Epiphany 7: Foolishness, Wisdom and Leadership

Leviticus 19-1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119-33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

Over our twenty-four hours together the Vestry spent a fair amount of time talking about and reflecting on leadership. Leadership seems to be a perennial issue in the church, and certainly one of the issues Paul is addressing in the first letter to the Corinthians. In today’s reading he likens the community’s leaders to builders who build on the foundation that is Jesus Christ himself, while at the same reminding the Corinthians not to “boast about human leaders”. (1 Corinthians 3:21) But does that not leave us with a bit a problem, since all we have are human leaders? Well, that depends how we look at it, and how we understand leadership. If we try to force Christian leadership into conventional models of leadership, we do run into some problems; and Paul highlights this when he writes, “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19a) What Paul is here hinting at is the counter-intuitive nature of truly effective leadership. The “wisdom of this world” – mere human wisdom – is the ingrained and knee-jerk reaction to events and situations, and sometimes we have took take the “foolish” – I use the term in inverted commas – route in order to arrive at a place of genuine wisdom, the wisdom of God.

While on our Vestry retreat the words of St Paul did not specifically arise, it is serendipitous that it we are presented with them today, because much of what we heard on our retreat is reflected in Paul’s ideas of leadership, of counter-intuitive wisdom and of foolishness. One of the first statements Fr Larry, who led our retreat, shared with us was a quote from Albert Einstein: “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” It is a hard lesson to learn, but much of people’s failures in resolving problems and effectively addressing challenges stems from their unwillingness to conceive the issue in a new light, within a different frame of reference. Sometimes coming into a new place of resolution is not about arriving at the right answer, but about perhaps re-framing the question, or even examining whether we are asking the right question to begin with. Have you noticed how Jesus, for example, when asked questions about the meaning of the law, always takes the whole discussion out of the narrow definitions of rules and law-keeping and instead places it within the context of interior attitudes and conversion of life. I know we have some problems here at the Church of the Saviour, but I wonder if we actually have the problems we think we have. Are we asking the right questions? We ask a lot of questions about what we should be doing, but are those really the right questions? Should we perhaps be asking questions, having discussions about what we want to be? Perhaps if we can come to some consensus about who we want to be, we can more easily discern what we need to be doing.

During the weekend we were also introduced to the work of the late Edwin Freidman. Freidman wrote and spoke extensively on the nature of leadership. He developed the idea of the differentiated leader; and among the qualities he believed characterise a differentiated leader are knowing where you end and the other begins, the ability to be clear about your own personal values and goals, the integrity to say “I” when others are demanding “we”. The differentiated leader doesn’t simply react to the actions and behaviours of others, but responds and by so doing can bring the community to a new place altogether. Again think of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:38-39) Certainly what he suggests is a kind of foolishness, contrary to “the wisdom of this world”. Yet, paying closer attention we can discern how instead of reaction, he advises the counter-intuitive action. He advises remaining true to one’s personal values. Moreover, such a response on the part of the person struck does not allow the striker to define the situation: “You can hit me and threaten me, but you cannot make me bend my conscience, or force me to abandon my principles.” Such a response affirms that the actions of another need not condition my own. It moves me out realm of mere reaction, into that of action and response. As a leader it frees you to think clearly without simply responding to the latest and the loudest; you may not be popular but the leader who seeks facile popularity will end up an ineffective weathercock.

Both Fr Larry and Edwin Freidman warned us about the allure of the quick fix. There are no quick fixes to any problem. Let me say that again and more distinctly: There are no quick fixes to any problem. There is no programme one can develop, buy, introduce or implement which will alleviate the difficult circumstances in which a person or a community may find themselves. Freidman writes that the quick-fix mentality actually signifies “a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change.” The quick fix usually whitewashes a problem in the hopes that if we cannot see it, it will disappear altogether. But problems and issues do not go away, the only way to deal with them is to engage in the hard work of resolution. The quick fix is a waste of time and energy doomed to failure and always ending in disappointment. Nevertheless, people in all walks of life, including in the Church, continue chasing the quick fix because the alternative just takes too long and is too painful. Freidman notes that “life processes evolve by taking their time…[and] there is no way out of a chronic condition without being willing to go through a temporarily more acute phase.” Think of the freed Hebrew slaves who opted for the quick fix of the golden calf; yet, in the end, to find a place of real health and life, they had to wander forty years in the desert. Their life process which moved them into their destiny “evolved by taking [its] time”. Effective leaders are not seduced by the quick fix, neither do they allow others to seduce them by it. Instead they are able to stay in the difficult places, resisting simple symptom relief while continuing patiently and sensitively to “focus on the fundamental change in the emotional processes that underlie [the] symptoms”. Imagine if Moses on coming down from the mountain and finding the people of Israel gathered round the golden calf said to himself: “Well they are not longer anxious or upset, they have found something to believe in, and that’s good enough.” No, there are no quick fixes, and good leaders don’t waste any time or energy on them.

Finally, one of the most powerful things Fr Larry told us is that the answer and solution to any issues we may have, anything we may perceive as problems is ourselves; not just the Vestry, but every member the Church of the Saviour. In one sense we do not have to do anything, just be what we are called to be – the Body of Christ in the world, the Episcopal Church in Hanford, witnesses to the wisdom of God. Let’s face it, it’s easier to just keep asking the same questions in the same way, and then wonder why nothing changes, instead of asking the really discerning and hard questions and perhaps confronting some even harder truths. Let’s face it, it feels friendlier if everyone just agrees and gets along, instead of taking the risk of upsetting someone by sticking to our principles. Let’s face it, it is easier to go for what just gets us by, continually re-arranging the chairs, as it were, instead of going through the pain and hassle of getting new chairs altogether. None of this is a programme or set of rules, but a shift in perspective, an adjustment in attitude. It is counter-intuitive and that makes taking the leap into it more daunting; still, Paul, in another of his letters, the letter to the Roman, writes “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are being asked nothing less than to renew our minds, hearts and lives in order that God’s vision for us can be discerned by us here and revealed in the world.

Epiphany 6: Living Deliberately

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

In the summer of 1845 Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American writer and philosopher, embarked on a personal experiment and moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson around the shores of Walden Pond. His book, Walden, was the record of the experiment, and in it he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” There is a difference between living life and choosing life, there is a difference between living by accident and living deliberately, consciously. To live deliberately is to live with a goal and a purpose beyond just survival; it is to live in the reality that our lives matter and that our decisions have meaning and repercussions for ourselves, for others, for our environment. To live deliberately is to live in the knowledge that there is a context to our lives and that – for Christians certainly – in the end we will have to make an account for how we lived. “Living life” – in the narrowest sense – is just about getting on in our little sphere, usually looking out for “number one”, keeping things safe and tidy, no dissensions and – above all – no awkward confrontations. “Choosing life” is about opening our hearts, mind and bodies to embrace all of life, all of creation and opening ourselves to the possibility of transformation. It is living deliberately awake and aware.

In the book of Deuteronomy and in other places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the difference between merely living life and choosing life is expressed in some pretty extreme imagery and language, chiefly in the difference between idolatry and worship. Idolatry is the handing over of our allegiance to a god of our own creation, whether made with our hands or constructed with our minds. Yet, no matter how much religiosity we may vest in that god, it is an easy out because the gods of our idolatry always tell us what we want to hear, always affirm our little selves, always give us a sense of arrival. Idolatry in all its forms is always about the small and narrow picture. Choosing life in this context means deliberately embracing the big picture; embracing the journey of finding God and not, as the poet John Betjeman phrased it, finding “a God who fits”.

Paul presents the difference in the terms of “flesh” and “spirit”. Through Christian history this has led to some misunderstanding that the physical is somehow second best to the spiritual, and thus opposed to the things of God. But nothing could be further from the truth. Paul is using both “flesh” and “spirit” as philosophical categories. The flesh is associated with all that hinders the community’s full revelation as the Body of Christ. It is interesting to note that flesh of itself is a dead thing, it is the meat one buys at the market; but a body is a living thing, and when we talk of the Body of Christ – that is the Church – it is the presence of the living God in the world. For Paul, whatever undermines the community is of the “flesh”, deadening: “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” (1 Corinthians 3:3) Human inclination is the default position, the un-thought out, knee jerk reaction – defensive, cliquish, parochial. Human inclination is living accidentally. Choosing life, living consciously and deliberately is living into the cooperative reality that is the Body of Christ in which “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. [For] the one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose”. (1 Corinthians 3:7, 8) Choosing life means choosing the big picture and accepting that few things in this world are about me, about my little and immediate concerns, about my petty hurts, arguments and allegiances.

