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Once upon a time, a long time ago, there came a time when my family and I, for reasons of my employment before I went to seminary, had to move to and live in Columbus, Georgia. In those days, Columbus was a rather drab and unattractive mill town. It has changed greatly in the last few decades, but in those days it was one of the dullest places I have ever known.
And yet, we were happy there. We made ourselves at home there, in spite of the town’s surface unattractiveness. I used to tell people that Columbus was a nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit there. We found much to be glad about in Columbus. We made many friends there. We were especially happy in our membership and participation in the Edgewood Presbyterian Church of Columbus, the church that was my springboard into ministerial studies.
We made ourselves at home in Columbus because we were reconciled to our location and circumstances, and we seized on what was good about them. Being reconciled and finding much to be glad about is at the heart of this lesson from the letter to the Colossians.
I.
The very first step in our pilgrimage toward spiritual contentment is to come to grips with the difficulty of being reconciled with our reconciliation with the God of our religion--facing and admitting how hard it is for us to accept our acceptance by God.
It is hard to believe that God loves us. It is easy to sing hymns about it; but it is hard to feel it. We say with our lips that God loves us warmheartedly; but we cannot honestly say that we actually feel that love warming our hearts.
I think this is so partly because we don’t love ourselves warmheartedly. We look at ourselves and we don’t like what we see. How can anyone, including God, love us? We don’t see or experience ourselves as being very lovable.
Also, it is hard to see God’s love in the pain we feel…in the sorrow we experience…in the disappointments that assail us…in the state of the world about us.
And, it is hard to accept our acceptance because we can’t escape the feeling that something more radical should have happened in our lives. We go through the motions of being church people. We do and say what the church bulletin says we should say and do next, but we don’t feel closer to God by having done it.
I think a part of our problem may stem from childhood religious and cultural conditioning--and especially from childhood here in the Southland--that values “conversion” experiences. I am sure you have heard the one about the fellow who was such a staunch old-time Presbyterian conservative that he wouldn’t eat any kind of rice except Uncle Ben’s converted rice. I remember how totally nonplussed I was by an experience I had as a student supply pastor, before I had completed seminary and been ordained. One of the members of the church came to me one day and announced that his son--call him Johnny--had been “converted” the night before and wanted to join the church. Johnny was seven years old. I didn’t have any idea what a seven-year-old could have been converted from, but we went to the session, where the elders gently convinced the father that we should wait just a few more years before Johnny made his profession of faith.
The keyword in this incident was “converted.” In this case, it spoke of Johnny’s father having been brought up in a Southern American religious culture that valued radical separation from the world and from worldliness. To make a profession of faith in Christ was to be “converted.”
I cannot claim, nor do I wish to claim, a conversion experience. And for those of you who are like me in that respect, if we really examine ourselves, we may find that the question nags us: Is it really enough to have never known not being part of the church? Is it really enough to have never known a time or state when we did not consider ourselves to be Christians? I was born and raised in a very conservative social and religious environment, one in which Christians were supposed to be “born again” and I cannot pretend that it left no marks on me. I did not have a so-called conversion experience and I remember how comforted I felt by reading William James’ exposition of the once-born and the twice-born in his book Varieties of Religious Experience. I am once-born, and it is okay. It is okay for you, too.
Another reason why it is so hard for us to feel--actually feel--the love of God is because we are forever running away from that love. We are like our own children, impatiently wanting to leave home, to strike out on our own, to be independent.
As children, we don’t want to be stifled and controlled by the love of our parents. We want to be totally independent. We parents really don’t want to be loved by God as much as we love our children, because we fear that it would demand changes and commitments that we don’t want to make.
We prefer to keep God at arm’s length. We prefer a God whom we can visit on Sundays, but who will not be too terribly involved in our lives on the other days.
But remember, Dear Hearts and Gentle People, that alienation from God always results in alienation from people. It results in the less-than-wholehearted embrace of our fellow church members and our neighbors. It results in coldness to and detachment from God’s needy and suffering children.
II.
A truth about us that we must face is that we really do need some kind of conversion experience--but on a continual, daily basis, not as a once-in-a-lifetime event. We need this, not in a blinding light experience such as Paul had on he Damascus Road, but every day on Highway 140. We need the kind of quiet, completely undramatic experience that is contained in deciding, moment by moment, to continue in the faith we profess.
