Some weeks as I look at the Scripture readings to prepare a sermon for Sunday, I shake my head and wonder what can I say out of all this. In those cases, I sometimes resort to preaching on the Collect, the prayer for the day. But that is not the case this Sunday.
From Micah, “O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to live kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” From Paul, in today’s Epistle: “the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” And the Gospel presents Jesus’ Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
The combined effect of these readings makes it clear that what God seeks of us is justice-making, humility, kindness, mercy, simplicity, purity, a spirit of reconciliation and a willingness to bear the Cross. They are perhaps summed up in Paul’s description of Love, agape, attempting to live in our own lives, God’s self-giving love in Jesus Christ.
This description of the Christian life is in stark contrast to many of the words and actions of many world leaders today, most famously now, the new President of the United States. There the talk is of economic and political grandeur, increasing military might, building walls of exclusion, advocating torture, no mercy for the oppressed, cultural and racial supremacy, institutionalizing greed – in short, hatred and demonization of the Other, put forward as a path to love and peace. In the Christian vocabulary, there is only one word for that approach: sin.
As Canadian Christians, we can well demand of all our leaders, from the national to the provincial to the local level: “do justice and live kindness and walk humbly” even if you do not believe in God. These are universal values of goodness shared by all religions and ideologies that value human life and community.
Power, including political power, can be addictive. As power-crazed leaders gain power, they want more power, and take away power from others – often from those who don’t have much power to start with: the poor, the refugee, the homeless, the First Nations person, the person on a fixed income, the unemployed, women and other threatening minorities. Or they promise power to some and take it away from others. This power-mongering can hypnotize and lead to mass violence, often against the other, the stranger. The other, the stranger, becomes the scapegoat.
The message of the Cross is different. God becomes a broken human being on the Cross, powerless; God takes on humility and weakness, so that the powerless, the broken, the humble, the Other, may be empowered. It is foolishness to those who think power and wealth are the highest good. The Latin American Liberation theologians a couple decades ago had a name for this divine action: God’s “preferential option for the poor” – and we might extend it to all who are weak and vulnerable.
Last week, I mentioned the request from the Church of the Transfiguration, St. Catharines, to take on responsibility for a Karen refugee family from Burma-Myanmar that they have been looking after and who will be moving on March 1st to Hamilton. I am pleased to report that enough people in the parish have expressed an interest in offering this support that I have sent back a “Yes” to St. Catharines. The family, a married couple and four children, will sometimes be worshipping with us. Let us welcome them, as a part of our doing justice, being kind, and looking out for the foreigner and stranger. This afternoon I’ll be at All Saints and will also invite them to become involved.
Working together, using all our different experiences and backgrounds, even our experiences of weakness and vulnerability, it should not be that difficult to take on such a task.
The South Pacific is full of many religious movements, some of them very strange. One I came across, some years ago, was called the Personal Viability movement. It advocated dividing people into the two categories of “viable” and “unviable”. When you joined the movement, you took a test that told you your level of “personal viability”. If your score was too low, you were declared “personally unviable” and encouraged to join the movement to make yourself “viable”.
While some churches encouraged the movement, I found the ideology deeply flawed. In the Cross of Christ, all are viable, even the weak and vulnerable, and we do not rank. People are not development projects, ranked for their viability. We all have areas of vulnerability, we all have areas of strength. Through mutual support and living the virtues of today’s lessons, we can all grow from weakness to strength, strength in the Christian life, holistically understood.
The powerful, addicted to power and seeking more power, turn the despised Other into objects, no longer human beings. The great Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, contrasted the I-it and the I-thou relationships. The I-it relationship is the human relationship with an object, a shoe perhaps, or a stone. Mutuality is impossible because the Other is not a human being, rather an object. But in the I-thou relationship, one speaks to the heart of the Other, another person, and the other responds with a mutual “thou”. The I-thou relationship is a reflection of our relationship with God, a “thou” who responds to our “thou” with the divine “thou” of love. Sin is treating another person as an “it”, only a object. Often the key is when we cannot name the other and can only say “they” and “them”: “’they’ are taking all our jobs away”, ‘they’ are causing all the crime”, “’they’ shouldn’t come here”, “I don’t trust them”.
Seeking justice and kindness and living with humility, requires us to approach the Other as a “thou”, as another human being like ourselves, open to and wanting friendship and mutuality. Where cultural or language barriers are great, it may be something as simple as making sure in an apartment that the elevator door does not shut before a large family arrives, or simply smiling to show acceptance. And to watch our talk – when it is a hostile “they”, “they”, “them”, “them”, we need to stop ourselves and re-assess our attitudes.
Likewise, when we meet strangers or even talk with one another, we are to give each other our full attention, eyes not drifting off to some more attractive person or old friend we might want to meet. Real engagement and presence are the foundations of seeking justice, loving kindness and living with humility.
So, let us take these lessons to heart. Though we may have fears, let us also have confidence. In the end, righteousness, kindness, humility, the weakness of the Cross, the Beatitudes will triumph because Love is eternal. Let us pray more and more to be agents of that Love, speaking and acting against the powerful injustices of this world. May God bless and strengthen us in this task. Amen.
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