Friday, February 14, 2014

All In All - A reflection for 2-16-2014


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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