Vice Versa

I can no longer remember who I was reading at the time, but a Christian author made the following assertion:  in every encounter each of us has we have two options -- to see Christ in the other person, or to be Christ for the other person.

I've been thinking about that a lot for a while, trying hard to remember it.  (Although, I'll admit, I've probably only gotten to the point of trying to try to try to remember it, if you know what I mean.)  Yet while this particular phrase resonates with me, I realize that it may well be "too Christian" for lots of folks.  So here are some alternatives:

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to be either a teacher or a learner.

I every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either be a healer or receiving healing.

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either rise to your best self or to help someone else to rise.

This last one kind of gives it away, doesn't it?  I mean, it's hopefully become obvious that these are not really two things.  Truth is, there's only one option.  Because . . .

if you rise to your best self you will naturally help others to rise as well;

and if you are a healer you will receiving healing in the process;

and there is not a teacher worthy of the name who is not also a learner.

Naturally the inverse of each of these is true as well -- learners are always teachers, those who receiving healing themselves offer healing, and those who help others to be the best have already become their own best selves.

But what of that first one?  It works this way too, because the surest way of being the Christ for another is seeing it in them . . . and vice versa.

Now maybe because I've written it down I might remember.  If I do, I'll remind you;  if I forget, I'm counting on your.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Reconciliation

[Listen to the Sermon]

Chalice Lighting:

We light this chalice as a symbol of our search for truth
We light this chalice in appreciation for this supportive community
We light this chalice in celebration of our humanity
We light this chalice in gratitude for life's amazing gifts
We light this chalice in love

Opening Words:  "Broken, Unbroken" by Mary Oliver

Reading:  From Charlotte Kasl's If Buddha Married

We are all fallible, imperfect beings.

Reconciliation is the blessing of two people stepping past hurt, pride, and ego, and revealing their hearts.  We go from separation to connection, from dissonance to harmony.  We unmask our buried grief and hurt.  Sometimes, we weep together.  We were out of harmony, separated, and now we come together back into harmony, into the "us" place.  The more we reconcile with everyone in our lives through our capacity to forgive, the more we come into oneness with ourselves.  Through our daily relations of forgiving and being forgiven, we start to experience the marvelous vastness of loving.  That's what makes life so beautiful and allows us to enter into loving relationships with others.   

* * *

I want to invite you to share a vision with me.  Get yourselves comfortable in your seats.  Take a slow, deep breath in.  If you’re okay with it, close your eyes.  (If you’re not okay with it . . . close your eyes – or don’t, whatever lets you get comfortable.)  Breathe in . . . and out.  Again . . . in . . . and out.  [. . .]

And now, try to imagine what it would feel like – not how you’d think about it, but how it would feel – to be at peace.  To know that you have “a right to be here.”  To feel whole – body, mind, and spirit.  No anxiety.  No fear.  No guilt.  Completely at home – in the world, and in yourself.  [. . .]

Keep breathing.  [. . .]

Come on back now.  Don’t put that feeling completely away; we’re going to come back to it.

Last week we looked together at the fact that all of us – each of us – you and me – we all know the experience of feeling less than.  We all know those things we don’t want anyone else to know for fear that we wouldn’t be welcomed anymore, wouldn’t be accepted anymore, wouldn’t be loved anymore.  We all know what it’s like to make mistakes, and we all know full well the mistakes we’ve made.  Probably could tick off a list, couldn’t we?  (Didn’t listen real well to my kids this morning; was sarcastic with my spouse last night; didn’t speak up during that awkward conversation the other day; was more resentful than called for when my parents asked for help last week; a little too comfortable with my lifestyle even though I know I need to change things.)

This month’s theme is Atonement and, as Lord Byron said, “The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.”  Listen to that again:  the beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.  Said simply, we can’t do anything about the brokenness we don’t know about.  Whether brokenness in our relationship with someone else; brokenness in our relationship with our own values; brokenness in our relationship with Life – we can’t do anything about fixing it if we don’t see it first.

So this is the part of Atonement, the recognition of its “necessity,” that last week we identified with what’s often called “confession.” 

Our Jewish neighbors, family, and friends have just gone through their most sacred season, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  This is the time each year for that “searching and fearless moral inventory” we talked about last week, that examination of one’s life to see where I’ve “missed the mark,” or “fallen down when I should have been standing,” or where I “intentionally crossed a line” or was “ignorant when I should have known.” 

