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[Tony] We begin with a text from the Gospel of Mark:
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves,
and take up their cross, and follow me.”
[Charmaine] Real peace. That means, getting real. Now, the
things that the previous presenters have presented and what we will be
presenting may seem worlds apart, but in reality, they are the flip
sides of each other. Last night and this morning, we got a chance to
look at the big picture—some of those things, some of those places where
peace is so needed, and where communities and governments and larger
groups of people need to be at work finding ways to make peace. We’re
going to go microscopic. We’re going to be having us all look inward to
what are some of the roots for those things that create barriers between
us, that cause some people to consider themselves as more important than
others.
So we’re going to go on a little journey inside of ourselves, and as
we go, we’re going to invite you to actively participate in this; so if
you don’t have a piece of paper nearby that’s got a blank surface, you
might want to get one, because we’re going to involve you in this
process, personally, as we go. Oh, you are all such good students—I hear
the rustling of paper. All right. We’re just hoping that our students
who are here today aren’t going to give us a grade, though it would be
fair, wouldn’t it?
Where should we start? We want to start with gratitude. When we have
the opportunity to work with young couples who are considering a
life-long commitment, as we’re helping them prepare for their marriage,
we always bring up: do not ever skimp on gratitude—gratitude for each
other, gratitude for the God who’s bringing you together. So we want to
start with gratitude. For us, this seems appropriate because
relationships are perhaps the greatest treasure that we are given in our
lives. So we thank God for this relationship we get to be in, in which
we’ve learned so much about life and love, and things about ourselves
we’d rather not have learned, and a relationship which God has helped us
to sustain in very concrete ways.
We’re also thankful for this job that we get to do together, and that
we get to struggle together. Isn’t that a great word: “struggle”? And we
are thankful for people, insights, writers, and experiences that have
helped us to cultivate this and other relationships in our lives. We
rely on those things, those writers, those experiences, sometimes with
much more desperation than with others. So for just a half a minute, I
want you to take some time to think about who are you grateful for in
your life. [33 seconds of silence] We are indeed greatly blessed.
You might ask, “So how are these guys qualified to talk about
relationships?” and the first thing I can say is, well, we have lots of
them, and the second thing is, I would say there’re times when we have
failed horribly. There’re some that have been beautiful. We’ve left some
relationships unattended, like something in the crisper spoiling, and
we’re still trying to figure out how to let Jesus be a part of more of
those relationships. So these are our qualifications—these and the fact
that we can’t say no to Andrew Bolton.
If you’re a visual person, this might be helpful. We like to imagine
relationships as workshops—those places where you keep hammers and saws
and planes—workshops where honesty and mutuality and equality are
crafted. You see, first of all, workshops aren’t tidy, and I think
that’s probably true of most of our relationships. In fact, if a
workshop is fulfilling its purpose, it’s not going to be doing any good
to anyone if all the tools are on the wall in all their nice little
spots and there’s no dirt or sawdust on the floor.
But some people act as though the goal in a relationship is to get it to
this one place, this organized, tidy spot, and then say, “Well, if we
can just be careful and not disturb anything, maybe we can coast on that
relationship for the rest of our lives.” And we’re usually abruptly
reminded that that’s not really possible, but sometimes that’s what we
do. But what’s the fun in that? How do we get to help each other grow?
How do we help to help to fix the broken parts inside each other? And
what happens to the God part of who we are together if we just put it on
a shelf somewhere, or tuck it away in a box in a nice, tidy workshop?
Another way in which our relationships are like a workshop is that,
usually, you have things at different stages of development—some just
begun, some you’re right in the middle of, some also resolved. And it’s
true of relationships as well.
And here’s our third thing about workshops: if things are happening
in your workshop, you’d better have a first-aid kit. So I want you to
think about what’s in your first-aid kit. Do you have any Band-Aids to
take care of those little boo-boos in a relationship before they become
huge issues? And what have you got for pain? Maybe a listening ear? A
prayer discipline? A good book? A better diagnosis? And in your
first-aid kit, have you thought to include the [phone] number of a
trained professional? It’s a good thing to have in a relationship.
