From the Pulpit:

 
                                                                                              Go Bananas for God!

Even though I’m a dog person, albeit one who does not presently have a dog, I did at one time for a year or so have a cat. She was a nice cat, and she loved me, and she showed me how much she loved me by bringing me gifts. I think those of you who have had cats know where this is going.
I liked it better when she brought them to me when I was awake than when I was asleep because I really didn’t like waking up bleary-eyed to find a dead mouse or bird right where I’d step out of bed. Whatever the gift was, I would have to deal with it. Sometimes the Bible is like that cat. Here are the readings, and we have to deal with them.

We begin every Sunday service with the Collect for the Day, the prayer to God to open our hearts to his message, to effect the infinitesimal transformation that moves us one step closer to him on this lifelong journey, to lead us towards being the person God knows us to be. And so today we pray for God to increase in us true religion.

It is the phrase ‘true religion’ that tripped me up because this week I read a pretty disturbing article by Kenda Creasy Dean, who is one of the high gurus of youth ministry right now, and she says that an alarming number of American teens are being fed a false Christianity, and that even well-meaning adults are forming them into fake Christians. I’ve admired her work for some time, so she is somebody I already respect, not someone
I can brush off as Chicken Little crying the sky is falling. No, she has conducted a study of 3300 American teenagers between 13 and 17 and has found, to her great dismay, that while they can speak with passion and nuance about a number of topics, when it comes to religion they are by and large inarticulate. They think God simply wants them to feel good and do good. They think God is primarily interested in their self-esteem. And we adults are guilty of promoting this concept of God, not to mention this relationship with God.

Today our grade school children are having their Rally Day. Catherine and her helpers have invited them to Go Bananas for God. Do we dare to go bananas for God? Or are we more focused on behaving ourselves for God? Do we stick to what is safe, to the image of God as our smiling therapist, the one who keeps a checklist of our behavior and doles out little rewards along the way for our being predictably good? I remember the words of Terry Holmes that for most of us religion is like a vaccine; we take it in small doses on a regular basis so that we never contract the real thing. Catherine is inviting those children to catch the real thing, to let go of control, to meet a God who is powerful, not somebody to sit down to tea with but the creator of the universe and the one whose heart is so radically huge that it can embrace the very worst that happens to us and transform us
into more than we can ever imagine ourselves to be.

What on earth would it mean for us to go bananas for God? And what would it mean to our teenagers if we witnessed to them our willingness to
let go of control in order to serve the Lord with true gladness, to act radically out of trust rather than strive for predictable results.

And so we have a couple of passages of  scripture laid at our feet like the mousie or the birdie. I suppose we could step over them but we know that’s not ultimately a very good idea. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes: Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. And then Luke tells us the story of Jesus offering what looks a whole lot like benign advice from Miss Manners. At first glance this seems like little more than common sense. Hey, you don’t want to be embarrassed, so make sure to take the lower seat at table so the host doesn’t have to ask you to move down. It’s like telling the kindergartner
not to shove his way to the front of the line. So what makes that gospel?

These are lessons about two things that go hand in hand. Hospitality and humility. Two biblical virtues. Two doorways to transformation.  
Two invitations for us to open our eyes and our imaginations to see what God is truly about.

I raised my sons in the Episcopal Church. Just about every Sunday I would manage to get them dressed and drove the couple of miles to St. Mark’s Cathedral in Shreveport . Everything would be as fine as it could be with four active boys until we got ready to sit in the pew, which was when they would start jockeying for position. They didn’t create a huge ruckus, but just a few years ago they told me that they took turns  being the one who had to sit next to the stranger. I had no idea. And let me tell you, the stranger was not very strange. St. Mark’s was not much like St. Alban’s. Everybody was white. Everybody was well-dressed. The chance of my boys sitting next to somebody they’d never met was pretty darned slim, let alone somebody who was truly different in some way.

It’s interesting to look at who we consider to be a stranger. Who is it, that if they came into our church today would put us on our guard? And without encouraging behavior that is truly unsafe in today’s world, how do we stretch the boundaries of our comfort zones to acknowledge the full humanity of someone who is different? Again and again we come back to the words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.

Hospitality is more than playing host to someone, more than inviting them into our home and feeding them. It is accepting our obligation as beneficiaries of God’s blessings to share them with those who are vulnerable. And there will be times in our lives  when we find ourselves to be the vulnerable ones. Jesus has words for guests as well as hosts. There are standards for both partners in this relationship and they are more than standards of etiquette. They are standards of humanity, of humility.

In our baptismal covenant we make a sacred promise to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. ( BCP 305) This oath raises the bar on hospitality. It is more than a drink of water or a ham sandwich or a soft bed. It is justice and peace. It is acknowledging that every person is as valuable in God’s eyes as our most beloved family members and friends are. Every person. That’s the rub. There’s a bumper sticker I see every so often that makes me smile. It says, “God bless everybody. No exceptions.” No exceptions. And that means the terrorist, the schizophrenic, the porn star. Just the thought is difficult, let alone the action. A while back we talked about what God’s peace looks like and that true justice is not retributive but distributive. That is, the kingdom, the one Jesus commissions us to create with him, is where all God’s children are safe and well fed and sheltered. What life paths would people choose if they were educated, nurtured, comforted?

On Wednesday night at 10:40 a bunch of us are going to be at the airport to meet some very important people. We haven’t met them yet, and they don’t have any idea who to look for, but we’ll have signs of welcome, and we’ll have balloons and toys for the little girl, who is four years old. They are refugees from Iraq , Robert and Bushra and their daughter, who have been given political asylum because Robert served as an interpreter for our government, and this has put him and his family in danger. Can you imagine their anxiety? There is a gift we can offer them, though,  that will be more precious than any pots and pans or mattresses or clothing could be, and that is the gift of our humility, the acknowledgment and communication that no matter that presently we are the ones giving and in this case they are the recipients of our gifts, we are equally valuable in the eyes of God.

A number of our parishioners, my youngest son included, have served in Iraq over the last seven years, and despite their Hum-V’s and Kevlar body armor they were dependent upon the gifts of these interpreters. On Iraqi soil these brave people knew how society worked. As we help them in various ways to adapt to life in Austin , Texas , humility invites us to imagine being their guests and to recognize that they have gifts to share with us as well as we with them. If we are genuinely risking being Christ to them and to anyone we are called to extend hospitality to, it means leaving Miss Manners with her concerns of propriety and reserve and going bananas for God, daring to move beyond our comfort zones to serve, witnessing to our young people that our faith means something and that we all have a long way to go in this adventure of incarnating the Christ spirit within all of us.

No, we must pray to be rescued from fake Christianity for ourselves as well as our young people. We must act to open ourselves to receiving  this radical and earth changing thing called true religion. And to know that we might just contract the real thing.

Let us pray: Living God, may we encounter you this day in the laughter of children, in the skills of those who create, in the pauses of the elderly, in the patience of those who teach, in the loyalty of friends, in the dedication of those who serve, in the exuberance of animals, in those willing to make fools of themselves. May we be your blessing to one another.

Amen.