For those of you who weren’t here last week, those are definitions of some of the seven different Greek words that are translated in the Christian New Testament documents as the one English word, “sin.”  To “sin” I suggested, is therefore more about making a mistake of some kind than it is about doing something on someone else’s list of proscribed behaviors.  And because making a mistake is not, in and of itself, all that big a deal, what makes a mistake a “sin” is that it causes a relationship to be broken.

It could be, and most often is, your relationship with another person.  It could be, and almost always is, your relationship with yourself.  It most certainly could be your relationship with God, the Divine, the Spirit of Life, whatever it is you call that overarching totality within which we live, and move, and have our being.  The “Sacred Something” I often call it.

So if “sin” has to do with breaking a relationship, “atonement” has to do with repairing it. It’s important to keep in mind that this confession, this moral inventory, isn’t the end of the process; it’s only the beginning.  Because atonement isn’t a static state.  It is a process – the process of rebuilding relationships.  If you change the pronunciation a bit “atonement” becomes “at-one-ment.”  The creation of wholeness where there was fragmentation, division, brokenness.

But how do you do it?  When I was meeting with the Active Minds group this past week we agreed that in a lot of ways it’d be easier if we were Christians or Jews.  Those traditions offer specific methods for engaging the work of atonement whereas we Unitarian Universalists . . . well . . . we’re kind of left to figure it out for ourselves.

But, of course, so is everybody else, really.  Anyone who takes the work of atonement seriously has to figure it out for herself or himself.  After all, going to a priest and sitting in a confessional is all well and good, but you know that if you’ve really broken a relationship it’s going to take a lot more than a few “Hail Marys” and a couple of “Our Fathers” to set things right again.  That’s just an outer form; the inner work is a whole lot more complicated.

Because relationships are complicated.  And unique.  Since no two relationships are the same – even the relationship between the same two people changes over time – how could any one approach to atonement suffice in every situation?  An outer form?  A guide?  A reminder?  Sure.  But the work itself? 

And, of course, that work is a lot more involved than simply saying “I’m sorry.”  Anyone can say, “I’m sorry.”  (In fact, I’ve heard it said that saying “I’m sorry” means never having to say “I love you.”)  That’s why religion don’t talk about importance of apologizing but, rather, the importance of repenting.

That’s another one of those words, like “sin,” that’s got a lot of baggage for a lot of people, but really it means “to turn,” or “to reorient.”  Bottom line?  It means, “to change.”  You have to change; I have to change; we have to change, not the person we’ve hurt.

Let me say that again – the person with whom the relationship has been broken is not the one who needs to change.  I’d never really thought about it like that before – and I’ll bet that most of you haven’t either – but when most of us think about making amends, or seeking forgiveness, this is really what we’re thinking about:

·         I discover that I’ve done something that has broken our relationship.

·         I go to you and say “I’m sorry.”

·         And because I’ve said, “I’m sorry,” I’m more or less expecting that there’s going to be some kind of internal change within you so that you’ll forgive me.  And when you’ve been transformed and forgiven me . . . well . . . then my atonement is complete.

I think this is why so many people get hung up on questions like, “how can I atone if the other person won’t forgive me?”  Or, “what if the thing I need to atone for happened a long time ago and the person is completely out of my life, or has died?”

I’ll let you in on a secret.  Atonement – the spiritual practice of atonement – ultimately has nothing to do with externals.  It has, essentially – in its essence – nothing to do with seeking and receiving forgiveness from someone else.  If we can do that, great.  Good.  And trying to do that may be a part of the atonement process.  Probably is.  But the spiritual practice of atonement has to do entirely with the reconciliation of myself with my Self.  With that deep part of me, that inner voice, what Hindus might call the God in me.

That’s where atonement happens, and that’s why it’s so darned hard.  We can get distracted from the real work of atonement by trying to get that other person to forgive us, or by fretting over the fact that we can’t.  Yet all along what we’re really doing, whether we know it or not, is keeping ourselves safe from the real task of real atonement.

Because it’s hard.  And it can be scary.  And we’d rather not change, thank you very much.  Yet if atonement first requires confession, it then requires repentance, a real change on our part. 

But then . . . well . . . get yourselves comfortable again.  Breathe.  And remember that feeling of being at peace.  Knowing that you have “a right to be here.”  Feeling whole – body, mind, and spirit.  No anxiety.  No fear.  No guilt.  Completely home – in the world, and in yourself. 



