The Joy of Being Wrong

• Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
• Revelation 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19
• Psalm 30

Some of my most satisfying moments as a pastor and a priest—or as a husband and a father, for that matter—come when the people around me find a solution to a problem for which I can take no credit.  I might have helped facilitate investigation of the matter, offered some clarifying analysis or fruitful question, but I have held myself back from providing what I think to be the answer, and in the end this proves to be a good thing, when I discover that I had wrong idea.  The insight that comes, the sense of the right direction forward is one I would not have come up with.  And the satisfaction of recognizing it when it comes, the energy I receive from being able to join in to saying “yes, that’s it”, is far greater than what I would have gained by insisting we try it my way.

This is what you might call “The Joy of Being Wrong.” Which is a phrase I got from the title of a book by an English Catholic theologian named James Allison.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you read the book, unless you’re in the mood for a good, brisk, philosophical and theological workout, but you don’t really have to, because the title tells you most of what you need to know.  Which is that the joy that is at the heart of the Christian life, the joy that burst with the brilliance of a billion suns from the empty tomb on Easter Day, and still spreads contagiously around the world almost two thousand years later, is the joy of being wrong. 

Of course, the Judeo-Christian sense of being wrong, is more far-reaching and profound than simply not knowing the right solution to a practical problem in the affairs of one’s family or the church.  The subtitle of Allison’s book is “Original Sin through Easter Eyes.”  And it isn’t only Roman Catholics who subscribe to the notion that there is something essentially, you might even say congenitally, off-the-mark in human nature.  “I have been a sinner from my mother’s womb” says Psalm 51.  Orthodox Calvinism teaches the doctrine of “total human depravity,” which is reflected in the General Confession from the original English Book of Common Prayer: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.”

This wrongness is not merely psychological, but is manifested in the social world we have made.  The Cross of Christ reveals this.  The powers that rule this world are unmasked on the cross as the powers of sin and death.  It is a world constructed on the victimization of the innocent, on violence and falsehood pretending to be justice and peace.    And this is reflected in the lesser instruments of death we wield against each other daily in our intimate circles—the hardened heart and the cold shoulder, the accusing finger, the sugary lips concealing a poisoned tongue, the deaf ear and the blind eye.   We are wrong when we think that our justifications, be they personal or cultural, religious or political, can make such things pleasing to God.  We are wrong to believe that a world so in thrall to the power of death is a world that can last. 

  

But Christ’s resurrection shows how wrong we also are when imagine we are helpless prisoners of that world, or that our deep-dyed implication in its wrongness is a stain which cannot be removed.  The Easter joy of being wrong is the freedom of seeing that there is no captivity in sin, in self-destructive vice or self-righteous injustice, in death itself, that cannot be broken open by the love and life of God.   The story of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus is the classic Biblical account of this truth.  Phrases from the story, such as “road to Damascus” itself, and “the scales fell from his eyes,” have entered the English language as proverbial expressions for the moment of amazing grace.  And the irony that the Lord Jesus should appear to this man, who has committed all his considerable talents to stamping out the name of Jesus from the earth, and should call him to make that name known to the nations, was not lost on Paul himself.  It became, in some sense, the core of his message, a compelling illustration of the power of the crucified and risen Christ to break down the best-defended barriers of bigotry, arrogance, and ignorance and create a new humanity in God.

But what is sometimes overlooked is that this is not only the story of the conversion of Paul, but is also about God’s call to a disciple in Damascus called Ananias.  The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord,” which is the standard Biblical literary form for the calling of a prophet.  And what Ananias is called to do is to complete the transforming action of Christ’s grace by ministering to Paul.  To do this he has to overcome his own well-founded suspicion of this man and his motives.  He has to move from the posture of traumatized victim to that of the agent of healing forgiveness.  He has to take a risky further step in trusting the transforming power of resurrection, in opening himself to the joy of being wrong.