We are not called to “walk the sawdust trail,” as responding to altar calls was described in the old days of big brown tent revivals with sawdust in the aisles. We are called to continue--to continue--in the faith we have professed. And to continue in the faith means to examine continually both the context and the content of our lives.
Being reconciled with God is not a matter of one dramatic spiritual event; it is a matter of daily decision making. Every day, I must decide anew to continue in the faith, to follow Jesus Christ. In every human encounter, I must remind myself that I am looking at and talking to a child of God.
To continue in the faith is to seek reconciliation with all God’s children. In the church at Colossae, the most important need for reconciliation was between Jewish and Gentile Christians. To make peace between two groups with different histories and different customs and a long record of despising and excluding one another, as these two groups did in Colossae, is peacemaking worthy of Christ. Analogous in our world and time is peacemaking between blacks and whites, women and men, Orientals and Occidentals, Arabs and Jews, haves and have-nots, old and young, management and labor, religious liberals and conservatives, and even--even--between Republicans and Democrats--because God loves all of them and all of us.
Such reconciliation is not an easy task. The Greek word Paul used for his toil and striving is literally translated “agony,” and he depended on energy from God to get it done. But to continue in the faith is to try to bring about some reconciliation--not in Iraq or Pakistan--but where you live and work.
III.
Our lesson from Colossians concludes with Paul setting out his great aim. It is to warn every person and teach every person and to present every person mature
in Christ. Here is the very dream of God for your life.
The word “mature” was chosen carefully, I think, because it was a technical term in the Greek mystery religion for the fully initiated cult member. The church at Colossae was being troubled by the influence of pagan religion as well as by divisions between Jews and Gentiles.
The Jews, before coming into the Christian church, would never have believed that God was the God of the Gentiles, or even cared about them. The Gnostics and the mystery religionists would never have believed that the elaborate and esoteric knowledge they thought necessary for salvation would ever have been the possession of more than a select few.
But in Christ, everyone may attain fullness and wholeness of life. The fact is that the only thing--the only thing--that exists for every man and every woman in the world is Christ.
There are gifts of thought and understanding and skill and talent that will never be the common possession of all people. There are privileges and pleasures that all will never share. There are heights of achievement that all will never scale. But to every man and every woman, the good news of what God has done in Christ is open and free, and the power of God to transform our lives into newness is readily available to all who desire it. We need only to ask for it. Amen.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Fulfilling the Law of Christ, Galatians 6: 1-10 by Rev. Charles Swann
As you know, Janell and I returned a couple of weeks ago from one of my dream trips. It was a tour of some sites in the West that I had always wanted to see, and for this reason I had talked her into going on an organized tour with me. The hotels were excellent, the food was first-rate, the tour company’s arrangements and care of us were faultless. In short, we had a wonderful time.
More than a few times on the trip, I thought to myself, “This is the life: riding comfortably through some magnificent scenery, with somebody else doing all the work. I could live like this.”
But I knew that I could not live like that. That guy relaxing on the bus was only one aspect of Charles Edward Swann, not the whole person. I could not live like that. The things that are wrong with such a fantasy are (1) I couldn’t afford it; (2) I would go crazy without some meaningful, creative work to do; and (3) I would drive Janell crazy.
I have known only two men who did not work. One of them had inherited enough money to be able to spend his days hunting and fishing and doing little else. He was widely considered by the community to be nothing more than a likeable bum with pocket money. That, in fact, was what he was. The other man I knew who did no work had married the sole heiress to a sizable fortune. He pretended to be involved in one business endeavor or another, when in fact he was not, and gradually drifted into clinical depression, at least in part because he knew that people were laughing at him.
A life without work does not work. What does work is a life of creative, productive effort punctuated by times of leisure. I know this, but still I have experienced at least the temptation of unending, selfish leisure, of a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. And that helps me to see inside those who are motivated by nothing more than the satisfaction of their hedonistic impulses.
I.
Too many people live lives centered on themselves alone. They live by what I call the “gospel of me, myself and I.” Now, all of us think about ourselves most of the time, but to far too many people, self becomes the sole reason for being. They live totally secular lifestyles that proclaim that their lives are centered on themselves.
Among younger people especially, this attitude of self-absorption is typified by a culture revolving around cultures, cars, clothes and sexual conquests. Among those who are little older, and who live less flamboyant lifestyles, we are likely to find that their lives of are of little benefit to anyone but themselves and perhaps their immediate families.