In this presentation, we’re going to be sharing a little bit about
what’s in our first-aid kit and some of the gifts we’ve received along
the way—gifts that have changed or sustained us, gifts that have brought
peace, hope, or understanding to our relationships—not just this one,
but all of our relationships—gifts that have let Christ’s presence be
real to us and with us.
OK, now, this next list of things that I’m going to say always makes
Tony nervous, so I’m going to say them. Even with all the help
that we’ve had from God and from all those other resources, we’ve yelled
and screamed and thrown things—mostly me—I have a better arm. We’ve
walked away; we’ve been sullen; we’ve found dozens of creative ways to
punish the other or hurt the other. We’ve sought help; we’ve hoped;
we’ve despaired; we’ve fought; we’ve manipulated each other, but [Tony
starts speaking] I get to share the good news. We’ve also
experienced joys together we could never have imagined. We’ve laughed
and laughed, and prayed, and wept, and thanked each other for tasks
done; we’ve found new levels of listening. We’ve argued over theologies
(imagine that!), discovered great joy in forgiving, shared romantic
times, supported each other through times of grief and fear, encouraged
the other, talked and talked, challenged each other, helped each other
dream again.
[Charmaine] But both of those lists are the real parts of
relationships. They are the best and the ugliest parts of ourselves
magnified, super-sized, but both lists are what loving is all about. We
feel vulnerable, revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly about
ourselves and our relationship with groups, but also with each other
sometimes. We’ve discovered, though, that if we are seeking peace in our
relationship, we must first recognize who and where we really are. Not
the way I think it should be, or the way I wish it was, or what I think
I deserve. Recognize any of those? Do you find yourself hating? Admit
it. Are you embarrassed to admit you’re wrong? Have you stopped trusting
in a relationship? Be honest about what is happening, in you and around
you, because then you’ll be able to see more clearly where peace is
needed, and where it can begin its work inside of you. You can’t have
real peace until you’ve been real honest.
[Tony] I’d like to share a word about our title today: “Crossing
Ourselves with Peace.” What does it mean? It’s actually our response to
the question: “How will we connect the peace of Jesus Christ to our
relationships?” Not ideal or imagined relationships, but our real ones;
the ones we wake up with, the ones we stew over, and struggle over, and
weep over, and rejoice over.
We have a friend who’s an American Baptist pastor. He and I went to
seminary together. And he once told us something a mentor of his told
him when he was doing weddings. This mentor, in a wedding, used to
address the congregation and say, “Today, two irritating, selfish,
unpredictable, imperfect people who have fallen in love, are pledging
before us to love each other for the rest of their lives.” You know,
it’s a convincing description of the impossible possibility of committed
relationships of all kinds.
But what does it mean to seek the peace of Christ here in the gritty
world of our real relationships? We think that the cross, and the
spirituality of the cross, can inform us about the nature of the peace
that Jesus brings, and about how that peace can be actualized in our
relationships.
[Charmaine] We’ll be stopping for brief periods during our time
with you this afternoon, to give you a chance to focus on one
relationship in your life. There’ll be opportunities to reflect on or
pray for that relationship. You won’t be asked to share your insights
with anyone else. This is simply a time for you and the Holy Spirit to
work together. So I want you to take a moment right now, identify
someone in your life that you want to love more, or with whom you want
more peace. Then I want you to write down their name. That’s all I want
you to write right now—to write down their name—but we’ll give you a
half-minute here. Who’s someone in your life that you want to love more,
or that you want more peace with? [43 seconds of silence]
We’ll be talking today about love, struggle, our little gods, inner
traps, and utter temptations in the context of relationships that we’ve
lived, ’cause those are the ones we know best. We’ve divided our address
into two parts. The first is the inner journey: how can Christ speak to
our inner landscape, what’s really happening inside of us? The second
part is the outer journey: how can Christ’s life and death help us die
to the images that seek to define us? We aren’t experts in bringing
Christ’s life, death, or peace fully to bear in all of our
relationships, but the power of Christ’s grace changes us as we try, and
so we commend it to you.