Closing Words:      “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann (excepted)

Beyond a wholesome discipline, 
be gentle with yourself. 
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. 
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, 
whatever you conceive Him to be. 
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life, 
keep peace in your soul. 

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world. 
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Radical Hospitality

This is my sermon from September 25, 2011, delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church -- Unitarian Universalist.

[Listen to the Sermon]

Just a few moments ago we sang, “Come, come, whoever you are.”   Did you feel the energy in the room?  Those words may have come from a Sufi poem, but that’s our song, isn’t it?

(Singing)  Come, come, whoever you are
wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
ours is no caravan of despair,
Come, yet again, come.

That’s us, right? 
And last week we sang about gathering ‘round the “welcome table,” and how there’re all kinds of people and no fancy manners there.  Everyone is welcome.  We’re a welcoming congregation, after all, right?  Anyone is welcome here.  Everyone is welcome here!

That’s us.  That’s what we aspire to.  That’s what we aspire to be.  No caravan of despair – there are enough of those around us these days; a welcome table where everyone is invited.

Did you know that according to anthropologists you can tell a lot about a people – a community, a clan, a nation – by the rules they’ve established about eating.  Commensality.  That’s the word for it.  Commensality.  And more accurately it’s about the  rules for who can eat together, and under what circumstances.

When I was growing up my family and I were faithful watchers of the PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs.  The show depicted the goings on of the Bellamy family in Edwardian England (the people “upstairs”) as well as among their domestic servants, led by the indomitable Mr. Hudson (the people “downstairs”).  And oh you’d better believe that there were rules about who could eat together.  These people knew their place or, rather, their places since they most definitely did not share the same place.

And while I haven’t seen it yet (or, for that matter, yet read the book it’s based on), I’ve understand that the same thing comes through in the recent movie The Help.  There is a place for everyone, and everyone has their place.

I came across this concept of commensality in the writings of John Dominic Crossan, a Catholic theologian and perhaps one of the most well-known members of the so-called Jesus Seminar.  Crossan says that we can tell a lot about Jesus’ concept of the Kingdom of Heaven by looking at the way Jesus ate.  And according to Crossan, the way Jesus ate needs to be called “open commensality.”  (So, can I say that Jesus was an early proponent of, “open sauce”?)

Jesus ate with anyone. Everyone.  Tax collectors, prostitutes, and Pharisees.  The elite and the neglected.  Anyone who’d eat with him, Jesus would eat with them.  This, says Crossan, is what it’s really all about.  This is what that Kingdom Jesus kept talking about looks like.  All kinds of people at that welcome table, and no fancy style keeping folks apart.  Come, come, whoever you are. 

And we feel good, listening to this, because we know that TJMC is such a place. 

But what if you’re a Republican?  How welcome would you feel here, really?  Or if you’re a believing Christian?  Or an immigrant with rudimentary English skills?

I’m not asking these questions to try to make any of us feel bad, or to suggest that we’re a bunch of intolerant heathens (although a lot of us would probably resonate with the “heathen” part).  I ask these questions, and the myriad I could add, because I want to encourage us to stop.  To stop and look at ourselves as we are, and not simply as we wish we were.

Not everyone is welcome here.  There are a whole lot of folks who would feel downright unwelcome.  Who’d feel uncomfortable.  Out of place.  Wounded by some of the things we say and do here without even thinking, the assumptions we make.  And, to be brutally honest, that’s natural.  It seems to be human nature to feel most comfortable with folks who seem the most like you.

So this is exactly where the idea of hospitality comes in.  Anybody can welcome a friend into their home; anyone can make a member of the family feel welcomed.  Hospitality, though, is different, and it’s a lot harder.  A lot harder.

The root of the word “hospitality” is the Latin word hospes which means “stranger” or “guest.”  Even in Greek, the word for hospitality is philoxenos which means love (philo) of stranger (xenos).  The practice – the spiritual practice – of hospitality, then, is all about offering a welcome to the stranger, or The Other, the person who is not part of our circle.  The truly hospitable welcome table will have not only all the folks you’d expect to see there but the ones you wouldn’t, as well.  In Jesus’ day it was radical that he would eat with “tax collectors” and “harlots.”  I remember the day I was shocked to realize how often he ate with the Pharisees!  Hospitality – true, radical hospitality, the kind that’s worth our time talking about as a spiritual community – has to reach out to those beyond our circle with as warm a welcome as to those within it.

