This morning I would like
to add to our nativity set … today we welcome in the Shepherds and their sheep
…
Why shepherds?
Historically, we know that shepherds lived very much on the
margins of the society – they were regarded as thieves and bandits and the good
church people of Jesus day had little to do with them.
I learned an interesting tid-bit this week reading up on shepherds
– if the shepherds were out on the hillside tending their flocks when the
angels appeared, it was NOT December but likely mid to late May that the
visitation happened … it would appear that the flocks get let loose on the
hills in the spring, not in the dead of winter. In December the flocks and the
shepherds would be safely ensconced in paddocks close to town …
But that aside – why are the shepherds part of the Nativity
story ? They are an unlikely group to come and welcome the newborn king … yet,
there is an appropriateness in having them gathering in the stable … Raymond
Brown, the great Catholic theologian notes that the shepherds were indeed on
the margins of their society, and as such they represent us – the ordinary and
common people – the workers, the labourers, the average joes who are coming
through the darkness to herald the birth of the new born.
On a deeper level, the joy and excitement that marks their
arrival and departure, and the certainty with which they appear and gather, is
something we would do well to emulate.
On a deeper level, in keeping with the spirit of the ideas
from John Pavlovitz’s book, the transformation of the shepherds from a rejected
marginalized group who were good and NOT keeping the customs and rituals of the
people, and who regarded as unclean and impure, - the transformation to a
central participant in the Good News proclamation that is Christmas, is a
template for the Church and for us as people of faith …
The concept on the table this week is – total authenticity
… and there is perhaps no better figures to reflect on total authenticity in
our scriptures than the shepherds and John the Baptist and the Biblical
prophets …
The shepherds make the transition from outcast to central
player, and we now hold them as paradigms of faith – we sing hymns about them,
tell stories about them, we have created an amazing pastoral panorama around
them … and we have the character of John the Baptist.
John himself is pretty out there and pretty much standing
firmly on the margins of society before he even opens his mouth – then he
speaks … in our reading today we have an edited version of John – a tame voice
… in other accounts he calls those gathering before him a brood of vipers …
Let that sink in for a moment – can you imagine coming to a
worship service and having the preacher thunder from the pulpit calling you a
brood of vipers and speaking of the wrath of God that is about to fall on you?
Yet, here is John in all his glory doing just that … he is
the messenger for the greater one that is yet to come, but as he speaks, he
calls for repentance of the people and for the wrath of God to fall on them …
You can’t get much more authentic than that …
But authenticity opens the door to deeper conversations …
to stronger relationships and to a healthy community that moves beyond the
casual “hey, how are you? Lousy weather we’re having isn’t it …” that we are
far too familiar with.
The transformation that can come with total authenticity in
the Church, is the transformation the prophet Isaiah dares to dream of … a new
way … a bold way blessed by God’s presence and touched by the holy … and
forever changed. The prophets were not warm and fuzzy theologians – their words
challenged people and often rubbed them the wrong way, and more often than not
totally opposed the rulers and powers of the day.
So, of that new way …
Pavlovitz writes that after years in ministry “one day I turned around and I didn’t
recognize myself. I began to grieve the smallness of life, the lack of
diversity around me. Not only was I now surrounded solely by other Christians,
but only other Christians from my church AND only those who I easily clicked
with. My table had grown staggeringly small … the reasons he notes that his
table had shrunk rather than grown was because he had stopped being authentic
as a person and as a minister.
He notes that even though the scriptures are full of people
who wear their doubt and their uncertainty openly, and are still regarded as
caretakers of the religious tradition, that openness doesn’t exist in the
church. Instead we edit and censor and offer a highly selective version of
ourselves to those we share the pews with … we have put comfort over openness
and authenticity. But the church thankfully is capable of much more than
gathering heavily edited and carefully censored saints, the church can, if it chooses,
be a place where real people gather warts and all, and where we no longer deny
our authentic selves …
And therein lies the challenge … how do we embody and live
that level of authenticity as a church? As people? As a community?
The monty python troop has a great sketch called
nudge-nudge, wink-wink … the characters are having a conversation and hit a
controvertial topic and they do a “nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more-say no
more” bit that infers a different level of behaviour or response … that has
long been true in the church.
