September 17, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
You see, a lot of church-people think that what we are doing here is supposed to be about Jesus – or even God. I don’t think so. What we are doing here is supposed to be about us. Jesus and God are more than capable of fending for themselves, and there is nothing that you or I can say or do that will bring us closer to Jesus or God. And what we know about Jesus or God, in any real sense, might just fill a thimble. For those that don’t sew, that’s a very teeny tiny amount. We are humble human beings, or at least sometimes humble. What we get to know about the big, bad mysteries of Life and God and supernatural stuff, is really very small.
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SERMONS AT TRINITY
Sunday, September 13, 2009
“Who you?”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
Good morning.
Who do people say that you are?
Really, who do people say that you are?
Now what they say
and what we think about ourselves,
sometimes dovetail and sometimes diverge.
Who is right?
Who is wrong?
I will come back to you and me in a moment,
but first let me dispatch with Jesus.
You see,
a lot of church-people think that what we are doing here is supposed to be about Jesus – or even God.
I don’t think so.
What we are doing here
is supposed to be about us.
Jesus and God
are more than capable of fending for themselves,
and there is nothing that you or I
can say or do
that will bring us closer to Jesus or God.
And what we know about Jesus or God,
in any real sense,
might just fill a thimble.
For those that don’t sew,
that’s a very teeny tiny amount.
We are humble human beings,
or at least sometimes humble.
What we get to know
about the big, bad mysteries of Life
and God and supernatural stuff,
is really very small.
If we are lucky,
we get to encounter God once in a while –
in the beauty of holiness,
in the holiness of beauty,
in the terror of death and dying,
in the joy of loving and crying,
in the awe of living life out beyond our capacities.
But what we get to know,
really know
about religious things such as Jesus and God,
is enormously infinitesimal.
In fact,
let me show you how little we know about Jesus
at the very moment we image
that the text of the Bible is telling us a lot.
In Mark’s story
Peter blurts out:
“You are the Messiah!”
The way the Church has always preached this text,
and used it to justify Christian doctrine,
is to say that it demonstrates Peter was the first
to recognize that Jesus was God’s guy –
God’s right hand man so to speak.
There is terrible irony in that claim.
The word “Messiah”
that we translate as “Christ”
was a nebulous term when Jesus was alive.
We imagine,
sitting in our 21st century crow’s nest
and looking back across the centuries,
that Jesus’ contemporaries
meant the same thing by “Messiah”
that we mean today.
Not so.
“Messiah” could refer to an ordinary person
called to a specific task by God,
like we refer to clergy “being called”.
“Messiah” could refer to a king or prophet of Israel.
“Messiah” could even refer to a king or prophet of another nation or religion,
thought to be used by God
for moving history toward God’s ultimate goal.
Messiah could also refer to one of dozens of
mythical and supernatural figures
that peasants in Jesus’ day
hoped would appear on the threshold of history
to destroy the Roman Empire,
and anyone else they saw as the enemy.
The term “Messiah”
was so indistinct
and meant so many things to so many people,
we have no idea what it meant to a fisherman of first century Palestine named Peter.
We have no idea whatsoever
what Peter meant
if ever he proclaimed Jesus as Messiah
because it could have meant so many things.
That does not need to be bad news for us.
It is good news in fact,
because it means that you and I
can have very different ideas about what that means,
and about who or what Jesus was or is,
and still be in spiritual community together.
We do not have to agree with one another.
We do not even have to have clarity for ourselves.
Instead, we can,
as we all should do no matter what we believe,
acknowledge that we do not really know.
To begin from the acknowledgement
that we do not really know
is the most important starting point of
faith and spirituality.
Mystery,
unknowing,
is what keeps us curious;
what keeps us humble;
what keeps us awed and amazed and open.
So we are not here to say who God is or who Jesus is
but to listen for who we are.
Who do people say that you are?
Who does God say that you are?
Who do you say that you are?
Which brings us back to
Fred Buechner’s piece about listening to our lives.
Here is a way of thinking about listening
I find helpful,
especially as a way of framing what spirituality is
and what it does for us in a very practical sense.
There is a very old sociology metaphor
called “Joharies Window.”
Joharie sounds exotic,
like Messiah,
but it really just refers to the original authors
of the idea: John and Harry.
Anyway,
Joharies Window
is a visual aid for understanding
the process of Self-knowledge –
or the way you and I discover who we are.
Imagine that your life is a four-paned window
and each pane contains a different and unique
portal onto your life.
