Loving every body

1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a
Psalm 5:1-8
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3

Along with some other members of St. John’s I spent last week up at the Bishop’s Ranch, near Healdsburg, at an educational program of our diocese called the College for Congregational Development.  The purpose of the vestry in sending us there was to move our parish closer to one of our strategic goals, which is to strengthen the capacity of all of our leaders, to help our various ministries, groups and committees, and the whole parish organization, to work together more effectively so that we can become more and more of what God is calling us to be. 

The week was the beginning of a two-year program, which commits the participants to a substantial reading list of books, a second residential intensive a year from now, and projects to design and carry out, complete with written reports, and a final exam.  We followed an intensive schedule of reading, presentations, small group learning labs, and project planning that began with Morning Prayer at 7:30 a.m. and ended with compline at 9 o’clock at night.  We worked on facilitation and group process skills and conceptual models of organizational structures, and of change, conflict, and even spiritual transformation within congregations.  We even learned models for human mental functions and how they operate differently according to personality type.  We had completed in advance a personality assessment tool that is widely used in universities and in corporate America, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and on Tuesday we received the results, which identified us with one of 16 different personality types, and told us how we prefer to interact with others, and what are our areas of strength, in what perceive, and how we make decisions and deal with conflict.

There’s a whole theory of mental functioning, that lies behind this system, and it was while one of the workshop trainers was trying to explain some of that to us, that one of my clergy colleagues in the diocese asked a question that had also been nagging at me.  In the course of her presentation, the trainer had said that these were the modes of “normal” mental functioning, and the types of “normal” personality, and so on.  So when it came time for questions, this priest, who happens to be a woman, pointed this out and asked “but what if you’re not normal?”   The trainer gave a sort of an answer and then quickly moved on, but the question is not a frivolous one.  It points to something essentially important about human beings, and also about the church.  

Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to borrow ideas and approaches from the business world and the social sciences to help us do the work of the church more effectively.  It is okay to talk about forces and dynamics, about data and feedback, about structures and systems and normal functioning.   But the Christian understanding of human beings is that our mental functioning, and our church organizations, are grounded in bodies.  And bodies can get out whack in all kinds of ways: from congenital conditions to senile dementia, from brain tumors and head injuries to autism and schizophrenia, from post-traumatic stress to clinical depression to alcoholism, things happen to our bodies that affect our minds, and even change our personalities. 

In the business world, if a person has a body that does not function as the organization needs it to, because he or she cannot effectively count beans, or produce widgets, or what have you, the manager will “let” that person “go” or never invite him or her to work there in the first place.  But as Christians we don’t have that option.  Not if we are sincere about following Jesus.  Because the gospels tell us stories, again and again, about people whose bodies, or minds and behavior, were not normal in the eyes of their neighbors.  These people came to Jesus looking for help and he welcomed them.  He told them that their faith in him had made them well, and sent them away in peace. 

Today’s story from the Gospel of Luke reminds us that this brought Jesus into conflict with his religious contemporaries.  When Simon the Pharisee decides that Jesus must not really be a prophet, it is not because he disagrees with him about theological ideas, or ethical principles.  Simon has second thoughts about Jesus because he lets a woman touch him.  It wasn’t normal for Jesus, a devout Jewish man, to let a woman who was not his wife or a close female relative touch his body, let alone to bathe his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.  What makes it worse is that this woman is notorious for her sins, presumably sins of a sexual nature, which made her body a doubly potent source of contamination.  But instead of pushing her away, refusing to admit her into his company, Jesus accepts her lavishly inappropriate gestures of repentance and gratitude and love.  He repays her with words of respect and forgiveness, the forgiveness that makes her body touchable again.

Now Jesus didn’t always just heal people and then send them away.  Sometimes he called them to be a part of his mission.  In his classic text, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following:

“A truth, a doctrine, or a religion needs no space for itself.  They are disembodied entities.  They are heard, learned, and apprehended, and that is all.  But the incarnate Son of God needs not only ears or hearts, but living people who will follow him.  That is why he called his disciples into a literal, bodily following, and thus made his fellowship with them a visible reality.”

