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Foundry United Rev. |
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Sermon Series: Love Yourself, Love Your Neighbor “You Are Accepted” Sunday, November 29,
2009 |
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Romans 5:15-21
Rev. |
Nothing,
except the example of others, is more responsible for me being a Christian
today than a sermon I read more than 40 years ago by the theologian Paul
Tillich.[i] It
is a sermon he preached on Romans 5:20; in the translation he used it says:
“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” In
the sermon Tillich says sin should never be used in the plural. We think of
sins as acts we do, but sin is really a state or condition in which we find
ourselves. A
word that gives us a hint of what sin means is “separation.” Sin is
separation. It is separation from ourselves, separation from others, and
separation from the ground of being. Our
separation begins, he says, in the womb and follows us to the grave. We
are separated from our own selves. We do not know ourselves. We are estranged
from our own selves. We are disconnected. There are depths inside of us we do
not know. We do what we do not want to do and do not do what we want to do. We are self-destructive. We do not know
ourselves or love ourselves. Sin abounds. We
are separated from others. We are disconnected from others. We live in an “us-them”
world. We define ourselves over and against each other. We live as though our
fates are not connected. Children
are starving across the face of the earth. Diseases we have cures for go
untreated in most of the world. The overwhelming majority of the world’s
people live on less than $2 a day. “The strangeness of life to life,” Tillich
says, “is evident in the strange fact that we know all this, and yet can live
today, this morning, tonight, as though we were completely ignorant. And,” he
says, “I refer to the most sensitive people among us.” Sin abounds. We
are separated from the ground of our being. We are disconnected from our own
meaning and purpose. We do not know why we are here, where we are going, what
it all adds up to. Sin abounds. “Before
sin is an act, it is a condition,” Tillich says. But
the most profound faith of Christianity is that where sin abounds, grace much
more abounds. Grace is far greater than sin. Let
me read to you the part of Tillich’s sermon that is responsible for me being
a Christian today. It is about the experience of grace: “Do
we know what it means to be struck by grace? “It
does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the
Savior, or that the Bible contains the truth. To believe that something is,
is almost contrary to the meaning of grace. “Furthermore,
grace does not mean simply that we are making progress in our moral
self-control, in our fight against special faults, and in our relationships
to [others] and to society. Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is
not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. “For
there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a
graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities. Such a
graceless relation to God may lead us by necessity either to arrogance or to
despair. It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than
to accept them without grace. For if we accept without grace, we do so in the
state of separation, and can only succeed in deepening the separation. “We
cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by that
stroke of grace. It happens; or it does not happen. “And
certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it
shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no
need of it. “Grace
strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we
walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us
when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have
violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were
estranged. “It
strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our
weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become
intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for
perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us
as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. “Sometimes
at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though
a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that
which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask
for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything
now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform
anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are
accepted!’ “If
that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not
be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But
everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and
reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of
this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition,
nothing but acceptance.” Simply
accept the fact that you are accepted. The
Christian faith is that this experience that touches us from time to time…
this experience of acceptance… of grace… reflects a reality that is deeper
and higher and wider than sin. Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. There
is enough grace in the heart of God to swallow up all of the world’s sin. The
moments of grace are truer than the day-by-day experience of sin. We stake
our lives on this. This
is what I try to say in one way or another Sunday after Sunday. We
are beginning a new sermon series this morning for Advent and Christmas. The
series is focused on a line from Foundry’s key scripture. A
couple of years ago when our planning team was writing our statement of call,
we asked if there was a key Scripture that might ground our sense of call,
and Elder Wellborn proposed Mark 12. A
theologian asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, and Jesus answered that
the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and
strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This
is the Scripture that we have been using to guide our life together. This is
what Jesus believed was the most important way to live. To love God and to
love others as we love ourselves. There
is presupposition in Jesus’ teachings. The presupposition is that we love
ourselves, and that we love ourselves in good and healthy ways. I
know some people I am not sure I’d want loving me the way they love
themselves, because they don’t love themselves very much or very well. In
order to love others well, we need to have a healthy love for ourselves. As
we begin this series on “Love Yourself, Love Your Neighbor” this morning I
want to say just a few words about accepting ourselves and accepting others. Few
of us are very good at accepting ourselves. Most of us grow up focusing much
more on our shortcomings and limitations and mistakes than on our strengths
and worthiness. Perhaps this is because adults think they need to correct us or
perhaps it is a given of life… the condition of separation Tillich talked
about. Because
it is hard for us to accept ourselves, it is hard for us to accept others.
