Sermon for Sunday May 29th, 2011

I have told you before about the visions I had as a young person about seeing how the human race was interconnected.  I would often close my eyes, shortly before I fell asleep and witness a sea of white strands of some kind of web, connected in every possible way to one another.  It was all of humanity, faces and names I knew and recognized, as well as faces and names I never knew and did not recognize.  It was a comforting vision, it was a good vision, and it helped me understand the African concept of Ubuntu, which we in the Episcopal Church have been using lately in our mission and ministry.  Ubuntu is the idea that , "I am what I am because of who we all are."  Desmond Tutu defines Ubuntu as this, “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

Of course when I was angry, that vision was helpful in exacting revenge.  I would close my eyes, imagine that web of connectedness and seek out the name of the person who I had perceived had wronged me.  When I found the strand of web with their name on it, I would cut it, I would cut it and watch it flutter helplessly in the wind, disconnected, unsure, useless.  It never made me feel any better about myself, it only would fuel the fear and anger that I felt, really.  I never remember returning to those strands that I had cut to repair them.  And when I would return to the same strand to cut it a second time, my world was a bit small back then, it would be repaired, no signs of scars, no signs of mending, the web was simply put back together, whole again.

In today’s Gospel Jesus paints of vision of connectedness simlar to that when he says, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.”  He says this as part of his declaration to the disciples to love him.  We often read this Gospel as a dichotomy, as if Jesus is a parent demanding us, his children to follow him and love him so that we will then keep Jesus’ commandments.  This must be a wrong reading of this Gospel, I find it hard to believe that Jesus salvation or self esteem or anything really depends on our keeping his commandments.  I find it hard to believe that Jesus would have such a punitive view of love and what love means.  Rather, this is saying, I believe, that in our love for justice and inclusion we are keeping Jesus commandments.  That in our love for the world God created, we are accomplishing the work of the Reign of God Jesus was also trying to accomplish.  That in our love for one another we are connecting ourselves deeply to one another, in ways that recognize none of us can be a complete person unless everyone else has the opportunity to be a complete person as well.  Ubuntu.

What does it mean to love Jesus?  Jesus’ commandments were clear, it seems, if not extraordinarily difficult, “Love God with all your being and love one another as I have loved you.”  Our work is to recognize this love in all people, our work as baptismally covenanted people is to be sure that every human being on the face of this earth knows they are built, and made in the image of God.  No single person is greater than another, no single person has more standing with God than any other.  Love, as Paul writes in the letters, as we understand Jesus to say in the Gospels, love encompasses ALL people, not just those we deem worthy.  Love and God throughout the Scriptures is not reserved for a certain number of people.  Christianity has had a difficult time believing and understanding this.  If we believe God had a hand in all of creation, then we must also believe that God had a hand in the creation of every human being, EVERY human being that has ever walked the face of the earth and therefore is also the love of God’s life, is holy and blessed as much as anyone else.

Of course our dialogue about this concept, this idea of love has been akin to the dialogue of the disciples who were challenged by Jesus about their conversation and when confronted by him said, “We were just trying to figure out who among us was the greatest.”  Jesus’ response was to say that if you want to be first, if you want to be greatest, you must be last of ALL.  All, not some, not a few, but last of all.  If we wish to impose our agenda’s, if we wish to impose our biases and our discriminations, well, we will never have the chance, because if we want to be first in the Kingdom of God, we must live in this life as humble and loving human beings. 

The dialogue at the state capital, the dialogue nationally about whether or not we should let people enter into same sex marriages is similar to the disciples’ dialogue it is a dialogue that is full of hubris, pride and fear.  There is little about this dialogue that is rational or loving.  It is simply another opportunity to discriminate against people, to legislate that discrimination and let our fear win.  I was drawn to a conversation I heard about the Declaration of Independence the other day, it contained a reminder that struck me like a clarion bell.  What are the opening words of our declaration of independence?  They are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  It dawned on me, there it is, right in the heart of one of our most important historic documents.  All people are created equal.  This statement is the secular equivalent to our religious and Christian statement that all people are made in the image of God. 

What part of all do we not understand?  Everywhere we look, in our political life, in our religious life, it is clear as day that we are called to include all people into the life of Christ, that we are called as people of this country to honor the equality of all people.  We cannot escape this inclusive and justice oriented understanding or call, this wide open clear as day thought of our forefathers that all people are created equal and hold the same opportunity at equal rights as anyone else.  No man, woman or child is better or greater than another.  And as Christians, no man, woman or child is greater than God.  Yet we seek to divide, to diminish, to lessen the quality of certain human beings because of who they sleep with, because of the color of their skin, because of how much money they make.  Because of our fear of things that are different from us, we desire to oppress others. 

When our forefathers founded this country, they were courageous and great agitators, but they did not found a democracy over night.  What we have today is not because of what some men accomplished at a certain time long ago.  In their minds there were still only a few people who were worthy, only a few people who were considered “All”.  Women, African Americans, Native Americans and anyone who did not own land was not allowed to vote in the elections of this country.  That resulted in only 4% of the people being able to vote, 4% of the people making the decisions for 96% of the others.  Thank God, as Martin Luther King Jr. has said, the arc of the universe bends towards justice and inclusion.  These past two hundred plus years have developed a democracy, that, while not perfect, is bending towards justice and inclusion.  We have spent the last two hundred years shaping and forming the idea that our forefathers and mothers left us.  We have spent the last two hundred years shaping a form of government that will include all people in its work, just as we have spent two thousand years shaping a Christianity that bends towards justice and inclusion.  We have not finished this work, we will arrive.  But it will take courage and hope in order to arrive there.

I have heard a number of people say that the vote at our capital on that day the constitutional amendment was passed was simply inevitable, they knew it would happen.  We are fine with this decision going to the people of Minnesota for a vote, because a majority of people of Minnesota support same sex marriage.  I find this appalling, and the main reason for my preaching on this today.  For it reflects an apathy and a deep misunderstanding of how we see one another in the light of our understanding of being created by God.  The work at the capital, the subsequent religious battles that will occur threaten to diminish and negate our common good.  Martin Luther King Jr said, “Forces that threaten life must be challenged by courage, which is the power of life to affirm itself in spite of life’s ambiguities.  This requires the exercise of a creative will that enables us to hew out a stone of hope from a mountain of despair.”  Despair is at the heart of our apathy towards our politicians and towards one another, and while we despair and lose hope other people seek to actively divide and diminish.  As Christians we must be on the side of justice and inclusion, challenging through our hope all that seeks to destroy life.  We must, as Dr King states, stand together courageously and creatively speaking out against that which would threaten our lives together.

What good will come out of this debate?  After a long, humiliating, protracted and heavily financed battle the only result will be a continued and deeper divide in our state along political lines.  Discrimination does nothing but sow hate and violence.   Discrimination does nothing but separate and drive a wedge between people who could otherwise work together to accomplish God’s reign of justice and love.  This discriminatory act will distract us from the real work we are called to do, it will take away from those who are poor, those who are orphaned those who are in need, and continue to oppress and diminish.  No good will come out of this, because it is filled only with fear and money.

When we discriminate against others, we diminish our own self worth and cloud our image of God and our understanding of the love that Jesus calls us to express in today’s Gospel.  As the First Letter of Peter commended the early Christians, I commend all of us here today to be eager to do what is good.  Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.