Sermon: Does Anyone Here Recognize Me?

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Does Anyone Here Recognize Me?

By Charles Rush

January 25, 2004

our passage this morning, Jesus comments on the Torah in his home synagogue. He reads the very elevated passage from Isaiah 61 and then says directly ‘today the scripture is fulfilled'. Then follows an interlude that is impossible for ordinary people to understand today. Essentially, Jesus suggests in a subtle manner that the fulfillment of Isaiah is not for the Jews only, it is not only for the righteous, but for everyone… even those people who live in regions that we know are full of compromise and sin. For that, some people get enraged and attempt to throw him over a cliff… but the scripture says he escaped without notice. He just slips through the crowd. Herein you have the course of his life in a nutshell.

From the very beginning to the end of his ministry, Jesus was a little bit like wrong-way Corrigan who made newspaper headlines around the world in 1938. In July of that year, Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett airfield on the east coast and headed to California. He was flying a 9 year old monoplane with the cabin door tied shut with bailing wire and carrying only two hand held compasses for navigation.

29 hours later, Mr. Corrigan set his plane down in Dublin. Not Dublin, Nebraska or Dublin, Nevada… but Dublin, Ireland. He claimed that his first compass didn't work and the second one pointed him in exactly the wrong direction. The press was a titter with coverage and Mr. Corrigan was nicknamed 'Wrong-way' for the rest of his life.

Years later it was discovered, he might have been more sly than foolish. Apparently he had applied for a transcontinental flight plan but the fledgling Aviation board denied his application on the grounds that his plane was mechanically unsound for the flight. So he headed for California, a legal destination, and by accident got most of the celebrity and press that Charles Lindbergh had gotten ten years earlier. "Aw shucks, ya'll it was just a little mistake."[1]

Jesus comes saying that he has been sent to the downtrodden and the poor, to release the captives, and set at free the imprisoned. Most Jews had long interpreted those scriptures to apply exclusively to them in their historic suffering. They were looking for the shepherd to come look for the lost sheep Israel and bring them all back home. When Jesus suggests that he has come for all the downtrodden and oppressed, that sounds blasphemous and they try to do him in.

Jesus had a subversive quality to him, at times somewhat subtle and mischievous, at other times prophetic and bold. He came to teach us about the spiritual superiority of the gospel of reconciliation and he came to show us that the only way we can do that is with each other, all of us with each other. I heard Coretta Scott King last Monday, sharing a few thoughts about her deceased husband at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She said that Dr. King taught us that it is not enough to conquer our enemies, we must learn to be reconciled with them. She was poking a jab, I presume, at the invasion of Iraq- and regardless of what you think of that jab- she is ultimately right that reconciliation is the spiritually more profound way.

And it is an amazing message, especially coming out of a Jewish tradition. Two Rabbis took me to an Orthodox service in Crown Heights, Brooklyn a few years ago. The synagogue was filled to overflowing, all the men downstairs, the women in the balcony. And there was a liturgy going on, but a group of men were praying over here, doing their own thing, another group were talking over here, a group were laughing in the back. It was like the party before a political rally, overwhelming crowd noise, everyone doing their own thing. One of the cantors took a prayer book and was banging on a pillar, "Now we are going to pray." But no one could hear him. This did not look like the place one would expect profound instruction on reconciliation. Controlled anarchy, perhaps, but not reconciliation.

One Rabbi tells a story about a synagogue where half of the congregants stood during the Shema (the opening prayer "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God") and the other half sat. No problem except that both groups yelled at each other to sit down or stand up during the service. The Rabbi didn't know what to do, so finally he decided to consult one of the original founders of the synagogue and ask his advice.

He took a few representatives of both of the traditions to the founders home and one of the people who stood, said to the old man, "Is it the tradition of the synagogue to stand during the prayer?"

"No" said the old man.

Whereupon one of the representatives of those who stood said, "Is it the tradition to sit during the Shema?"

"No" said the founder.

"But", said the Rabbi, "the congregants fight all the time, yelling at one another."

"Ah," said the Old man, "that is the tradition."[2]

This is one of many things that the synagogue and the Church have in common. I am grateful that at Christ Church, we have had a reprieve from yelling at each other for the past few years, but it will come back because we are human and we are not naturally given to getting along and being reconciled.

I heard of one Rabbi that started off an annual retreat for the leadership of the synagogue with a story about the undergraduates at Brandeis that wanted to have a serious crew team and they as they lost nearly every race they had.

They sent a spy up to Harvard to discover their secret. The student watched them work out on the Charles river, came back to college and announced that he had discovered the Harvard team secret. Said he, "they have eight guys rowing and only one guy shouting."[3]

So often, it is about that simple. I know of few people who have been involved in the Church, or many other philanthropic outreaches for that matter, who have not reported at some point or other, they have been surrounded by Monday morning quarterbacks like the new Brett Farvre commercial, when what they need the most is some one to pitch in and just get involved.

St. Paul picked up on this theme that Jesus develops in his ministry and makes it the leitmotif of his advice to young churches. His letter to the church at Corinth takes this up. Always remember that the point of our life together is that we must mature and grow in the meaning of being reconciled.

Just as in our political life, there is always an issue before us, sometimes silly, often substantive that we must decide together. The challenge is to develop ways to interacting and involving one another that lead us ultimately in the direction of reconciliation. That doesn't mean we have uniformity in a straight jacket of agreed upon dogma and praxis. But it does mean that we work towards unity that celebrates diversity in the Spirit of God.

