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The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost There is a story circulating on the internet these days about a mother—a somewhat evangelical mother, I suspect—who, as a bedtime story, read to her daughter the passage from Ephesians that we heard today. She did this, so the story goes, because she wanted her daughter to sleep well, feeling safe and protected by God. Then, taking this idea a step further, she made her daughter some pajamas that incorporate elements of the Ephesians reading—the breastplate of faith, the belt of truth, and the like. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably given the consumer oriented culture that we live in, she decided to market these pajamas, and so we now have this—for a mere $49.95 you too can purchase for your son or daughter the whole shebang, pajamas complete with not only the belt of truth but also a helmet of salvation, a sword of the Spirit, and a shield of faith pillow. No adult sizes yet, but stay tuned….. I guess, depending on your particular perspective this might be seen as either entrepreneurial creativity, or consumerism run amok. I find it fascinating, though, because I think this marketing ploy speaks to two competing images of Jesus in our culture today—Jesus the meek teacher who although he confronts the powers and principalities of the time, does so through teaching and modeling a way of life based on love OR the so-called muscular Jesus, the he-man testosterone powered image that has become increasingly popular in some evangelicals circles. Those who endorse the first image tend to emphasize the social gospel, the call of Jesus to feed the hungry, to care for the outcast, to love our neighbors even when those neighbors aren’t so lovable. On the other hand, those who would put themselves in the latter camp, those who argue that liberal Christianity has watered down both Jesus and the message he brought to the world, tend to place more emphasis on conversion, on calling people to repentance, on naming specific sins and confronting them head-on. It will surprise no one here, I expect, when I say that my image of Jesus falls more in the former category than in the latter. My reading of the gospels tells me that Jesus was indeed a radical, indeed revolutionary, but not because he was militant or advocated any kind of belligerent action. Yes, Jesus confronted the authorities of his time, but in those confrontations he sought not to use physical might, not to overpower by numbers or force, but rather to bring those authorities and powers back into the Kingdom of God through the power of love. Jesus was radical, he was revolutionary because he called on his followers to stand against the principalities and powers, against evil in the world in a new way. Rather than seeking to overthrow power structures, he challenged teachings and ways of life that he saw as taking people away from God and he did it with a message of love. Jesus called on the world to love God first and foremost and then to love each other in the same way, and Jesus lived out that kind o f love right up through his death on the cross. Even though I can and do place myself in the camp of liberal Christians who endorse the social gospel, who see Jesus as more meek than militant, I also find this dichotomy between a meek Jesus and a muscular Jesus to be somewhat of a false dichotomy. It’s a matter of balance, really, isn’t it? Most of us liberal Christians would not deny the need to confront evil, to call the world on practices that are out of sync with the life God is calling us to. And most conservative or evangelical Christians would not deny that Jesus calls us to a new way, calls us to care for each other, to bring in God’s kingdom in the here and now as well as in the world to come. But in our differing emphases we tend to get hung up on the details of how we should live out our lives as Christians, and often we miss the point all together. It’s the same kind of thing we see being played out in today’s gospel. Here we find Pharisees confronting Jesus because they see his disciples doing something that defies Jewish law and practice: they are eating with unwashed hands, engaging in an act of uncleanliness, of impurity. Jesus retorts by calling the Pharisees on their hypocrisy, invoking the prophet Isaiah to back up his argument. You worry too much about the minutiae, acts that come from long tradition yes, but still not as central as the commandments of God, he says. You’ve lost sight of the balance, Jesus is telling the disciples. You’ve let the letter of the law worked out in traditional practices become more important than the spirit of the law that comes from God. Isn’t what comes out of our body more important that what we put in? And isn’t worrying too much about the cleanliness of what goes in distracting us from the thinking about the cleanliness, the quality of what comes out? I don’t think that Jesus questions the devotion, the piety of the Pharisees; rather he calls them on how they live out that devotion and piety out. By concentrating on ritual practices that likely grew up to help the Jewish people keep God’s commandments the Pharisees are in fact putting human laws over the commandments that come from God. They are missing the point, losing sight of the balance, and in doing so they are impeding the people’s relationship with God rather than enhancing it. How often do we fall into that trap ourselves? How often do we get hung up on, argue about things that are not central to our lives in Christ—what sort of liturgy we should use, what sort of prayers are most “proper”, whether we must use only male pronouns to refer to God, or specific words to talk about the Trinity. It’s not that these things aren’t important, or that we should not have any concern about them, it’s that we let ourselves get so invested in these things that we lose sight of what these things are for—to bring us closer to God; we lose sight of we are really about—turning to God, loving God and loving our neighbors in the same way. And is the same not true of the turmoil that is rocking the Anglican Communion? Yes, there are issues that should be discussed, and yes there are areas where people of faith disagree. But can we let those disagreements so divide us that we forget the mission of the church? Or can we agree to live with the tensions, as Anglicans have always done? Can we agree that God’s call to us, Jesus’ love for us, overrides those places where we fail to come to a common understanding? During September and on into the fall there will be a number of meetings between representatives of the different factions in the arguments that are tearing at the fabric of the Anglican Communion. Some of these meetings have the blessing of the ABC; others of them are amongst the conservatives only; all of them will ultimately impact the fate of the Anglican world. I hope that we might pray for all these meetings and those who participate in the. I hope also that we might find a way to set aside our differences without compromising our values and beliefs, without abandoning our vision of a church that welcomes and includes all of God’s children, and that we may choose to live with the tensions as we work out our call from God. AMEN
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