The most self-absorbed, self-centered people in the world are little babies. They are conscious of no needs and wants other than their own. Nothing in this world matters to infants except the satisfaction of their bodily needs and their personal comfort levels. We accept this in little babies. We do everything we can to satisfy their little needs and wants. But as they grow older, we teach them that other people also are important and we expect them to grow out of their total preoccupation with themselves. We hope they will learn, and we try to help them learn, that a good life comprises giving as well as taking.
Unfortunately, some people never grow up all the way to the point of finding a balance between giving as well as taking. They live lives with no sense of personal obligation for personal service to others or to the community in which they live. They live lives with a view of the problems of their society that concludes with the opinion that “they” ought to do something--and it never occurs to them that they are part of the “they.”
Their religious lifestyles, if they profess a religion, are characterized more by poverty of experience than practice. Their religion focuses on themselves, rather than on God. They hear a call to worship God as a summons to gather some more spiritual goodies, some more feel-good experience for themselves.
Their self-absorption may result in indifference or rejection of any church involvement or attendance and is heard in the often-repeated phrase, “I don’t get anything out of it.” This tragic expression almost always comes from a person who has not put anything into it.
Their self-righteousness is reflected in the voicing of their opinion that the church is full of hypocrites. My reply is, “Yes, but we are all trying to get over it. What about you?” Or they may say that the organized church has too much politics and bureaucracy in it. My reply is, “Yes, but human beings have never found a way to operate without these things. Do you know of a way? Come and show us how.”
The self-satisfaction of some people is reflected in their declarations of how they try to live good lives, how they try to be good persons. But Jesus made it very clear that the avoidance of sin is only one-half of the life that God has in mind for us. The other half involves doing good, not just being good.
And some of these folks seem to feel that self-perpetuation should be the goal of their religion. They are the ones who feel no need for any kind of church experience for themselves, but who feel that it is important for the children to go to Sunday School and get some religious training. My question is, “Why? So they can grow up to be as superficial as their parents?”
I am a cantankerous old man, and I have just vented about some of the things that bother me about the unexamined lives that some people live. But having spoken about these things, I cannot let them pass without confessing my guilt on every point I have just mentioned. I cannot claim innocence on any aspect of the self-centered, selfish life I decry. May God be merciful to me, a sinner, on every one of these points, and continually call me back to my calling.
II.
The antithesis of self-centeredness is the realization that God has put us together in this world to be helpers and supporters of each other, and it includes the cheerful willingness to live and work according to that realization. And in doing so, we fulfill the law of Christ.
When this realization comes to me, it dawns on me that, truly, no man or woman is an island. It seems like yesterday, but it was actually 44 years ago that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released a song called “I Am A Rock.” It became a hit because it spoke to the sadness that so many people felt. A couple of the verses go like this:
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
Part of the singer’s sadness is reflected in the words, “If I never loved, I never would have cried.” How sad--when we know that trying to be a rock, an island, will only increase, make worse, one’s sadness.
When we begin to realize that, truly, no man or woman is or can be an island, we are on the verge of changing the question of “what can I get out of it?” into the questions of what can I put into the human relationships that are all around me, beckoning to me, inviting me. Then we see the I-don’t-get-anything-out-of-it attitude for what it is: pure babyhood, infantilism masquerading as adulthood.
When we see this for what it is, participation in the common life and in service to others can be seen and experienced as a source of satisfaction rather than a chore. We begin to see that other people have problems and we have the energy and the means to help them. We begin to see that people are, many times, not responsible for what happens to them, and they need our help. And thus, we begin to fulfill the law of Christ.
You and I, too, will have burdens. And the interdependence of the Christian community will be a source of strength and comfort and help to us, too. In the face of these realizations, “me, myself and I” becomes changed and expanded into “we.”
III.
One of the signs of emerging Christian maturity, growing from the babyhood of self-absorption into the adulthood of responsibility, is that we occasionally find ourselves doing good just for the sake of doing good. And so we fulfill the law of Christ.
We are perhaps growing up a bit in our spiritual pilgrimage when we begin to feel that we are what we are, and we are where we are, not merely for our own sake, but for the sake of others.
Why do people want to retire from the world of work? It is, I think, because our minds and bodies simply grow tired of meeting the demands of work. The world of work seems to become one long demand on energy and strength that we just don’t have in such generous measure in our older years. The pains of arthritis replace the pull of ambition, and we get up one morning and say, “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” And some of us have to say we just can’t do this anymore.
