What a very, very strange week we have had. Bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, ricin
found in letters to a US Senator and the President, a huge explosion and fire
in Texas, a massive hunt for a nineteen year old that kept many of us glued to
our televisions or computers or i-phones, and we even got a piece of hate mail
here, an anonymous screed about the evils of gay clergy and the congregations
who they “manipulate,” mailed from Nashville, Tennessee.
As the week went on, I was so grateful of the coincidence
that we were having baptisms today.
There is nothing like baptisms to get us re-grounded, re-focused, facing
our fears but handing them over to the God from whom we can never be separated. Whatever is wrong with the world, and this
week it seemed like the answer was almost overwhelmingly, “a lot, too much.” What we celebrate here today is the answer. If
the world is sometimes a nightmare, here is where we renew the vision.
Before the craziness of this week, I actually was beginning
to think along these lines because of a news story I came across Monday
morning. Some of you may know the name
of Melissa Harris-Perry, a weekend commentator on MSNBC. MSNBC for quite some time now has been
showing promos featuring its various hosts and commentators giving us a few
sound bites on the theme “Lean Forward.”
It was Melissa Harris-Perry’s turn last week, and she chose
to talk about education and the raising of children in America. Here’s the line that seems to have set off
the controversy:
We need to break through the private idea that kids
belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that
kids belong to whole communities.
The howling about this statement over the weekend was
fierce. Her statement was generally
interpreted to mean that children should belong to the state and not to their
parents and that this dangerous idea that children belong to the community is
the height of Socialist/Marxist/Communist ideology.
Admittedly, “belongs” is a strong word and most parents would
chafe to be told that their child does not belong to them. But she did not say that she thought that
children belong to “the state,” but “to whole communities,” two very different
things. I do not know if such an ideal
is socialist or Marxist or communist.
But I do believe that it is both biblical and Christian.
Sarah Palin tweeted that Harris-Perry’s comments were
“unflippingbelievable.” What is
unflippingbelievable to me is that a Christian person like Governor Palin would
not know that Christianity has been teaching this from practically the time
Jesus first opened his mouth, and he was only emphasizing what his Jewish
tradition had taught him and that teaching had come straight out of the
Scriptures. But I suspect she would call
my understanding of the Bible “unflippingbelievable” also.
I do not believe in any way, shape or form that the Bible
is anti-parent. “Honor your father and
your mother” is, after all, one of the Ten Commandments. But the Bible also clearly teaches several
things that build on each other:
·
First: Everything we have is an absolute gift,
including all our relationships. Nothing belongs to us. “Possession” is not a word that should exist
in at least the Jewish or Christian vocabulary.
That alone says that Harris-Perry is right. Children do not belong to us
any more than anything else does.
·
Second: We are not possessors of things and
relationships we are stewards.
Stewardship is our way of life, not possessiveness.
·
Third: Stewardship is not something we ever do
alone. We are stewards together. Why? Because every decision I make about my
relationship to anything or anyone is part of a web. It not only affects the object of my
decision, but reverberates beyond it.
The Bible is not big on our notion of “privacy,” especially as an
ultimate value. We are, ultimately all
responsible to each other for everything.
· Fourth: Jesus very
clearly understands these values that are rooted deep in the Hebrew Scriptures
and has a notion of “family” that is just about as expansive as it can be. He asks
“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” and pointing to his disciples he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50).
“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” and pointing to his disciples he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50).
·
Fifth: The followers of Jesus carried this way of
life forward. There is a glimpse of that
in the Acts reading this morning. This
is not a traditional family as we think of it that Peter stumbles upon. It is a community of disciples. That is the biblical “familyunit.”
· Sixth: Baptism
has been understood from the very beginning to be the continual creation of a
new family of disciples, brothers and sisters who live in equality and mutual
responsibility.
This
understanding of Baptism is still in the rite we are about to go through even
if we choose not to pay attention. The
very fact of having sponsors and godparents is a very clear sign that
responsibility for this child belongs to a wider circle than just its
parents. And we are not being the least
bit sentimental when we ask the question, “Will you who witness these vows do
all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?” The spiritual upbringing of the children we
are about to baptize is not the sole responsibility of their parents and
grandparents, aunts and uncles. It is
not even primarily theirs. It is
primarily ours. Why? Because we are
taking responsibility for them here. We are making them members of our
family. For Christian people, water is thicker than blood.
And
so, traditionally, we do not use last or family names when we baptize. I like to tell people in preparing for baptism
that there are no last names in heaven, in the kingdom of God. And so do we say when we respond to their
baptism and chrismation by saying “we receive you into the household of
God.” “Household” is a much more
important word in the New Testament than family, especially as we tend to
define family.
There
is one Table in this house, and one Family that is fed around it, a community
of disciples, brothers and sisters who live together in mutual service and
responsibility.
What
does this have to do with this crazy week?
First of all, when tragedy strikes we often get a glimpse of this desire
of God for one family, one beloved community, because suddenly who you “belong”
to is no longer important. We call
people “heroes” in these situations when they forget about themselves and serve
others, often at great cost, sometimes even of their lives. But in the eyes of God they are not heroes,
they are being that “kingdom of priests” that is God’s vision for all of us. They are acting out what is God’s dream for
everyday living.
Second
of all, it is only this expansive notion of community that can save us. Often we say that it is only love that can
save us, and that is right, but community is love in action. Community is love taken out of the realm of
theory and sentimentality and exclusive notions of who “belongs” to whom, and made
real in the relationships of women and men, all human persons with each other
and with the creation. Love in practice
means we all belong to each other and live in a world where the nightmare turns
into the vision only when we live in mutual responsibility.
Oddly
enough, that is the primary message of that strangest and perhaps scariest of
the books of the Bible, the Revelation to John.
Evil is what divides and controls and enslaves, and it is only overcome
by the action of one who takes responsibility for the whole world, the one John
repeatedly calls “the Lamb who was slain.”
And this Lamb who was slain is also the Good Shepherd who gathers a community
together, a new family,
…a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages…
This image is such an
important part of John’s vision that it is repeated six times in the book. It is what turns the nightmare into a vision,
a dream, of a new heaven and a new earth where weeks like we have had do not
happen.
Why is it so hard for us to get that we are all in this
together, all of it, all the time. If we
truly believe that nothing can separate us from the love of God, than we must also
truly believe that nothing can separate us from one another. Perhaps we ought to say after we baptize
someone what we say after we marry them:
“What God has joined together let no one put asunder.”
In the midst of the nightmare that was this past week, it
was also the 50th anniversary
of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King got it, and I’ll let him have the
last word.
I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all
communities and states….Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all
indirectly.
No comments:
Post a Comment