So They May Be Responsible 7-6-14

So that They May Be Responsible       7/4/2014

God, author of freedom and peace, lead us to prioritize where we spend our time.  Show us where we fit in your holy sacredness.  Amen

          Happy Fourth of July Weekend!  The fireworks are over, but the enthusiasm lingers on as it should.  My favorite Fourth of July comes from the mid-80’s in New York City.  We gained not quite legal access to the roof of my apartment building which housed students from Union Theological Seminary and as dusk grew into full darkness, magnificent displays of fireworks could be viewed from all four directions.  I would look South and East and see some of the higher explosions from the Macy’s East River show.  Several towns in New Jersey provided displays to my west and to the north and east I could see displays in the Bronx and somewhere close to Westchester County.  Of course, eventually we got caught, but the good-natured security guards pretty much let us finish the shows before rushing us back inside and finding a better way to secure the door until next year when students would again find a way to remove the lock. 

          The Fourth of July is a uniquely United States holiday since no one else cares to celebrate our declaring of independence from Britain in 1776.  As such, it gives rise to a certain militarism that may have strayed from the meaning of the original celebration.  I suspect that, in the beginning, it was more about the birth of a new nation than the battles that would be fought in the name of Freedom throughout the decades.  In focusing on the defending of Freedom, we may have lost some of the actual excitement of 1776 when a fairly rag-tag bunch of folks stepped up and said, “we are called to be more than this and it’s time to show the world just what we are called to be”. 

          I think much of modern day Christendom may suffer from a similar lack of understanding of her true beginnings when a fairly rag-tag bunch of apostles and followers said, “that man, Jesus, he showed us how to be more than who we are now and it’s time to show the world just what and who we are called to be”.  This thought has led me to think about what it would look like if we sincerely sought to return to our roots, to re-connect to our Judeo-Christian early beliefs and to be reconciled to God through our actions in faith and through God’s amazing grace.  So, I want to introduce you to a new series of sermons that I hope will help us think about reconnecting to our earlier roots and priorities.

          Here is the truth about tradition:  even when the story that is handed down may have been proven later to be a myth, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is to look for the hidden or not so hidden truth in the story.  The stories of our ancestors held sacred truth; and, people throughout the centuries have found that truth significant enough to hold on to by the telling and retelling of the stories that make up our knowledge of earliest times.  The creation story is one such tradition.  In this story, we find God creating the world and all there is.  Days one through five are spent on creating the world and everything in it except us.  We come to Day Six—the last day of creation.  This is what God says:   “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”      In this story of ours, we must not overlook the reason we were created.  We were made in God’s image the epitome of responsibility and faithfulness so that we could be responsible for all the rest of creation.  We were created to reflect God’s nature.  And in the next breath, God blesses us and commissions us:    “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!  Be responsible!”  And at the end of Day Six, God looked over everything that was made; it was so good, so very good!  You see, God trusted us to be responsible.   So, if we take seriously our story tradition, humankind was not created last to indicate our superiority.  No, humankind was created last because of our role in the world, our role as caretakers of everything else that was made.  We might need to let that sink in.  For thousands of years, humankind has thought of themselves as loftier that all of creation when, indeed, we were created to be servants to all creation. 

          Now, if our stories represent what our ancestors thought were the most important things to be remembered, we have some work to do.  What, then, is the spiritual paradigm shift to which we are called—once we recognize our rightful place in the scheme of things? 

Let’s look at the typical schoolroom.  Let’s assume that you or I are always at the top of the class.  We make the 100’s, we score the A+’s, we get to be ‘in charge’ when the teacher leaves the room.  Let’s also assume that the teacher goes to a seminar and learns a new way to teach.  All of a sudden, he or she reverses the order in the classroom; and, suddenly, I find myself at the bottom.  It is the student who struggles the hardest just to make a C that is suddenly thrust into the limelight.  Now, I am going to be one angry student.  We were so good at staying at the top—you and I—that we have a very difficult time accepting this new world order.  Everything we’ve learned is being challenged.  The very people we used to think were below us are now in charge.  Now, let’s assume that we are particularly insightful students—that we open ourselves up to the possibilities inherent in this change, that we look for what there is to learn.  Once we lower our anger response and once we lose our sense of entitlement, the insights see easier to grasp.

          First, and foremost, we learn humility.  Life looks different from the back of the line.  And, if we are paying attention we can gain certain spiritual truths.  From my new found place in the order of the world I discover that I can see all who are ahead of me.  I see the dirt from which I both came and find my nourishment while I am here.  I see all the animals which play such vital roles in the eco-systems world-wide.  I lie under shade trees and feel myself one with the roots of that tree going deep, deep into the earth seeking nourishment from the center of the earth.  When it is dark, I can see the moon and the thousands of stars that make up the known universe.  And, when it is sunny, I can stand in the rays of the sun and find my gratefulness for the rays that keep all of this earth in varying stages of warm. 

          Thus, we learn responsibility and accountability.  I am responsible for all of creation and accountable to God for ensuring the keeping of that responsibility.  Before God closed the book on creation and rested, God put us in charge and pronounced everything to be good.  I have to suspect that somewhere along the line the energy that is God shuddered and continues to shudder at how poorly we have done.  I believe that, as much as it has been scientifically proven that human beings have, for the most part, done a truly terrible job of maintaining the “good” that God saw at the end of the sixth day.  It is only through a spiritual awakening that things will change; we must be born again. 

          Jesus says this about our relationship with the Divine.  “Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense Divine grace”.   Just as our shift to the end of the line in our imaginary classroom changed the way we saw things, and allowed the focus to shift from ourselves to God, this alteration will change the way we look at things as well.  Jesus came into a world where few were focused on God.     Our reconnection to the earth—to the earth created and given to us to guard and protect—will require us to undergo a certain rebirthing process as a world of peoples.  While we will probably continue to celebrate the birth of the United States of America, we must, at the same time, know deep in our hearts and psyches that we are not at the head of the line; we are bringing up the rear ensuring the safety of all who walk ahead of us and who will eventually come behind us.  And, in this spiritual rebirth, we find ourselves yearning to explore what it means to be a part of all there is.  In humility, we know, along with Joan Chittister that   “Real patriotism will not be reached on this planet until, for each of us, our country is the world”.  By this, she does not mean that we cannot feel a special pride on next year’s Fourth of July; she does mean, however, that “real Patriotism” requires all of us to know and celebrate our role of responsibility for the world.  And, someday, perhaps, that energy we call God will say again, “And all is good; all is very good”.  Amen, amen, and Namaste.