It is just as possible to grow weary in well-doing. Sometimes, the Christian life can seem to consist of one long demand--on our substance, on our time, on our patience, on our love, on our faith. We do get tired of responding to others, and we do get the feeling that there has often not been a great deal of responding to us. These feelings are natural and normal.
But there is a source of rest and refreshment and renewal. And it is the Lord who inspired us to exert ourselves in the first place.
The church has been represented by a lot of similes and metaphors. One of the homeliest, but I think one of the most apt, is that of an auto service station. I am talking about the old days when a service station was a place to get service, not just a convenience store that sells gasoline. The service station of the good old days was a place where you could go to get refueled and repaired, get your flats fixed and your batteries recharged.
I like to think of the church that way: a place where you can get what you need to hit the road again, ready to roll. (A fellow named Jesus is the station manager, but he has lots of helpers who are ready to help you.)
But I would not have you think it is necessary to come to church to get refueled and recharged, because Jesus has a helper out on the road. I am glad that in the Atlanta metro area we have people patrolling the interstate highways who are called HEROs. That stands for highway emergency response operator. Out of gas? Got a flat tire? Your battery dead? A HERO will help you. The helper God in Christ sends to aid us when we are out of gas and our batteries are dead is the Holy Spirit. One of the functions of the Spirit is to bring us spiritual renewal, whenever we need it and wherever we are. All we have to do is ask for help. Whenever we need it and wherever we are.
More than a few times on the trip, I thought to myself, “This is the life: riding comfortably through some magnificent scenery, with somebody else doing all the work. I could live like this.”
But I knew that I could not live like that. That guy relaxing on the bus was only one aspect of Charles Edward Swann, not the whole person. I could not live like that. The things that are wrong with such a fantasy are (1) I couldn’t afford it; (2) I would go crazy without some meaningful, creative work to do; and (3) I would drive Janell crazy.
I have known only two men who did not work. One of them had inherited enough money to be able to spend his days hunting and fishing and doing little else. He was widely considered by the community to be nothing more than a likeable bum with pocket money. That, in fact, was what he was. The other man I knew who did no work had married the sole heiress to a sizable fortune. He pretended to be involved in one business endeavor or another, when in fact he was not, and gradually drifted into clinical depression, at least in part because he knew that people were laughing at him.
A life without work does not work. What does work is a life of creative, productive effort punctuated by times of leisure. I know this, but still I have experienced at least the temptation of unending, selfish leisure, of a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. And that helps me to see inside those who are motivated by nothing more than the satisfaction of their hedonistic impulses.
I.
Too many people live lives centered on themselves alone. They live by what I call the “gospel of me, myself and I.” Now, all of us think about ourselves most of the time, but to far too many people, self becomes the sole reason for being. They live totally secular lifestyles that proclaim that their lives are centered on themselves.
Among younger people especially, this attitude of self-absorption is typified by a culture revolving around cultures, cars, clothes and sexual conquests. Among those who are little older, and who live less flamboyant lifestyles, we are likely to find that their lives of are of little benefit to anyone but themselves and perhaps their immediate families.
The most self-absorbed, self-centered people in the world are little babies. They are conscious of no needs and wants other than their own. Nothing in this world matters to infants except the satisfaction of their bodily needs and their personal comfort levels. We accept this in little babies. We do everything we can to satisfy their little needs and wants. But as they grow older, we teach them that other people also are important and we expect them to grow out of their total preoccupation with themselves. We hope they will learn, and we try to help them learn, that a good life comprises giving as well as taking.
Unfortunately, some people never grow up all the way to the point of finding a balance between giving as well as taking. They live lives with no sense of personal obligation for personal service to others or to the community in which they live. They live lives with a view of the problems of their society that concludes with the opinion that “they” ought to do something--and it never occurs to them that they are part of the “they.”
Their religious lifestyles, if they profess a religion, are characterized more by poverty of experience than practice. Their religion focuses on themselves, rather than on God. They hear a call to worship God as a summons to gather some more spiritual goodies, some more feel-good experience for themselves.
Their self-absorption may result in indifference or rejection of any church involvement or attendance and is heard in the often-repeated phrase, “I don’t get anything out of it.” This tragic expression almost always comes from a person who has not put anything into it.
Their self-righteousness is reflected in the voicing of their opinion that the church is full of hypocrites. My reply is, “Yes, but we are all trying to get over it. What about you?” Or they may say that the organized church has too much politics and bureaucracy in it. My reply is, “Yes, but human beings have never found a way to operate without these things. Do you know of a way? Come and show us how.”
