Tag Archives: christian ethics

General Seminary Commencement 2016: A love that binds friend and stranger

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Matthew 28:16-20


Jesus said to them… “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”

To the end. From the beginning.  The alpha and the omega. Christ within us all, stirring and working within us to answer a call to be part of the community life within this place, and for those of us about to graduate, to go forth into the world having fulfilled this seminarian-shaped piece of that call.

My story is full of Christ beside me in so many wild and crazy and beautiful new ways in my time here. The comfort of the daily rhythm of chapel life, and the occasional whimsy of pranks. Fellowship with friends over wine around all sorts of tables. In the ringing of the bell in the tower. The people I started loving the moment I first heard them speak, and the people I have loved who I didn’t even think I’d like.

But I don’t think anyone here needs to hear a sermon about the radiance of our King of Glory in the beauty of springtime flowers blooming, rainbows cutting across the sky, children laughing and loving someone so deeply that your heart swells so big that it reaches your toes. Christ in the hearts of all who love us.

That’s Glory of God 101.

I’ve seen enough Grace made manifest in enough people here to say with confidence we’ve got it covered that Christ is with us in rainbows and butterflies.

Christ is with us always.

Always means not just when we feel Him in the sunshine or when we see Him in our favorite people or when we’re doing something that makes us feel really proud of ourselves and that we’re sure Jesus is going to want to hang up on His heavenly refrigerator when we present it to Him next time we go to pray.

Always means that Christ is within us through all of our least favorite parts of our stories: the parts when we screw it all up. When we say nasty things about what someone wore or how colossally they stuck their foot in their mouth or how they failed at something daring they set out to achieve. Christ is with us when we fail to disagree in a way that honors our baptismal covenant.  Christ is with us when we avoid the light of a truth because we’re too afraid of what it means. We can close our eyes and cover our ears and turn our backs and stomp our feet, but resistance to this truth is futile.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier to take comfort in the fact that Christ loves us so unconditionally that He is always there to help us avoid making that particular mistake again, if we let Him in? If we let each other in?

Christ is with us always.

Each September, as part of the ritual that ties all our stories together, each new class prepares to sign the book chronicling nearly 200 years of matriculates, Each September at matriculation we join together in singing St Patrick’s Breastplate:

Christ be with me. Christ within me
Christ behind me, Christ before me
Christ beside me, Christ to win me
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Restore. Restoration from any breaking down. For all the love I’ve learned so far, my story includes walls tumbling down, too. All of our stories have these ups and downs.

But Christ has the power to restore us from any deaths in our spirit that might interfere with our ability to experience the Gospel of Life, if we’re willing to take the time and do the work and name whatever the problem is – rather than pretend it simply isn’t there.

What does acknowledging Christ in times of danger even look like?

This past January, I had the privilege of going to South Africa on the General Seminary pilgrimage – something I highly recommend to every single person in this room – and as part of this wild ride, my fellow adventurers and I had the honor of dining with Fr. Michael Lapsley, who graced our campus with his presence two weeks.  Lapsley was one of many people whose stories and perspective helped enrich our class’s understanding of South Africa’s long journey of ending apartheid and continuing journey of restoration. One of the great many things Lapsley has done with his life is to found something called the Institute for the Healing of Memories. He believes that the entire human race has been traumatized by what we’ve done, what was done to, and what we failed to do. He believes the key to moving past this trauma is to have our stories acknowledged, reverenced, recognized, and given a moral context. Through his institute, Lapsley seeks to create a space that is secure for people to bare their wounds and move from victim to survivor to victor through being courageous and vulnerable enough to speak their truth.

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Christ is with us always.

To fully acknowledge the Christ within us, we all must be courageous, too, when we go out through those gates and into the city. But having courage like Christ means we need to be brave enough to be truly vulnerable.  If we want to go out there and inspire the world with a love like Christ, then we need to follow the model of our God – who so yearned to be in deeper relationship with us that our God led by the example of stepping out of a heavenly, glorious, comfort zone and taking on an infinitely more vulnerable way of being – frail, fragile, human flesh. Christ before us. The word made flesh, tabernacling among us.

The love doesn’t stop there. Obviously.

