The Proclaimed Word
Preached by the Reverend Canon Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday,
December 30, 2007, at the 8:40 and 9:50 am services.
You may have noticed our third reading today comes from something called
“Pseudo-Matthew”. Pseudo-Matthew is also known as “The Infancy Gospel of
Matthew”.
Pseudo-Matthew was part of a genre called “infancy narratives” that were
written to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ childhood. Those infancy gospels didn’t
make it into our bible, but they did have their audiences and they influenced
some of the art and beliefs of the middle ages. Where the canonical gospels
skip the majority of Jesus’ youth, the infancy gospels try to fill in those
missing years. Pseudo-Matthew, if I am not mistaken, is the first to mention
the ox and the ass being present at Jesus’ nativity. And, please forgive the
harshness of that word… you must realize that until recent times the word
“ass” was considered proper and had not slang connotations. It comes from the
Latin “Equus Asinus” and is the preferred word in the King James Bible for
what we call a donkey.
All this donkey talk reminds me actually of when I was kid, growing up in
the hills of Arkansas. My great-aunt Gladys came to visit once. We had an old
donkey we called Dadgummit (yes, Dadgummit the donkey — though, being of rural
stock, we usually referred to our donkey as a jackass). See, there’s the
connection.
Anyway, my great-aunt and I thought it would be fun to take a stroll around
the countryside with Dadgummit. So, little tot that I was, I climbed up on
Dadgummit and my great-aunt walked in front of us, holding Dadgummit’s bridle.
We passed in front the old Nazarene church, and the pastor’s wife saw us,
and even though she was standing alone, she said out loud, “I can’t believe
that naughty, selfish, wicked little boy is making that poor old woman walk
while he rides in comfort on that jackass!” I was so embarrassed. Immediately
I hopped off and insisted that Aunt Gladys ride. I wasn’t big enough to lead
Dadgummit, but I could walk at their side.
Soon, we passed Bubba’s Bait & Tackle Shop. And Bubba was standing outside
with a customer. The customer said very loudly to Bubba, “What a mean old
lady… riding on that jackass while that poor little kid has to walk in this
heat.” So, Aunt Gladys jumped off of Dadgummit and we both walked on either
side of our donkey.
But then we passed some older kids who were very rude, and they starting
taunting us, saying, “What a couple of idiots, walking when they have a
perfectly good jackass to ride.”
Demoralized, Aunt Gladys and I both jumped onto Dadgummit and we started
riding him together. Until…
We passed by the Widow Glenn’s house, and Widow Glenn was sitting on her
porch and yelled at us, “You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves, over
burdening that poor old beast. That old jackass isn’t strong enough to carry
two people.” Aunt Gladys said, “You know what? She may be right.” So we both
jumped off the donkey and picked him up to carry him on our shoulders.
Now, unfortunately, the winding roads of the Ouachita Mountains in Central
Arkansas are narrow and treacherous, and they don’t all have guardrails. My
great-aunt was not exactly an athlete anymore, and I was just a little kid.
So, we were quite a sight carrying this huge braying monster on our shoulders
on the side of a winding road next to a drop off on the side of a mountain.
Predictably enough, on a narrow curve, we lost our balance, dropped
Dadgummit the donkey, who fell right off the side of a mountain and bounced
all the way down until finally, in the valley below, we heard a faint “splat”.
I looked up at my great-aunt Gladys with tears in my eyes, and she just said
in her usual dry tone to me, “Let that be a lesson son. If you try to please
everyone, you’ll lose your ass.”[1]
A true, if not factual, story.
Notice how the pastor’s wife, and Bubba’s customer, and the truant
children, and the nosey neighbor all knew what others “should” be doing.
Sadly, that is the religious experience that many of us have had. Our churches
told us what to eat or what to refrain from eating. Who to love, or who we
couldn’t love. What to read, or what we should never read. Religion was
reduced to a list of do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts). And we thought our only
option was to please the powers that be by doing everything we were told, even
when we received contradictory messages, or to abandon religion entirely. What
to believe, or what to avoid, or who to exclude… that was the unfortunate
message we received.
A similar situation arose at the beginning of the 2nd century,
around the year 100. An elder in a particular worshipping community is
responding to discord. People have left the church, and the ones who have
remained are at each others’ throats. They are arguing about the nature of
Jesus. They are arguing about if and when and how the so-called second coming
will take place. They are arguing about what one must believe to be a “true”
member of the community. Apparently, the situation is contentious and bitter
and becoming increasingly dysfunctional. The elder of the community, who
probably wrote the letters of 1st John, 2nd John, and 3rd
John, responds to the messy, discordant situation. And his response to the
various arguments is revolutionary, even still.
The elder who writes this text says that the standard of our faith and our
unity is NOT doctrinal. What brings us together and what keeps us together has
very little to do with what we believe. We don’t even have to all believe the
same things! We get to be adults, with differing opinions and experiences. We
can think for ourselves and choose to behave out of a since of integrity
rather than out of fear of retribution. We can explore our beliefs, and try on
new ones, and discard old ones that no longer serve us. We can enjoy the
journey.
If faith and unity don’t depend on our pretending to believe the same
things… not only the same things that everyone else believes, but also the
same things that our ancestors believed… as if it were possible to not learn
new things and incorporate the new learning into where we are in our faith
journeys… if it isn’t about agreeing with an inherited doctrine, then what
could possibly bring us together and keep us together and make any of it
worthwhile?
The writer of 1 John has a response… What can bring us together and keep us
together is simply the practice of love. He even goes so far as to suggest
that apart from the practice of love one can’t even know God. Commitment to
the Jesus tradition isn’t about what one can accept cognitively. Commitment to
the Jesus tradition isn’t even primarily about one’s own spiritual attainment.
Commitment to the Jesus tradition is about demonstrating, sharing, and
celebrating love. That love is shown in caring for the lonely, advocating for
the oppressed, challenging injustice, offering compassion to those who are in
pain.
Love doesn’t require that you let yourself be walked on. Love doesn’t
require that you appreciate every attitude or action. Love doesn’t even
require that you feel warm and cuddly toward everyone. If that’s what love
was, there would be precious little of it in the world.
Love does require that you recognize the sacred value of the other. Love
does require that you acknowledge that each person deserves love, whether or
not you can be the one to show it at a given moment. Love does require that we
do what we can to make our world a more hospitable place. Leadership guru John
Maxwell says people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you
care. The writer of 1st John agrees entirely.
The writer of 1st John says that while we’re arguing over
theological points which we could never prove, we’re missing an opportunity to
show compassion or to offer help or to embrace someone in their moment of
need. Even to argue about Jesus is to overlook the simple truth that Jesus’
mission was one of love. The writer is telling us, whatever Jesus did, he did
for love; whatever he stands for must represent the love of God.
Our opinions are important to us and they are often valid, but they are not
what define us as followers of Christ. The litmus test for a Christ-follower
is simply “love”. If you can love, you can know God… and the writer of 1st
John argues, that only those who love can know God. Don’t worry about getting
it wrong… just love work on being more loving.
And so, the Elder reminds his community, and ours:
Let us love one
another because love is of God; everyone who loves is born of God and
knows God.
This is the Good News. Amen.
[1]
I first heard a version of this story at an MCC conference about six years
ago. I have obviously adapted it.