Namasté
Romans 14: 1-12
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 13, 2020
In the late 1960’s Biblical scholar, farmer activist, and Georgia resident Clarence Jordan (that’s “jer-dan” in southern parlance), in his ‘cotton patch’ version of the Gospels and Paul’s letters, translated the New Testament into his world of racial injustice and a sweat economy made from cotton, corn, and peanuts. He reframed Paul as a converted Southerner and the 1st century Greco-Roman world as the southern states in the 20th century. He renamed the letter to the Romans as the Letter to the Christians in Washington, D.C., the seat of power in our American Empire.
So when I hear Paul quote the prophet Isaiah with the words “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God”, my mind turns to athletes who have taken a knee during the national anthem, in protest of violence against Black and brown lives. It is language that calls to mind kings and emperors, any power that demands absolute fealty. But rather than bow to an earthly and possibly corrupt ruler, Paul sees God as a benevolent loving ruler but who also holds absolute sway. As I once heard in a movie, “[The] Kingdom of God is not a democracy. The Lord never seeks re-election. There are no referenda on which road to take. There's one right, one wrong, one absolute ruler.”
And yet it’s also language that leads to despotism. Throughout history the question is asked, “How is it possible for Christians to follow a despot?” because at times we have. Well, it helps if one’s image of God is also like that of an all-powerful father who loves those who praise him and punishes those who are unfaithful. It’s an image that has persisted because it favors power and privilege and serves as protection. It’s an image that judges others and is merciful to oneself.
When I read this passage earlier this week, what came to mind was a scene from the third movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. Sauron, the dark lord, has been defeated. Aragorn has just been crowned king and his love Arwen has been restored to him. Aragorn and Arwen make their way through the thronging crowd and approach their friends Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry, the four Hobbits without whom this day would not have happened. The four bow before their friend Aragorn as their king. But Aragorn stops them and says, in the most gentle and reverent voice, “My friends, you bow to no one.” And as he and Arwen kneel, the entire crowd also kneels before these four flawed, brave heroes.
What is it we bow to? To what do we bend, willingly or unwillingly? The word ‘Namasté’ is Hindi from the Sanskrit namas ‘bowing’ and te ‘to you’. One of the more popular translations is “The divine light in me bows to the divine light in you.” As with most spiritual sayings there are many interpretations:
· I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells.
· I bow to the place in you that is love, light, and joy.
· When you and I bow to our true nature, we are one.
· My soul recognizes your soul.
· We are the same, we are one.
· I honor the place in you that is the same as it is in me.
And yet at the same time we’re not all one, not even close. What is sacred to us? What is of ultimate importance and value? What hill are we willing to die on? What can’t we live without? It is these questions I think that Paul is getting at in his letter to the Romans, the questions that are at stake in our nation and our world right now.
Even if our image of God is far from a despot or benevolent dictator, there is always the danger that our image of God is us. When we see humanity as having ultimate value and purpose, as ones who dominate and solely have power over life and death, then we’ve all become despots of one sort or another, filtering the world through our ego and our fears, our needs and our desires.
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| By Rupi Kaur, from The Sun and Her Flowers |
What Paul is writing about seems so petty and yet when it comes to the future of humanity, doesn’t it all seem so petty? And yet the dignity and worth, the holiness of every living thing is hardly trivial. Ultimately we are accountable not only to God and each other but to all life on this planet, and who knows, maybe beyond. This is not only a spiritual issue but a moral one, a justice one. We all have a different take on what is good and holy and true and yet none of us has all the answers. To say “I’m right and you’re wrong” is to declare ourselves infallible, to engage in a fundamentalist mindset. When did we stop being curious about one another and about mystery? When did we settle for certainty and magical thinking instead? When did we decide to make do with tolerance instead of doing the hard work of love and acceptance?
I know the last six months have been harsh in many ways and the lectionary has been relentless. And yet we know there’s no going back and the way forward is nowhere humanity has ever been before. It’s all hard any way you look at it. But as one of you said early on, we get to live through this time. We get to do this. Like Paul and the apostles and others who came after them, we are living through our own brave new world. We get to help shape it by how we live and we also need to get out of its way. It’s time we figured out if what we deemed ultimately important was of value because it was all we knew and it was what was given to us or because maybe there is such a thing as eternal and lasting truth.
Like love.
And friendship.
Covenant.
Passion.
Forgiveness.
Humility.
Interdependence.
Wholeheartedness.
Sustainability.
Rebirth.
Wholeness.
Sounds an awful lot like Jesus. But it also sounds very human, like love enfleshed.
Namasté.
Amen.
Benediction – from the poet Mary Oliver
To live in this world
You must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go
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