The Proclaimed Word
Preached by the Reverend Elder Lillie Brock at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, January 27, 2008, at the 8:40 and 9:50 am services.
A middle-aged woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While
on the operating table she had a near death experience. Seeing God she asked,
“Is my time up?”
God said, “No, you have another 43 years, 2 months, and 8 days to live.”
Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a
facelift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and
change her hair color. Since she had so much more time to live, she figured
she might as well make the most of it.
After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While
crossing the street, on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance.
Arriving in front of God, she demanded, “I thought you said I had another
40 years! Why didn’t you pull me from out of the path of the ambulance?”
God replied, “I didn’t recognize you.”
Have you ever wondered if God looks at us and doesn’t recognize us? Would
God perhaps ask us to take time out, not to have a facelift, but to evaluate
who we have become — who we have become as God’s children and as Christians.
I have to believe that this kind of evaluation would cause us to change our
orientation if we took it seriously. Many of us are familiar with this as a
matter of sexuality but that’s not what I mean. Changing our orientation means
engaging the second point of Progressive Christianity. It means looking
through new eyes at the life of Jesus. It means embracing who we are as
Metropolitan Community Churches. And perhaps most importantly, it means
accepting a most difficult truth: two conflicting things can both be true.
So let’s visit those places for a few minutes.
-
The second point of Progressive Christianity asks us to recognize the
faithfulness of other people who have other names for the realm of God and
acknowledge that their way is true for them. This orientation asks us to
honor the truth of others, not see it as an opportunity to convert them to
our truth.
-
If we look at Jesus through new eyes, we might see that he constantly
challenged the leader’s of his faith to change their orientation by
including everyone. We might also see a Jesus who thought that too many
rules around our relationship with God, actually causes us to lose sight of
God.
-
If we embrace who we have collectively, as MCC’s around the world,
defined ourselves to be, we would find these words as part of our statement
of purpose:
-
We want to build bridges that liberate and unite. At MCC, we have
experienced the soul destruction that comes from hate-filled rhetoric. In
restoring our souls, we have come to find that our voices will speak the
liberation that comes through peace, compassion, love, respect, and grace. As
followers of Jesus, we believe in everyone’s holy privilege to work out their
own salvation. While we are a Christian church who follows Jesus, we respect
those of other faith traditions and work together with them to free all those
who are oppressed by hate, disregard, and violence.
-
Then there is the challenging concept that two conflicting things can both
be true. For example, I love spending time with my partner and little girl. I
also love having time to myself. So, there are times when I want to be with
them and at the same time, I want to have time alone. These seem like
conflicting feelings that could cause a fight between me and them. But it
works out a lot better when we allow these conflicting feelings to all exist
as true. In other words, we don’t have to make one feeling untrue in order for
the other feeling to be true. In opening ourselves to other spiritual paths,
we have to change our orientation from true and not true to understanding that
conflicting things can both be true.
So, you see, when we look at some of the words and documents and precepts
that guide our steps, they continually call us to a shifting orientation.
Perhaps the gospel of Matthew gives us the fixed point that we so often
need in order to navigate a changing orientation. Verse 22 suggests that our
fixed point must be simple acts of hospitality and generosity. This doesn’t
suggest that there are certain rules that have to be followed or that some are
in and some are out but rather, we reflect the nature of God when we are
generous and hospitable.
Would God recognize us if we offered a generous spirit to those who know
God by a different name? I think so.
Would God recognize us if we opened our table to those of other faith
traditions? I think so.
Would God recognize us if we joined with other communities of faith to feed
the hungry and liberate those who are oppressed? I think so.
In the end, changing our orientation means shifting our perspective and
opening our minds to the bigness of God, the limitless capacity that God has
to recognize us all.
Once, my friend and I were walking down the sidewalk in New York City
during rush hour. There was all sorts of noise in the city; car horns honking,
feet shuffling, people talking. And amid all this noise, my friend looked at
me and said, “I hear a cricket.”
“No way,” I responded. “How could you possibly hear a cricket with all of
this noise? You must be imagining it. Besides, I’ve never seen a cricket in
the city.”
“No, really, I do hear a cricket. I’ll show you.” She stopped for a moment,
then led me across the street to a big cement planter with a tree in it.
Pushing back some leaves she found a little brown cricket.
“That’s amazing!” I said. “You must have superhuman hearing. How did you do
that?”
“No, my hearing is just the same as yours. There’s no secret,” my friend
replied. “Watch, I’ll show you.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out some
loose change and threw it on the sidewalk. Amid all the noise of the city,
everyone within thirty feet turned their head to see where the sound of the
money was coming from.
“See,” she said. It’s a matter of what you’re listening for.”
As we seek to be people who change our spiritual orientation, perhaps we
should ask ourselves, “what are we listening for?”
-
Are we listening for the things that make us different from
those who practice Judaism?
-
Are we listening for opportunities to judge those who worship
Mohammad?
-
Are we listening for the ways in which the Bible speaks in
contrast to the Koran?
OR
- Are we listening for the heritage we share with the Jews?
-
Are we listening for the values of love, grace, and compassion
as common across all communities of faith?
- Are we listening for the voice of God in unlikely places?
My friends, may God recognize us as children who incline our ears to hear
the cricket, not the noise.