We can see a similar vision in the 21^st Chapter of John.  When Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” it is an unmistakable reminder of the night he was betrayed, when they asked Peter three times if he knew Jesus and he denied it.  The risen Christ comes to Peter and gives him the chance for a "do-over," to declare three times not only that he knows Jesus but that he loves him.  It hurts Peter’s feelings, but it also helps him to release his guilt and to embrace the magnificence of his mission.  It reminds of his cowardice, so he can take a stand in his courage.  It reminds him of his faithlessness, so he can step forward in faith.  It reminds him of his refusal, so he can be whole-hearted in his acceptance.  And what is he accepting but a commission to do what Jesus himself has done—to be a shepherd, to feed the flock of the Messianic community with words of life and acts of healing and compassion.

In the same way, the dynamic of our Christian ministry is always simultaneously giving and receiving forgiveness, feeding and being fed.  We do not hold ourselves apart from the sin and suffering that are the common lot of humanity.  We do not pretend that the world is other than that it is, or wish to escape to a private island of material privilege or spiritual transcendence.  We engage with the real stuff of life—which is why stories of resurrection in the New Testament so often involve the sharing of food.  But we do so with a very particular perspective, one that is more of an open inquiry, a wondering, than it is a prescription or a dogma.  It’s a questioning that flows from the knowledge that we are certainly wrong: And so we ask--how could God be present in these circumstances?  What possibility of healing and transformation is here that Christ can see, even if we can’t?  Where are we blocking the energy of love, that could create something new out of this mess?  And what might we say or do, to release the flow, so that we nourish, rather than slaughter, Jesus' lambs?

The breaking of bread which the collect for this Sunday speaks about, the breaking of bread in which we recognize the presence of the risen Christ, is not bread we break for ourselves, but bread broken for us by a stranger, a stranger we are always only just beginning to know.  His is the body that was broken on the cross, that is still broken every day in the victims of our greed, fear, hate, and indifference—and at the same time it is the bread of life.  We do not simply see this broken bread, we break it to share it, to take it into ourselves—it is the food of our redemption and forgiveness.  It nourishes us with the faith and hope and love that animated Jesus, the faith and hope and love of God for the world.  It sends us out to minister to that world in the joy of being wrong, bearing in our bodies both the death of Christ, and the glory of his resurrection, and it opens our eyes to see both cross and resurrection there.

Original grace

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

When I was in my early thirties, I decided to get baptized.  I’d been thinking about it for a few years, ever since I’d discovered that I couldn’t become a Zen Buddhist priest because I was actually a Christian.  And for a time I considered organizing a baptism for myself.  I could ask my father, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, to perform the rite, and invite a few family members and friends to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, or the banks of the irrigation pond on the farm where I was working.  But the more I thought about it, and the more I learned about this strange thing called Christianity, the clearer it became that baptism wasn’t just something for me.  And it wasn’t about becoming a Christian in some general sense, or undergoing some kind of metaphysical change.   It was about becoming part of something made of flesh and blood.  It was about joining a community.

So it was only later, after attending Episcopal churches for a few years, and finding one in San Francisco where I felt I could belong, that I decided it was time.  So I signed up for a class, which involved going with a few other folks over to the Rector’s house for dinner and a conversation.  The only thing I remember well about that evening, besides the delicious catered meal, was that, along with a couple of us candidates who were adults, there was a young mother, who came on behalf of her infant daughter.  We were going around the table explaining why we were considering baptism at this time, and what we thought it might mean for us, and when it was the mother’s turn, she spoke about the importance of family tradition, and her desire to give her child a religious foundation for life. 

But then her voice rose and she got really quite passionate, as she began to lodge a strenuous objection to the doctrine of original sin.  She was outraged at the thought that her beautiful, perfect little child was somehow deep-dyed wicked at the core, and needed to have this congenital taint washed out of her, and to be born anew.  And the rest of us around the table, including the priest, had to agree, because, after all, when you put it like that, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.   

Now I have some doubts about whether that young woman was reacting against real classical Christian doctrine, or a one-sided misinterpretation of it, but that’s not really the issue.  Because she had a point—if baptism is about the difference it makes to live our lives with God, but the accent is all on a heightened sense of worthlessness and guilt, then why bother?  Shouldn’t it be more about love and grace?  And if it is about a life lived in communion, of membership in a body, why focus such a harsh light of interrogation on the individual person?   It’s a distortion of perspective, and it yields a grotesque image, which is plain to see when the person in question is a child. 