And there’s another dimension that etymology reveals or, rather, maybe it’s just an expansion of this first point.  The word hospes means “stranger” but in some circumstances it also means “host.”  In the same way, xenos means both “stranger” and, sometimes, “host,” so philoxenos means both “love for the stranger” and “love from the host.”  There’s a blurring of the lines, a dulling of the distinctions, when hospitality ripens in its fullness.  There is, as we heard in our reading a little earlier, an “anemic” form of hospitality – or, I would say, pseudo-hospitality – in which, “the host is always the host, the guest is always the guest, and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind who is in charge.”  There is a façade, but no real substance. 

This might be helpful in describing the difference.  (This image also comes from John Dominic Crossan, who was trying to describe Jesus’ open commensality.)  Imagine that you’re at home one evening when you hear a knocking.  You open your front door and discover a homeless family that’s recently been living under a nearby bridge with some other folk.  They tell you they haven’t eaten all day.  Do you:

a)      Invite them to go around to the back door where you meet them with some food?

b)      Invite them to go around to the back door where you invite them in to your kitchen for something to eat?

c)      Invite them to come in and join the dinner party that’s going on in your dining room?

d)     Invite your guests to take all of the food and beverages and go down to the bridge to share the party?

Let’s set aside for now the deeper systemic issues that are unaddressed in this example.  I know a lot of you want to go there.  I do too, honestly.  And I’ll admit both that I want to go there because I think we need to address those systemic issues, and because this other thing – this issue of hospitality – scares me.

Because, to be honest, I’ve got to confess that I kind of like the idea of keeping the host the host and the guest the guest and leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind who is in charge . . . especially if I’m the one in charge and the guests are the kind of people I feel kind of uncomfortable around.  After all, I get to reap the benefits of my hostliness (if I can coin a term).  I can feel good about my generosity, my hospitality, my inclusivity, and whenever things get uncomfortable I can ask people to leave and let things get back to “normal” for me.

A while back I posted an article on our congregation’s FaceBook page about another church – in Winnipeg – that had voted in 2000 to suspend its Food Pantry program because, and I’m quoting the headline here, “it is attracting too many poor people.”  A minister of this church is reported to have said, “It’s attracting a lot of street people that makes it uncomfortable.  It’s creating social unrest in the church”

Now, I have done some checking and it seems that this may be one of those things that fly around the web without taking the full context of the situation into account.  Be that as it may, as an illustration it just couldn’t get any better.  I do have some other ones, though:

I know of welcoming congregations that have gotten quite uncomfortable when people who were deemed too “flamboyantly” or “politically” gay started showing up.  And congregations that started to freak out a bit when their diversity initiatives actually started bringing in real numbers of people of color who wanted to do things a little differently. 

Let’s face it – as long as things continue to look and feel pretty much the way they always have, then diversity is a great thing.  As long as I get to retain my self-identity as host – and the whole backpack of privileges that go along with it – then I’m eager to welcome anyone as my guest.

But that’s not what it’s about.  Not by a long shot.  The call of the welcome table, the imperative of the spiritual practice of hospitality, is for me to step down from the seat at the head of the table and offer it to the stranger who is in front of me.  The invitation is for me to shed the roles and labels I’ve collected and to stand face-to-face with this other person in our common humanity.  That’s the Beloved Community.  That’s the Kingdom of God.  That’s the world we dream of.

And that’s really, really hard.  And scary.  Yet it can happen.

Earlier this month I took part in our monthly Food Pantry and I was struck by something I thought of as really beautiful.  There weren’t a whole lot of church people there as volunteers.  There were some, to be sure, but a lot of the volunteers were women and men, and even a child, who’d come to receive a bag or two of food.  These people were giving as well as receiving, as were the people from the church community.  In fact, it’d have been a challenge to a casual observer to say with certainty just who was from the church community and who was from the wider community because we were, in that moment, just one community.  There was a blurring of the lines, a dulling of distinctions.  Only “us” there.  I can’t wait to go back on October 7^th to experience this again.

(Singing)  “All kinds of people ‘round that table.  All kinds of people ‘round that table one of these days hallelujah.  All kinds of people ‘round that table.  Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.” 

As we continue to “cultivate connections” this year let’s remember that it’s not just the plant that undergoes transformation.  The soil changes, too.  The entire ecosystem evolves.  Everything changes, and that’s just the way it should be.

In Gassho,

RevWik