It is not so much that living accidentally is particularly wrong or evil – although historically un-examined and accidental living has resulted in some quite horrendous consequences – but rather that purely accidental living cannot bring us to the fullness to which we are called and for which we were created. For Jesus in Matthew’s gospel the difference between the two lies in the difference between outward action and interior attitudes. Doing the right thing is certainly a good discipline. It helps us get along with others, and to some degree it works to our benefit; it makes things run more smoothly. But certainly the aim is that by doing that which is right and proper, we will slowly be transformed at a deeper level. Isn’t that what we believe about children – that by molding their behaviour we shape their consciences? The ingrained human inclination may be to follow the rules, but choosing life, living deliberately asks the harder interior questions, it signifies harder, interior work. “You have heard that it was said…, ‘You shall not murder”; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement;…You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:21-22a, 27-28) Pretty harsh stuff. Few of us here will have committed murder or adultery and for the most part that is clear for all to see, but have we entered into the deliberate transformational work of being people of peace, or being people who objectify or prejudge no one? Are we consciosuly working to bring to fulfillment God’s vision spoken through the prophet Jeremiah of that time when the law will not simply be a list of rules, but instead be written on our hearts? (cf. Jeremiah 31:33)

Whether in my relationship with God, my relationships with others or even my relationship with myself, I can live accidentally. I can live from that default place where God is comfortable for me and comformable to me, where the picture is small and my allegiances parochial, and where I can safely live within the rules; or I can choose life – real life – and live deliberately where it is not always about me, where God is big and does not always fit into my plans or prejudices, where I really understand that I am part of the whole, and where I consciously allow God’s Holy Spirit to transform me interiorly according to the image and likeness of God which I was called to be from the beginning. The difference between merely living life and choosing life is the difference between existing and existence. As Thoreau observed, merely living life can be a sort of quiet desperation – the desperate work involved in keeping one’s world-view intact, the constant worry of whether one measures up. Choosing life, living deliberatively opens us up to the mystery of reality not as we would like it to be, but as it is in God, in others and in the world. If we are honest and committed, choosing life in this way is the only response we can make to Christ’s proclamation: “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Epiphany 5: God as Active in History

Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 112
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Matthew 5:13-20

Preparing to preach this morning, I came across this observation in a commentary on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “The object of Christian faith is not God in se [in himself] but as active in history”. It sparked my thinking: “The object of Christian faith is not God [in himself] but as active in history”. The commentator writes this in reference to the 4th and 5th verses of the 2nd chapter of the letter, when Paul writes: “My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)

It is an interesting turn of phrase “active in history”, and rather distinct from how usually talk about God as “acting in history”. A god who simply acts in history is like the gods the ancient classical world, or the gods of the peoples encountered by the ancient Israelites in the Hebrew Scriptures. These gods intervene in history, but they are not involved in history as such. They may swoop in and change the course of a battle or the fortunes of a believer, but there is little sense of the big picture, that the deity is there for the long haul, as it were. The Judeao-Christian God, on the other hand is one who enters into human history, forming relationship, initiating covenant, investing and involving God’s self in the human enterprise. We witness this at the beginning, when God enters into relationship and makes a covenant with Abraham, Sarah and their descendants, and also when God calls those descendants out of slavery in Egypt, renewing that covenant and then leading them to the promised land in order that they might be a beacon to the nations. In Jesus we see God’s continuing activity in history as God joins God’s self to humanity in a distinctive and unique way, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit is revealed God’s abiding promise and desire to be intimately and actively within us.

The God revealed to us in the Scriptures and in the Tradition, in the Church and in our lives, is this God who is indeed “active in history”, but belief in this God has some implications, all of which we human beings – Christians included – sometimes have trouble grasping. One of these is that it means God’s revelation of God’s self and God’s purposes is an ongoing process, and that these are made known not in signs from heaven or obviously extraordinary acts, but within history itself, in the context of human experience and deliberation. Those who prefer clear-cut, once-for-all rules – and that’s most of us – can find this disappointing and dis-orientating. The argument in the early church over circumcision is a case in point. God had made circumcision the sign of the covenant with Abraham, anyone now coming to faith in Christ must certainly be circumcised. However, as more and more non-Jews became Christians the Church was led to understand this was not central to God’s ongoing relationship with humanity. We cannot underestimate how incredibly surprising – even repulsive – was this shift in the mind-set of the early Church.

