Proper 16 Year A: Waking Up as One Body
Proper 16, Year A
The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector
Those opening lines from today’s portion of Paul’s Letter to the Romans provide us with a thread that weaves its way through our readings: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect.” What does it mean “not to be conformed to this world?” How does not conforming to the world point the way to following Jesus? And what difference does not conforming to the world make in a time of racial reckoning, fear-mongering, and political animus?
In Paul’s vocabulary, the world, like the flesh, is not about denial of our physical selves. God gave us bodies and God in Godself came among us in the flesh. God declared the creation “good.” So a proper understanding of Paul’s notions of flesh and world can’t just take the easy route of a world-denying spirituality that ignores our bodiliness, or the simple truth that we live and work, laugh, cry, and die, in an undeniably embodied, physical world. Something else must be going on.
That something else is indicated by Paul’s appeal to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your spiritual worship.” The key word there is “living sacrifice.” There’s a lovely story of the theologian Gil Bailee going to see the African American theologian Howard Thurman when he was a young man with one of those of questions we all grapple with in our youth--”Why am I here?” What’s it all about?” “What should I do with my life?” “What does the world need?” Thurman’s response? “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive.” Presenting yourself as a living sacrifice, giving ourselves wholeheartedly to that which makes us come alive and that brings joy to others is what Paul is really getting at. The old forms of sacrifice--doing something because others expect us to, going through the motions, going along to get along, scapegoating others to secure an illusory peace--don’t really make us, or others, come alive.
The important thing to realize as well, is that this is not some “follow your bliss” kind of willy-nilly individualism--the individualism that looks like people refusing to wear masks for the health and well-being of the common good--because they’re a little inconvenient, a little hot in summer, because they make our glasses fog up. Presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice is premised on the recognition that we are one body. Paul writes, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” When Paul speaks of the new creation (or when the Presiding Bishop speaks of giving birth to the Beloved Community), they are speaking of a community where the individual gifts and talents of each member are honored, celebrated, and nourished, while at the same time affirming their unity of purpose: working together for that quaint old notion of what we used to call “the common good.”
What Paul calls the world, is really a world that is based on an us-them dynamic. It’s a world dominated not by living sacrifice where we give ourselves for others and find ourselves enriched in the process, but by getting rid of, expelling, the other in the blood-dimmed delusion that if we just sacrifice these others, we’ll secure the peace for which our hearts yearn. That, of course, is exactly how Pharaoh operates. He’s enslaved the Israelites and turned them into brick makers, but he’s still afraid. “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Pharaoh thinks that if he can just get rid of the Israeilites by killing their first-born sons, peace will come upon the land.
But Pharaoh’s daughter, in a truly grace-filled moment of going-against-the-grain, refuses. She doesn’t let her mind be conformed by the world of Pharaoh’s bloody, sacrificial violence. Instead, she stoops in the reeds, pulls the crying baby from water and arranges for him to be nursed. The world wants blood, but Pharaoh’s daughter gives milk. I find it interesting, too, that this ordinary, unnamed young woman was in the middle of something when she noticed the child who would become Moses. She was taking a bath. How easy it would have been for her if her mind were conformed to her needs, her wants, her desires, to miss this sacred opportunity and just go about her business. It sounds far-fetched, perhaps, but the Kitty Genovese case shows us otherwise. The habit of being conformed to the world is a powerfully addictive one.
When we come to today’s Gospel we find a similar tension between the way of the world and the way of love, between the way of conquest and bloody sacrifice of despised others and the way of forgiveness, mercy, and service. It’s easy to miss the drama of the setting--Caesarea of Philippi. Brian McClaren puts it this way:
Imagine what it would be like to enter Caesar-ville with Jesus and his team. Today, we might imagine a Jewish leader bringing his followers to Auschwitz, a Japanese leader to Hiroshima, a Native American leader to Wounded Knee, or a Palestinian leader to the wall of separation. There, in the shadow of the cliff face with its idols set into their finely carved niches, in the presence of all these terrible associations, Jesus asks his disciples a carefully crafted question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
Jesus takes the disciples to the seat of Roman Imperial power in the region and asks them that provocative question. At first he seems interested in drawing out from them how the “world” understands him. And the answers are predictable: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet. The “people” respond with what they already know, with minds conformed to the world.
“Hmm,” Jesus says, “But, who do you say I am?” In other words, “Tell me how you experience me right here and right now without recourse to what other people have told you. Drop all your previous associations and respond without recourse to your thinking!” What comes next is what’s known as the Confession of Peter and it has been used for centuries to divide Roman Catholics and Protestants under the auspices that Peter (i.e. Rome) has the keys and Protestants are on the other side of a locked door. (A funny quip from Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury in response to the question, “Where was Anglicanism before the Reformation?” to which he responded “Where was your face before you washed it?”).
Peter it seems, gets it right. Taken to the regional seat of Roman Imperial power it’s as if he says, “I get it. You are Lord, not Caesar.” But to what extent has Peter’s understanding been transformed by the renewal of his mind, and to what extent is he simply putting Jesus in the place that Caesar formerly held? I like to think that Peter actually did glimpse something of who Jesus actually was/is (let’s give the poor guy some credit), but that his understanding wasn’t complete. He still brought those old categories into his perception. After all, there are inscriptions from the 1st century that refer to Caesar as “Lord,” “Savior,” and even “Son of God.”
That’s why, just a few short verses later, Peter is rebuked by Jesus and called Satan. Jesus sees that Peter still has a military-minded notion of what the Messiah will bring. By telling Peter to “get behind him” Jesus is making the powerful point that, “Violence cannot defeat violence. Hate cannot defeat hate. Fear cannot defeat fear. Domination cannot defeat domination. God’s way is different. God must achieve victory through defeat, glory through shame, strength through weakness, leadership through servanthood, and life through death.”
Peter, to some extent, is still in the thrall of that same us-them mindset that thinks victory comes at the expense of victims. Winners and losers. It’s the Pharaoh mindset rooted and grounded in fear of the other and preservation of power and the inequitable status quo. So Jesus is reminding Peter, and us, that that is not what the Kingdom looks like. The Kingdom is where everyone, without exception, has a seat at the banquet table of divine love. The Kingdom is that deluge of mercy that washes like the oil in Aaron’s beard all over everything (carefully pressed and cleaned robes included). Mercy (like a mustard seed) doesn’t respect human erected boundaries. Mercy ignores the dictates of patriarchal power and reaches into the weeds not to drown the tiny baby, but to suckle, to nourish life, to save.
How do we come to embody and enact this mercy? By coming to know the one who is Mercy Himself. Christ. We dwell on God’s word as revealed to us in Holy Scripture. We worship in common regularly (even virtually if we have to). We participate in sacraments when their gift is made available to us. We pray regularly. We engage in acts of service to others even if that means reaching out with our hearts and not our hands at this time. And slowly, we might notice that our minds are being renewed, that our lives are being re-oriented towards something that brings us alive and that brings life to others. Paul tells us to “be transformed.” The great theologian of grace doesn’t say, “transform your mind!” This is God’s work. God’s grace is something we “undergo” as James Alison likes to say. It’s our job to be clay in the potter’s hand and allow Him to mold us into a beloved community, a community of love where the divisions, fear, violence, enmity, partisan name-calling, and blatant self interest that characterize our time are transfigured and we wake up one day realizing we are members of each other and that it has never been any other way. We wake up and say no longer “I,” but “we” and learn to bear each other’s burdens.
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