1 Corinthians 3:10-17 (The Message)
9-15Or, to put it another way, you are God's house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you'll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won't get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn't, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won't be torn out; you'll survive—but just barely.
16-17You realize, don't you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God's temple, you can be sure of that. God's temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
Matthew 5:43-48 (The Message)
43-47"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."
God, You continue to take us down paths of learning and growth. We thank You. Lead us in Your ways this day. Amen
In the passages from last week, this week, and next, I inadvertently stumbled into a profoundly important place in our spiritual journeys—certainly for my spiritual journey, and I believe for those of you who are open to letting God work in new and challenging ways. Last week, I talked about congruence--allowing the alignment of our inner and outer lives so that they are the same; our inner hearts speak what our outer lives show in the world. I spoke about integrity and authenticity. This week, I believe that our passages take us deeper into that conversation—into the understanding or at least a glimpse of understanding into our unity with our creator. And it is a place of great comfort, great fear, and a place that requires us to do hard work. As always, when lead in ways such as these, I argued with God. In the end, I am convinced that sharing my thoughts and struggles with these passages may have some meaning beyond the words on a page or the echoes in this room.
Interesting thing—our passages this week have often been used in negative, blaming ways—not a surprise here! The Corinthians passage has been used to proof text everything from prohibition to so-called moral decency laws and I believe that misses Paul’s point completely. Matthew’s Jesus seems to point us in a legalistic way, and we miss the call to live out our true identities.
And so, as I sometimes am, find myself with a blank slate—asking God to point me in a deeper, more meaningful direction. I have much help along the way. This week I have found myself drawn deeper and deeper into the work of Parker Palmer. His book Let Your Life Speak is a foundational work on the topic at hand which has inspired me. There are many others, but Palmer’s work is freshest in my mind. Palmer is a Quaker, one of those calm, peaceful spirits, who seems as if he has been forever comfortable in his own skin. Not so, as he courageously assures us. He begins his book with a quote from May Sarton,
Now I become myself.
It's taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces. ...
May Sarton was a giant among us—She lived into her 80’s and died in the mid-1990’s. And she calls us in this brief passage to question who we have allowed ourselves to be over years. Whose faces have we worn—whose expectations have we met rather than look to our own inner truth—our God-gift? One of the many delusions of youth is that as you age, you figure it all out—that somehow, magically, the aging process brings with it a certainty of not only who we are, but who we were and are intended, born—if you will—to be. This, my friends is false. There is nothing about aging that teaches us who we truly are—our God nature. Aging is a process that brings with it certain adaptive skills—but allowing one’s true self to become mature can happen at any age and, quite frankly, continues throughout one’s entire earthly life.
February is a celebration of African-American history. One of my heroes is Rosa Parks. Parker Palmer calls us to the why and what of Rosa’s historic actions in his exploration of this journey to our God nature. He tells the story in words similar to this:
At the moment that Rosa Parks sat down at the front of the bus, it was a moment of reclaiming who she knew herself to be—a person as worthy as any other to ride on any bus—front, back or in the middle. For all the world to see, this courageous woman showed us what it looks like when what we know about ourselves on the inside—that is our God-gift—is reflected in our outer life. Rosa Parks sat down because it became essential for her to be who she really was—not a second-class, unworthy person, but a whole, beautiful, child of God, who chose to act congruently with that truth. You may remember that last week, Sr. Thea Bowman called us to reject the enslavement of our inner selves—the enslavement that keeps us from reaching out as we really are to be who God made us to be and change the world for ourselves and for others. Rosa Parks, in that one, ultimately society-changing act, threw off the enslavement of which Sr. Thea spoke.
Palmer called this decision the decision to live an undivided life. He also asks the question “Where do people find the courage to live divided no more when they know they will be punished for it?” His answer: “these people have transformed the notion of punishment itself. They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.” Or in words slightly more resonate with some of our own experiences: “What you can do to me for being who I truly am cannot come close to what I do to myself when I am less than who and what I know myself to be.” Our gifts, whatever they may be, may bring risks with them, our essential God-ness may lead us into unpopular or mis-understood paths, but to allow fear to keep us estranged from that God-ness is a far more deadly punishment.
You may well not be called to act on a global stage like Rosa Parks—probably you are not, but this decision to live with the integrity we talked about last week—what Palmer calls the “undivided life” is part and parcel an integral piece of the scripture passage today. After Paul calls the Corinthians to use no other foundation other than Christ Jesus, he adds this: “You realize, don't you, that you are the temple of God, and God is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God's temple, you can be sure of that. God's temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.” Is not this inability, this fear of allowing God’s gifts to flourish in us—no matter our age or self- or other- imposed denial of our truest self—a vandalizing of God’s temple? This living “less than” God intended for us robs God’s temple indeed. And along comes Jesus, no less demanding: “You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." Our God-created identity defined in only one way—to live towards others the way God lives towards us.
I am hopeful that I still have your attention, because I am convinced of the great value of this call to integrity and undividedness. And I am honestly standing here before you inviting you to join me in this process. I used to think that I had to seek to find out all that God intended me to be—and I’ve spent thousands of dollars looking for just the right book guide, travelled many different spiritual paths seeking just the right feeling, and engaged in hours of talk, private and communal, trying to string together just the right phrasing of who I view myself to be. I imagine that some of you have done the same—but today we are called to a different path.
Palmer has one more important truth about Rosa Parks. He notes that the Rosa Parks story can help us to discern our own truths, but if it is to do so, we must see her as the “ordinary person” that she is. We have put her into a museum—set her apart—made her into something that we believe ourselves unable to be. He says that we set our heroes apart to protect ourselves from the truth that we all have the gift of God inside us. It is not that we shouldn’t praise her and appreciate what she has done, but we must also let her story challenge our own—shake us into our own essential moment.
May Sarton reminds us that the pilgrimage to become ourselves takes "time, many years and places." My friends, our world is calling for people who care enough to spend the time and energy to journey to our own—your own truth. We are created in the image of God—formed to be who and what God intended for us to be. Living out into that truth is the vocation and call of every one of God’s children. Today I may no little else but this I know: God, I am Your Temple! Amen and Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment