JOURNEY INWARD, JOURNEY OUTWARD

Our first lesson is about God’s servant 

          whose identity is ambiguous.

Sometimes the servant is an individual 

     with a mission to Israel;

     other times the servant is Israel. 

For Christians, the servant is Christ.

Jesus is the servant who raises us up 

            like the tribes of Jacob.

But that same double-meaning carries forward 

       into Christianity

because St. Paul says we are the Body of Christ, 

and that makes us the servant. 

Do you know this true story of an old Italian village 

with a lovely Renaissance statue of Christ 

in the town square? 

For centuries that stone Jesus extended his hands

        offering grace. 

During World War II, 

        bombs demolished their beloved statue.

After the War, restoring it was the village’s top priority.

Money was raised. Sculptors were hired.

Eventually the statue was perfectly rebuilt

         – except for one thing.

They left it without hands. 

Fascism and war had taught them a lesson to remember.

So they left the statue without hands,

     and inscribed at its base these words 

      from St. Theresa of Avila

     Christ has no hands on earth but yours.

The full quotation goes:

     Christ has no body now but yours,

     No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

     Yours are the eyes with which 

      he looks compassion on this world.

     Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

     Yours are the hands through which he blesses 

      all the world.

     Yours, the hands; yours, the feet; yours, the eyes.

     You are his body. 

     Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

We come to Christ for our own healing and restoration. 

We bring our grief, our shame, our addiction, our loneliness.

Maybe we find acceptance here. We feel safe. 

That’s the healing grace of Jesus. 

But our healing and restoration isn’t complete 

        until we ourselves 

become the Body, the Servant, the agent of hope.

Our transformation starts with supporting each other 

in a faith community. 

The Church is the training ground where we practice 

     respecting each other’s human dignity. 

We practice being Christ to each other, 

     and that changes us little by little 

     into the likeness of Christ.

But we are an all-too-human assembly.

Our practice of mutual respect is hit and miss.

We try to serve; then get responses that just deflate us. 

They call us practicing Christians 

because we haven’t yet mastered it. 

Sometimes we get discouraged 

         like the servant in today’s lesson. 

He said, I have labored in vain. 

I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.

30 years of ordained ministry may not teach you much,

     but it will teach you the meaning of that verse. 

So the servant tendered his resignation to God.

Instead God multiplied his job duties. God said,

     It is too light a thing that you should 

                . . . raise up the tribes of Jacob

                 and . . . restore the survivors of Israel.

     I will give you as a light to the nations 

                 that my salvation may reach 

                 to the ends of the earth.

The nations means everyone else, the gentiles, 

            the pagans, the foreigners.

Up to now, Judaism thought God was on their side.

Israel first, they said, and the rest of the world 

        could go to the dogs.

But God wasn’t having it – not anymore.

The servant was to become a light to the nations, 

          the outsiders. 

Led by the individual servant, 

        Israel was to become such a light. 

Anti-Nazi martyr and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said, 

     The Church is the Church only when it exists for others,

                 not dominating but helping and serving.

Our own Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said,

     The Church is the only society that exists for benefit

                 of those who are not its members.

Plenty of unchurched irreligious people do good things.

But our motive is different.

That’s important because the motive changes how it feels 

     to be on the receiving end of mercy.

Christians don’t serve people to prove how good and generous we are.

We don’t serve people because we feel sorry for them.

We serve people because when we look at them, we see Jesus. 

God bless the secular service groups 

          for all the good they do.

But we are up to something different.

Our mission is rooted in the old, old story of Jesus 

        and his love.

Our outer mission flows from our inner work

-- our individual inner work of prayer and study;

and our congregational inner work of mutual care, 

faith formation, praying together,

     worshiping together, and sharing the sacraments. 

Being a light to the nations, 

        starts with the deeply engrained habit 

of respecting the dignity of every human being.

We learn that here. We practice it here. 

We pray our way into it here. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said we live in two realms:

     the internal and the external.

     The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed 

                 in art, literature, morals, and religion. 

     The external is that of complex devices, techniques,

                 . . . and instrumentalities by which we live.

Dr. King’s point is we need Christ in both realms.

If we remain stuck in the internal realm 

       of private spirituality,

     we are what Jesus called a tree that does not bear fruit.

Our life is disengaged, fruitless.

But if we live only in the external realm, 

      even doing good deeds,

     our actions are shallow, often unwise, 

        and easily twisted 

by our unconscious ego-agendas.

As St. Ignatius Loyola said of service 

      disconnected from spirituality,

     we do more harm than good. 

Psychoanalyst Michael Parsons says  

       the ability  to move back and forth 

        between the inner and outer realms,

     turning inward for wisdom, then outward for justice,

is the key to our own emotional health 

and being fully alive.

The path isn’t one way. It loops back.

After we have engaged the world, 

     we take that experience back into prayerful reflection. 

It’s the raw material for our spiritual project. 

Elizabeth O’Connor was the spiritual teacher 

        for The Church of Our Savior, the flagship of Christian social engagement in Washington, DC.

In her books, Search For Silence 

        and Journey Inward, Journey Outward,

O’Connor called it a spiritual law 

          that if we look deep into our souls,

                 it moves us to serve others. 

Donna Hicks says that spiritual law is hardwired 

        into our neurology. 

But we have to tap into it 

        through prayer, study, and practice.