This is a good example of why it's good to come to church, because in church we get to balance out our theological ideas about things like baptism with the actual practice.  We get to look into the face of a stranger, a newcomer to the community, and recognize ourselves.   The words we say and the actions we take when we baptize are about acknowledging what we all have in common.  They are about our shared humanity in God.   Baptism illuminates what it truly means to be human, but what it reveals is not a philosophical paradigm or a collective entity or a universal archetype, but the life and death of a person. 

When we baptize someone we call her by name, because the relationship of the baptized to the baptized is a relationship of persons, each one of whom is utterly unique, unprecedented, with a face and a path and a story unlike anyone’s who’s ever lived before.  But we also baptize everyone in the name of Jesus, the only Son, the human person whose life and death and resurrection shows us how each one of our stories, and all our stories together, are the story of God.   Now people are always looking for new and different ways to get that point across, ways that they think will be more direct, approachable, or user-friendly.  But the best way, I think, certainly the time-tested way, is to come together to listen to the story of Jesus.

There are different versions, and some of the versions have prologues.  For the last three weeks or so we’ve been listening to bits and pieces of those.  But all the versions agree that the main story begins with baptism.  A man named John appeared in the wilderness by the Jordan River, telling people that God was about to make a new start with everyone, so they’d better get ready.  And apparently a lot of them agreed that a new start was necessary.  I gather things weren’t going all that well in Judea and Jerusalem, because the inhabitants of those places out in droves to meet John, and they confessed all the things they had done to participate in the violence and injustice, the callous self-righteousness and self-promotion, the self-indulgence and escapism that plagued society at large. 

And as a sign of their desire to put all that behind them and make a new start with God, they waded out into the river, and John put them under with loving ferocity, pushed them down into the dark, cold, turbid water and held them there until they started to feel fear, started to really know just how close they were to nothingness, and how much they would give for just one breath of air.  And then the force of John’s strong hands reversed direction and lifted their faces up out of the water into light and breath and freedom.

And one of those, the story says, who came to be baptized, was Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.  He heard John’s call to repent, a word that in our minds is linked with guilt.  But Jesus had nothing to confess.  His repentance must have been driven by something else: compassion, maybe, for his people; a sense of responsibility; a desire to be part of the movement of renewal; a longing for God.  In any case, Jesus gave himself over into the hands of John and went down into the river.  And when he came up everything changed. 

It wasn’t that he had changed—nothing had been added to him or taken away.  It was more like God changed.  God who had been hidden, far away in heaven, threw back the curtains.  God who had been silent, spoke.  God’s elusive Spirit, the maker of justice, the wisdom of creation, the vision of truth, came over him with wings of peace.  In that moment Jesus knew who he really was, and what he had to do.  Because this God of grace and love was not for him, but in him.  The immortal, invisible God had a visible, mortal face, and it was his face.

In this story of the beginning we can already glimpse the pattern of the whole: a life of repentance (or maybe we should call it “atonement”) for the sickness and suffering of the world, that is not preoccupied with sin and guilt, but abounding in solidarity, compassion, and joy; a personal revelation of God’s grace and intimate love; a movement of the Spirit, pouring out active, creative, healing, and liberating communication.   This is the pattern of the whole story of Jesus, and the fact that we can see the pattern right at the beginning is no mistake, because baptism is where his story converges with our own. 

Baptism is where our lives are incorporated into Jesus’ pattern, and that is why it matters, even if it happened to you as an infant, and you can’t remember a thing about it.  If there was even one person present that day that looked at you in your little white gown, kicking your legs and crying, and saw a recipient of God’s grace and love, it had its intended effect.  Because the choice that matters in our baptism is not our choice, just as it is not we who created the heavens and earth, or who gave us birth, or we who redeems our lives from death.  But though baptism is the revelation to the world of God’s life in us, conscious cooperation with that life is something we do choose day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.