After we celebrate the miracle and the mystery
of the Incarnation,
we pause to consider the difference it makes
for our lives.
The wise men show us 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 see other humans.
It changes how we look at each other.
Today’s Collect sets out the theme of our lessons.
O God who wonderfully created
and yet more wonderfully restored
the dignity of humankind.
The wise men didn’t just kneel before the divinity of Jesus.
They knelt before his humanity,
because God had 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 gifts are our prototype
of honoring the dignity of humankind,
which, as our Collect says,
God wonderfully 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 do we honor Christ in the stables
of each other’s lives?
Harvard Professor 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 first 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.
Where she says respect I’d use the word admiration.
Admiration depends on what someone has done.
But respect for dignity belongs to who someone is.
Dignity goes with the turf of being human.
Baby Jesus in the stable hadn’t done a thing.
The wise men paid him homage for who he was.
Respecting someone’s dignity isn’t about their 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.
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 us.
Number 2. Inclusion
Show others they belong.
3. Acknowledgement
Give people your full attention by listening
and responding without judgment.
4. Safety
Keep people safe physically from bodily harm
and psychologically 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
When you have violated the dignity of another person,
apologize.
The rules are perfectly simple.
But putting them into practice is hard.
It takes persistent discipline.
It takes attention and effort. It’s work.
It’s hard because all of us have had our dignity violated
at one time or another, probably a lot of times.
Those wounds could make us compassionate
guardians of each other’s dignity.
But 19 times out of 20 we build ourselves back up
by taking someone else down.
It would be oh so satisfying to take down the person
who disrespected us,
but usually we have to find someone else to pick on.
Defensiveness, disregard, and contempt easily
become habits, unconscious habits.
We dismiss and undercut each other without
even being aware of what we’re doing.
I’ve seen so many marriages 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 flamenco dance
on each other leaving a couple of embittered pancakes
before the divorce.
The public square is spattered with rage and contempt
because working people feel disrespected
by cultural elites.
Ethnic and religious minorities feel disrespected
by the same people who feel disrespected
by the cultural elites.
The Church is as fallible as any human organization,
maybe more so.
But our purpose in the midst of this bloody fray
is to be a model and a training ground
for mutual respect.
And what do we get out of mutual respect?
Awareness of the good. Encounters with Christ.
Life surrounded by people we respect is a whole lot better
than a living with people we judge, dismiss, or ignore.
Respect feels good whether we’re giving it or receiving it.
Wise people from Sophocles to today’s psychoanalysts
teach us that respect and care for other people
is the key that opens our narcissistic case of ego
and sets us free for life, abundant life.
Here, in our church relationships, this is where we practice
the 10 Essential Element of Dignity.
If we practice those 10 things here,
it will change our marriages, our businesses,
and even our government.
If we church folks seriously put those 10 commandments
in practice, the world will 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 responding,
how could you think something so idiotic,
we might try saying, Tell me more about that.
The simple practice of asking curious questions
instead of vainly trying to argue others into agreement,
breaks down walls of defensiveness and contempt
that separate us from godly relationships
with one another.
That alone, just that, would be a critical infusion
of the Kingdom of God into a troubled world.
