Pearl Harbor was an effort to keep his own fear in check.  We can easily imagine that he was reaching for some kind of habitual emotion that felt safe: “I’ll protect my wife; that’s my role.”  It’s what we do when we go numb: we look for habitual patterns to protect us from overwhelming truths.  “Your mother can’t handle this” is a way of thinking that lets the husband feel like he is still in control.  It’s a way for him to stay in a safe place.

It's always the wrong time to tell the truth, isn't it? It’s always the wrong time to encounter God. The leader of the synagogue in this morning’s Gospel stumbles right into that problem.  Listen to him: "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."  It feels stunningly wrong.  It’s just like “Don’t tell your mother.”  It’s the voice of a man desperate to hold onto the world he knows, even if, in this case, it’s a world full of pain and limitation, and the voice breaking through to him is bringing news not of war but of healing and peace.  It doesn’t really matter. As long as we want the lives we already know more than we want the truth, we will respond to Jesus this way.

No, we’ll say to ourselves, this isn’t the right time to go to my room and pray.  I’m never going to be a contemplative. No, this isn’t the right Sunday to come to church.  It’s hot. No, daily Mass is something for other people.  The daily office is too hard for me.  There is no need to reconcile with that estranged family member today; I can call her on her birthday.  Or Christmas.  Or next Christmas.  Everyone drinks this heavily.  It’s normal to live a life filled with resentments.

No, I don’t need to be an active member of that parish.  No, I’m not needed for that service position.  Sure, I have sins, but there is no need to confess them this week.  I have questions but there is no need to ask them right now.  I need to tell someone what God once meant to me but I can’t face that whole story right now.  That person wouldn’t understand.  I can’t find the spiritual teacher I’m really looking for.  Maybe I’m not meant to have a radiant faith.

Is it ever the right moment to encounter the living God?  Is it ever the right time to tell the truth?  Could this be the moment? 

We have so many reasons to think that this is not the right time.  Christianity doesn’t really seem to be in ascendancy in twenty-first century America, does it?  Faith in Jesus is not really in vogue.  Religions across the board seem to be under so much pressure from fundamentalism, and under so much pressure from the distracting demands of practical life: keeping a job, keeping our heads above water, keeping up with the rushing tide of history, keeping our families and our relationships intact.  It’s all fantastically complicated, and sometimes it’s truly bleak.  I wonder whether we really experience our relationship with Jesus as commensurate with the pain of the lives we are living.  I wonder whether our faith in Jesus feels like salvation, for ourselves and for the world.  I wonder whether secretly we aren’t tempted to give up on that idea, and keep God at arm’s length.  Aren’t we tempted to postpone our encounter with God in hopes that there will be another day when prayer will beckon to us more powerfully, or God will seem present, or it will make sense to us to let go of the possessions and the habits and the attitudes that keep us apart?  I have a feeling I’m not the only one who imagines becoming a real Christian one day in the future. 

What would our lives be like if we were willing to believe that today was the best day to meet God breaking through to us?  That today was the best day to let God into the problems that baffle us?  That there would never be a better moment, that we were in exactly the right place to hear from God?  Not in spite of our very real problems and limitations but precisely because of them?  What Gospel story is being written among us today?  What story would be written if we would step out from our hiding places?  What turning point would this be?  We are the best people God could possibly choose for the lives God has given us, imperfections and all.  And this is exactly the right time to hear that message.

That’s what Jesus saw when he was teaching the synagogue, as Luke tells us.  He saw a woman who had been bent over, unable to stand up straight, for eighteen years.  That’s a long, long, time.  Long enough for the woman and everyone around her to take that physical limitation as inevitable, so much so that it ceased to be visible.  She ceased to be visible.  But not to Jesus.  When Jesus sees her he calls her to him and he puts his hands on her and he sets her free.  It’s the wrong time for the leader of the synagogue, who is no doubt as shocked as we would be to feel God’s presence so profoundly and in such a new way.  But it’s the right time for Jesus, and it becomes the right time for the woman, who immediately stands up straight and begins praising God.

She didn’t ask to be healed, any more than most of us ask to be transformed radically by God’s grace.  She is just the kind of person Jesus is looking for, precisely because she is as shut down as we are.  Precisely because her pain and her limitations have become business as usual.  Precisely because she belongs to a religious congregation that has quietly abandoned the desire to be startled by God’s actions in the world.  Jesus didn’t do anything in the synagogue that morning that he doesn’t do all the time among us.

There isn’t anything we can be that those people in Luke’s Gospel haven’t already been.  We can’t keep Jesus out with our complacency or our resignation or our hypocrisy or our need to maintain control.  Jesus simply calls, and touches us, and sets us on our feet and fills our mouths with praise.  It’s not so much that he triumphed in spite of the resistance of the congregation that morning in the synagogue.  Let’s think of it a different way: he went there looking for the woman whose limitations were chronic and the religious community that didn’t want to have to face the living God.  He went there looking for people like us.

And although this is a story of great, miraculous healing, it’s no different than a hundred healings that might be happening here and now among us.  We don’t see it, because we don’t jump up and start praising.  But we surely could.  We could make it more visible than we do.  We could hear the sound of a hundred hearts slipping open, a hundred backs straightening, a hundred burdens being dropped.

This story condenses and magnifies what we know to be true, what we experience in smaller ways all the time.  This story presents us with one big healing and doesn’t tell us what the woman’s life is like after that, but we know about life with Jesus.  We know that we have within us not only the woman who is to be healed, but also the religious leader who is desperate to control and hide from the power of God so as to remain in the world he knows.  And it’s possible, too, that sometimes we have in us Jesus himself.  Sometimes there will be the voice of Jesus calling to another with healing grace.  Sometimes our own hands will be the hands of Jesus reaching out to touch another who is in pain.  Sometimes the time will be right for us, and we will witness the grace of God working in our midst.

 Praise God that we are given the gift of this healing in all of its dimensions.  Praise God that we are sometimes ready to be healed in whatever way God prepares for us.  Praise God that the religious leader within us, the one afraid to let God work in ways he can’t control, may be only a passing moment in the larger story of our lives in Christ.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

21 August 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia