Defining the Hyphen

 PROPERS:          PROPER 20, YEAR B  

TEXT:                MARK 9:30-37; THE COLLECT OF THE DAY

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2021.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The faith, which we define, can sometime separate us; but it is also what brings out of many, one.

 

 

 

            Some years ago, I was assisting with the interment of some ashes at the Diocese of Mississippi’s conference center. A friend, who is also a British priest, Tim Jones, was the celebrant and preacher.

 

            He offered a pertinent observation.  He noted that the span of life on a tombstone is represented by a simple hyphen between the date of birth and the date of death.  All the details of that person’s life are compressed into a simple hyphen. The many ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, joys and sorrows, successes and losses – major and mundane – are all reduced to that simple punctuation mark.

 

            Think about that.  How would it reflect on your life?

 

            This past Wednesday, the first lesson for our weekly healing service and Eucharist was from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.  The passage had been on my mind from the day before.  It included these words from the apostle to a church bitterly divided: “^2:1When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. ² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” 

 

            Imagine the audacity of reducing Jesus’ life to the simple phrase: to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

 

            I admire St. Paul’s focus. But how do you do that?  As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.  There are a lot of details in the story of Jesus – and debates about them go back to the earliest days of the church.

 

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            Each of us understands the story and meaning of Jesus in a unique way. Through passages of scripture, we have knelt at the manger, we have walked with him through Galilee, we have heard his parables, we have stood at the foot of the cross, and we have entered the empty tomb – and more.

 

            There is a certain unity that comes from sharing those stories on a weekly basis.  Together we hear the accounts of him healing a woman of a long-term illness, his admonition today to welcome children in his name, of feeding thousands with five barley loaves and two fish, and of standing silent before Pilate, who could release him from execution.

 

            Through those and other stories we are changed.  We touch the cloak of the divine. Our lives are molded and formed.  Hopefully, we are humbled and transformed.

 

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            Sadly, the influence of culture has tainted both the humility and transformation that Jesus has bestowed.

 

            Over the years, I have seen various tides of bitterness, resentment, and division that have sundered God’s people. We have seen it over issues of race, sexuality, gender, and most recently, political philosophy.  Please don’t hear me demeaning or minimizing those disagreements and the reasons for them.  God has been known in those debates… and our society has been refined by the vigorous discourse.  God’s work has been done.

 

            But there is a certain vitriol that has seeped into the latest episodes.  It is like the Civil War – brother against brother, friend against friend, father against son, mother against daughter.

 

            Society has become polarized, and we see its evidence day after day.  One of the primary culprits and enablers of that division is called new media.

 

            In an excellent long-form column this past week, Washington Post columnist George Will reflected on his 50-year career writing columns and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and social media. He wrote about the ill effects of words being written or spoken on the new media posts that should not ever have been written – or even thought.

 

            The problems that this world faces are deeply rooted and are enflamed by shallow, reactive, bombastic observations shouted over the megaphone of Facebook, news channels or other outlets.  Those problems call for reasonable, thoughtful, informed discourse which acknowledges the complex sources of those very issues.

 

            The virus of those strong and bitter opinions – right and left – has invaded the sacred walls of the church.  It has replicated and has caused us to define ourselves and others as right or wrong.

 

            There is a tendency to disagree about the definition of the hyphen, when it is the essence of the hyphen which unites us.

 

            Our identities – our primary identities – should not be sources of division, such as Republican, Democrat, independent, Liberal, Conservative, Moderate, or Libertarian, but instead should be as a Child of God.

 

            We should see ourselves and others inside this building as brothers and sisters, for whom Christ died.  Every one of us.

 

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            There was a certain genius present in 1776 when John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson offered a Latin motto for the nascent union of people, states and philosophies: E pluribus unum.  Out of many, one.

 

            Our nation has struggled to attain the fullness of that motto.  That struggle continues.

 

            But that same sentiment was present in the early Church when slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Romans,  people of wealth and people of poverty came together to worship God and the resurrected Christ.

 

            We are Christian heirs of that same motto. Out of many, one. In this chapel here, there is a diversity of views represented. Our task is to live that unity in this building and then… and then… take that same unity into the world outside our doors. To be the light shining in the darkness… a light which will not be overcome.

 

            The late Indian Jesuit, Anthony DeMello, wrote a brief meditation entitled, The River.  It was not about a river, but about perspective – that time and distance place our anxieties, our worries, our disagreements in perspective. The further we move away from a problem or disagreement in time and space, the less and less monumental they become.

 

            That same wisdom is reflected in our collect today.  Hear those words again: Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

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            When people disagree, we should be mindful of the passage from today’s gospel lesson: Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

 

            As people of faith, we are called to be like St. Paul: to know Jesus Christ and him crucified. And with our words and actions, and in our diversity, say, “We believe.”