We are used to thinking of the calling of disciples as a manly sort of business.  Peter and Andrew and James and John are by the Sea of Galilee mending their nets, when Jesus walks by and says “Come, follow me,” and they unhesitatingly drop everything and go after him.  They go to be leaders, apostles of the kingdom and fishers of men.  But today’s passage in Luke reminds us that sometimes the calling of a disciple is not recruitment for a brave and noble mission.  Sometimes it begins as a desperate plea for relief from torment.  Mary Magdalene must have been seriously deranged, for Jesus to have cast out seven demons from her.  Still, in its own way, coming out of the shadows of disgrace and untouchability to seek healing and restoration to community is just as heroic, takes just as much courage, and faith, as that other kind of following.  

And Luke wants us to see, with Bonhoeffer that, from the beginning, our fellowship with the Incarnate Son of God has been embodied in a visible reality, a community.  In the Episcopal Church, the core of our identity is continuity with the first community of those that Jesus of Nazareth called to follow him.  Every time we add a new member to the church in baptism, the priest or bishop asks “will you continue in the apostles’ fellowship?” and the congregation says, “I will with God’s help.”  After the rite is complete, the congregation greets the newly baptized, saying “we receive you into the household of God.”  Like any other household this visible reality requires managing.  It needs leadership.  But sometimes leadership looks less like having great ideas and telling others what to do and more like noticing what other people need, what are the broken pieces that need mending and the loose ends that need tying.  According to Luke it was the women, who followed because they had been sick and became well, who first exercised this leadership in the church.  We can’t forget that it was they who obtained the spices needed to prepare a body for burial, they whose sorrow and need for a final, physical demonstration of love led them to Jesus’ tomb. 

And if this it is a household its members are a family.  But a new kind of family, one united not by of genetic inheritance or even by their natural love for each other, but by the grace of God.  Just as we don’t get to choose who we will have as our parents, or our brothers or sisters, we don’t get to choose the people whom the incarnate Son of God Christ calls into fellowship with us.  We don’t get to set criteria of eligibility, or send away the family members who don’t meet our standard of past history, education, or experience.  And there is no right kind of body, no “normal” height or weight or sex or color of the skin, but one body, crucified and raised in glory, into which all are called by the grace and mercy of God.  

Giving a drink is enough

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

In the 13^th century a religious movement arose in the towns of what is now Belgium and Holland, known as the Beguines.  The Beguines were women who started their own intentional Christian communities dedicated to prayer and service to the poor.  They did not take formal monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  They were celibate as long they remained beguines, but could leave the life at any time and get married, if they wished.   They were not part of a centralized religious order with an overall superior, but each of their houses was independent, with its own regulations.  And knowing what we do of church history we should not be surprised that a number of medieval popes accused the beguines of spreading heresy, and attempted to suppress them.  And in the 16^th century the Protestant Reformers took up where the popes left off. 

And in our country today, as well as in England, and Australia, and many other places, young Christians are carrying out innumerable experiments in new forms of religious practice, in alternative worship, and arts festivals, in café churches, dinner churches, and house churches and new monastic communities, in a diverse and decentralized phenomenon that is sometimes called the “Emergent Church.”  I would be lying if I claimed to represent this movement, but from what I’ve read and from those I’ve met who are part of it, I’m sympathetic with many of its aims and concerns.  I’m also not surprised that some Christian leaders have denounced the Emergent Church, or elements of it, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a danger to the good order and doctrinal purity of the church.

After all, I’m an Episcopalian, so I’m not unfamiliar this sort of treatment, and maybe that’s why I’ve taken the liberty of referring to our congregation as an “emergent community” on the home page of our website.  This isn’t because I’m trying to cash in on a trendy brand; it’s because I feel there is a genuine open-endedness about what we’re trying to do here at St. John’s.  The schism that devastated this congregation almost nine years ago left us not only with the necessity of renewal, but with an opportunity to do more than try to recreate a church we remember from the past.  It’s given us the freedom to experiment with new forms of worship and new practices of leadership, to take risks, and make mistakes, and learn together how to live in authentic Christian community in the cultural context of today.