When we do not accept ourselves, it will almost inevitably result in us not
accepting others. When there are parts of ourselves we cannot face or own,
there will be parts of our neighbor’s being we refuse to accept. What
we tend to hate in others is usually a repressed part of our own selves.
Racism is usually a projection of our own repressed self-hatred. Ethnic
stereotypes, such as the stereotype of Jews being greedy, are projections of
our own repressed greed and avarice. Homophobia is a projection of our own
repressed sexuality. We
cannot accept in others what we will not accept within ourselves. If
you find yourself feeling particularly strong feelings about the behavior of
others, watch out for those same longings and desires within yourself. Whatever
excites a strong response in you may well indicate a repressed excitement
within yourself. If
I am your neighbor, don’t love me until you face the parts of your own self
that you can not accept within you. You
know the Johari window? It is a window with four panes. One pane represents
what you and I both know about me. Another pane is what I know about me that
you don’t. A third pane is what you know about me that I don’t. There are
things that you know about me that I am not aware of. The fourth pane is what
neither you nor I know about me. All four of these realities exist in each of
us. I
have been trying to know my subconscious for most of my adult life. I have
read Jung, I have chronicled my dreams and shared them with therapists and
therapy groups. The more of my subconscious that I can bring to the light of
day and accept within myself, the less disconnected I am from myself and from
you. I’ve been working intentionally at this for more than 40 years.
Sometimes it feels as if I am just beginning. Carl
Sandberg said, “There is a zoo in me.” “There
is a wolf in me. There is a fox in me. There is a hog in me. There is a fish
in me. There
is a baboon in me. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird. O,
I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my
red-valve heart.”[ii] What
we will not face in ourselves, we cannot accept in others. We cannot love in
our neighbor what we will not face and accept in ourselves. All
love of neighbor begins with the experience of grace within ourselves. This
is why we come to church, hoping to be struck by grace. If it happens now and
again it is enough. This is why we pray and practice spiritual disciplines,
hoping to be struck by grace. If it happens even rarely, it is enough. This
is why we serve others and work for social justice, hoping to be struck by
grace. Even once or twice is enough. We
cannot love our neighbor without grace. Someone
sent me a poem last week. It is a wonderful poem, written by Marilyn Chandler
McEntyre, and it is entitled "How to Recognize Grace." Here’s the
poem: It
takes you by surprise It
comes in odd packages It
sometimes looks like loss Or
mistakes It
acts like rain Or
like a seed It’s
both reliable and unpredictable It’s
not what you were aiming at Or
what you thought you deserved It
supplies what you need Not
necessarily what you want It
grows you up And
lets you be a child It
reminds you you’re not in control And
that not being in control Is
a form of freedom[iii] Sin
and separation and disconnectedness abound in our world. There is lots of
hate and violence, physical and spiritual, lots of arrogance, lots of
resentments that go back generations and generations, lots of unhealed pain,
lots of judgmentalism, lots of unfairness and inequalities, lots of
oppression, lots of repression. Sin abounds. But
it is our deepest faith that where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. This
is the meaning of Advent. Sin is not the final word. Grace is. And
our job as Christians is to stand in the places grace might strike, to know
it when it strikes us, and to become grace in the lives of our neighbors. You
are accepted. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. And then accept
your neighbor as you are accepted. www.foundryumc.org |
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