Character Formation
By Charles Rush
(My thanks to Michael Usey)
March 2, 2003
Matthew 25: 31-40
are about to enter Lent, the season of moral and spiritual introspection. It comes at a good time of year. About now, those of us who actually made New Year's resolutions, are coming face to face with the reality that we can't actually keep them very well. The winter winds down, the romance of the snow giving way to cruel dirty ice. We are itching to get back into some shape, physically and spiritually.
This morning's text is wonderful
because the King separates the ‘clueless' from the ‘on cue', the goats from the
sheep. I'm particularly drawn to the later group in the story, those that are
‘on cue'. They are “self-unaware” like people with true humility and character often are. They say, “when did
we see you hungry, naked, in prison, or sick?”
Psychologist have categorized the
way we perform tasks into at least four levels. The first level is the
unconscious incompetent. Like the name implies, at the most basic level, we
can't perform the task but we don't know that we can't perform it. On the
spiritual domain, there are a whole lot of people in metropolitan New York in
this category.
I reached adolescence on the tail
end of the grand hippie era, completely immersed in the music and the concerts
of that era. In some ways, the whole era reached it's fruition in the music of
the Grateful Dead, a musical genre that a friend of mine described twenty years
later as ‘structured chaos'. Grateful Dead concerts were sometimes not so much
a set of songs as one long jam that had no beginning or end, just a perpetual
now. And you didn't so much dance to the Dead's music as sort of writhe
standing up. Or just float around. Of course, at Grateful Dead concerts most
people were floating around which made floating around easier. I thought I was
dancing. Now, I'm not sure what I was doing. Then, it felt like dancing. It was
unstructured movement set to unstructured music in an unstructured life, so I
thought I was ‘in the groove'. None of the girls I dated ever told me I
couldn't dance, so I didn't know that I couldn't. That is unconscious
incompetent.
As I said spiritually, you know a
lot of people like this. They work around you. They so don't know, they don't
even have an idea that they don't know. One of Jackson Browne's songs has a
line, “I'll be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender.” It is an
option that quite a few people give serious effort to living. Just pretend that
there is no substantial spiritual dimension, stay focused on just getting
through the ‘to do' list, chipping away at promotion, stay focused on looking
good, enjoy good dinners, good vacations, don't talk about anything deeper than
sports or gossip, just enjoy your toy collection and be happy.
The good news of the bible is that
God comes after us even though so many of us live in this thin prism of
reality. There is a wonderful line from St. Paul that says ‘while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.” Today we would amend it to say, “while we were
still empty headed fools, God cared for us.” It is very hopeful.
The second level is conscious
incompetent. On this level, you still have no appreciable skill, but now you
know it. Several years after Jerry Garcia had receded into mere memory, I had
several small children and other forms of structure, my wife suggested that we
take some dancing lessons, to bloom into a new way of being. With a dozen or so
other people, we were instructed by a little fireball Jewish woman named Freda…
“And a one and a two… One, two, three.” The music was on. We were following our
steps. Freda would yank the record and scream across the gym, “Chuck, what are
you doing?” I'd say, “I'm feeling the music.” Freda would say, “don't feel it,
count it… You look like a giraffe in heat.” Then she would walk across the gym,
pull me out where everyone in the whole class could observe how not to do it,
and walk me through a painful exercise in utter failure. Jaws went slack.
Eyeballs rolled. I knew I was hopeless and just grateful that I didn't have to
date anymore. I was grateful just to be a Minister because Minister's get a
free pass on dancing. They don't have to dance and no one will think they are
weird. So we won't dance in public anymore, just writhe privately with the
Grateful Dead on the headphones. That's not so bad.
Spiritually, this is an awakening
moment. Several years ago, someone called me to process a funeral. He was in
his early thirties, a colleague had died in a car accident, right out of the
blue. He went to the funeral. He gets to the funeral and he hadn't been to a
funeral in probably twenty years. He didn't prepare himself at all. It was a
Greek Orthodox funeral and the coffin was open and everyone filed passed the
casket, some of the people kissing the corpse. He files past the coffin, stares
at his colleague, finds his way back to his pew, repeating the same line over
and over to himself, “What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?” He
didn't have any answers but he was feeling mildly nauseous and sat there in a
blank stare for the rest of the very long service. Later he was slightly guilty
that the whole time at the funeral for someone else, he was absorbed with
himself but he couldn't turn it off if he wanted to. It just suddenly crashed
over him that he knew he didn't know and it was very frightening.
The third level is conscious
competent. I am nearly open to this stage with dancing. I got the brochure from
the 92nd Street Y and noticed a number of dancing classes that were
offered. I checked again to make sure none of them were taught by a woman named
Freda.
This third level is where the
religious practices of lent come into play. Christians have recognized the
importance of developing spiritual disciplines in order to develop spiritual
competence in the formation of our character. It is the principal reason that
the institution of the Church exists. We come together weekly for worship and
instruction because few of us are strong enough or informed enough to do this
on our own. Furthermore, Christianity by it's very nature, as our text reminds
us today, is a social faith. It is compassionate community meeting the needs of
other people, practicing the meaning of tolerance week in and week out when we
don't see eye to eye on important social issues, working together on becoming
inclusive, doing the things that make for reconciliation, forgiveness, learning
together what it means to work for justice and peace, learning how to support
one another in tragedy and death.
The disciplines of Lent ought to
facilitate the practice of these things that strengthen spiritual formation. It
is true that certain forms of renunciation in Lent can become important aids to
spiritual growth as the Catholic tradition holds. Giving up something that you
rely on constantly can remind you of the difficulty of self-control and develop
strength of self-direction and the need to regularly and often filled with
God's vision to re-direct desire. Likewise, it is true that being intentional
about prayer and meditation can ground you in a centered way that makes you
stronger going through tribulation and trial.
However, the Church could do a lot
more towards developing the character skills that we know are important. Of all
religions, we ought to be the one's offering courses in the skills of
listening. We ought to be the one's teaching people the mechanics of
reconciliation and putting them into practice in our homes, in the community,
in our places of vocation. And as our passage reminds us today, the Church
ought to be the one's structuring opportunities for service and compassion
towards people in need, the homeless, the imprisoned. Our Bridges program is
such an obvious, but important place for growth in this regard. We need to be
reforming ourselves in this direction.
Which brings me to the fourth stage:
Unconsciously competent. The King in the parable today lifts up the sheep in
the parable as such an example. They are what we hope to become. As my friend,
Michael Usey has said, “It is not only that the sheep didn't recognize Jesus;
they can't even remember when they might have helped him. Their loving the
people around them has become so much a practice with them that they are
unconsciously doing it.”
This is the point, ultimately, of
our Christian lives. You want your life with God to seep so deeply and completely
into your character that you just live well, embody compassion, empathy, and
support for others, without having much thought directed at yourself. You just
become it.
I was watching Isaac Perlman
teaching violin to some really talented young students. They had obviously
practiced their piece over and over, working deeply on the technical aspects of
the piece for the great master. And their work was stunning. Then Perlman said,
“Put away the sheet music, close your eyes, and let the emotion of this piece
run through you. Let it express itself.”
Spiritually, that is congruence. The
disciplines of the spiritual life are important to help us structure our
character. But the point is to let the Spirit of God channel through us and
radiate out to those around us that we might become the face of the Christ to
others. That is not a deprivation but a fullness, not a work but a grace.
As we turn our faces towards the
season of Lent, may grace fill all of us, and may we become spiritually
stronger together.
Amen.
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