[Tony] We begin with the inward journey—crucifixion of self.
Taking us to the cross can be a hollow cliché—another way of talking
about doing something you’d rather not do—like for our students,
preparing for an exam. Being crucified with Christ carries its own
negative baggage. The cross of Christ, sadly, has been used to exploit
people. I think back to Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ,
and I remember a story I heard. After a showing of the film, friends
observed a man just outside a theater in Independence, Missouri, with a
sign that read, “This should have been you.” What a wretched
misinterpretation of atonement; as if God wanted to torture and kill us.
I’m going to be talking, in my part, about taking up our cross, but I
want to say up front, that I reject all uses of this language that would
justify abuse—as when the poor, or abused women, or others are told to
put up with the way things are, and they should just bear their cross.
On the other hand, I think that discarding Christian symbols because
some people misuse them actually leads us nowhere. So, in fact, what I
want to do, in my part, is suggest that Jesus’ death, and his language
about the cross, are deeply relevant to relationships and, especially,
to the pursuit of peace.
The best way to get at this theme is for me to be autobiographical
for a few minutes. I’m going to take you back to a three-year period in
our lives, just after I’d finished graduate school. The long years of
theological study were over, and I was ready to begin my career as a
teacher and a scholar. I had started down this path with a very clear
sense of calling that never left, and when, early in the journey,
Charmaine and I met and we were married, she entered that path with me.
But when I finished and could not find a teaching position, much in my
life and in our life together, came lurching to a painful stop.
I entered a God-forsaken piece of territory that has a sign that
says, “Welcome to the desert.” All of the props, all of the nets of a
successful stint in graduate school were gone. My dreams seemed like
mirages. There were no longer any professors around to tell me how
wonderful I was. I was without title, without future, and, actually,
without a job. All we had was each other, and for me, the empty place
where once I thought God had been. So I entered a wilderness, which is
where my education, in some ways, really began.
Medieval spiritual writers call this condition “desolation,” and they
knew what they were talking about. But desolation started to do me a
favor. It forced me to take a long, hard look at myself. Now, for many
years prior to this time, Charmaine could see what was happening to me,
and had the clearer vision. She tried to let me know, but I thought I
knew better. Now I had to face it; we had to face it together and begin
to name what we saw. What did we see? Christian spiritual traditions
offered to name it, and I’ll get to that in just a minute. But what the
tradition helped to put into words, Charmaine had articulated many years
earlier during a walk one night, when she looked at me and said to me,
“You think, that because of your education, you’re smarter than me and
more important than me.” Ouch. I tucked that little glimpse of reality
deep into some mental pocket, and moved on with grad school, where I had
too many interesting books to read and things to do to face this ugly
truth, and others. But when you’re in the desert, you turn out all your
pockets, looking for anything that will help you survive. And so I had
to go back and start taking a long, hard look at me.
As I began to read classical spiritual writers like Thomas à Kempis,
and Brother Lawrence, and William Temple—which had no interest to me as
a grad student, I wasn’t interested in them at all—I found what was
looking for me. Here’s a quote from the great Anglican theologian,
William Temple. He says: “It is always selfishness—or continued
exaggeration of the particular interest of selves—which makes painful
the substitution of love for self, as the controlling influence of
life.”
Selfishness: “the continued exaggeration of the particular
interest of a self.”
Temple’s words illuminated me pretty darn well. They applied to
situations as diverse as a graduate student’s obsessive concern with his
own career. They also apply, equally well, to an administration’s
disastrous foreign policy. Temple put his finger on what Augustine and
many Christian writers through the centuries have called “self-love”—amor
sui. What does it mean? When this spiritual tradition refers to
self-love, it means something very different from the popular
vernacular, which equates self-love with self-esteem. And it isn’t what
Jesus was talking about when he said to love your neighbor as
yourself—where there, the self, the love of self, simply refers to
regarding others as of equal value to you.
