When
Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple,
they were kick-starting his
spiritual journey as a member
of a faith community.
When
Christi is confirmed today,
she will be taking her place as a member
of this faith community.
To
join such a body of believers in the year of our Lord 2014
is a countercultural act.
Most
people prefer to figure it out on their own.
Popular
spiritual writer, Thomas Moore, has a new book called
A
Religion of One’s Own.
It’s is a do it yourself guide to religion
so we can skip the messy complication
of human relationships.
I
get it. Church is hard because it has people in it.
Last
week a seminary professor I know
shared on Facebook her heartfelt
protest against a Church
that was hurting her friend.
She
said the way Church people treat other Church people
is why young adults avoid the church
like the plague.
She’s
right. The downright cruelest behavior I have ever seen
has been in church.
A
Methodist pastor was saying to me week before last,
she just couldn’t understand why
people do and say things
in Church they could
never get away with at work.
We
check our guns at the doors of bars
and our manners at the doors of Churches.
it’s no wonder people don’t want to
hang out with us.
We
aren’t a safe place.
So
were Mary and Joseph wrong to expose their son
to the social perils of organized
religion?
Or
were the synagogue and temple kinder, gentler places
than the 21st Century
Church?
Well,
apparently not.
1st
Century Jews were divided up into feuding factions:
intellectual Pharisees, high church
Sadducees, mystical Essenes,
Apocalyptic Survivalists, radical Zealots, penitential
ascetics,
just
to name a few.
And
except for the Essenes who were too spiritual
to be seen with ordinary Jews,
they were pretty much all there at the synagogue and temple.
It
was just as much of a zoo as the Episcopal Church today.
Even
so, Mary and Joseph made Jesus a member
of that mixed up faith
community.
More
remarkable still, we have Christi here today
ready to stand up, take vows, and
join this Church.
What
is that about?
Why
are we still here in the thick of organized religion
reciting “How lovely is thy dwelling
place O Lord of Hosts to me”?
After
thousands of years of faith communities
behaving in “all too human” ways, we keep doing it.
Maybe
we are just gluttons for punishment;
or
maybe there is something holy and mysterious at work here.
You
could make a good case for the gluttons for punishment theory.
But
I’m going to go with answer number two:
something holy and mysterious.
It’s called the Incarnation.
When
God became human in Jesus,
God showed us that God lives in
humanity,
in the mixed up messy milieu of the
human race
with all our frailties,
foibles, and faults.
My
first Christmas as a priest, the congregation drove me to distraction.
I
knew how Christmas is supposed to be done.
But
they just wouldn’t do it.
So
I called a wiser older veteran pastor and whined
about how my congregation was screwing up Christmas.
He
said, “Well, I guess Jesus will just have to be born
in a stable again this
year.”
And
so it is.
Jesus
is always born in a stable. It’s messy.
God
shows up in the stable of humanity,
not in the palace of an idyllic spirituality,
not in the Southern Living mansion
of propriety,
but in the neurosis, addiction, and
just plain orneriness
that make us such an
untidy lot.
Jesus
said, “The Kingdom of God is like a net
that was let down into a lake
and caught all kinds of fish.”
All
kinds of fish, including the bottom feeders.
Jesus
said the Kingdom of God is like a farmer who planted
his field with good wheat but there
were also weeds.
His
workers wanted to pull the weeds.
But
the farmer said, “No, we’ll wind up pulling up wheat too.
Let
the wheat and the weeds grow together.”
So
here we are, the Church.
A
net with all kinds of fish.
A
field with wheat and weeds growing together.
We
are a mixed assortment of fruits and nuts.
But
that makes a pretty good trail mix.
And
this, friends, is where God hangs out.
Three
decades ago I rediscovered Christianity so I went back to Church.
I
was looking for God – not friends – I didn’t much like people.
I
thought Church was just something I’d have
to put up with along the way.
Sometimes
it has felt like that.
But
the truth is I’ve come to love this motely crew.
They
have been the human channel of God’s grace to me
over and over.
They
have been channels of grace by being good to me,
but just as often by difficult.
Martin
Luther said,
“God carves the rotten wood and rides the lame horse.”
We
grow here through the slow hard work of relationships,
including difficult relationships.
This
is the crucible where we are changed into the likeness of Christ.
Because
the church has people in it,
we have to deal with them.
We
learn patience and forbearance.
We
also learn how to set boundaries
so that the personal foibles of some are not allowed
to wreck
things for the rest.
This
is where we learn how to tell the truth in love.
We
learn how to ask a question out of sincere curiosity
instead of trying to manipulate
someone into our opinion.
We
learn the difference between being kind and being nice.
In
the Church, we practice a balance of wisdom and compassion.
We
cultivate the ability to imagine how things look
from someone else’s point of view.
We
may even learn to trust each other.
500
years ago, St. John of the Cross said,
“God has ordained that we are
sanctified (made holy)
only through the frail
instrumentality of each other.”
We
need each other’s strength and courage.
We
also need each other faults and foibles.
But
the goal is that we change, we all change, we change together.
By
hard work, by patience and discipline,
we transform ourselves into the kind
of community
that attracts people to Jesus
instead of chasing them
away from him.
Our
salvation happens through this process of change.
And
it is not our spiritual well being alone that depends on it,
but the well being of all those lost
people
who will never see the face of Jesus
except in us,
and the only gospel they will ever read
is the one they see
in how we treat each
other.
