Roger Ray, pastor
Easter 4a May 11, 2014
1 Peter 2:19-25
19For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. 21For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22"He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
Nature does not know about good and evil. Nature is morally neutral. We talk a lot about defending the earth, protecting and restoring the environment, but as Neil deGrasse Tyson as recently observed, you really don't have to worry about the earth... the earth will be fine no matter what we do. The question is whether human beings will survive.
Whenever we talk about preserving the environment, what we really mean is keeping the environment in that narrow and delicate zone in which humans can survive. Dinosaurs come and go... but nature lives on. Various species of plants, birds, fish and animals come and go but nature is indifferent.... Nature is morally neutral.
At the core of the Genesis myth of human awakening is the dawning awareness of good and evil. It is that knowledge that separates us from the rest of nature and the rest of the animal kingdom.
We project human emotions onto animals and some people are convinced that there is more than instinct in their pets or even in certain marine and wild animals but if you will permit me to make this fundamental observation: A snake that eats a bird's eggs is not evil or malevolent, it is just a snake. And a hawk or eagle that eats a snake is not getting revenge, it is just doing what hawks and eagles do.
The arguably unique claim that we humans have is that it is possible for us to sin... we can choose to do what we know is evil, whether it is a crime or not, we know that we are not neutral players in human history. Our actions have moral dimensions, even when we want to insist that they do not.
A great deal of what we call mental disorders is, in one way or another, a reaction to our awareness of the fact that we are moral players in society. Scott Peck wrote in the Road Less Traveled that most people who seek psychiatric help are either neurotics or people with character disorders. The two are, basically, opposite sides of the same coin.
The neurotic tends to take too much responsibility, making themselves miserable with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. People with character disorders make everyone around them miserable by blaming everyone else or the universe itself for their actions. The neurotic frequently says, "I ought to..." or "I should..." while the character disordered person will say, "I had to.." or "I couldn't."
Now, it is entirely possible to be a character-neurotic but today is Mother's Day and so we should show some deference to the people who are able to simultaneously belittle themselves for all of their inadequacies while making everyone around them feel somehow guilty. I am, of course, speaking only of mothers who attend churches other than ours.
Seriously, neurotics can be tedious to deal with, but character disorders seem to be the ones who are in charge of the public narrative in our day. Most of us are the heroes of our own plays. Whenever we describe the events in our lives, we rarely describe anything that ever happens as having been a failure on our own part. Someone else, or bad luck, the weather, the government, our parents or the opposite sex are all somehow conspiring to make our lives not go the way that they should.
Our natural, animal instincts lead us to avoid suffering, to make sure that we get enough to eat and the safe, warm, confortable sleeping spot... our conscience is what tries to justify those choices to ourselves and others.
Again, when we turn to that myth of beginnings in the book of Genesis, when Cain has killed Abel and God asks Cain, "Where is Able?" and Cain replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The unspoken answer, the answer you are suppose to feel rising up from your heart rather than from reading it off of the page is, "Yes, yes I am my brother's keeper."
What gets "mom" on the short list of things we value along with "baseball and apple pie," is our awareness of mom's who genuinely have suffered, sacrificed, worked, to care for and improve their lives of their children. Giving birth does not make someone a mother any more than being the male actor in propagation makes you a father.
A character disordered person can have a child for selfish purposes... to have someone to love them back... to have someone to care for them in their old age... to shape another person as an extension of themselves, like "Mini-Me" in an Austin Powers movie. If you love a child only when they reflect your personal values, your religion, your beliefs, then you have never really loved the child and, in fact, are not deserving of even the greeting card holiday that is either Mother's or Father's Day.
I was asked recently if we have a lot of gay people in our church and when I thought about it, I realized that we have more parents of gay people than we have gay members. We have, over the years, been more likely to inherit a church member who had to struggle to come to terms with the sexual orientation of a son or daughter and could not, in good conscience, continue to go to a church that either directly or by default, condemned their children.
It is heart breaking to realize how many people remain in churches where they try to "pray away the gay" so that they can make their children more like their parents.... There is nothing sacred or noble about that.... It is just sick... a kind of sick we call narcissism.
Both character disorders and neurosis are, in a way, a reaction to moral compulsion we feel to take responsibility. A healthy form of spirituality is to embrace that moral responsibility in a factual and realistic way. Neurotics go to extremes and make themselves emotional invalids, character disorders find a way to completely deny the reality of the morality of their actions.
It may be unfair to pick on just one person to illustrate my point but here in Missouri, any time we can use someone in Arkansas as a negative example, it feels fair, doesn't it?
Many of us in this part of the world have made the short drive down to Bentonville to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum, which is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The architecture of the buildings is worth the trip, the landscaping on the campus is stunning and the ever-growing art collection is soon to be the American rival to the self-love expressed in the French collection of the Louvre.
Of course, with a budget of around a billion dollars, how can you fail? A billion dollars.... That's a thousand million dollars that the Wal-Mart heiress, Alice Walton, has donated to create this museum that is free to the public. Why did she do this? She explained that she and her family had been looking for a way that they could give back for all of the wealth they had accumulated through Wal-Mart.
Their wealth has come to them through vigorous union busting, by teaching their under-paid employees how to apply for public housing, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, subsidized child care... shifting their labor costs onto the backs of tax payers while they keep an international army of poor people living in poverty to fatten the bottom line of Wal-Mart stock dividends.
The widow of Sam Walton and their three children together have as much wealth as the bottom 42% of America's economy...one family has as much wealth as 150 million Americans, many of whom work for the Walton family. How on earth could they give back?..... an art museum!
I don't usually say anything about Mothers' Day because there are so many people for whom that has not worked out too well.... Those still grieving the too soon loss of their mother, those who always wanted to be a mother and never could be, mothers estranged from their children and those of us who never felt the sincere warmth of the kind of mother for whom the emotional tributes of this day are inspired. But there is a spiritual quality we look for in all of us that I believe lies at the root of what makes motherhood a status deserving of praise.
It is moral responsibility. I admire the Crystal Bridges Museum but I never drive away from it without recognizing the sacrifices made unwillingly by millions of impoverished workers to allow a single family to enjoy the appearance of largess.
We honor mothers because in the USA, unlike most of western civilization, women still earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn because women sacrifice promotions in their careers, forgo advanced degrees, leave the office in time to pick up kids at school and put a meal on the table, coach the soccer team and direct traffic in front of the school so that their children will have a better life. Don't think we don't notice.... Ok, I noticed!
There are no ads on TV tempting you towards responsibility and virtue. Every bit of media stimulation speaks to your appetite for a more sparkly diamond, a nicer home, more alcohol and a more attractive spouse but nothing tells you that there can be something redemptive about meaningful self-denial. You are likely to only get that here so I hope you can hear me.
