Homily for Sunday, September 27, 2015 Graves
Chapel
Lessons:
Psalm 124
Mark 9: 38-41
The Collect: O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in
showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running
to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Jesus says: “Whoever
is not against us is for us.” He
opens a very wide door of inclusiveness, doesn’t he? It makes me worry about how often we Christians tend to open
doors just a crack to see who is knocking—and then slam the door shut when we
don’t like the looks of those outside.
In my capacity as an academic advisor, I am asked all kinds of
questions by the students who come to my office. One young man, who had noticed that I sometimes wear a
cross, came to see me with a question of grave importance to him. He wanted to
know if I would discuss spiritual matters with him. This young man (I will call him Lee), raised by Christian
parents, was having a crisis of faith that I think must be common among his
peers. One of his parents is Baptist and the other is Catholic. (Some confusion
on his part is understandable!) He told me he tries to do the right thing,
tries to live according to what he has learned in church, but he cannot
reconcile all that he has been taught with what he has now learned about
humanity from his friendship with students who have backgrounds very different
from his own.
His Baptist grandmother insists that anyone who does not
acknowledge Jesus as Lord will burn in hell. Lee asked me a question we may all
have pondered: What about the good people who are raised in a different faith
tradition, who have never learned about Jesus, the people who live decent
lives, love their families, and behave with kindness and respect toward their
neighbors? Will those people really burn in hell? I asked him to consider
what Jesus might say in response to this question. Is today’s simple statement
from Jesus an answer to Lee’s question: “Whoever is not against us is for us”?
Holy Scripture is replete with expressions of the open-handed and
welcoming love of God for all people.
In Isaiah 49, as the prophet sets the table for the coming of a Messiah,
he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the
tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a
light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Jesus became that light and shed his
light on anyone who was able and willing to reflect it—to the ends of the earth.
In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells us that only the
Samaritan—not the Jewish priest or the Levite who passed by on the other side
of the road—reflected God’s love for the poor injured man. Remember, he tells this story in answer
to a question by an expert in Jewish law who asks him essentially the same
question Lee asked me: Who is my neighbor? Through his parable, Jesus answers, “Your neighbor, even if
he is not from your own tradition and background, is the one who shows love
where love is needed.” The Jews of
Jesus’s day despised the Samaritans and considered them half-breeds. Yet, Jesus tells us here and shows us
when he encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, that people of a good heart—even
the people we disdain for their differences from us—are welcomed and valued in
God’s kingdom. As the collect for today says, “O God, you declare your almighty
power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.”
The world we live in offers many tests of our willingness to show
mercy and pity. These days news programs are filled with images of refugee
families fleeing the war zones of northern Africa and Syria and landing, with
desperate hope, on the shores of Europe.
We know just how desperate they are since they would rather take the
risk of dying in a substandard boat as they cross the Mediterranean than stay
in a place where they and their loved ones are likely to be brutally killed in
war. How can we reconcile Christ’s
parable of the Good Samaritan with Hungary’s erection of a razor-wire
fence? When the prime minister of
Hungary says that he will not allow the refugees into his country because their
presence will challenge the Christian values of Europe, can he not see the
irony in his words?
Yes, I do understand the real fear of potential terrorists. I do
understand why some caution must be exercised. I am not completely naïve. But
let me ask you this—how many ordinary families, turning to others for simple
compassion, are likely to bite the hand that feeds them? How many of them will reject the face
of Christ turned to them in love? Aren’t people more likely to be radicalized
when they experience downright meanness instead of kindness? What would Jesus ask us to do?
The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, of which Graves Chapel is a
part, has been holding what are called “Hand in Hand Listening Sessions” around
the state. The purpose of these listening sessions is to discuss how we, as
Christians, can work with more determination toward racial reconciliation. Dave
and I attended one of these sessions in Charlottesville on Thursday
evening. In our small groups, the
primary consensus we were able to reach is that bringing all people together in
the common light of love is something our faith requires of us. My first understanding
of this requirement comes from my experience as a child in Bible School when we
sang, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and
yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little
children of the world.” The simple
truth of the words of this song were reinforced for me by the loving kindness I
saw my mother demonstrate to everyone she encountered, without reservation.
Simone Weil, a French philosopher and Christian mystic who is
considered by many to be a 20th Century saint, is quoted as saying, “Christ
does not save all those who say to him, ‘Lord, Lord.’ But he saves all those
who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving man, without
thinking of him [Christ] the least little bit. And these, when he thanks them,
reply, ‘Lord, when did we feed thee?’…An atheist and an ‘infidel,’ capable of
pure compassion, are as close to God as is a Christian, and consequently know
him equally well, although their knowledge is different or remains unspoken.
For, ‘God is Love.’”
Weil died in 1943, at the age of 34. During World War II, she was actively involved in the French
resistance movement. Diagnosed with tuberculosis while in London, she continued
her work and refused special treatment, restricting her diet to what she
believed her French counterparts were able to eat in German-occupied France.
Her solidarity with her compatriots meant that she sometimes refused food.
Ultimately, she died in a weakened state.
While she lived, she lived for love.
Although we don’t know where our call to follow Christ will take
us, I pray we will be able to follow that call with courage. It isn’t always
easy to BE the face of Christ, but we are called to SEE Christ’s face in
everyone we encounter. After all, as he himself said, “Whoever is not against
us is for us.” May we, by reaching
out the hand of love, turn those who might be against us into those who are for
us and with us. Neighbors! AMEN.