The self-satisfaction of some people is reflected in their declarations of how they try to live good lives, how they try to be good persons. But Jesus made it very clear that the avoidance of sin is only one-half of the life that God has in mind for us. The other half involves doing good, not just being good.
And some of these folks seem to feel that self-perpetuation should be the goal of their religion. They are the ones who feel no need for any kind of church experience for themselves, but who feel that it is important for the children to go to Sunday School and get some religious training. My question is, “Why? So they can grow up to be as superficial as their parents?”
I am a cantankerous old man, and I have just vented about some of the things that bother me about the unexamined lives that some people live. But having spoken about these things, I cannot let them pass without confessing my guilt on every point I have just mentioned. I cannot claim innocence on any aspect of the self-centered, selfish life I decry. May God be merciful to me, a sinner, on every one of these points, and continually call me back to my calling.
II.
The antithesis of self-centeredness is the realization that God has put us together in this world to be helpers and supporters of each other, and it includes the cheerful willingness to live and work according to that realization. And in doing so, we fulfill the law of Christ.
When this realization comes to me, it dawns on me that, truly, no man or woman is an island. It seems like yesterday, but it was actually 44 years ago that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released a song called “I Am A Rock.” It became a hit because it spoke to the sadness that so many people felt. A couple of the verses go like this:
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
Part of the singer’s sadness is reflected in the words, “If I never loved, I never would have cried.” How sad--when we know that trying to be a rock, an island, will only increase, make worse, one’s sadness.
When we begin to realize that, truly, no man or woman is or can be an island, we are on the verge of changing the question of “what can I get out of it?” into the questions of what can I put into the human relationships that are all around me, beckoning to me, inviting me. Then we see the I-don’t-get-anything-out-of-it attitude for what it is: pure babyhood, infantilism masquerading as adulthood.
When we see this for what it is, participation in the common life and in service to others can be seen and experienced as a source of satisfaction rather than a chore. We begin to see that other people have problems and we have the energy and the means to help them. We begin to see that people are, many times, not responsible for what happens to them, and they need our help. And thus, we begin to fulfill the law of Christ.
You and I, too, will have burdens. And the interdependence of the Christian community will be a source of strength and comfort and help to us, too. In the face of these realizations, “me, myself and I” becomes changed and expanded into “we.”
III.
One of the signs of emerging Christian maturity, growing from the babyhood of self-absorption into the adulthood of responsibility, is that we occasionally find ourselves doing good just for the sake of doing good. And so we fulfill the law of Christ.
We are perhaps growing up a bit in our spiritual pilgrimage when we begin to feel that we are what we are, and we are where we are, not merely for our own sake, but for the sake of others.
Why do people want to retire from the world of work? It is, I think, because our minds and bodies simply grow tired of meeting the demands of work. The world of work seems to become one long demand on energy and strength that we just don’t have in such generous measure in our older years. The pains of arthritis replace the pull of ambition, and we get up one morning and say, “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” And some of us have to say we just can’t do this anymore.
It is just as possible to grow weary in well-doing. Sometimes, the Christian life can seem to consist of one long demand--on our substance, on our time, on our patience, on our love, on our faith. We do get tired of responding to others, and we do get the feeling that there has often not been a great deal of responding to us. These feelings are natural and normal.
But there is a source of rest and refreshment and renewal. And it is the Lord who inspired us to exert ourselves in the first place.
The church has been represented by a lot of similes and metaphors. One of the homeliest, but I think one of the most apt, is that of an auto service station. I am talking about the old days when a service station was a place to get service, not just a convenience store that sells gasoline. The service station of the good old days was a place where you could go to get refueled and repaired, get your flats fixed and your batteries recharged.
I like to think of the church that way: a place where you can get what you need to hit the road again, ready to roll. (A fellow named Jesus is the station manager, but he has lots of helpers who are ready to help you.)
But I would not have you think it is necessary to come to church to get refueled and recharged, because Jesus has a helper out on the road. I am glad that in the Atlanta metro area we have people patrolling the interstate highways who are called HEROs. That stands for highway emergency response operator. Out of gas? Got a flat tire? Your battery dead? A HERO will help you. The helper God in Christ sends to aid us when we are out of gas and our batteries are dead is the Holy Spirit. One of the functions of the Spirit is to bring us spiritual renewal, whenever we need it and wherever we are. All we have to do is ask for help. Whenever we need it and wherever we are.
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