July 6, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
I think we have all had an experience like this. We were at some event and make some comments and on the way home we are going through what we said and have a insight of how we could have been more profound. Or we come up with some witty comment that we wish we had said, some brilliant comment that would have summed up all the talking. We are always more brilliant and funny in hindsight. This ability is called self transcendence - the ability to stand outside ourselves. We can do that even in the midst of an event. We seem to be watching ourselves as we encounter others. Another name for this is self reflective - the ability to make oneself an object - an external while having an internal experience. From this emerges our capacity for creativity, freedom and morality.
This is the ability to reflect on our actions. In Romans Paul says - “the good which I want to do, I fail to do.” This saying resonates, for we know that experience of doing something which we wish we had not done. We can look back on our actions, and that looking back can call us forward to do better in the future.
Not only do we have the experience of hindsight, we can, through self reflection, experience freedom. This is the ability to project, to see how our actions could potentially influence the future. We know that there are consequences to our actions, and we can imagine them before we act. The capacity for self reflection frees us to make decisions - to decide on what actions we will take.
Then there is a third level to this self reflection. In our memory, and our imagination, we can experience our own behavior as if we were the recipients of our own acts. Let me unpack that. By this method we know the impact of our decisions - by our feelings we can anticipate how others might feel the impact of our actions. This is projection in the good sense - to know if our actions are for good or ill. Not only see, have empathy, feel what the action would do to the other, to those who are the receiving end of our actions. We can put ourselves in the other’s place. This is the root of moral or ethical action.
Yet this process is not always clear cut. Our ability to be reflective can become ambiguous and our reflective process can be clouded. Our motives are not always pure for we are full of self interest. We ask, too often, is this good for me? We can be self deceptive.
In response to this we can become judgmental. We create images and rules that are judgmental. This comes from our seeking clarity, and ways to transcend our ability to be self deceptive. In response our world moves to repressive codes, from freedom to bondage. We create codes or moralisms that deny our ability to make sound, imaginative, and creative choices. We create guilt trips. We emphasize the negative and say people cannot be trusted and become harsh in response to failure.
In our tradition there is a message that can be repressive. While it is true we sin, sin becomes the defining image - and this leads to a judgmental religion. Yet this reading from Matthew speaks of a light yoke not a heavy burden. It reverses the order we have created - we begin in judgement and then turn to redemption. In the light burden the order is reversed, it begins in redemption. It is because God redeems us that we can judge our activity. It is because God has claimed us we can look with honesty at our behavior. It is because we are the center of God’s erotic power that we dare acknowledge we have missed the mark. Judgement does not come first. Redemption does.
For the Christian redemption brings the ability to see ourselves from God’s perspective. It is to add a new lens to self reflection - to move from self centeredness to God centeredness. This is because of the Divine-human love affair we can experience. This is the erotic power of God. Eros is our ability to be aroused by, and connected, with the world around us - expanded into delight and appreciation. It is a response to great beauty. This is God’s desire for us. Yes desire. God seeks to be connected to us, to join with us and that love of God connects us to any beloved person, place or thing, whether it is a child, friend, a house, or job. This yoke which is light takes us from self centeredness to acts of care of others.
We all have inner circles of care. It is a good beginning. However our vision often is limited to this inner circle. This yoke of God widens the circle. When we let God’s perspective touch us, the wider community of the earth is placed on our hearts. This is the experience of the ecstasy of losing oneself in another.
Notice two things are combined. Moving from inner security to world care. Inner spiritual leads to outer spirituality. This love of God in the center our being moves us to relate to that which is external. This light yoke values up our ability to be self reflective, for now we see ourselves as part of the oneness of the universe, we see ourselves as part of that which is larger than our ego.
Rebecca was one who exhibited this unity. She attracts the attention of Abraham’s servant by a simple act of hospitality; the cooling water for him and his camels. Then she graciously invites him home. There is a gracefulness we recognize. Have we not all turned and watched a stranger walk toward us with graceful strides, a beauty that is not self conscious, a smile that comes from the soul? We have been caught up in that moment. I think this is what happened in Genesis. So much inner peace that cultural taboos were broken. They asked her if she would venture into a new and strange land. In that time it would be out of the question to ask a woman for her opinion. Yet they ask her. Without a pause she says yes. What confidence. This is what Isaac needed, for her arrival brings again hospitality and play to his tent.
This inner sense of God is a refusal to move back to restrictive rules. What we have is a transformation of our motives by seeing through renewed eyes. This calls for nothing less than a reorientation of our whole being. Freedom is born in seeing consequences of our actions before they happen - to think ahead. Compassion is ignited by seeing from the perspective of others, rather than our ego. Creativity emerges from an imagination that sees the possibilities of a renewed world and people. This is a religious vision that unites inner spiritual with world care. This is love that desires sacred relationships, an act of beauty offered up as fitting praise. Here is a new aesthetics of experience, the way of being fully human embraced by God - a work of art, a relationships of beauty, a lyric of play, a touching of healing that drives us from solitude to world loyalty.
This inner sense of God allows us to live in our world with its broken nature, the terrors of reality, the incomplete actions, the failures. These realities are not sensed as heavy yokes but as opportunities for healing - by being overwhelmed by the love of God we can overcome and respond - respond with hope and grace, willing to move into new realities - to be a healing presence.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson.com
