Sermon

Sam Portaro

September 25, 2005

Proper 21, Year A
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:28-32 

Of the five children in our family, I’m the one that rolled farthest from the tree.  Yet we're a close tribe, so when I return home to North Carolina to see the rest of the bunch, if only for a short while, we're reconstituted as the company we knew in our childhood and youth.  Now, of course, there are nieces and nephews, and soon I'll be a great-uncle, but the presence of the younger ones is often a reminder to us of moments from our past.

As we adults sat at table one evening, the children, having been fed, played together just a few feet away in another room.  Our grown-up conversation was interrupted by a wail,  followed by the sudden appearance of a weeping child who threw herself into her mother's instinctive reach, a sullen child standing a few paces away avoiding eye contact with her parents, and assorted other children looking like bystanders at a shoot-out wondering whether it was safe to get involved at all.   One of the adults began the inquiry with the usual “what happened?’  and almost simultaneously the two children at the center of the altercation blurted, “It was her fault!”

I’ll admit that it was terribly difficult for those of us at the table to maintain our concerned demeanors, for each of us was stifling laughter.  In that moment we were struck by the timelessness of the situation and vividly transported to a time not so long ago, though longer than we wanted to admit.  In the memorable redundancy of Yogi Berra, it was “deja vu all over again.”

Now grown and perhaps more sophisticated in our ways, I realize how very little our culture has moved from that family scene.  In a culture obsessed with entitlement, litigation and victimization, seemingly every conflict in human experience demands a culprit. Whatever befalls us, we're quick to ask, Is it genetic?  Who did what to whom when, perhaps to lasting consequence?  And most importantly, Who's going to pay? 

We're only indulging a characteristic as old as the human race itself.  We can certainly trace the tendency back to the prophet Ezekiel who, in a moment of profound insight and frustration, reminded his own people that they could no longer lay the blame for all their failures upon their ancestors.  He was sick and tired of hearing every human shortcoming dismissed with the easy saying, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.”  He banned the phrase from common usage and insisted instead that each is responsible for his or her own life; no excuses allowed.  “Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit,” demanded the prophet.  

It seems as good a doorway as any into the complex questions that swirl about us, whipped into consciousness and tangibility by a particularly robust hurricane season. If we learn anything in the wake of the winds and rain, it is that much depends, in our life together and in the making of our own lives, upon our relationships and their responsibilities.  

In his words to the Christians at Philippi, Paul wrote of the common life they shared.  He understood that rivalry and vanity, being basic human impulses, would be present in that community, but he urged them to put those impulses aside.   There could be no place among them for competition, not if they were to be a community.  In humility, they were to share and bear alike their strengths and their weaknesses, for this was the way of Christ Jesus.

Interestingly, Matthew's parable of the two sons presents a commentary on competitive relationship, as well.  It's a story made of comparison and contrast, one that traps its hearers into taking sides, playing as it does upon our notions of justice and fairness.  But note that Jesus never really says which of the two sons was the better or more admirable of the two.  In fact, the point of his parable seems to be that neither of the sons is particularly virtuous nor particularly laggard, and neither of the sons is rejected.  What Jesus does make abundantly clear in his words to those who heard the parable is that their own notions of fairness and justice were not the same as God’s.   

It's good to be reminded of these realities as we come into this place, this significant and intentional pause in our continual quest for a deeper knowledge and love of God.  It's good to remind ourselves and to confess to others that we're not here for righteousness, but for love.  We're not here because we have to be here or because we ought to be here or even because we want to be here.  We're here because we need to be here.  We're here because we need each other.  In this city and in this world, that’s a bold and courageous thing to confess.  That’s why it scares us so much to admit it, and why we so seldom do.  

We have no need to blame our shortcomings upon one another, nor upon our genes, nor upon our experience, important as those factors may be to those realities.  But neither can we take credit for what we have, for what we enjoy, for what we cherish, and for which we give thanks.  We're not created and called by God to competition, but to community.  We live, as our Collect reminds us, within the embrace of  a God whose primary characteristics are not justice, but mercy; not retribution, but compassion.  What we have asked, in that prayer, is that we, too, may have those characteristics at the heart of our lives.  We have prayed that as we run to obtain God’s promises, and indeed, as we run to obtain our own ends, we might remember that the race in which we are engaged is not a competition.  There is no winner, no loser.  All will cross the finish line, all will complete the race, each in his or her own time.

When, by God’s grace, we are at our best we'll look and act as Christ, for it's his body we claim to be.  In those times we'll manifest the humility which empties itself in care and compassion for others.  When we're at our worst we may still look and act as Christ, no less his body for our being broken, provided we can confess and share with equal humility and grace the pain we cause, and endure.  We'll not have all the answers, and thus some will be disappointed with us.  We'll not always be attentive, and thus some will be lost to us.  But we can pray for and strive to know that new heart and that new spirit that is so different from the age-old competitions and conflicts that have driven and continue to drive us toward destruction.  

Each of us is important to the other, each of us is blessed and beloved of God.  Each of us is different, else we would have no need of community.  Difference is not a hindrance to our life as a community; it's the prerequisite to that life.  When we come empty and hungry, be assured someone will have enough to fill and to feed us.  When we come eager and joyous, be assured someone will be ready to share it.  When we come tired and burdened, be assured someone will have time and strength to bear us.  When we come comfortable and satisfied, be assured someone will demand comfort and care.  When we come knowledgeable and confident, be assured someone will have questions and fears.  It's always the case when we gather that each will have need to receive, and each will have need to give.  And that need shall bind us together in our common need of the God who gave, who gives, and who shall give all that we are and all that we own.

It was difficult for my sisters and brothers and I to explain to those contentious cousins how equal their culpability, how equal their need of each other.  As their tears subsided and they returned to their play, the conversation amongst us resumed.  We talked of many things at that table and in those private moments we shared.  We talked of the significant differences represented amongst us, the kind that lead to bitterness, rejection and strife in many families.  We talked of our weaknesses, our mental and spiritual frailties and our physical fragility, deficits which, in other contexts might be manipulated to one's disadvantage.  We shared the pain of struggles we've yet to overcome, and the joy of accomplishments in the midst of challenge.  But we wasted little energy or time seeking someone to blame.  And we wasted no precious moments to the indulgence of selfish pride or vain superiority.  As we sat at that table together we asked only to know how each could help the other, and to confess again and again the profound love that makes us a family.

In those moments at table, we were what this community is to be as it gathers at this table, and what the family of God may one day be at the ultimate table we're called to share.  For in such moments my siblings and I shared at that family table, and in the moments we share at this table, we anticipate a life shaped not by competition, but by care; a life shaped not by our flawed and imperfect notions of justice, but by mercy; a life shaped not by contorted conceptions of personal superiority, but by the generous sharing of compassion for the realities we all bear.

Somewhere between our childish fights and our precious and far-too-few adult reunions, my siblings and I found a new heart and a new spirit-new hearts and new spirits that must work constantly at remaining new, always challenged by those old forces that pull at us from every side.

My brothers and sisters and I are, I suspect, something of what we struggle to be here and throughout those places where people gather in the name of God.  We're not always sure of where we're going, nor of how we'll get there, nor of what awaits us.  We're sure only of our love for one another.  We're sure that wherever we are going, we’re going together.  And we're very sure that God is with us.  AMEN.