Self-love, in this tradition, refers to our tendency to want to place
the self and self-interest at the center of the universe. It is egotism,
or more plainly, self-centeredness. Martin Luther really colorfully
described this human propensity with the phrase incurvatus in
se ipsum, which means, we are “curved in on ourselves.” Self-love
restricts our ability to love—to love God, to love neighbor, to love
enemy. Why? Because we are the object of our own love, and the roots of
amour sui, self-love, run a lot deeper in us human beings than can be
managed by just teaching children to share their toys, though that’s a
pretty good start. Me, at the center of the universe, sounds like I’ve
applied for God’s job.
Self-love has more than one face—actually lots of faces: arrogant
self-assertion, shameless self-promotion on one side; self-hate and
denigration on the other side. Either way, I am still the focus; my self
is still the controlling reality. Obsessing about my imperfections or
wanting to build up a personal kingdom are just different symptoms of
the same disease. Frankly, self-love is what we’re describing when we
say, “It’s all about me.” So do you recognize yourself in this yet? If
not, it may be because self-love is very crafty. It has a thousand
masks, and it hates to be revealed. Its disguises can be socially
acceptable—seeking to excel, wanting to make a difference, striving to
be seen with the successful and powerful, yearning to be something. It
can equally take the mask of self-loathing or spiritual nit-picking, so
that it looks like humility. And let me say that self-love is really,
really subtle in the life of the church. For example: being
indispensable in the congregation may actually mask the desire to
control. Or, claiming to be the standard bearer for this particular
truth or that one may disguise arrogance. Or, pursuing my calling may
conceal putting my desiring and goals before my partners.
Giving generously can sometimes camouflage the intention to dominate,
like a congregation we once belonged to, where somebody wanted to donate
money for a new sign, and when the committee came up with the design for
the sign, the person withdrew their money, because they didn’t like it.
It wasn’t really a gift, was it? So on it goes. As Thomas à Kempis
writes in The Imitation of Christ (this is roughly the1400s), he
says:
“Many people seek themselves in what they do, and do not know
it.”
In Christian community, you see, we need to be deeply, deeply in
touch with our real intentions, and willing to practice the art of
self-examination. But how will we begin? In my time of wandering in the
desert, ancient and medieval Christian spiritual writers provided me
with words to diagnose my malady, and they prescribed a remedy. See, I
began to see, really for the first time, the powerful, invisible
tentacles of self-love in my own life. This is a never-ending process,
by the way. I was guided by the light of my own pain. I was guided by
Charmaine’s pastoral instincts. And I was guided by the tradition’s
wisdom, and I learned, I started to learn that the Christian life is
actually supposed to be about the de-throning of the self, or better,
it’s about what François Fénelon, called the crucifixion of self. The
Christian life is supposed to be a continuation of my baptism—entering
into Christ’s death.
Let’s spend a moment in some reflection right now. Go back to the
name that you wrote down earlier, and reflect on the following
statement: “When I think about loving or reconciling with this person,
my self-love gets in the way by _____________. And remember, you’re not
sharing this with anybody. [3-second silence]
I want to move on to François Fénelon. He was one of the guides I
discovered in my desert. He’s from the 17th century. He was a
French-Catholic archbishop, who ran into trouble with the King Louis
XIV, got himself exiled, and from exile, became a spiritual director for
lots and lots of people. I started to read his letters and I’ll tell
you, what captivated me about his letters was he had this amazing
ability to cut through my bull. Yes, I just said “bull” in the Temple,
by the way. Religious bull, robed in pious language. Listen to this
advice that he gave to somebody back in the1600s, who doesn’t like the
spiritual direction that they are receiving and what it’s begun to
uncover in their life. Fénelon writes them and he says:
As long as any self-love is remaining, we are always afraid it
will be revealed, but God does not give up. God pursues it, and by
some infinitely merciful blow, forces it into the open. Self-love,
forced into the light, sees itself as it really is, in all its
deformity, and despair, and disgrace. You asked for a remedy, that
your problems might be cured. You do not need to be cured. You need
to be slain.