Equally distasteful – although it may not seem so to us – was the breaking down of the barriers between the social classes. This is some of what Paul is addressing in his letter to the Corinthians. In part, the problem in Corinth stemmed from the fact that at the celebrations of the Eucharists the old social order was still being observed, with the well-to-do and the friends of the host eating at the table and from the choicest foods, while the poorer and not as well connected members received lesser amounts or food of inferior quality, and a distance. The Corinthians had not fully grasped the new social order of equality revealed by Jesus and into which each had been baptised. God’s activity in Jesus was so radically different than the actions of any of the pagan gods, the effects of which were usually to re-enforce the existing social order, the wisdom of the dominant hierarchy and paradigm, what Paul calls the “wisdom of this age and of the rulers of this age”. (1 Corinthians 2:7) Paul reminds the Corinthians that “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”. (1 Corinthians 2:9) Our God, “active in history” is a God of surprises, not necessarily bound by the old or the conventional, a God who in relationship with us, questions our assumptions. For us, as for the Corinthians, encountering this God may mean we let go of some of our inherited and conventional wisdom, some of social conditioning.

How much more comforting if God simply acted in human history, but left things, for the most part, the way they were already set up, re-enforcing the status quo by those divine acts. However, as idyllic as that may sound, that is not the God we believe in. Moreover, belief in such a god suggests a disturbing of image of relationship, because it would signify human beings as only passive creatures acted upon, merely pawns at the whims of such a being. Instead our God, active in history, draws us in as agents in the cosmic drama, subjects in the process of creation’s groaning as it awaits the fulfillment of God’s purposes. In the Judaeo-Christian narrative human beings are not pawns, but partners with God. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is the prophets who most succinctly present this truth. We heard it today in the reading from Isaiah. God gives the people of Israel a vision of a rebuilt Jerusalem, yet God does not simply step in and accomplish it, but instead presents the city’s restoration as a result of a renewal of the people of Israel themselves and their re-commitment to the core of the covenant: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:10b-11) Similarly Jesus reminds his followers of God’s continuing revelatory activity in history: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17) At the same time he invites people into that movement towards fulfilment and reminds them how instrumental is their participation, our participation: “You are the salt of the salt of the earth….You are the light of the world”; and he dares to suggest that God’s revelation in the world depends on our remaining savoury and bright so that the world “may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”. (Matthew 5:16) The God who is active in history does not overrun our free will or treat us like pawns, but invites us into covenant and to act as agents in the fulfilling of the divine vision. God doesn’t just act in history, God is always and already active in history. What we have to do is align ourselves to that activity, become fellow-agents with God in order to reveal God’s power and vision for a renewed creation.

Gods who merely act in history are products of the “human wisdom” Paul mentions. They re-enforce the status quo while making human beings mere objects of their actions; and there is a certain comfort in those gods – they make us feel safe and special, and absolve us of responsibility to act. This, however, is not the wisdom of the God we believe in, a wisdom which Paul describes as “secret and hidden” because it is not as obvious and overt as the “wisdom of this age and of the rulers of this age”. (1 Corinthians 2:7) Our God continues always to be active in history and can sometimes pull the rug out from under us, so we cannot hold on too tightly to the status quo, and this God always draws us into the divine activity already initiated. Believing in “God as active in history” means perhaps above all two things: get prepared to be surprised and be ready to be involved.

Epiphany 4: There are Some Things Worth Dying For

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

There are some things worth suffering for. There are some things worth being reviled and persecuted for. There are some things worth dying for. If we cannot come to terms with these truths, then we may never completely grasp the full depth of Christian faith or the Christian life; because right there at the centre of the Christian narrative is a man reviled and rejected – a man of sorrows. At the centre of the Christian narrative stands a cross and a place of execution. There at the centre, stands a man who while able to escape both rejection and death, embraces them because he believed that there are some things worth dying for. Jesus Christ the rejected, Jesus Christ the reviled, the persecuted, Jesus Christ the executed was the over-riding pattern of Christian life for the first few centuries of the Church’s existence. The very word martyr comes from the simple Greek word meaning “to witness”; for so many of the first Christians witnessing to Christ and the Christian life was synonymous with suffering and death. Witnessing to Christ meant, as Paul says to the Philippians, sharing in Christ’s “sufferings by becoming like him in his death”. (Philippians 3:10)

