Tonight’s
Gospel can sound rather harsh. It uses language that is problematic in light of
the racism and myriad other oppressions which are the fabric of the society we
live in. But we need to remember that Christ speaks of another reality
altogether than the one we live in. Whether that be the historical/cultural
reality of first century Palestine, or the Kingdom of God, it is not the
reality of our society.
We pray
every Sunday, and likely many other days as well, for God’s kingdom to come,
for God’s will to manifest on earth. That’s God’s will though, and not our
will. I think often in the U.S. when we glorify our freedom, we mean exercising
one’s will without impediments. And that’s certainly not an option for many,
many people in the U.S. But I question that definition of freedom to begin
with. I’d like to explore that with you for a bit before we get to tonight’s
Gospel.
Loki, the
villain in the Avengers movie, in his declaration of himself as ruler of Earth,
gives a speech about humans ultimately wanting to be ruled. Like a lot of well
written villains, he gets at a truth, however twisted his version of it is. The
one line in particular that has something to it is this, “The bright lure of
freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity.” And
this truth is especially true for Americans I think, as our sense of freedom is
tied up in individualism.
The great
irony of the American myth of individualism is that it is, in and of itself, a
socially constructed ideology that we operate out of collectively. It only
works if enough people buy into the illusion. And so there’s great social
pressure to buy into it. And maintaining that illusion I believe does diminishes our life's joy in a mad
scramble for power, for identity.
And while
I’ve never had much of a will to power, my life had been bound up in a mad
scramble for identity. Without going too deeply into it, my madcap adventures
with questions about who I am and the social pressures involved and my uneasy
relationship with identity politics can diminish my joy greatly.
Not that any
of this changes who I am, but the scramble around it is the issue. And in truth
it was only when I began a process of surrendering my will to God’s that I
found any peace in this and understood not how I saw myself, but rather how God
sees me.
I call the
surrendering of will a process, because it’s neither an easy thing, nor perhaps
something any of us can fully accomplish. And there are so many reasons and
temptations to take one’s will back, especially if exercising one’s will
without impediments is how your culture describes freedom.
I can’t
remember all the Greek right now, but I do remember that a lot of Paul’s
language around freedom, redemption and salvation was in terms of being bought
out of slavery. And yet he refers to himself as a bond-servant of Christ. Timothy,
James, Peter, and Jude all describe themselves as slaves of Christ as well. So
it ends up sounding as if Christ has bought us for Himself, and we’re to find
freedom in that.
And this may
seem like a contradiction, but I’d like to point out that Christ is God, and
that we’re not talking about being bond-servants to another human. And in fact,
given that we are totally dependent on God for our very existence, that God is
in fact our creator, any idea that we don’t belong to God anyway is false. So
in buying us, Christ brought us back to our right relationship to God. Christ
did more than that, too, made us friends and heirs as well, but it is in the
context of slaves that I comment on tonight’s Gospel.
“We are
worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”
Now the word
worthless is honestly I word I have struggled with as feelings of worthlessness
and despair actually keep me from doing what I ought to do. When I hear worthless
in the context of God, a God who I have experienced as loving and merciful
beyond anything I could hope for, I use it as a reminder of the fact that I
have in no way earned God’s grace. I am not any more or less worthy of God’s
grace than anyone else.
The word
slave, as I have indicated above, has to do with our complete and total
dependence on God in the first place. Nonetheless, we have been given the will
to go against God’s will. Christ Jesus gave us an example of what it means to
align our will with God’s. And yet, even as I say this, even though I know
better, my cultural warning lights and bells are flashing. Submission is
weakness they tell me, any submission!
Now, without
getting to far off the track here, I should mention the contradictory message
that if you are a lesser class of human, if you are a POC or a woman or poor,
etc. you are expected to know your place. And face consequences if you don’t.
But cultures and societies often have mixed messages, and it’s the message that
submission is necessarily weakness that makes me react to tonight’s Gospel as
very very harsh.
In truth it
takes great strength for one to submit one’s will. I’m not talking about
letting someone walk all over you. I’m not talking about having a crushed
spirit. I'm definitely not talking about giving up the fight for your legal rights. I’m talking about earnest, deep, loving, and voluntary surrender - to God. One cannot do it
without cultivating a complete and utter trust in God. One of my professors at
divinity school asked the question, “What would you be able to do if you had no
fear?” It’s that level of trust I’m talking about, a level of trust that I
believe can only be achieved through dedicated prayer and deep meditation. If I
had no fear, I could easily do God’s will as I understand it.
I often
think I don’t have that kind of trust or faith. This brings me to the bit about
faith that the slavery passage is coupled with tonight. Now I know people who
read the passage as a criticism of not having enough faith. I can’t make a tree
jump into a lake, so I must not have even a mustard seed of faith.
I think that
interpretation is backwards, at least as it’s presented here in Luke. The
apostles are asking for more faith, and Jesus is telling them they have all the
faith they need. Now it’s possible that these two passages in tonight’s Gospel
are unrelated and yet it was the pairing that made me see this take on the
passage about faith.
Perhaps
Jesus is illustrating that they have enough faith with the slavery sayings.
Just do what you are asked to do, what you ought to do, with the attitude of a
slave, full submission. Remembering that dedicated prayer and deep meditation
are part of what you ought to do. You’ll likely find you had all the faith you
needed.