Doesn’t sound like Pastoral Counseling 101, does it? When you start
reading Fénelon’s letters, they sound a bit harsh; you have to brace
yourself. But I can tell you, when you start to get what he’s talking
about, you discover this guy’s not some 17th century Dr. Laura. The
harshness is superficial, because this man deeply, deeply loved the
people he was counseling. And he looked past their faults and he wanted
to bring them into a richer relationship with God, and he knew from his
own experience the way into divine depth is letting go of yourself and
your self-concern. He believes we need to see ourselves as we actually
are, not as we pretend to be.
And you know what, the sight of that slimy creature called my ego has
a real shock-effect if you’ve never seen it before. It’s like seeing
Gollum in yourself, you know? Tolkien was a master of this; he
understood this. Gollum is like a hobbit’s self-love magnified. The
thing is, for Fénelon, you’ve go to see this truth about yourself at the
same time that you see that God absolutely loves you unconditionally the
way you are. And this is what he means, and what other Christian
spiritual writers mean by embracing the cross and dying to self. My
cross is anything in my life that shows up my self-love—clear vision of
my weakness, persistent failure at some virtue, people who irritate me,
criticism that touches my sensitivity. This is the kind of stuff of
everyday life where, actually, from Fenelon’s perspective, God is trying
to reveal things to me about me so we can deal with them; and the point
here is to patiently let God resize my ego and put it in its due
proportions.
Dying to self sounds pretty ominous, so you’re asking, “Is Tony
saying that we should just let people walk on us?” No, not at all. Dying
to self in this spiritual tradition means something like this: embrace
what directly confronts your self-interest, or your image. Accept
whatever calls you to renounce your ego protection. Do not reject the
truth that you need to be remade. Do not turn away from your pain. And
do not turn away from the pain or the imperfection of others. That’s
what this is all about in this tradition. It’s incredibly relevant for
peacemaking. And so, since that time, [I’ve] been trying to practice
what we call “a spirituality of the cross.” It looks a little bit like
this: I try to be critical of my assumptions about my life and my
motives. Try to listen, not speak. Learn not to chafe at criticism. Be
suspicious of my own need for affirmation. Be careful of wanting God to
make me perfect, because, you know, to be perfect is a danger to our
souls—it makes grace unnecessary. Self-love cannot be conquered in a
day, or a retreat, or a camp, or one Lent, or ten Lents, or even in one
lifetime. It’s something that we and God chip away at day by day for the
rest of our lives; and that is what taking up our cross is about.
Dying to self is the way of the cross; the way of self-emptying, the
way to love. Quote from William Temple:
To realize what my selfishness means to the [God] who loves me,
with a love such as Christ reveals, fills me with horror at the
selfishness in me, and calls out an answer in love…Thus it is that
we plead the sacrifice of Christ; his love, shown preeminently in
his death, has transforming power over all those who open their
hearts to it.
Last thing for me, for right now: What larger relevance does this
spiritual path hold for our world and for peacemaking? I think it has
immense relevance—if you’re concerned about the common good. You see, as
long as self-love governs relationships, the common good is ever out of
our reach. Do some imagining with me. Image, for example, what health
care in the United States might look like if all of the stakeholders
were to abandon self-interest for the sake of real human well-being. Or,
if we could back up the clock, imagine what difference it might have
made if a wounded, frightened, angry nation had chosen, not violence and
retaliation, but the way of the cross. “If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross.”
Jesus didn’t give us a formula or cliché, but a way to swim with the
current of the universe.
[Charmaine] Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this
world. My kingdom is not from here.” It’s from John 18:36. I’m going to
be talking about the outer journey; the images that stalk us.
Well, what are these images? The images are the shorthand of our
society’s ideas of what success looks like. It’s a language of sorts
that we’re trained from our childhood. The easiest place to find these
images—you can find them anywhere, but the easiest way—is to look at
commercials. What’s the message behind those images and those words?
Well, beauty looks like this. Happiness is dependent on doing or
consuming this. Success means you own this. You’re special, and so you
deserve—whatever. You’ll be admired for your intelligence if you buy
this. These messages that we hear all the time have disastrous effects.