The first pane contains public information –
all the information and images of who we are
that we know and that others have available about us.
Cam Miller is a large, Caucasian male Episcopal priest
who is married and has four children
and lives in Buffalo, NY.
We could brainstorm for several minutes
and come up with quite a bit of public information
about any one of us.
The next pane is more interesting.
It is the information you all have about me
but to which I am blinded.
We all have blinders on about ourselves
and cannot really see ourselves
the way others perceive us.
There are many things that we do
and that we reveal about ourselves
about which we don’t have a clue.
In the first pane information is accessible to all,
but if I want to know what is in the second pane
I have to ask you for feedback,
or you have to tell me even if I don’t ask.
Feedback,
requested,
shared
or delivered with the force of blunt force trauma,
is a hugely important tool for our spiritual growth.
A problem occurs however, if we are very defensive
in response to feedback
because then we limit how much information
about who others say we are,
and so limit our own self-understanding.
Now of course we will be defensive about some information we receive – it may hurt our feelings
or jar our own self-image
or confirm our worst fears
and we may simply not want to know it.
But we need to get grounded in the knowledge
that what others say about us is true
from their perspective
but does not necessarily have to jibe with
what we say about ourselves.
When this happens,
we can receive the information and…wonder.
Wonder,
curiosity,
open exploration without fear
about such differences can lead us to deeper
understanding and self-knowledge.
We can replace the defensiveness
with wonder and curiosity
and allow it to lead us.
It is a struggle and journey
and something we will be good at sometimes
and ungainly with at others.
We don’t need to be perfect,
all we need to do is keep working
at seeking and receiving feedback the best we can.
The third pane is also pretty interesting too.
It is the largest of the first three panes of the window.
It contains all that we know about ourselves
but do not share with anyone else.
It is,
as I like to describe it,
a vast deep reservoir within us
where we swim alone with God.
It is the pane containing our private self.
But we do not always see inside very clearly.
We have dreams that whisper to us in the dark
and we wake up wondering what that was all about?
We do things that we wish we hadn’t
and can’t figure out why?
We have strange emotional reactions
to external stimulus and are confused by them.
There is so much we do not understand
about ourselves.
Knowing about what is inside
does not automatically provide understanding.
But there is a great deal that is inside
we can only see darkly or as blurred images.
The only way to see it
and understand it
and make sense of it,
is by talking out loud about it with another person.
So just as Feedback was the tool of self-knowledge
in the previous pane,
Self-disclosure is the tool of self-knowledge
in this third pane of the window.
Self-disclosure may be to a friend,
a spouse, a child, even a stranger;
or it may be more formal
as with a therapist or spiritual director.
Just as Feedback can be blocked by defensiveness,
self-disclosure can be prevented by fear.
Self-disclosure is scary
because we are making ourselves vulnerable
to somebody else –
but even more scary,
we are becoming vulnerable to ourselves
by possibly seeing ourselves more clearly
when we would just as soon stay ignorant.
The final pane of this window of Self-knowledge,
is all God.
It is the part of ourselves
that we do not know about
and that no body else has a clue about.
In the deep dark silence within and
it holds a vast mystery we have yet to breach.
Self-disclosure and Feedback
are impotent in this part of ourselves
because there is an impenetrable veil
that is lifted only by God’s action –
a gift of self-knowledge from God to us.
The religious word for it is revelation
or the “unveiling” of knowledge.
Who does God say that we are?
That is what emerges from this vast expanse
of inscape that exists at the center or our lives.
We harvest revelations by getting quiet,
by given ourselves time to listen to our lives,
to listen to the smallest and most ordinary moments.
The forth pane of Self-knolwedge
delivers its secrets in big and life-changing “Ah Ha’s!”
and in tiny incremental revelations
that build over time into a deeper understanding.
But normally,
they are received when we take the time,
and give ourselves the space,
and find a special place
in which to listen.
So the window of self-knowledge has four panes:
Who are we in the public square?
Who others say that we are?
Who we say that we are?
Who God says that we are?
And we have tools for each:
Feedback from others,
Self-disclosure to others,
and listening to our lives for the whisper of God.
These are the means,
the very concrete tools we have with which to
listen to our lives.
Now all this is not going to resonate very loudly
as we pig out and picnic today
but in the weeks ahead,
it’s worth thinking about both
your tried-and-true
as well as new and better ways,
to listen to our lives. Amen.
