Rosedale United Church

‘Exalted Lowliness‘ February 13, 2011
Rosedale United Church
(Deuteronomy 30:15-20 , Matthew 5:21-37)                    Doug Norris

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Well, there was trouble in paradise this week.  I’m not taking about Egypt, though we’ll get around to that.  There was a dust-up at the local Starbucks.  I wasn’t there, but I heard about it.

One of the regulars came in and his customary table had been reserved by a group to hold a small meeting.  He kept trying to sit in his usual spot, and they kept telling him to move, and soon he stood and told them to….  he used some Very Bad Words.  So then they used some Very Bad Words right back at him, and then some of the other regulars who I guess thought he was being treated badly stood up and they used some Very Bad Words, and it must have sounded like Trailer Park Boys with none of the very bad words being beeped out.  I’m sure there was wild gesturing, and I expect some lattes got spilled.    I’m very glad I wasn’t there.

Angry people with a lot of caffeine in them.  This must have been hugely embarrassing.

There is, I believe, a stunningly thin layer, a veneer of civil behaviour, over top of a deep layer of anger, among many of us right now.   You just see this anger, this incivility, all over the place.  I feel it in myself.   And in most places this anger, unleashed, does not amount to much more than embarrassing outbursts of Very Bad Words, flipping the finger, horn honking, but sometimes there is a gun or a knife or a snowplow nearby and it goes deadly.

And among all of the things it is important for us to be doing, to be responsible adults in a world needing care – surely one of them must be understanding the anger that is in us, and redeeming it.   Trading it for something better, something life-giving.  Or, at least, choosing, with intention, which way we will live.

‘He has placed before you fire and water – stretch forth your hand for whichever you choose’.    It’s the way of it – our paths and our character are not pre-determined – stretch forth your hand – fire and water – you get to choose…

For some folks anger is a tool they have chosen – they find they get by better in the world living that way, anger gives them an edge, makes them competitive, even feared.    ‘Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, snarl and you get better service…‘    Others may feel this layer of anger that is in us, but understand that it is corrosive, and want to grow out of it, to evolve into peaceful beings.  So there is always a choosing.  Stretch forth your hand – fire and water…

A native story – an elder speaking to a child.  ‘There are two wolves at war within you – one wolf represents geed, anger, fear and envy, arrogance – the other wolf represents peacefulness and generosity, care and compassion – these two creatures are wrestling inside you, right now’.   The child asks – Which one will win?     He replies,  ‘The one you decide to feed.’

Jesus, in his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, had some very clear comments on this.  It is in the section in chapter five where he seems to be presenting a new and higher form of righteousness.   He is portrayed in the setting as a new version of Moses, giving a new law on the mountain, as Moses brought the commandments on Mount Sinai, but now Jesus is going further, he is calling for something more.

This series of ethical teachings, on murder, adultery, divorce, and the swearing of oaths, takes this form :  You have heard it said….’X’, but I say to you… ‘Y’.

One of the risks in this story is that Christians have loved to use this story as a form of supercession – that it, that Jesus supercedes the Jewish law, rides over it, makes a new thing – so this has been a favourite anti-Jewish text.

What is likely going on – because Jesus was of course thoroughly Jewish and had no intention of starting a new religion – that was Paul and it came later – what was going on in this was Jesus not riding over the traditions, but driving deeper into them.  From behaviour to character.

Now it is not enough to refrain from adulterous activity, the command is to not have lust in our hearts.  And it is not enough to refrain from actually murdering people, the command is to not have anger in our hearts…

And to not have anger in our hearts means trying to understand why we are angry, and to understand our anger is, I believe, to understand our fears.  And to understand our fears, we will need to deeply know the other people around us – because I do believe that our fears, and so our angers, are almost always driven by not really knowing the other, the neighbour, the stranger, and so wondering if they are maybe a threat, or if they are after the things we think are ours – our place at the table…

Here’e what I find Jesus saying :

If you are on your way to church and you have your offering in your pocket and you are humming the tune of a hymn, and on your way in you remember that you are in a broken relationship with someone – then stop, and go find your brother or sister and be reconciled.  Then carry on with your religious practices…

His response to the prospect of anger is to seek out reconciliation.

Here’s the problem.  This is hard work.  It is hard work in that we don’t easily swallow our pride, and it is just plain old hard work to be in the business of really listening to people, especially people you have already decided you don’t like.

G K Chesterton said a very observant thing, many years ago – he said : “It is not that Christianity has been tried and has failed.  It is that Christianity is hard, and so it has rarely been tried..

It could be that the core character of the teachings of Jesus is hard work.  And I know this is bad news – we have lots of hard work already – we don’t come here for more.

We have tried very hard, over the years, to soften this, to domesticate the message, to declaw the teachings of Jesus so they can roam the house and not scratch the furniture or frighten the visitors.  We have honed our skills for beauty, and even for entertainment.  But we’ll keep getting pushed back to it.

Here’s the quandary – in the shape of two other messages from the gospel :

From Matthew 11  :  ‘Come unto me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens.  Come unto me and I will give you rest.  For my way is easy and my burden is light…’

From  Matthew 10 :  ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth – I did not come to bring peace, but a sword…’

Anyone else confused yet?   As with every text ever written, context is everything – so we can understand that while at one ,moment Jesus is confronting a wounded and broken people living under the heel of a brutal empire, and so he can offer peace, and be tender, at another moment he is instructing his apostles that they are about to go out into a world that will be hostile and they need to go tough and clear and unambiguous about the challenges they will face.

Beauty, and peace, rest for the soul, and deep, hard work.

So – I see two imperatives.  For the time ahead.

Dive into the goodness.  Love the beauty, the delight, love the peace and the rest for the soul that come with the companionship of Jesus and his people.

And  then when it gets hard, when there is deep work to do, don’t look away.  What is needed in the world are people who don’t look away.

In the beautiful song the choir sang a while ago, we head the invitation Jesus called out to the disciples before they even knew they were disciples – and we hear it now as a metaphor, though they heard it as advice for unsuccessful fishermen :  Go to deep waters- cast your nets out there, where it is riskier.  Go out to deep waters, where only faith will let you go…

I’ve asked the choir to sing that again for us, now, and want to make an invitation to prayer – or reflection, or whatever you need at this moment.

Deep waters are the hard places, the ones we’d rather avoid – these are the broken relationships we want to mend and can’t find the way – these are the people we know who are hurting and it scares us to really understand how they are doing because it brings us close to our own fears.  Deep waters are the places in the world so stunningly broken that we can barely think about them because it touches in us the place where we wonder how we would ever live – in Gaza, in Cairo, in Regent Park…

So let’s hear this prayer of Jesus, that we might be able to do the hard thing which is the beautiful thing.  Go out to deep waters…