For many, these messages engender a type of debilitating
self-consciousness and are especially devastating to those in our
society who have been planned out of having access to those things that
we call success. But just as insidiously, those who are able to meet the
expectation of what I call “the image gods” are then proclaimed to be
somebody. I know as a kid, as a youth, that was the goal: to be
somebody. But this is a deadly trap as well. For it feeds that fiend
that Tony was talking about, that inner insecurity or self-love that
craves proof that I—because of my uniqueness or my proficiency at
something—am better than those other people.
These images that we take in all of the time leave us with a boatload
of expectations, images that play in us about who we should be and what
we should do. How should we look? I think it would have been
entertaining for you to have heard our discussion about what we were
going to wear today. Those kinds of settings are the ones that you start
flipping through—all of these images you’ve been fed about what this
looks like, what that looks like, what it is you’re communicating about
who you are or who you aren’t. Some of these images are imposed by the
society around us, but others are self-imposed, and some of those images
are kind of just hovering over our heads, over our sense of self-worth.
Here are some others: gender role-casting, body image, being good
enough, rich enough, smart enough, nice enough. All these expectations
and more ambush our attempts to love and to be loved. How do we use
these things to determine who’s lovable and who isn’t; who’s of worth
and who’s of less worth?
We have a friend who discovered, just in the nick of time (I think),
that he had bought into one of these ideas about one of these images of
what beauty is. For him, beauty was: blonde, petite, and perky. He
realized this, I say in the nick of time, because, there in his life was
a beauty who was just waiting for him to notice, and they’ve been
married for about five years now. Loving and being willing to be loved
are the basic elements of a relationship, but the expectations by which
we judge ourselves and others often sabotage even our dearest
relationships. I know a couple where the man, from their mid-30s until
near his wife’s death in their mid-80s, badgered the woman all the time
about her weight. He obsessed about his own, but he was very cruel at
times about her weight and her attempts to go on diets. It was not until
he faced her impending death that he could clearly see the joy that he
had killed in their life together, and the barriers that his criticism
had built. It wasn’t until this point that he could finally admit what a
jerk he had been—how his own insecurities, to be seen in a certain way,
had destroyed love and trust. And worst of all, it was now too late for
him to even acknowledge that to her. He did the best he could by
speaking his mistake and his shame to his children. But he knew that the
opportunity to fully love her was gone.
From the scripture I read earlier, we know that Jesus’ way is not our
culture’s way. The kingdom that Jesus preached about has a whole
different set of rules than the ones that these images give us each day.
In this realm—this kingdom that Jesus talks about—all are loved and of
equal worth before God, all have a purpose in God’s plan, and all are
cherished and beautiful. Things we want to hear about ourselves, those
are the things that this kingdom is about: being cherished and
beautiful. Jesus lived this out for us, reaching to those who’d been
discarded and despised by his culture.
In fact, Jesus not only showed us what God’s love looked like, he
also draws attention to two different, distinct sets of images that are
at work in our culture. One of them, I’ve already mentioned, the ones
that are our culture’s images—the things we see on TV. In Jesus’ time,
there were also those cultural expectations. But he drew attention to
another set of images that have that tendency to work in our lives in
negative ways. And these are subtle and sinister images that are
promoted by us religious people. Jesus, you know, gave the Pharisees a
pretty hard time, but we might want to hear from him speaking to us as
well. The set of images that he got after the Pharisees for were things
like worrying about what should be worn during worship or what spiritual
practices should be done by people, or how the scriptures were read or
interpreted. Some of those fit for today as well. I don’t know if in the
temple in Jesus’ time or in the synagogues they had what’s sometimes
today called the “music wars,” but sometimes we imply that God likes
certain kinds of music [better] than others, more than others. And those
are images, because when religious people start talking about images, or
start promoting particular images, the implication is that this is what
God thinks; and sometimes, inadvertently, we have told people that God
can’t love them because they haven’t fit our image.
Something this morning in the keynote: “robbing people of the divine
image”—telling them, judging them by other things. Jesus showed us what
being freed from the traps of images and expectations can look like. And
I think they may still be useful demonstrations today. There’s the whole
story of Mary and Martha. His vote is for Mary, the woman more concerned
about her relationship with God than meeting her society’s expectations
of waiting on the men in her life. I like that one.
