This beautiful Sunday morning, having arrived late last night "permanently" in Orlando, I walked to the Cathedral, almost on time for the 8 am Eucharist. The lector was reading the passage from Revelation appointed for this 5th Sunday of Easter. The psalm, Psalm 100, always brings me back to my childhood chorister days, when we sang "O be joyful, joyful in the Lord, all ye lands!" Then, reading a shorter portion from the same passage of John's Gospel that we hear on Maundy Thursday, the Deacon proclaimed the words of Jesus: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." The preacher quoted the late 2nd Century Father of the Church, Tertullian, who, in his Apology, remarked that it was observed in the Roman Empire that the Christians loved one another, and shared all things in common-- except their wives. (The feminist listener in me wondered about the language that simply assumed that those engaged in this apologetic conversation were males.) He commented that these Christians were living in this community-building way at a time when the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble, when the fabric of all the formerly strong institutions was starting to fray.
I was almost beginning to let down my guard and think that I might hear a sermon in this cathedral that didn't derive its primary energy from being against liberals, gays, or abortion. I should have seen it coming....
The Canon continued. We are in an age that is much like the end of the Roman Empire. The institutions of our day and age are also crumbling. The Church tends to grow and thrive when it is persecuted. The institutions of the family, of marriage, and of Nationhood are being assailed, and the Church has the responsibility for living differently, lovingly, showing a "better way."
I agree--almost. But I deplore this use of insider code-language. I am pretty sure that the Canon really believes that what threatens marriage is any definition of such a union that could extend it to committed and faithful life partners of the same sex. I am pretty sure that the Canon really believes that what threatens the family today is any definition of family that could extend to configurations other than husband-wife-children. About our nation--I don't know what he thinks, but I might venture to guess that he thinks that a concept of us as anything other than a Christian Nation, a Light Set upon a Hill, would threaten a true understanding of American Nationhood.
I am excited about the possibility of the Church showing the world a Different Way to love one another in our marriages and families, and in how we live as citizens of the United States while owing a higher allegiance to the Reign of God, the Kingdom of Heaven.
What if we turned away from the values of a Consumer Culture?
What if we were to strive for a balance between work and family that allows time for conversation, laughter, the sharing of dreams for the future, and stories of our past--regardless of whether there are two mommies, two daddies, or a mommy and a daddy in the family?
What if we were to turn off the TV, to refuse to let advertisers dictate to us what kinds of bodies are attractive, to remember, as the Beatles famously said, that "money can't buy love"?
What if we elect and support government officials that don't assume that the American Way is the only way, and that our nation's self-interest is not the final arbiter of what is right and good in the world, that the United States must have an endless and easy supply of consumer goods and oil at all costs?
So....I'm starting to develop a hypothesis about preaching. Most of us who preach, even those of us who are in traditions that preach from a lectionary, find in the texts confirmation of the things we already believe. I walked in too late to notice whether the Cathedral used the Revised Common Lectionary reading from Acts this morning or the Book of Common Prayer Lectionary. The RCL reading is a passage about Peter's encounter with Cornelius, the Gentile. If ever there was a passage that shows a person's beliefs blown wide open and re-oriented by an encounter with God, it is this story of Peter and Cornelius. This encounter radically changed how Peter read and interpreted his Bible. A whole category of people: Gentiles, who had once seemed to be beyond his concern, beyond God's love and care, designated ritually "unclean"--now were on the same side of the clean/unclean divide that had loomed so large in his religious landscape.
When I read these passages, I see how God calls us as Christians, by virtue of his radically different kind of love, to function as agents of transformation. I would prayerfully consider whether we may be called to lead the way in recognizing that the blessings of marriage and family might now be extended in Christ's name to couples without regard for the gender of the partners.
But, I confess, I brought these ideas to the lectionary readings, too.
How do we clergy prayerfully prepare to preach in such a way that we are as open to the Spirit of God teaching us new ways to love, leading us to see whole new categories of people whom God calls us to walk with as sisters and brothers? How do we remain open to the possibility that, in addressing our sinfulness and our own darkened minds, God may turn our hearts and minds in a whole new direction? And, having let these texts speak to our hearts, how do we craft a sermon or homily that invites our hearers to meet God by "chewing" on those same texts? How do we do this while humbly leaving open a place for God's Spirit to be at work in our hearers' lives? Every preacher has had the experience of having someone mention at the back of the church that they thought the sermon was just for them, that it blessed and encouraged them--but the sermon that the parishioner heard was not the one the preacher remembers preaching.
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