Sermons

Aug 14 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

This last week we witnessed the successful journey of the Discovery space shuttle, and, as I often do, I imagined myself on board. Don’t you wonder what it is like to temporarily leave this world? One day you’re running around doing errands, meeting deadlines, fixing problems, very focused on the little details that seem so important around here. The next day you’re flying up out of our atmosphere, becoming weightless, seeing the earth at a distance, peering out into the darkness of space.

Your perspective, blown wide open, must make you marvel at how limited our view of life is all the time. Like rats in a little maze, we scurry around, eyes on the ground, thinking we know what life is all about, so concerned about what we think is urgent, and all the while we are surrounded by such mysteries as infinite space, gigantic burning balls of gas floating in emptiness, the invisible pull of gravity. It’s like that wonderful scene in the old movie Contact where the astronaut flies into outer space and sees swirling galaxies of unimaginable color and form, and the only response she can utter is I had no idea! I had no idea!

Well, we really do have no idea. Fully occupied by such a tiny fraction of it all, we are blind to the big picture. But that’s one of the reasons why we come to worship, isn’t it? To glimpse the big picture once more. That’s why we pray, especially when we pray in silence, in stillness. That’s why we go out into the desert, and why I’ll be on a lake gazing out at the water for the next few weeks.

Occasionally scripture blows our perspective wide open. And when it does, it has the effect of dismantling many of our little conceptions about God and life. This is difficult for some to deal with, and so they set about reconstructing their neat little world again and again, insisting that it can’t be as wide open, as mysterious, as unknowable as it sometimes seems.

Isaiah had this effect on Israel. This prophet lived in a time when many Jews believed that they were the Chosen Ones, even that only those few within Israel who were scrupulous about keeping the law were acceptable to God. Then in a blinding moment of grandeur, Isaiah ripped open the sky, daring to speak for God: Thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs, even to the foreigners – the Gentiles- who choose what pleases me, I will give a name better than sons and daughters, I will bring them to my holy mountain and make them joyful, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

How they must have torn their clothing and pulled their beards when they heard this. Impossible! Why, if we dismantle our world, all hell will break loose. (In fact, all heaven is what breaks loose.) Then this moment of impossible generosity faded into the background as the religious technicians reassembled their neat little perspective. Back to business as usual.

Then the apostle Paul came along, singing the same tune as Isaiah. To traditionalists like Peter and Jesus’ brother James back in Jerusalem, he pulled away the veil and said our Jesus has blown open the whole system of law, clean and unclean, chosen and unchosen. I am a Jewish apostle to the Gentiles. We’re all one in Christ!

It didn’t take long for the church to reconstruct a tight little building around that one: Why, if we’re all one in Christ, then everyone must believe in Jesus in order to be part of this oneness. Briefly, the curtain was drawn back, and those who had eyes to see it said I had no idea! But then it was back to business as usual.

Even Jesus had to have his blinders removed. We forget that he really was human, and not just a divine visitor disguised as a man. In his humanity, he was walking with his friends through Tyre and Sidon, among the Gentiles in the cosmopolitan coast on the Mediterranean. Aware of their Jewishness, aware of those around them who were different - Romans and Syrians and God-knows-who-all - Jesus and his little chosen band were approached by an unclean, Gentile Canaanite woman whose daughter was tormented by a demon. She shouted Son of David, have mercy. Heal my child.

The disciples urged Jesus to send her away, naturally. She wasn’t part of the plan. As Jesus so bluntly put it to her, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. Makes sense, doesn’t it? It was Israel, not others, that God called into a special covenant; they are the light of the world, the chosen ones; redeem Israel and all will be well.

But the woman was persistent. She ripped open the sky. Cast away your blinders, Jesus. I’m a child of God. We all are. I’m not a dog. But even if I were, God would certainly allow me some crumbs from the table of the chosen people.

In that moment Jesus transcended his own little perspective. In a blinding flash, like the Christian persecutor Paul who was knocked off his horse, he glimpsed the impossible grandeur of God. I had no idea. All exclusions and limitations were swept away by a flood of divine love. Isaiah came back into view: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. Jesus was connected with the divine energy that is always waiting to be tapped, and instantly, at a distance, the daughter of the Gentile woman was healed.

Prior to this event, Jesus had sent out his disciples to teach in the towns, and carefully instructed them to Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But after this event, none of that mattered any more. It is no coincidence that the Pharisees and the Sadducees began from this point on to question Jesus sharply about the law and his orthodoxy, even plotting to kill him. Jesus had blown apart their little religious construction, and they busied themselves by trying to put it back together again.

Today we live in a special time in history. All our little constructions are falling apart, and a grand new vision is trying to open itself up before us. Cultures and value systems and lifestyles and beliefs are all out in the open, crashing into one another. Ultra-conservative, anti-modernist Muslims talk on satellite cell phones. Latin American peasants, having to leave family plots and subsistence farming, go to work for wages for a NAFTA or CAFTA corporation. African Anglicans, some of them polygamists, are suddenly very concerned about certain kinds of committed, loving relationships half a world away. New family configurations spill out for everyone to deal with: adoptions by two mothers or two fathers, in vitro fertilizations, step-brothers and half-sisters, civil partnerships, commuter marriages. New immigrants from all over fill our cities, and we are truly becoming a nation of many colors. And religion? Anything is possible, everything is available. As we live in closer proximity to one another, everybody’s world-view is being challenged by everyone else.

It is tempting to respond to this break-up of our carefully constructed world by doing what the Jews and the Christians and the Pharisees did before us, and which even Jesus was tempted to do. All hell is breaking loose, and we know how things are supposed to be. Let’s get back to what we know. Let’s enforce our laws, our values, and put our little house back in order. But it won’t be put back together the way it was before. The world evolves forward, not backward.

Our world-view, like that of Jesus and that of Paul, must evolve. We are long past the day when we can confidently say that there is one legitimate religion, one truly moral form of committed relationship, one economic or political system that fits all, one culture that is superior to others. In our time in history, the world is very closely interconnected. And so unlike any time before, we have much more experience with those who are different. And that experience tells us that the other is not wrong, not evil, not inferior, just because they don’t fit our construction of how things are supposed to be.

In our time in history, we needn’t see the break-up of traditional forms as chaos. We can see it as a movement of the Spirit, where in this complex modern world God is making our differences visible to all, and then weaving them together into one beautiful and integrated whole. If our eyes are open, we will see what God is trying to show us in this unique time of human history: that we’re all children of the Holy One; we’re all filled with divine light, whether we recognize it or not; we’re all living together in a magical universe, all essential parts of one vast organism we call life.

God invites you into that house of prayer that is always open to all. God invites you to remember that in Christ there is no slave or free, no Jew or Gentile, no male or female. God invites you to take the children’s food and joyfully throw it to the dogs. A new, yet very ancient, vision is opening up in our day. Viewing it, we are connected with the divine energy that is waiting to be tapped, and we are instantly healed. Humbled, we stand before the beautiful face of God and say I had no idea!