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Think On These Things Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis July 26, 2009, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 11:3b-9 Philippians 4:8-9
The commentary in print and on the media concerning the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates has generally produced more fire than light. The President even acknowledged as much about his own remarks on Wednesday. The same could be said of the dust-up that ensued when forty-nine black children were turned away from Valley Swim Club a few weeks ago because, as was said initially, they would change the complexion of the pool. But concerning this week’s conflagration in particular, whether for reasons of race or class or male ego or jet lag, whether belligerence and disrespect for authority or the thin skin of an officer resulted in handcuffs and an arrest, two narratives have clashed and spawned a thousand more. What is the gospel for such a week as this? The apostle Paul must have asked himself the same question as from prison he penned a letter to Christians in Philippi and to a church embroiled in the divisions of the society around her. Amid Judaizers and libertines, Gnostics and the Romans, all forces vying for the Philippians’ hearts and minds, Paul had set out to establish a community of faith composed of people called out by God’s address in Jesus Christ without regard to social, economic or ethnic origins. It was a remarkable experiment in a world where people normally gathered according to “family ties, professional associations or ethnicity.” It is still a remarkable experiment today. “[The Philippian church] could not but be construed as…subversive to the whole edifice of the Roman Empire,” writes N.T. Wright, “and there is plenty of evidence that Paul intended it to be so construed….” That said, Paul also knew how to use the culture for the sake of the gospel and our text this morning will lead us to do the same. When we get to the fourth chapter of Philippians says New Testament scholar Fred Craddock, “It seems as though the apostle realizes that he has spoken so much of opposition and conflict between the culture and the church that points of commendation and agreement have been overlooked.” Therefore he commends to the Philippians a list of virtues extolled by the ethicists of their own Greek culture: the true, the honorable, the just, the pure, the lovely, the excellent, the praiseworthy. Again says Craddock, “It was not as though Paul were looking for a point of accommodation, an opportunity to embrace his culture. Rather Paul faced a phenomenon with which he and all Christians have had to deal: Outside…[the church] are those men and women whose conduct and relationship exhibit qualities enjoined upon those within…[the church].” Curiously I found myself, like Paul, reaching outside the circle of the Christian faith for a helpful word on a morning and in a week when words have been anything but! The help came not from Greek moralists but from Buddhist monks and the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh in a book entitled Being Peace. There I read that “During the last 2,500 years in Buddhist monasteries, a system of seven practices of reconciliation has evolved. Although these techniques were formulated to settle disputes within the circle of monks,” he writes, “I think they might also be of use in our households and in our society.” Three are of special help for us today. The first is Face-to-Face Sitting. People in conflict come together, he writes, in a spirit of the willingness to help and not with the willingness to fight. “The two conflicting monks are present and they know that everyone in the community expects them to make peace.” It is not quite like Officer Crowley and Professor Gates having a beer in the White House with President Obama, but I think there is a thread that connects the attitudes and actions in both settings. Imagine your family, the church, the community. Imagine this congregation coming together and inviting opposing parties to sit face to face in a spirit of the willingness to help and not with the willingness to fight. “…here’s what I really wish,” wrote Adrian Walker, a columnist at the Boston Globe. “I wish Gates and Crowley would sit down and talk to each other, no lawyers, no cameras, maybe a friendly columnist to facilitate. I wish they could sit across lunch from each other….” Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. The second Buddhist practice is Remembrance. “I wish” Walker goes on, they could sit across lunch from each other and have an honest, no-posturing conversation about what happened. They can talk about the road each of them traveled to that regrettable moment and what they wish each of them had understood about the other.” In the presence of the whole community, writes Hanh, “[b]oth monks try to remember the whole history of the conflict, every detail of the life having to do with the conflict, while the whole assembly just sits patiently and listens.” Remembering, it seems to me, is different from rehearsing grievances. True remembering does exactly what the word says. To re-member is to name the pieces of our broken common life before the community and the God who, in Paul Lehmann’s memorable phrase, is a God who picks up the pieces. But I think more is given in the practice of remembering. Paul might call that more the mind of Christ. Remembering is an “act of the moral imagination that is both counter-intuitive and counter-cultural,” New Testament Professor Katherine Grieb goes on to explain, “seeing the other as the brother or sister ‘for whom Christ died.’ The other, whether ally or opponent, friend or enemy, is shown to have infinite value in the sight of God and to be worth, in the judgment of Christ Jesus, the pain and humiliation of death on the cross.” Imaginative empathy is awakened within the gathered and listening community. Grieb then goes on to observe that cultivating the mind of Christ (Hanh would say remembering) “turns out to be a habit of the heart comparable to the disciple in active and attentive prayer. It is a way of thinking that results in a changed way of being. I must act differently towards the other whom I [imagine to be] my brother or sister in Christ.” Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. The third principle is my favorite and it is the hardest: Non-stubbornness. “Everyone in the community expects the two monks not to be stubborn, to try their best for reconciliation.” Stubbornness inhabits a space that claims that the virtues--the true, the honorable, the just, the pure, the pleasing, the commendable—belong alone to me and my side of the argument. I know I can be stubborn. So can you! I spent a good part of the week searching for words that would counter my stubbornness and open my heart to the virtues of Officer Crowley as well as Professor Gates. Almost immediately concerning the latter, I came upon an op-ed by Wil Haygood of the Washington Post that opened my imagination to the experience of a black man in this culture. “I loved living in Cambridge, Mass.,” Haygood began, “except when I didn’t. And when I didn’t was when I had left my apartment late at night to walk to the all-night corner grocery store with just that $10 bill stuffed into my pocket, having left my wallet on the bookcase in the hallway. Then, strolling along, soon as I spotted a police car, I’d tighten: Dammit, I’m gonna get stopped. Maybe some black guy broke into a home two blocks over. Maybe he was over 6 feet and slim like myself. Maybe there was no black guy two blocks over. I could, in that flash, without any ID, picture myself sitting in the police car, handcuffed. And then when the car would pass, when I’d finally exhale, I dared not look back over my shoulder, lest the officer think I was checking him out checking me out through his rearview mirror, which would have been a telltale sign of some kind of wrongdoing in motion. The little mind games that black men in Cambridge—and other places—sometimes play when it comes to the police.” To practice non-stubbornness is to begin to imagine myself in Haygood’s skin. Not until Saturday morning did I find words that let me into the mind of police officers. An article in the newspaper spoke of an officer’s tolerance for being disrespected that varied from zero to a practiced silence before another’s anger. “…we’re not dealing with people at their best,” said one officer, “and if you don’t have a tough skin, then you shouldn’t be a cop.” Another observed that he would not back down if a crowd gathered “in part out of concern of sending a message of weakness that could haunt another officer later. ‘We’re a band of brothers,’ he said. ‘We have to be there to help each other out.’” “Let’s say I do a stop,” says another. “I question and it’s nothing. ‘Sir, I’m sorry, I apologize.’ What’s the reason for staying, if the anger’s directed at me?” “We pay these officers to risk their lives every day,” a detective adds. “We’re taught that officers should have a thicker skin and be a little immune to some comments; but not to the point where you are abused in public. You don’t get paid to be publicly abused.” What of these words help us try our best to understand the other? To imagine ourselves in uniform? Needless to say, they are not the rants that characterize talk radio. Rather at the end of the day and to return to our own tradition, they are the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 taken to heart, words that just might help us drop the stubborn attitude toward the other! Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable think on these things. At the end of her commentary on Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Katherine Grieb tells the story of a rector who serves a large inner-city parish in Alabama. Every day he disciplines himself to think on the virtues listed by Paul in relation to his congregation. Then “he writes a letter to someone in the congregation [daily], giving thanks to God for something that person said or did that served to build up the body of Christ. Since he tries to write to a different person each day, the discipline helps him to be on the lookout for people and events that provoke thanksgiving and joy….I can only imagine,” says Grieb, “how the congregation’s life together has been affected over the years by this practice….” I can only imagine how attitudes and actions might change if each of us took that discipline upon ourselves, not just in regard to this community but to our families, our neighborhood, our public officials and servants, our friends, our enemies. For finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things for Christ’s sake. Amen. |