Notice how our Gospel lesson is about paying attention

in the interior realm.

     He watched Jesus / He exclaimed, “Look”/

     The . . . disciples heard him / Jesus saw them/

     He said . . . “What are you looking for?”

     He said . . . “Come and see.”

It goes on. We start by looking for 

what Quakers call the inward light, 

     so that we can become that light for others. 

  

If we don’t first see the light of Christ, 

we have nothing to carry but our own moral pride

       and we do more harm than good.

We have to hear the old, old story before we can tell it

     -- not just with words, 

              but tangible acts of love and mercy.

So, brothers and sisters,

     study, pray, know Christ so you can be Christ

     for a world that needs Christ today more than ever.

Christ has no hands on earth but yours.

"LIVE WITHOUT FEAR. YOUR CREATOR HAS MADE YOU HOLY." -- Lady Julian

Dear People of Holy Comforter,

FDR famously said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” He may have overstated his case. We know good and well there are threats and dangers about. International affairs, domestic terrorism, climate change, wildfires, mystery drones over Weld County, just daily traffic are enough to make us uneasy. And we are uneasy. But Roosevelt did have a point. The “fear itself” usually poses a greater danger than the things we are afraid of. 

Emotional states tend to become habitual. We get stuck in them. That restricts our capacity for new experiences. It stops our life. The saying goes, “To a hammer, the world looks like a nail.” If we habitually see the world through a lens of fear, even innocent things look scary. We become frozen and unable to move forward. Physically, chronic anxiety is not good for us. We have long known about its direct effect on blood pressure. Newer research suggests chronic anxiety is a significant factor in increasing inflammation and that excessive inflammation adversely affects how our bodies respond to various health threats. Auto-immune disorders are one area where inflammation, though not necessarily the cause, is decidedly not helpful. Bottom line, fear is bad for us. 

My fear isn’t just my problem. Systems theory teaches us what common sense already knows: fear is contagious. It isn’t clear how this happens. But we are more like cattle than we’d like to think. If one jumps, the group stampedes. We may not stampede but we do catch each other’s feelings. When we are feeling someone else’s fear, it’s all the scarier because we don’t even know what we’re afraid of, so we have no clue how to defend against it. 

Faith is the opposite of fear. But faith lives in tension with the unsettling nature of life. We know we have a “firm foundation laid in (his) excellent word.” Then our children have troubles at school, and we don’t know how to help. Or we hear about a crime committed too close for comfort. Or an important work project starts to veer off track. 

The Bible has a lot more to say about fear than it does about sex or other issues we think are religious concerns. It says “Do not be afraid” 365 times, once for each day of the year. The command Jesus gave his disciples more than any other, was “Do not be afraid.” But the Bible knows our ability to live into that command is spotty. In Mark, the angel at Jesus’ tomb announces the resurrection to the women there, tells them “do not be afraid,” and instructs them to go tell the disciples the good news. But they ran away “and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.” That’s the last line of the original version of Mark. “They were afraid.” Curtain down. The end. Oh, well. We aren’t going to do this perfectly. 

So what then can we nervous, fallible mortals do? This is not an authoritative or comprehensive  Rx for fear. But here are a few suggestions for starters from an old clergy person who has had his share of panics and walked beside a lot of other Episcopalians through theirs:

1.     Jesus did not say, “Do not feel fear.” He said, “Do not be afraid.” We feel what we feel. There is no point trying not to feel it. But we don’t have to live in it. We don’t have to identify with our fears. We don’t have to believe them without calmly checking the facts. We don’t have to act out of fear instead of faith. We can have our fears without letting our fears have us. A subtle truth of psychology is that feelings often come before thoughts. We feel afraid. Then our mind generates thoughts to justify the fear. If we can catch the process early, we will at least recognize those thoughts as secondary effects of our fear, not the causes of it. 

2.     We can take our  basic existential stand that the ultimate meaning and value of everything is God, and God is not at risk. In God all that is good, true, or beautiful are preserved for Eternity. That is why we trust in the face of all threats that, as Lady Julian assured us, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well.”

3.     We can step out of the frantic pace of life, which is essentially anxiety driven, to notice “the still point of the turning world.” (Eliot). Various prayer practices are effective for returning us to the stillness. Centering Prayer and yoga are two examples. There are also effective breathing exercises. In The Healing Power of the Breath, Drs. Brown and Gerbarg prescribe several simple exercises that proved effective in their treatment of 9/11 first responders for trauma and related physical symptoms. https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Power-Breath-Techniques-Concentration/dp/1590309022/ref=sr_1_3?hvadid=77653130053974&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=the+healing+power+of+the+breath&qid=1578430703&sr=8-3

4.     We can find where we feel the fear in our bodies and just attend to it, not trying to banish it or change it or talk it into feeling differently. Just sit with the fear without being swallowed up by it but also without judging it. It’s just a feeling, not a sin. Hold it as you might a frightened child and let it be.

5.     We can practice intentionally being a community of faith – instead of a community of fear – for each other. That means being a community in which it is ok to feel afraid. The community of faith is strong enough to handle that. But we shape our practices to accept and reassure one another that despite all the scary stuff, our God reigns and all shall be well. We are better together. We can get each other through this life.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyFlLjdNqk8

Blessings always,

+Dan

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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.