The Church at Corinth had written Paul about three questions that they wanted answered, hot button questions in their time. First, what do you do about people that are married to non-Christians? That issue is back with us again, probably on a scale that we haven't practically since the letter was written. The second question was what do we do about people who are Christian that are still using some religious practices from the old religion? Finally, in the passage that Joy read earlier, they ask Paul, what about people who have different gifts? Which gifts are more important?

Paul makes an extended analogy, a bit over developed perhaps, but one that was important when it was first made, that our communal life is like the different parts of the body. We all need each other, all of us together, in order to really function. As the African proverb that says, 'when the foot has a thorn in it, the whole body must bend over to address it.' Those of us who are older know this well. You never appreciate just how important a rib is until you bruise it in a fall and discover painfully, with each and every breath, that it is connected to everything. No we need it all to function.

When we know that and live it, when we ingest that reality together, we live in homonia or 'concord'. In the next chapter, he says, we live by love. We live in koinonia.

That is a life that is reconciled.

It is not easy to stay in that mode for long, particularly in successful communities like ours, because we are surrounded by large ego's that regularly suck up more oxygen in the room than they should. You probably know that the playwright George Bernard Shaw was as vain and arrogant as he was successful. He was also acquainted with Winston Churchill, whose politics he never agreed with.

Shaw had a play that was opening in London and sent Churchill two tickets with a little note that said, "Dear Winston, I would like to invite you to the opening of my latest play and I include another one for a friend… if you have one."

Churchill's ego matched his physical frame. He wrote back to Shaw, "Dear George, Sorry I cannot make the opening night of your play as I have other arrangements already. I would very much like two tickets to the second night of the play… if there is one."

Some of us have to manage our ego's and their desire to back everyone off… and we know who we are. We need to regularly pray for and work on humility in the sense of exercising some restraint and understanding the limits of our power interpersonally.

But humility is not groveling either. It is an honest appraisal of who you are. It is, in the words of one theologian, seeing yourself as God sees you. You are somebody. God loves you. You have worth.

I was watching some old tape on Monday night of Martin Luther King in Memphis, speaking to the garbage workers who were on strike. There were hundreds of people there, mostly garbage workers. He looked out over all of them and he said, 'there is no work that does not have dignity.' St. Paul said, there is no part of the body that is not worthy. We can use you and we need you to learn together how to love and how to get along.

Spiritually, I think there are more of us than we know, that are just looking for a place to belong. We are like a Southern gentleman that I saw a few months ago at a movie theater. He had gone into the theater with his family and they had all gotten their seats, while he went off and got some drinks and pop corn. By the time he got into the theatre, the previews had started. I could see him walking up and down the aisle looking for his people. Up and down. Up and down. He was frustrated. Finally there was a pause in the previews and I heard him say out loud, "Doesn't anybody in here recognize me?"

Spiritually speaking, my sense is that there are more of us wandering around like this than we know. Sometimes even with your spouse, who you think appreciates you and understands you, until they do something or they miss something, and you have this moment… Hello… this is the woman you wake up every day with… Brunette... walks the dog.

You get some news that has weight to it, something really important that will directly impact your life, possibly good, possibly bad, and you want to share it with someone. You find yourself walking from work, on the subway, on the train, all these people that are around you, some of them you even know but none of them do you have that kind of connection with, not for this. And you find yourself with a deep longing to be with the people that you have a spiritual connection with, people that know you on that level.

I know that we have people that walk into this Church all the time and, without saying it, without even realizing it themselves, that is what they are saying. We want to find a home, a spiritual home, a place where other people see us as God sees us. We want a place where people are willing to work with us, to be patient with us; a place where people can find some use for what we have to offer, where we can fit in and find our place and make a difference. We want someone to recognize us and welcome us home.

That is what the Church is all about, St. Paul says. It is vitally important and my sense is that it is getting more and more important each decade, precisely because community in general is getting more and more complicated to sustain. When it works in the church, it is profound. But we go through cycles and there is a lot of the time that we don't develop it so well. We get comfortable with them that we know well, or we are overloaded and just have enough time to slip in for worship and out again. And the net effect is that even though we are friendly people, we don't actually reach out to new people that are looking to find their place. But we should. We should actually have it as something of a goal at church that twice a month, we find someone that we don't know and speak to them. Find out something about them.

I know some of you are thinking twice a month. I'm lucky to get to church twice a month. Get to work. Get out there.

And you remember that first month at college. All those formal introductions to people you didn't know at fraternity and sorority parties. What a relief when you finally got to leave the main party and pal around with a smaller group of people upstairs, out of the way. And how interesting to get to know people that way.

And spiritually, how much more interesting when you can really be real with people and start to share your dreams, your fears, your hopes and burdens with other people that support you rather than take you down.

At the end of the day, that is really the thing that has been the most fulfilling about being the Minister at this Church. I've gotten to know some really great people and know them on the level that most matters to them… Interesting people, outside the box people, talented. Rarely strange, never dull, intellectually challenging and worldly wise, substantial people that are pillars of support to one another when the incoming artillery gets heavy. People that can give you feedback without judgment and without sentimentality. People that are not afraid to express a dissenting opinion and are not easily offended if you do.

You can find healing in this community. So if you are new, trust me, it is a good idea to hang in there and get to know these folks. And because all of you collectively have so much to offer, extend your hand to people around you. We can make this circle a little bigger and stronger at the same time. And may God's peace be upon you this mid-winter chill. Amen.

[1] The story comes from Siegfried S. Johnson in Dynamic Preaching, vol. 19, no. 1, p. 25.

[2] Ibid. p. 29.

[3] Ibid. p 29.