Monday, June 20, 2016

Thy Kingdom Come: And the Pain it Causes


          With a little help from Evelyn Underhill who was recognized on the liturgical calendar this past Wednesday, I have learned some important things about my spiritual journey this week that I would like to share with you this morning. 
Most notably, I have discovered that the more firmly rooted I find myself in the life of God—through worship and prayer and the reading of scripture—the more aware I become of the great chasm that exists between our world and the world God reveals in Christ.  In particular, I become deeply aware of the pain and heartache of this world and find myself saying, “it shouldn’t be like this.”
            Consequently, I have learned that my birth into the kingdom of God is not some escape to a utopia free from pain and worry.  Instead, my being born into the life of God makes it abundantly clear to me just how broken and devastated our earthly kingdoms are set in contrast to God’s heavenly kingdom made known in Christ. 
            Remembering a passage from the Book of Revelation, I find myself identifying more and more with the souls in heaven who cry out from beneath the altar of God saying, “How long must your people suffer, O Lord?”
As one priest suggests (Barbara Brown Taylor), our Christian vocation calls us to see that the world is not the way it should be but we are to love the world the way it is.  I believe this is the vocation of Christians because this is the vocation of Christ—to love a broken and sinful world.
And like those who call out from beneath the altar of God in heaven, the primary way in which we find ourselves moved and inspired to act on this love for a broken and damaged world is through prayer.  Left to our own devices, I am afraid we would all spiral into an abyss of chaos and nothingness.  Without the knowledge of this radical love that God reveals so fully in Christ, we would all eventually disconnect ourselves from anything and everything that is good and holy and right.
But prayer, even in all its clumsiness, has the power to recreate and renew our heart and our soul and our eyes to see the world as God sees the world.  Prayer not only opens our eyes to see the Eternal reality of God but also opens our eyes to see how God in Christ loves a world that often times is so unlovable.  As the Archbishop of Canterbury said just this week, “to start praying is to take an enormous risk-we change and the world around us changes.”    
On Wednesday evening, about 40 gathered next to the bridge to hold a prayer vigil for those who lost their lives in the mass shooting in Orlando.  It was hot and muggy.  We couldn’t get the PA system to work.  I was in a bit of a frenzy because the conditions weren’t ideal.  But as God has the tendency to do, God showed up despite the circumstances.  God tapped me on the shoulder a few times and reminded me that his presence was near.
While Psalm 23 was being read, two of our parishioners who are both under the age of 5, offered what I will call a spontaneous liturgical dance.  And just when the reader read the part of the famous Psalm that says, “my cup runneth over” the two children dropped a bottle of water that spilled out all over the ground.
Immediately, God’s reality was made visible.  In the beginning when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep the wind of God swept over the waters.  The wind of God swept over us on Wednesday—something even our most articulate prayers couldn’t manufacture. 
After the prayer vigil, I met two tourists who happened to be taking pictures in front of the bridge at the time.  The tourists were from Orlando and expressed deep appreciation for the vigil and asked for our continued prayers.  Surely, the Spirit of God connects the human family on a deeper level than even the best laid human plans.        
The image of God was reflected in the diversity of the crowd.  In the face of the young and old, the black and white.  In the face of those who go to church all the time and in the face of those who rarely if ever go to church.  In the face of preachers and politicians and city leaders. 
In the face of the rich and the poor, the privileged and marginalized.  In the face of both the gay and the straight.  In the face of both Jew and Christian, male and female.  In the face of a people who long for a world this is set free from the destructive forces of pride, prejudice, intolerance, hatred, and indifference. 
As I looked out over the crowd gathered in prayer, I was reminded of the passage from Galatians that we just read.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  God, through prayer, moved me again to see the world as God sees the world.
Again my heart began to ache because the world that we live in often looks so different than the world God creates for us in Christ.  I have to imagine that Jesus’ heart ached too when he prayed the words, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
            Unlike God’s heavenly kingdom, we live in a world that still treats people based on class, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, and the list goes on.  We live in a world that is crippled by the sins of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia. 
Simply put, we are too often driven by fear of the other mainly because we don’t know the other.  And if we really want to get right down to it, this fear causes us to notice the sin of the other instead of looking for the image of God in all people.
            As a straight, white, male, I am becoming more and more aware of my privilege in life.  I am becoming more and more aware that in this society I am the least likely person to be discriminated against based on color, gender, class, and sexual orientation—mainly because people like me hold most of the power.  There is no door in this society that I can’t walk through.   
A few months ago, as I was struggling with what to do with my place of privilege—I didn’t ask for this, right?, I asked two female clergy in the diocese to help me figure out what to do with it.  I’ll never forget their response.  They said, “use your position to give voice to those who have no voice.”  
So this morning I want to give voice to one of my best friends who is gay.  Like me, she went through the discernment process for ordination but was not granted the opportunity because of her sexual orientation.  I am still convinced that she would have made a lot better priest than me.
She and her friends are in a lot of pain.  This past week’s mass shooting in Orlando has accentuated that pain.  My friend and members of the LGBTQ community are children of God regardless of one’s opinion on their lifestyle.  Our vocation as Christian is to simply love as Christ loves us--and let that be enough for us all to find healing.
Like Paul said to the Galatians, we are no longer held hostage by the law.  Instead, we are granted life through the gift of faith.  And the gift of faith simply calls us to trust that loving Jesus is enough.  The gift of faith tells us that our love of Jesus will give us access to a life where we can quit dwelling on our sin and the sin of others.  Our love of Jesus has the power to produce fruit that gets us beyond discrimination and fear and see other's in the light of God.   
In a letter to a spiritual directee, Evelyn Underhill writes, “As your favorite St. Augustine said, 'Love and do what you like!' If you like wrong things, you will soon find the quality of your love affected."  In other words, we would do well to pay attention to how our love of Jesus produces the fruit of the Spirit and let that be an indicator of the faith given in Christ--and not get bogged down in what scripture may or may not have said about a particular issue.
Underhill goes on to say, "This same condition of love governs everything else...It seems to me that your immediate job must be to make this love active and operative right through your lifeTry to see people by God’s light. Then they become 'real.' Nothing helps one so much as that...When you have learnt to live within the love of God in this human and healthy sense, the question of sin will cease to be such a bogy as it is as present.”
Beloved, we live in a world that is broken and crying to be heard.  May we have the grace to put our ego and pride and opinions aside and listen to the cry of the marginalized.  May we have the grace to join them in prayer and call on the love of Jesus. 
And may our love of Jesus grant us all a vision of what it means to live in a world that is finished separating the other into different camps based on gender, class, religion, and sexual orientation.  May we have the grace to see in the other the image of God and let that be enough.  Amen. 


            

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