Jesus loves Zacchaeus, who in his time represents the big, bad
government. Yes, the government is big and the government is bad, and
Zacchaeus has ripped off a lot of people, but Jesus shows that the power
of repentance and God’s forgiveness can even work for traitors and
politicians. Who’d have thought it? And then there was the woman caught
in adultery and the other women who were thought to be prostitutes. He
not only was not ashamed to be seen in public with them, he publicly
acknowledged that God had forgiven them and he stood for their right to
have an unimpeded relationship with God. And then what about the
Samaritans? They were seen as mixed race heretics by Jesus’ people. But
he rebuked James and John when they wanted to call in fire on the
Samaritans. And a Samaritan was a hero of one of Jesus’ most famous
parables, and maybe if Jesus had been telling it today, it would have
been the Good Iraqi or the Good Iranian, to help us see our folly.
Take a moment now, for personal reflection. Think about the person
whose name you wrote down earlier. What images or expectations are at
work inside of you? Seeing these will help illuminate the work ahead of
you of learning to love or to make peace. What images or expectations
are at work inside of you? Anne Lamott, in her book Plan B: Further
Thoughts on Faith, describes a friend’s gift and blessing to her.
She begins by saying:
I wear something on my wrist that one would not expect a
Presbyterian woman to wear—a thin red cord that was blessed by the
Dalai Lama, and given to me by my Buddhist friend, Jack Cornfield.
Jack knotted a number of blessings into my cord last year when he
tied it on my wrist: to protect me from the values and judgment of
the world, from the disaster of my own thinking, and to allow me the
forgetting of myself. So, how can we free ourselves from the values
and judgments of the world—those crippling images and expectations
that are in us and in our relationships?
I don’t have all the answers, but I have learned one little trick. A
few years ago, I was at my childhood home, and two of my sisters and I
were preparing a meal. We were discussing some topic, and I’m not even
sure what it was anymore—you know how those things go—and somehow we
started pushing each other’s buttons. You know, I have to always ask the
question, Do we ever really grow up? Within a matter of minutes,
it was like we were back in our teens, squabbling over nothing.
But here I was, forty something, and it still felt like it was when I
was a kid, and I got angry and hurt, and I went storming off in a rage,
crying and pacing, and praying—it was all so unfair! Why were my sisters
so mean to me? Sisters were supposed to love me and support me, supposed
to give comfort and gently care for me. What was wrong with me? (Or
them, most likely.) And in the midst of my pacing and praying, I was
stopped by a simple little phrase: die to your expectations. It was the
key, a simple little thing. And it opened up before me the realization
of all these unrealistic expectations I had of my sisters, of our
relationship, and it gave me the freedom then, of course, to blame them,
to feel like a failure, because we didn’t have it worked out right—well,
and to blame God, too, you know: “I deserve better than this, God.” We
do say that—maybe not out loud, but sometimes we think that in our
relationships.
But as I tried that, as I tried to die to those expectations of what
I thought that relationship should be, something started changing inside
me. Something shifted. In some ways, it was like letting Christ’s death
have room in me again. This simple act helped me to sweep away some of
those false images that I had of them, my sisters, myself, and of
sisterhood. And I was suddenly free from playing the old games; it was
amazing. And I found out that I could focus on what really does matter
in those relationships. I’d also begun to see how much of my time I
spend worried about how people see me. And that was not appealing, but
it was good to know.
I found some other ways, too, in which Christ and the cross can
immunize us and our relationships against the false images and
expectations that are around us and inside us. I’ll go slowly on this
one, so that if one of them hits you, you’ll have a minute to write it
down, OK? I can recognize almost all of these in me. Here are some
possibilities of ways to short-circuit those images and expectations:
- Surround yourself with people who practice seeing what God sees
in people.
- Practice asking forgiveness often; learn to spurn the adulation
of the world—a couple of old-fashioned words in there, but they work
really well.
- Thank God often for the people in your life, especially the
difficult ones.
- Challenge ways our society equates the value of a person with
how much money their work produces.
- Practice giving forgiveness, especially when it costs you
something like being right.
