Before
I begin the sermon, I’d like to mention with appreciation the wonderful
passage from Ecclesiasticus (6: 5-17) read as our first lesson. It is not
anywhere on our list of scriptural readings at any services throughout the
year. I came across it accidentally and happily substituted it for other
approved readings for tonight. It is a splendid sermon in itself.
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When I was eight years old I was an acolyte at my first Service in the suburban
Boston Episcopal Church where I had been baptized. I was active in various
facets of church activities at the parish and diocesan levels right through
high school. Being a Bostonian of sorts, I simply accepted certain forms of
behavior as proper and others as improper. At home and in my church I
don’t recall much talk about sin, just about proper and improper.
In
the Roman Catholic elementary school that I attended “sin” was a
favorite preoccupation. I worried a lot about sinning, because I might go to a
temporary, sizzling purgatory for my venial sins (impure thoughts, minor theft
and lies) or to scorching, eternal hell for just one lousy mortal sin (missing
Mass on a holy day of obligation, murdering someone). My worry was that I might
suddenly become unconscious and die with a catalog of unforgiven sins on my
scorecard. I knew what happened to hot dogs at a barbecue, and I didn’t
want that fate! I believed that at my death if I could just stay aware long
enough to mutter a few sincere words of contrition, my sins could be expunged,
like a delete key on a computer, and I’d get right into heaven. So, my
worry was not with the sins I committed; it was whether my last conscious act
could be one of repentance, a ticket to Paradise.
However,
for being improper in a Boston area Episcopal church forgiveness was
never mentioned. Unseemliness was unpardonable. A transgressor did not wait
until divine judgment at death. The verdict was immediate - as soon anyone
thriving on gossip observed the impropriety. Curiously, offenses were not
focused on sexual matters, because Episcopalians in those days pretended that,
for the most part, no one had any bodily functions whatsoever. Serious
indiscretions like a woman forgetting to wear a hat in church or a man caught
with a soiled necktie at dinner dishonored the fundamental precept:
“appearances are everything.” Pedigree, wealth, social connections,
or a particular residential address might be somewhat significant here and
there, but to hint of any of them was boorish, off-putting, and signifying an
individual running on empty.
Each
Christian denomination had, and still has, its own “right kind” of
people, some conforming to various ways of earning righteous merit badges and
some conforming to whatever respectability is locally in vogue.
Permeating
tonight’s Gospel reading, indeed the entire New Testament, we have a
portrait of a Jesus unconcerned with scorecard approaches to sin or with social
correctness. There is no indication that he had lists of venial and mortal sins
or that he aspired to establish a “society church.” He associated
freely with rule-keeping Pharisees and despised tax collectors. The slogan
“appearances are everything” couldn’t be further from his life.
By Jesus’ own relationships you and I are confronted repeatedly by his
challenges to accepted standards of behavior and customary forms of human
relationships. He completely and radically reverses approved human judgments
and piety, whereby God's values and purposes are forced into human awareness.
For Jesus it is both hard-hearted and wrong-headed to praise individuals simply
because they obey particular rules and exhibit conventional forms of living.
Such well-behaving men and women are often addicts to protocol, insensitive to
personal circumstances, self-absorbed, secular social climbers, and inflexible
in ordinary situations; for them "sin" is a failure to observe their
rules of propriety. Assuming their own righteousness, they have contempt
for all persons who do not meet their ideals of superficial pious living. And,
yes, they are “running on empty.”
Recall some of the people regarded by various past and present Christian
purists as not the “right kind” of people: left-handed people,
because left-handedness was believed to be a sign of the devil; divorced
persons, because they failed to keep their vows; couples with no children,
because they had failed to be fruitful and multiply; genuine scientists,
because they failed to harmonize their discoveries with Church doctrine;
bankers who charged any interest on a loan and in so doing deserved
eternal punishment; all non-Christians and dissenters; and, those whose
non-procreative sexual lives are actively bisexual or homosexual, to mention
but a few. You see, everyone fails to meet someone’s standards for being
the “right kind.” The absurdity of all of this for Christians is that
Jesus the Christ is not the “right kind” of person, either; he was an
unmarried male whose life was unconforming to his day’s religious and
social expectations. Even today he would not be called as pastor of most
Christian congregations. In fact, it’s doubtful that he would have been
found fit for ordination.
The
Church as a counter-culture includes a ministry that challenges what you and I
might regard as the criteria for the “right kind” of people. Not here
simply to affirm our values, not here to provide a sanctuary for righteous
rule-followers or fussy social classes, a faithful Church of Christ invites all
sorts and conditions of humanity to participate in day to day baptismal living.
The “right kind” of people are faithful disciples of Christ who mess
up, are penitent, forgiven, and begin again, but whose lives overall are marked
by continual growth in Christ’s love and service. I trust that this
congregation is the “right kind” of people!