A Challenge

September 23, 2012

Pentecost 17, Proper 20 (Year B)

Mark 9:30-37 

Before I start talking this morning and you guys get in listening mode, I have a little challenge for you.  This is where that little piece of paper comes in.  It’s based on a fascinating Christian Century cover story, where the magazine invited Christian authors and theologians of all stripes to boil down the essence of Christianity into 7 words or less.  You probably read some of the results hanging all over the place as you walked into church this morning.  Now it’s your turn – I challenge you to begin to discover the truth that lies at the heart of your faith.  How would you share what you find most distinctive and compelling about Christianity?  What is your Gospel in 7 words or less? 

Last week, after the Ambassador to Libya was killed and then American interests were the subject of a wave of violence in at least a dozen more countries, it felt like the world was spinning out of control.  I couldn’t quite get my head around how a low-budget video denigrating Islam could be the spark of so much violence; why protecting your prophet from slander would be worthy of murder.  And even though I wouldn’t trade our freedom of speech for anything, I’m angry at the people that squandered that freedom on making this video that mocks and abuses Islam.  And I’m angry that they’ve got the support of a very vocal self-proclaimed Christian pastor.  How is it possible for religion to go so incredibly awry?

I recognize that this is not a first.  Religion, or one religion’s antipathy toward another religion, has often been at the heart of violence and hate.  I have an atheist brother-in-law who gets great pleasure in pointing out to me (the token religious person connected with his family) how often religion leads to violence -- persecution, crusades, inquisitions, jihad.  And I can’t really disagree.  Religion, which you’d think ought to foster peace and love and harmony, can sometimes become one more thing that makes another person, or another set of people, Other.

I wonder if Jesus was ever surprised by that.  He was often in tension with the religious teachers of Judaism who were threatened because of his take on the faith.  He even had trouble within his band of followers.  Jesus may have waxed poetic about how blessed the peacemakers were, but those who walked closest to him were the first to urge him to distance himself from pesky children or unclean Samaritans.  And look at them this morning arguing about who is the greatest among them.  Fighting about which one of them is closest to Jesus, which one most deserves to be his right-hand man.  You’d think if anyone the disciples would have a decent shot at learning how to love each other, but it doesn’t seem like they’re any better at it than we are.  Peace is an elusive thing, even when God is right there next to you.

But I have a little more hope about the world today than I did a week ago, and it’s partly because of Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britian, whom Krista Tippett had on her show “On Being” last Sunday.  Rabbi Sachs talked about how in the 21^st century, we find ourselves living right on the edge of difference.  With the internet and easy travel and a global economy, world religions are forced to deal with each other.  And since we’re all armed with such power of destruction, the stakes are high.  As he put it, “God is really giving us very little choice – We must love one another or die.”

Now there are some people, like my brother-in-law, who would see that as reason to do away with religion completely since it has such capacity for destruction and separation.  Others would suggest a toning down of religion – if each religion could just surrender their distinctiveness a bit, we could all get along better.  And we hear a lot about tolerance, now days, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t a word Jesus would have liked.  I guess tolerating the Other is better than being intolerant of the Other, but it’s not the same as loving them.

            With the recent riots, there was a lot of back and forth about whether it was somehow inappropriate to agree that the video was horrible and to empathize with the pain and anger it caused the Muslim faithful.  But for Rabbi Sachs, and I think for Jesus, without empathy, there is no hope of reconciliation.  Rabbi Sachs talked about the custom at the Passover seder of spilling a drop of wine for each of the plagues that God delivered upon Egypt when the Pharoah refused to let the Hebrew slaves go.  I’d heard that custom before, but had never heard that those drops represent tears.  “For a moment,” the Rabbi explained, “we allow ourselves to think of the victims of our victories.  The pain of the other side who were enslaving us, but they were still human.”

            Somehow we have to remember that when we read the news.  The people that are storming our embassies, killing our soldiers, making offensive videos, all of these people are human.  All of them are creations of God.  But we have to do more than that.

            Rabbi Sachs argues that what the religious of the world really need to do to help bridge the animosities and misunderstandings about religion that make our world such a dangerous place is talk to each other; the greatest antidote to violence, he says, is conversation.  But it isn’t enough to share the surface stuff, to speak platitudes that don’t really mean anything to us.  It’s when we start sharing what is deep in our heart, and start really listening to what is deep in the hearts of others, that we can begin “to hear the voice of God in a culture not our own, to see the presence of God in the face of a stranger.” 

            And that’s where the exercise we began with this morning comes in.  The challenge to delve into our own deepest religious truths.  What struck me most as I read through the contributions from all the different people was how it made me want more.  I wanted to ask the writers why they used a certain word, or what had happened in their life to make that piece of the faith the most important to them.  Or sometimes their 7 words hit me so strongly that I wanted to share with them what they meant to me. 

It’s when we go deep into what lies at our heart that there is the potential for the kind of heart-felt conversation that can start changing the world, one relationship at a time.  

I invite you to place your slip of paper in the offering plate on your way to communion and I’ll include the list in the e-news this week.  Who knows what kind of conversation we’ll spark?

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.