After
we celebrate the miracle and the mystery of the Incarnation,
we pause to remember what the
Incarnation means,
and to consider the difference it makes
for how we live each day.
The
wise men are examples of how to live
in a world where God has become human.
They
are pictures of how we keep two of the vows
in our Baptismal Covenant.
Today
we look especially at those two promises:
First, “to seek and serve Christ in all
people.”
Second, “to respect the dignity of every
human being.”
When
God takes on human nature,
it changes how we think of other humans.
It
changes how we look at each other
and how we treat each other.
Today’s
opening Collect sets out the theme of our lessons.
“O God
who wonderfully created
and yet more wonderfully restored the
dignity of human kind.”
The
wise men didn’t just kneel before the divinity of Jesus.
They
knelt before his humanity,
because God made humanity holy.
Bishop
Tutu says that if we really believed
what the Bible teaches about human nature,
we would genuflect before each other as
we do
before the Blessed Sacrament.
The
wise men showed us how to respond to Jesus.
The
Baptismal Covenant tells us where we find him – in each other.
We
“seek and serve Christ in all people and respect the dignity
of every human being.”
The
wise men’s bringing gifts to the stable
shows how we are to treat each other,
honoring the dignity of humankind,
which God created in the beginning
and more wonderfully restored
in the Incarnation.
But what
would that look like?
The
wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh
to honor Christ in the stable of Bethlehem.
How
shall we honor the Christ in the stables of each other’s lives?
Donna
Hicks mediates conflicts around the world.
She has
worked with insurrections in Latin America,
civil wars in Africa, and religious
strife in Ireland.
In her
book, Dignity, Hicks says that
wherever conflict rages in the world,
if you scratch the surface you’ll find
a dignity violation.
Somebody
has felt disrespected.
From
wars between nations to fights in the family,
most of our conflicts boil down to
dignity.
Hicks
says that respect can be different for people
who have done something to earn our respect.
It can
depend on what someone has done.
But
dignity belongs to who someone is.
Dignity
goes with the turf of being human.
The
baby in the Bethlehem stable hadn’t done a thing.
The
wise men paid him homage for who he was.
Respecting
someone’s dignity isn’t about his or her resume.
It’s
about their humanity.
Christians
vow to respect the dignity of every human being.
But
how? I am still looking for concrete actions.
Just as
the wise men brought three gifts to the stable,
Hicks says there are 10 gifts we need
to give people
to
respect their human dignity.
She
calls them “The 10 Essential Elements of Dignity.”
I’d say
her list adds up to a pretty good 10 commandments
for how we treat each other at home, at
work,
at church, and in the world.
Number
1 is Acceptance.
Approach people as neither inferior nor
superior to you
Number
2. Inclusion
Make others feel they belong.
3.
Acknowledgement
Give people your full attention by
listening and responding.
Give others the freedom to express
their authentic selves
without fear of being
negatively judged.
4. Safety
Put people at ease at two levels:
physically so they feel safe from bodily harm;
and psychologically so they feel safe from being humiliated.
5.
Recognition.
Recognize others for their talents,
hard work,
thoughtfulness, and help.
6.
Fairness
Treat people in an evenhanded way
according to agreed on rules.
7.
Benefit of the Doubt
Start with the premise that others are
acting with integrity
and good motives.
8.
Understanding
Believe that what others think matters
so try to understand
their point of view.
9.
Independence
Encourage people to act on their own
behalf
so they can feel in control of their
lives.
10.
Accountability
Take responsibility for your actions.
When you have violated the dignity of
another person,
apologize.
The
rules are perfectly simple.
But
putting them into practice is hard.
It
takes constant discipline.
It
takes attention and effort.
It’s
work.
It’s
hard work because all of us have had our dignity violated
at one time or another, probably a lot
of times.
Those
wounds to our dignity could make us compassionate.
They
could make us into guardians of the dignity of others.
But 19
times out of 20 they make us try to build ourselves back up
by taking someone else down.
It
would be great to take down the person who disrespected us,
but usually we have to find someone
else to pick on.
Defensiveness
and contempt easily become habits.
I can’t
tell you how many marriages I’ve seen start well,
until one spouse steps on the other’s
dignity,
then the second spouse stomps back, and
so on
until they have done a 20 year tap
dance on each other
leaving a couple of embittered
pancakes before the divorce.
The
Church is as fallible as any human organization,
maybe more so.
But our
purpose is to be a model for godly life.
Here,
in our church relationships, this is where we practice
the 10 commandments to honor
the 10 Essential
Element of Dignity.
If we
practice those 10 things here,
it will change our marriages, our
businesses,
and even our government.
Our
diocesan slogan is: Together we can change the world.
If we
church folks seriously put those 10 commandments in practice,
the world would change.
But we
don’t have to do it all at once.
We can
take baby steps.
We
could change the world this year with one simple practice
-- not an easy practice, but a simple one.
Whenever
we hear someone say something that strikes us as wrong,
instead of saying, “how could you think
anything so idiotic?”
we would say, “Tell me more about
that.”
With
the simple practice of asking curious questions
instead of vainly trying to argue
others into agreement,
we could break down walls of
defensiveness and contempt
that separate us from godly
relationships with one another.
That
alone, just that, would be a critical breaking in
of the Kingdom of God into a fallen world.