Of course, that cultural context is quite chaotic, rapidly changing, and some might say, dangerously ill.  So on our website homepage, where it says that we are an “emergent Christian community” it also says that we have been Petaluma’s congregation of The Episcopal Church since 1856.  And I like having those two seemingly contradictory ideas in the same sentence.   I think it gives a good snapshot of who we are, and where we hope we are going.  It says that we may not be bound by tradition, but neither are we rootless; we are grounded in a place and a history that we did not invent, but inherited from others.  It says we trust in the faithfulness of God’s promise to the church, because we’ve seen it in the continued existence of our community.  It says that when we try to discern who Christ is for us today and what he wants us to do, we aren’t starting from scratch; we are exercising an authority that has been handed down to us in an unbroken line of transmission from the first disciples of Jesus.

Now ordained clergy like me are fond of this last point, because we stand in a particular relation to that authority.  Sometimes we act as if it were our exclusive possession.  And bishops, priests, and deacons do have a special responsibility for maintaining the core tradition, but their role is borrowed, you might say, from the apostolic character of the whole people of God.  And all authority in the church is secondary to the authority of Christ himself, who is still shepherding his flock in the Holy Spirit, and teaching us in the scriptures.  Today, for instance, the Gospel of Mark reminds us that the biggest danger to the church is not that things will get out of control.  It’s not that people will make unauthorized use of the name of Jesus, or lead others astray with unconventional teachings or practices.  The greater danger is that the church’s leaders will abuse their authority.

Last week we heard how Jesus had observed his disciples arguing with each other on the road about which of them was greatest.  They were getting to be full of themselves, and to rival one another for honor and respect—maybe even for power.  So Jesus reminded them that leadership is really about responsibility.  It’s about putting your personal interest in the back seat to the interest of the group, and being in service to others.  It’s about being attentive to the real needs of the people who have entrusted themselves to your care, especially the ones who are most powerless.

In this passage Jesus uses strong language, to say the least, to warn his disciples of the consequences of betraying that trust—“it would be better for you,” he says, “if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” 

This is in response to John, who told Jesus about a stranger they met who was casting out demons in his name.  The disciples wanted to shut him down, because, as John put it, “he was not following us.”  It is kind of amazing to read in the gospels how early the characteristic problems of the church began to show up.  Because here we see already, in the apostolic community, anxiety about who has rightful ownership of Jesus. 

But could there be a more generous and inclusive view of how that ownership is shared than the one that Jesus gives next?—“Whoever,” he says, “is not against us is for us.”  It is incredible to hear this and then think about all the centuries of quarrels in the church about who is entitled to speak and act in the name of Christ, and about all the leaders who have appointed themselves as guardians of the gate, telling the faithful what they must do and believe to qualify for a share of heavenly reward.  All this, when Jesus’ own standard is that giving a cup of water to drink is enough. 

Jesus has an image for this kind of jealous and controlling behavior--picture a person innocently walking along, trusting that she has found a good path to follow.  Her eyes are looking far ahead; she is happy to be walking the path and hopeful about where it will take her.  And then someone slips a block of stone or wood in front of her feet, to make her stumble and fall. 

When I think about times in my life when I’ve tripped up someone else in my community, it has usually been when I’ve been insecure about my own belonging, and have tried to jockey for a better position by putting someone else in his place.  It’s been when I’ve pulled rank, and corrected someone or talked down to him, saying, without using so many words, that my discipleship is better than his. 

Being a priest makes me particularly susceptible to this kind of error, but from what I’ve seen, lay people are not immune.  It is an occupational hazard of aspiring to leadership in religious community.

But the irony is, of course, that in putting a stumbling block in front of someone else, it is we who stumble.  And here again Jesus draws on his most colorful vocabulary, to warn his disciples that when they become jealous of others’ free access to grace, they put their own at risk.  So whatever it is about us we think gives us the right to take down a brother or sister in the community, that superior quality is really a hindrance we’d be better off without.  If I think I have a magnificent vision of the future that’s way better than yours, I’d be better off tearing out my eye and throwing it away.  If I think I’m working harder and getting more done because I’m stronger than you are, it’s time to cut off an arm.  And if I think I’m running ahead in the race to win salvation, I’d better cut off a leg.  And if you imagine that you are going to escape the purifying fire of God’s judgment, or that someone else is going to be left out of the quickening flame of the Holy Spirit, well I’ve got Good News for you.