- Practice love in the places where judgment usually comes to you
most easily—you know who you judge, where those tendencies are in
yourself—I don’t need to name those.
- Let your anger teach you where your sense of entitlement or your
sense of superiority may lie.
- Check your fears to find your prejudices.
- Be willing to sacrifice your good image for the right cause.
- This is a hard one, but a good one—practice pretending that no
one sees you—this is particularly good as a way to battle
self-consciousness, pleasing others, or seeking affirmation.
We are certainly not the first people who’ve struggled with letting
go of images that keep us from following Jesus. Jesus’ disciples had to
struggle with that their whole discipleship, their whole life. Peter
tries to talk Jesus out of his plan. When Jesus tells him “I’m going to
be crucified; I’m going to be judged, rejected, crucified,” Peter tries
to talk him out of that, and Jesus says, “No, you’re measuring things by
the wrong standards, you’re measuring them by earthly standards,” and
Jesus says if anyone plans to follow him, they must take up their cross
and follow him. And he asks them, and maybe us, what will it profit you
to gain the whole world, but to lose your life? We see all around us
people gaining lots in the world, but losing their ability to love
others; gaining wealth or power, but losing their integrity, their
souls; people gaining things that are supposed to make them feel good,
but losing control of their spending, their impulses, their addictions,
their relationships; gaining stuff or status, but losing hope; gaining
points, but losing the point, which is knowing, loving, and being loved
by our God.
We are surrounded by the images that promise to give us worth, but in
the process, those images separate us from God and from each other. They
divide us into this kind of strata, defining who’s on top, and who
belongs on the bottom. They obstruct us from being able to see and care
for each other, to feel vulnerable to each other. These images become
buffers that keep us from experiencing the pain, the fear, and the
hunger of our brothers and sisters. But God’s kingdom, this kingdom that
Jesus talks about, is a great leveler. Christ brings down the dividing
walls, and his peace heals the torn fabric of relationships.
We are told that the kingdom is already among us; it is, but we’re
not going to recognize it by big buildings and big armies. We’re not
going to recognize it because everyone is dressed nice and lives in a
nice house. We will recognize this kingdom because we’ll see it where
there is genuine sacrifice for each other, where all are fed, where all
have access to affordable health care and decent housing; where everyone
works for a cause greater than their own ego; and where each one’s worth
is an assumption that we start with in any encounter. Christ’s kingdom
is near enough to access as we risk being with and for each other.
Your last step—the person that we had you write down—and we know
we’re a little bit over, but that’s OK—we’re going to give you a minute
or so to take a look at that name again—that person you identified that
you want to have more peace with or to love. I want you to take a bit of
a moment—this is like a prayer: “God, thank you for this person you have
placed in my life, and for my desire to see your peace and love at work
in our relationship. Help me let go of_______. Help me forgive______.
Help me see clearly______.” We’re only going to have a minute or so for
you to begin on this, but I would encourage you to take some time and
let these thoughts lead you into seeing where peace can be in that
relationship. Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my
kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me
from being handed over, but as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
[Tony] Who was this 1st century Galilean Jew who called his
followers to such an outrageous lifestyle? We close with a quote from
theologian William Placher:
Just this Jesus is the human face of God, not merely a messenger
or a prophet, but God’s own-self, come as self revelation to
humankind. If God becomes human in just this way, then that tells us
something about how we might seek our own fullest humanity, not in
quests of power, and wealth, and fame, but in service and solidarity
with the despised and rejected, and the willingness to be vulnerable
in love.
In the cross of Christ, God becomes vulnerable to human misery, and
to the nasty power of our own self-love. And yet, here, Christ reveals
what divine love actually is: other-embracing, other-regarding,
self-emptying, self-forgetful love.
[Charmaine] When this kind of love touches us, the meagerness and
defects of our culture’s way of assigning worth are exposed. We begin to
see that Christ’s life, death, and cross can empower us to die to the
images that have previously defined and dominated us. Freed from the
incessant need to justify our worth, we are liberated to love from a
place of vulnerability, rather than a place of power. And before us
opens the path of peace. |
