A
Sermon for VI Epiphany All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC
February 16, 2014 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
“All
in All”
The
writer of the Book of Ecclesiasticus is the grandson of Jesus ben
Sirach, an early 2nd
Century BC Rabbi who lived in Jerusalem. The grandson collected and
passed on the poems, maxims, counsels, and prayers of his
grandfather. The collection was probably written and published on the
commemoration of the Rabbi’s death, and the book was revered by
Jews and Christians alike. In today’s passage, he says: “God has
placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever
you chose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one
chooses will be given.”
Do
you ever wonder what your relatives will say about you after you’re
gone? “S/He seemed like a good person, s/he kept the commandments,
avoided breaking the law and never intentionally hurt anyone.” I
hear that phrases like that a lot after someone has died. Is the
purpose of life to avoid doing bad things and not hurt anyone? Or, is
the purpose of life is to fully live and give and receive love? I
would like to hear the lines from Hamlet about his father: “He was
a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like
again.”
“To
take someone all in all” - to see in them the good and bad and yet
to love them. Does anyone here know the difference between approval
and love? We just celebrated Valentine’s Day and, as part of my job
in preparing for the sermon (plus, also since I know what is good for
me in my marriage) I went to the store to look at Valentine cards,
and almost all of them were based on the concept of approval. They
gave reasons why the recipient might be loved, listing all the good
things about them. As Charlie Brown from Peanuts
can tell you, Valentine’s Day is an exercise in building or
destroying self-esteem, where people are given the message that they
are worthy of receiving love. How do we get idea that love is a
commodity to be earned and withheld?
We
start off life being loved, but as time goes by, we begin to learn
that the continuation of love is based on approval. We are so afraid
of losing love that we begin to mold our behavior based on the
expectations of the family and community in which we live. We learn
manners about eating, about dealing with waste, about touching, about
what is expected in production, and in what rules must be followed.
There’s nothing wrong with learning all these things. It is part of
being civilized. The problem is that we also learn shame. As Mark
Twain remarked, “Humans are the only animals that blush - or need
to.” So in order to avoid blushing, we learn how to stuff down
unacceptable thoughts and feelings before they come to the surface.
In
order to hide our connections to the rest of the animal kingdom, we
learn how to present a mask to the rest of the world. In ancient
Greek Theater, characters wore masks and those masks reflected the
character’s persona. A persona is the mask each of us shows on this
stage of life. The problem is that our unacceptable thoughts and
feelings don’t go away - they are always just under the surface.
The stronger the feeling, the deeper we push them, hoping they never
come up and blemish our mask.
Often what we tend to do then is take
all of these repressed thoughts and feelings and project them on to
another person or scapegoat them by piling all of our repression on
them. When we project, we say things like: “Oh I can’t stand that
(fill in the blank – white, black, gay, straight, fat, talky,
quiet, loud, dirty, depressed, angry, sex-obsessed, self-centered,
selfish, etc. etc.) kind of person or when they do that (fill in the
blank) kind of person!” Usually projection tells more about the
projector than it does about the person on whom the projection is
placed. Usually when a country wants to go to war, we tend to project
all sorts of things on the potential enemy because it is always
easier to kill an object than to kill a person.
In
today’s lesson, as we continue the Sermon on the Mount from
Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about how we live fully in this
life in the Kingdom of the Heavens, right here and right now. Part of
his message is the difference between approval and love. Jesus takes
the commandments and pushes them to the pre-conscious level. Fine -
you did not murder a person, but did you ever discount a person or
call them a “fool”? Did you see or think of another person (or
even yourself) as an object to be discarded instead of a beloved
fellow image of God to be honored? If the answer is “yes”, then
you are guilty of murder. When I was reading this lesson, I thought
of all the times I turned people into objects and said “Strike
one!”
Congratulations - you never slept with someone other than
your spouse, but did you desire to have another person? Did you see
or think of another person as an object to be possessed instead of a
beloved fellow image of God to be honored? If the answer is “Yes”
then you are guilty of adultery. “Strike two!” Does this mean
that if you think it you should do it? No, the Desert Fathers used
to tell their novices. “You can't keep the birds from flying over
your head but you can keep them from nesting in your beard.”
So
the choices that we have seen so far in dealing with unacceptable
thoughts and feeling are (a) to repress them and keep them from
coming to consciousness, which takes away valuable energy and makes
you a stranger to yourself, or (b) project them on to someone else,
which takes away valuable energy and time and makes you a stranger to
the other person. There is a third option - to claim that repressed
part of the one and to withdraw projections from the other. Jesus
does this by asking people to go into their hearts and claim their
own brokenness. Claim it- own it- take responsibility for it –
don’t beat yourself up and set free your energy to accept and give
love.
One
of the reasons I am looking at dreams is that, when we are asleep,
the engines of repression are put to sleep and we are able to go
deeper to find the depths where hide our own shadows. As we look at
our dreams, we have the opportunity to face our projections. When we
look at our dreams in the light of day, then we are able to accept
ourselves, the fullness of who we are, instead of the tyranny of the
one-dimensional persona. We are indeed deeply flawed, but we are
deeply loved in spite of our flaws. When we admit who we are, then
and only then, can we really ask help from a power greater than we
are. Until we do that, we try to hide and do it all by ourselves, and
that takes so much joy out of living. The ministry of Jesus is to
show us that nothing ever separates us from the love of God. There is
nothing we can do, or say, or think, or feel that cannot be forgiven.
God knows exactly who we are and what is inside us and still loves us
and calls us to call upon him to grow into the fullness of life with
neighbor, self, and God.
The
theme of Valentine’s Day is “I love you because you have done
these things to earn my love.” The theme of Jesus and his ministry
is “God loves you, and now accept that love so you might be free to
love others and yourself.” Jesus said that he came to fulfill the
commandments, which means that we are not to see the commandments as
a list of things we are forbidden to do or a list by which to judge
others, but as a guide for searching our souls so that we might
present ourselves to be healed by the one who loves us so much. The
Psalmist tells us that “We are all fearfully and wonderfully made”,
and each of us contains shadows but, at the end of our lives on this
earth, may others pray for us “They are God’s children; take them
for all in all.”
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