Undoubtedly the world around us saw us as foolish, misguided religious fanatics. The world-view of Ancient Rome was one in which overt power was the paradigm, and its victims were to be considered casualties at best, but more usually derided; and those who purposely got in its way were fools or idiots. One might commit suicide to preserve one’s honour and that of one’s family, but to embrace the sort of public executions meted out by the Roman judicial system would be nothing less than a humiliating sort of madness, foolishness; and perhaps it is in this context we should hear Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”. (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25) What we Christians were saying is that in Jesus a new paradigm had been inaugurated in which it is not our own power or our control which gives us the victory, but instead a power which comes from God and which is revealed not in holding on to our life, but in letting go so that we hold on to something deeper and more lasting.

Jesus could have escaped the cross by violence. He could have cursed from the cross those who put him there and those who mocked him. Feeling a victim, he could have lashed out at those suffering with him. Yet, to have done any of these would have been to give the lie to all that he had been, lived and taught. Instead, recall how he reproached the disciple who cut off the ear of one of those who came to arrest him in the garden, and actually healed the fellow; instead, he prayed for those who nailed him to the cross and those who mocked him as he hung there; instead, he offered hospitality to the thief crucified with him. To the outside world Christian martyrdom may appear to be some kind of foolish acceptance of victimisation, but for those born into the wisdom of God it is an assertion of the liberty we have in Christ in the face of powers which try to convince us we are powerless slaves. It is the proclamation that there are some things worth dying for, and the insistence that there is real freedom in our capacities to do so.

Just over 360 years ago today, King Charles I of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland stepped out of a window in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace in London and onto a platform specifically erected for his execution. It was the culmination of a political and religious struggle we now call the English Civil War, and which for a time dispensed with the monarchy and bishops, as well as making illegal the Book of Common Prayer. Historians will judge Charles as not the finest example of monarchy. His commitment to the divine right of kings rode roughshod over the sensibilities of Parliament, and he demonstrated something less than consideration towards dissenting religious groups; yet his commitment to the Church of England, its forms of order and worship, particularly as expressed in her middle way of the Elizabethan settlement, her governance by bishops and in the Book of Common Prayer is unquestionable. In fact, when he was finally captured, “tried” and condemned to death, he was offered his life should he be willing to abandoned his commitment to episcopacy and to the Book of Common Prayer. He refused, and at his execution said, “I die a good Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left to me by my father….I have a good cause and have a gracious God.” His enemies may have seemed to have had the victory, but his example was remembered among many in his kingdoms, and the Commonwealth – the government established after his death – lasted some eleven years only; after which the monarchy was again restored, and the throne assumed by Charles’ son; also restored were the episcopal order and liturgical worship of the Church of England. Holding on to what really mattered to him, in his death Charles gained for us a substantial inheritance. Anglicanism would not have survived in its present, rich form had he renounced it all from the scaffold. His example was honoured and commemorated almost immediately and he is the first saint officially commemorated by the Church of England after the Reformation. At the scaffold he lay aside earthly power for meaningful victory, saying: “I go from a corruptible to and incorruptible Crown.” There are, he believed, some things worth dying for.

From our perspective of religious tolerance, this reflection on martyrdom may seem strange and distant. Yet, ironically the 20th century has been called the century of martyrdom – more Christians were killed for their faith in those hundred years than in all the previous centuries combined. Chances are we will never face these kinds of overt violence, or be forced to make the kinds of choices many of our Christian sisters and brothers have had to make or have to make. Yet, does that then excuse us from coming to terms with the reality that there are some things worth dying for? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that then say about how we live our lives, about what we believe as ultimately valuable or precious? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that say about our principles; more importantly, what does it say about our faith as Christians centred as we profess on Jesus Christ who believed profoundly that there surely are some things were suffering for, being reviled for, dying for? Ask yourself for a moment if you really believe there are some things were dying for, and if so what are they? It's a good thing to know about one's self. Of course, the goal of the Christian life is not to seek out persecution, ridicule, even death. Yet, neither should we shy away from it, for we know that should it come and we meet it with principled integrity we are in good, good company: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:12).