In case taking on frail human flesh for us wasn’t enough of a vulnerability, Christ died naked, nailed to a cross in the crucifixion and that violent, vulnerable, Good Friday nightmare – was the death that preceded the resurrection. Think about that. There’s no big, beautiful resurrection without the crucifixion. That is mind-blowingly miraculous vulnerability! That’s God’s love for us. That’s Christ.

And Christ is with us always.  

We are never going to get it all right, out there or in here. But if we spend our whole lives hiding from the truth of the errors we make or too afraid to speak a truth that goes against popular opinion because we’re afraid, then we’re living in the kind of fear that perfect love like God’s casts out.

And even if we’re cowering, there’s no sure way of avoiding having the crowds of the passion play yell “crucify him!”  or “crucify her!” at any of us.

And for all the pain involved in standing in front of the angry mob…
It’s that COURAGE!
It’s that VULNERABILITY!
It’s that TRUTH!
That gets us to resurrection and new life!

We wouldn’t have a resurrection without a crucifixion.

Christ loves us with a love unafraid to be truly, deeply vulnerable because He knows that’s the path to new life.

How do we experience rising again if we don’t fall down?

In the words, of St Patrick’s Breastplate, here is my prayer for us all:
Christ be with us, when we go out of these gates into the city.
Christ within us, help us love more deeply
Christ behind us, call us out of our comfort zone.
Christ before us, continue to inspire us with your example of deep, vulnerable, love
Christ beside us, help us help each other rise back up when we dare greatly enough to fall.
Christ to win us over to a better way of life.
Christ to comfort and restore us. Always.
Christ is with us, always.

We have already bound this love unto ourselves. Let us dare to live it.

On the usefulness of nonviolent resistance…

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When someone asks me about nonviolent resistant, so many powerful events and people twentieth century history come to mind from Gandhi’s hunger strikes to Martin Luther King Jr, the Civil Rights movement, and sit in’s. These events paved the way for so many of the peaceful marches in Fall 2014 following the shooting of Michael Brown. When I think this way, I’m reflecting on nonviolence in a cultural and literal way, but what does nonviolence mean in a Christian context?

Throughout scripture, we are reminded that our thoughts can lead us to sin even if they are not all realized into action. For instance, in the Epistle of James, James writes: “But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.”[1] The violent action of sin is preceded by the thought that tempts us, angers us, or preys upon our fears.  If sin precedes action in the form of a thought, then when does violence begin? Does it start before one draws back one’s arm to strike? According to James, yes it does! It all starts with desire, an emotional response that is poorly handled. It’s a timeless story well-told both in scripture and a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

For how highly our culture values the canon of Star Wars and the heroics of the Jedi, it is really quiet amazing how little we mind our thoughts relative to our actions. After all, the best existing paraphrase of James 1:14-15 is one of the most quoted lines from the wisdom of Master Yoda; “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to the Dark Side.”[2] The Dark Side: while it may be nothing more than a different point on the same spectrum from which the Jedi gain their power, the Dark Side is where that power is used without restraint or fear of consequence for how it affects others. Among the Jedi, collaborative leadership governs a hierarchical system in which the community of Jedi mentor each other in mastery of power but also mindfulness of thoughts. The thoughts they mind are not just violent ones from flaring tempers, but the seeds that grow those thoughts. Yoda cites anger as starting in fear. Throughout the episodes 1-3 of Star Wars, we hear the Jedi caution each other, and especially the protagonist-turned-antagonist-turned-protagonist Anakin, to be mindful of their thoughts. At the end of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, it is Anakin’s fear of losing his wife, Padme, that causes him to give into the Dark Side, the temptation to use his knowledge of the force without restraint.  He forsakes all he once held sacred because of a fear and countless Jedi and others die as a result, many, including Padme, die because of Anakin’s reckless thoughts run rampant and Anakin’s disregard of his fellow disciple Yoda’s advice, cautioning him of the danger within his fear of loss.

The Jedi mindfulness of thought is at the heart of their order, in which they focus on peace, seeking a diplomatic solution before drawing their swords. [I probably could have also writing about them in my paper on whether there is such a thing as a just war]. Living by their code as demonstrated in the Star Wars movies can help one live into James’s caution to be mindful of our desires and to give us the strength of resolve protestors had decades ago, when they dared to sit at the Other End of a counter and not strike back at the hateful acts of those around them.

[1] James 1:14-15 NRSV

[2] Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, directed by George Lucas (Lucasfilm, 1999), DVD (20th Century Fox, 1999).