The grace of deviance
Galatians 5: 1, 13-25 (The Message)
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 26, 2016
Isn’t it a pity?
Isn’t it a shame?
How we break each other’s hearts
And cause each other pain?
How we take each other’s love
Without thinking any more
Forgetting to give back
Isn’t it a pity?
Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not so many people
Can see we’re all the same?
And because of all their tears
Their eyes can hope to see
The beauty surrounds them
Isn’t it a pity?
Isn’t it a shame?
How we break each other’s hearts
And cause each other pain?
How we take each other’s love
Without thinking any more
Forgetting to give back
Isn’t it a pity?
Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not so many people
Can see we’re all the same?
And because of all their tears
Their eyes can hope to see
The beauty surrounds them
Isn’t it a pity?
This song, written by George Harrison, illustrates how we human beings can take love and make it
unrecognizable to the point that we forget who we are and whose we are.
But
we’re not born that way. A baby knows
what communion is in being fed by her mother’s body and blood, a very real,
life-giving, life-sustaining relationship.
A baby knows what baptism is in being suspended and then born in the
waters of the womb. A baby knows what
love is before she is even born.
The
Hebrew word for compassion, whose
singular form means ‘womb’, is often used of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. ‘To be compassionate as God is compassionate’
is to be moved as a mother is moved in response to her children. This is what is meant by Paul in his letter
to the Galatians when the Greek word agape
is used: to love as in great and tender
mercy, pity, to love in a social or moral sense—to have compassion.
I’d
like to have a car magnet that says “Love does not insist on its own way”. That pretty much sums up what Paul is trying
to say to the church in Galatia. When we
take on love, when we inhabit love and allow it to have life in us, to quote
another song, “you can’t always get what you want.” We become slaves but of a different
kind. Fools for Christ. Suckers for Jesus. Freedom does not mean that we get to behave
any way we want, say anything we want, do anything we want.
The resistance to and
rejection of the phrase “politically correct” has been brewing since it was
perceived to be an imposition of liberal orthodoxy. President George H. W. Bush said in a
commencement address in 1991: “The
notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And
although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris
of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudices with new ones. It
declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even
certain gestures off-limits.” Yes, the
ones that hurt others and deny their dignity and worth as a human being.
Many of us probably
define political correctness a bit differently, depending on where we’re coming
from. As I was writing, as I often do, I
asked David what he thought, and he said that to him, political correctness
means awareness and respect for another person’s perspective: their values, morals, ethics, their viewpoint
and experience of the world. Some people
object to political correctness because they see it as an intrusion on their
own values. What’s the favorite comeback
in the point in the conversation when someone objects to some political incorrectness? “Hey, it’s a free country”.
But we’re not free to
call people hateful, hurtful names.
We’re not free to make others targets of our anger and fear. We’re not free to discriminate and establish
laws against others because of who they love, the color of their skin, their
gender or gender identity, their ethnic background, their religion, or because they’ve
come to this country for a better life.
We’re not free so we can hate whoever we want. Is that really the country, the world, the
freedom we want to live in?
If folks want to keep
quoting Leviticus, let’s begin and end with chapter 19, verse 18: “You shall not take
vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” As Eugene Peterson so wisely put it, if we
bite and ravage each other, in no time at all we’ll be annihilating each other,
and where will our precious freedom be then? We’re free so we can love and care for
everyone as we would want to be cared for and loved.
We’ve seen a viciousness
unleashed in a way that divides people, even from themselves. Earlier this week a man tweeted an invective
at a well-known female author, but lovingly announced the birth of his
daughter. An ineffective congress
offered its thoughts and prayers once again after a devastating shooting,
engaged in a filibuster, and even had a sit-in, but is still getting nowhere
when it comes to effective legislation to prevent gun violence. A nation divides against itself in a vote
that may wind up taking it out of a union but wonders the next morning what it
did to not only itself but our broken global economy. The Grand Canyon of anger, pain, and division
is everywhere, and we’re choosing sides rather than trying to heal the rift.
Mary Luti, seminary
educator and UCC pastor, wrote in a recent devotional, “The miracle is [Jesus]
decides not to stand aloof from another person’s pain. …We heal by the company we keep”. This is why I believe faith communities and
community of all sorts, especially the United Church of Christ, is so needed right
now. More than ever we cannot afford to
stand aloof from another person’s pain but to stand with and in another person’s
pain, especially if they are alone. We
live in a time when we can isolate ourselves and believe ourselves to be
connected all at once. We can lob
insults and injury all the while staying hidden behind what appears to be a
curtain of privacy.
This is why the framers
of our country devised not legalism but freedom yoked with responsibility, with
self-control. It’s why in the United
Church of Christ we have autonomy, the freedom of a local church, held in
covenant, in relationship with the wider church. We’re going to be human, which means we will
want our own way while still wanting to be in relationship, in community with
others. We will still be
pleasure-seeking, pain-avoidant creatures who want to belong to each other. So how do we live without causing each other
suffering? How do we walk with each
other, travel together, and not destroy one another but behold one another as
beloved, even in our pain?
Frederick Buechner wrote,
“It is no wonder that from the very start of [Jesus’] ministry, the forces of
Jewish morality and of Roman law were both out to get him because to him the
only morality that mattered was the one that sprang from the forgiven heart,
like fruit from the well-watered tree, and the only law he acknowledged as
ultimate was the law of love.”
The only thing for fear
and pain and hate is to be deviant, defiant by having the courage to love and
to forgive. This is what is meant by
living God’s way, the way of Jesus, the way of Spirit, the way of the Buddha,
the way of Krishna, the way of the human being that seeks the good of all
life. We can’t legislate it; we have to
choose it. When we choose this way, when
we deviate from me-first to all-of-us-together, we create more kindness, we are
able to restore justice, we become more resilient. This way is a living way only when we live
it. Community gives us life only when we
invest ourselves in it. It is another
great paradox: We are set free when we
become slaves to love. That’s what it
means to be Church.
AMEN.
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