This past week I read a disturbing story from the US about
a priest who murdered a young church member he was infatuated with, but for 57
years he went unpunished because of an epic “nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no
more-say no more” approach to his crime … he confessed to other priests, but
they did nothing … he was a suspect, but the church ignored it … he went on to
have a hand in other crimes and enabling other priests to abuse young men and
young women throughout the US … but today in his late 80’s he is being held
accountable for his actions because the game of nudge-nudge, wink-wink has
ended …
It’s the same game that is underlying the #metoo movement
and the precipitous decline of careers throughout Hollywood, and the world as
the truth is being spoken and embraced. Too often, and for too long bad
behaviour was endured and ignored as a ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ attitude
prevailed and no one called the badly behaved to account …
So, in the church – how do we claim our authenticity?
If we can welcome in the shepherds to the stable, and
listen as they leave proclaiming the Good News at the top of their lungs with
great unfettered joy, then we can welcome and even BE the shepherds in our
world – the marginalized people who with great faith, and even greater joy, celebrate
the presence of the Holy.
And so, it begins by being wholly open to the TRUTH … not
the truth we chose to hear, but the truth …
No more nudge-nudge, wink-wink … no more looking the other
way when unrealistic expectations or hypocritical behaviours become evident …
Instead, the church becomes as Pavlovitz suggests:
A beautifully restorative community, one where disparate
people are invited to bring the full weight of their inconsistency and hypocrisy
and vacillation, and to be lovingly received as they are. It can and should be
(we can be and should) a place of loving
renovation and healing and growth. BUT only when we allow everyone to be
exactly who they are.
The first question that arises is - What does that look
like?
It looks remarkably like you and I being ourselves – no
more roles, no more pretense, no more editing or censoring – the person that
you bump into at the grocery store on Tuesday, or at the game on Thursday, or
at the coffee shop or bar or beer tent, is the SAME person … if we use blue
language and cuss, so be it … if we can cuss at the arena or at home in front
of the tv, then total authenticity calls us to cuss here too …
If we like to have a glass of wine with dinner, then we
have it and don’t pretend we didn’t …
For me authenticity begins with a rejection of the lovely
line – “but you are a minister …”
For starters, we are ALL ministers, and secondly, I am not
different from any one except that I have specialized training and education to
do the job of paid accountable ministry … I’m human like everyone else … I make
mistakes and missteps and so on, just like the rest of us …
My first encounter with the “but you’re a minister …” came
a year into my time in Bella Coola when very nasty letter from a very unhappy
man who had been storing his junk in the basement of the manse … when we moved
in the basement was FULL – and I mean full of stuff. Some came from the years
and years of ministry at the end of the road literally and physically, but the
store room was full floor to ceiling with the possessions of a tenant who had
rented a room from the previous minister when he arrived five years earlier.
I managed to track him down and asked him nicely to remove
his stuff – I contacted him every couple of weeks for almost a year until one
day a buddy of his showed up and took a bunch of the stuff like cameras, a saw,
tools and so on … I asked him about the rest and he said “this is all he
wanted” SO I sent him another letter politely asking him to please remove the
stuff – we had a baby coming so we really needed the space for other things … a
year after my first request to him, I heard nothing so I made arrangements to
clear out the room – most of which it turned out had been damaged when the
basement had flooded the spring before we arrived …
A week after the room was cleaned out, painted and made
inhabitable again I got a letter from him raging at destroying all his stuff
and ruining his life and so on … it repeatedly said “how could you do this? You
are a minister!”
The letter upset me, and I shared it with an elder in the
native community who sat for a long time and then said – “you did nothing
wrong, you were more than generous letting him keep his crap there (insert a stronger
word though) for so long. This isn’t about you being a minister, this is about
him being a terrible human being …” then he said something that has stuck with
me in the 24 plus years since – “a minister is a person like the rest of us, some
people just don’t understand that nor do they accept it …”
More often than not – when we hear the words – “but I
expected more of you – you are a minister …” it has less to do with me, or the
clergy and more to do with the speaker being called on their bad behaviour …
Total Authenticity means opening our doors, our community,
ourselves to each other not with some façade hiding the truth, but opening to
each other as they and we truly are … it means sharing our frustrations, our
doubts, our sadnesses, our angers, our struggles, our triumphs … sharing
whatever is going on in and around our lives … sharing who we are on Tuesday
after getting bad news or on Thursday when we are watching the big game …
Total authenticity invites us to step in the door as the
marginalized, and like the shepherds to be transformed by the presence of the
holy in the community we find in the dark night, and it then sends us back into
our days proclaiming the transformative power of the Spirit working in and
through us. And it all begins by simply being who we are with no masks, no
facades, no editing, no censoring – just you and I sitting down at table
together and being nothing more than that children of God … creating a new
reality in the presence of the holy …
May it be so … Thanks be to God … let us pray …
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