Sermon Epiphany III 2004

The Rev. Andrew J. Walmisley

You are the poor one, you the destitute. You are
the stone that has no resting place. You are the
diseased one
whom we fear to touch.
Only the wind is yours.

You are poor like the spring rain
that gently caresses the city;
like wishes muttered in a prison cell, without a world
        to hold them;
and like the invalid, turning in his bed to ease the
        pain.
Like flowers along the tracks, shuddering
as the train roars by, and like the hand
that covers our face when we cry - that poor.

Yours is the suffering of birds on freezing nights, of dogs who go hungry for days.
Yours the long sad waiting of animals
who are locked up and forgotten.

You are the beggar who averts his face,
the homeless person who has given up asking;
you howl in the storm.

This poem of Rilke's, Du bist der Arme, du der Mittelose, played a significant role in a theological revolution that took place in my heart about 10 years ago. I would even go so far as to describe it as a kind of conversion experience. I had been deeply moved by a national Church conference I attended called "JPIC", Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation. The Presiding Bishop, Ed Browning, was a major presence at the conference, as was a broad spectrum of church social and environmental activists. The basic theme, reflected in the title of a recently published book by the Presiding Bishop was "There are no Outsiders in God's Kingdom." At last, it seemed, the Church was beginning to push the theological envelope and make some daring conclusions rooted in Paul's understanding that we are all members of one Body, all members of one another. I've long believed that every theological perspective must be taken all the way to its fullest expression, or else it has no meaning if we really believe in the totality of God's Love. If, for example, we speak of the Body of Christ, it makes no sense from the perspective of Christian revelation to limit our understanding of this Body to the Church, but to conclude with some contemporary theologians that the whole of creation is God's Body.

At JPIC a theology was presented that affirmed the unity of all creation in a single organism, drawing together in one common purpose Christians with a passion for social justice as well as those with a passion for the environment. A single justice for humankind and the voiceless ones of creation was celebrated. It was stunning for me to see so many representatives of the "Established Church" boldly confessing the death of the dualism that has infected Christianity for so many centuries. Weare all interconnected in One Body, the joy and the pain of the littlest members affecting the whole, a Christian expression of the popular "Butterfly Theory". The life of the Spirit is about unity, about sharing a common life with all creation.

Really, the core value of the entire Christian experience is compassion, the true entering into the suffering of the other. This is the essential theme of our Story: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And beingfound in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." This passage in Philippians, by the way, is regarded by many as the oldest Christian hymn of all. It speaks of the kenosis of God, God's self-emptying in Christ, the sacrificial love which is the power that draws all creation into one. It is the true nature of all things and the very essence of compassion. You are the poor one... the diseased one whom we fear to touch... wishes muttered in a prison cell.. .flowers along the tracks, shuddering as the train roars by... the hand that covers our face when we cry...the long sad waiting of animals who are locked up and forgotten. This is the God we have known in Christ and it is upon this that we are called to model our own lives.

At the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus daringly proclaims a blueprint for his ministry built entirely on this compassion. Note that he doesn't speak of moral purity, about the practice or non-practice of sex, nor about who's "in" and who's "out." How ironic, then, that the church throughout much of its history, and it seems especially in our own time, seems wholly focused on these issues to the complete disregard of the Gospel of social justice and compassion that clearly forms the heart of Christ's message! No wonder that people aren't breaking down the doors of churches to get in these days! His message scandalized the people of his own home town for whom a message of religious division and moral perfection might have been more comfortable. The challenge at the heart of Jesus' preaching, to embrace all with the compassion of God, thwarted their desire to promote self at the expense of others, to exalt religious tribalism instead of a vision of inclusive love and justice. This is a message that all who reduce Christ's message to one of division and oppression should heed, for there is absolutely no justification in his teaching for the current focus by many Christians on purity, especially in the sexual realm. It is my opinion that the whole church's obsession with sexuality or the denial of sexuality is a sign of profound alienation &om the original teachings of Jesus and is the foundation for considerable abuse and oppression.

Just listen to the words of Jesus at Nazareth in this passage clearly intended by Luke to represent the essence of his teaching: "to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives; recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Nothing here about right sexual practice; nothing about right doctrinal belief; nothing about who's included in God's reign and who isn't. On the contrary, it is all about justice and liberation, with no indication that there are conditions or exclusionary clauses. The vision is one of pure and un-conditional love and compassion, reflecting the nature of God as self-giving and absolutely inclusive. Because from the Christian perspective, true humanity is rooted in divine nature, then we are true to who we are created to be only when we live our lives in accordance with the blueprint Jesus provides here at Nazareth. This means committing ourselves to a social order profoundly different from the one in which we currently live.

"To bring good news to the poor?" Is pursuing a costly war for oil good news to the hungry and homeless of this land, let alone to the starving children of many lands? How about trips to Mars and beyond? Is that good news to seniors who barely make ends meet or to families with no health care? Christians must challenge the profound evil that infects our society or they are not living into the truth of Christ. "Release to the captives?" What should the Christian response to our corrupt criminal justice system be? To build more prisons? "Recovery of sight to the blind?" Is not lack of a education a form of blindness? What should the Christian response be to a state governor who cuts funding in education in order to reduce the cost of SUV registrations? "The year of the Lord's favor" is a reference to the Jubilee year of ancient Israel when all prisoners were freed and debts cancelled? What do Christians think about debt-relief for third world nations, perhaps in place of military spending or support for Israel? I insist that this isn't the church "meddling in politics", but rather the necessary response of people of faith to life in this world in the light of the compassion of Christ, whose holistic message embraced the lives of real people in a real world. There is no way that we can spiritualize the sermon at Nazareth to mean something other than this without absolutely gutting its clear meaning.

And so, God is the poor, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed. God is the beggar who averts his face. God howls in the storm. And you and I are fully human when we embrace God in the suffering of his creation, when we offer our own lives for one another as God in Christ offers himself. We need to sit less comfortably with the pain of this world and learn to howl in the storm.