Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
Uniquely Blind
3/3/2019 Epiphany 8C Luke 6:39-49 1 Cor 15:51-58
The Gospel lesson this week seems to be a collection of Jesus’ sayings, very short parables in fact, grouped together. Not that they have any less thoughtfulness or meaningfulness for being briefer in words. In pithy ways, they all seem to talk about how we need to be following God ourselves, be practicing the wisdom of the Spirit ourselves, and letting that Spirit work on the integrity of our own self - before we try to tell anyone else how to get their life together. Let the one without sin cast the first stone, in other words.
I had a wonderful time some years back when I decided to do some spiritual studying with one of my favorite writers, Matthew Fox. I found a life-filling and soul-filling delight in exploring spirituality, and eagerly called each one of our Presbyterian seminaries about the possibility of doing a Doctor of Ministry degree in a further exploration of Christian spirituality. Not one of our seminaries had a program in Christian Spirituality at that time - they all have, since. At that time, however, I had to go outside our Presbyterian institutions. To me, that spoke of what I found life-stultifying and what I found life-affirming in the way we were prepared for living the Christian life, especially as clergy.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved and still love the Presbyterian church: I love the depth of what I read in our historical documents and confessions - there was nothing shallow about how faith was understood; there was fine-tuning in the eloquent words of our forebears as they carefully searched for how to speak both love and justice; there was a wise parsing of what the gospel says to living in faith. I took joy in it all -- no fly-by-night shells, no acceptance of careless thinking. Of course they were persons of their time and culture, and assumed some things that the Spirit has revealed more light on as time has gone on. Of course, they knew that was how the Spirit worked: reforming and still always being reformed.
Many of us at seminary in the 80s were hungry for more than an academic knowledge of the Bible - not that it wasn’t a rich and important way to learn...yet there was a hunger that this kind of study wasn’t filling. Several of my colleagues there turned towards a more liturgical way of worship, taken from the practices of the earlier Christian church forebears. Several others explored more new-composed music and styles. Some were charismatic. Some were intent on sowing their wild oats before becoming a traditional pastor. All of us were in transitions of seeking and learning. Overall, I was more like those who wanted more than doctrine and history and methods of training -- rather, a more personal way of living with integrity and following God with my whole self -- it seemed too much all in the mind, and I wanted it in my inner self as well. That’s not to say there was not deep and sincere commitment and passion in the professors of that generation - in the writings of these folks, you can sense the fire of dedication and love of God - only it seemed to come through and be satisfied by academic study of scripture. My generation seemed to want to learn in different ways.
Now that I am in the older generation of pastors, the younger Christ-followers coming up will probably seek their expression of Christianity in unique ways, too. It will be interesting to watch the Spirit working in the coming decades.
What drew me to Matthew Fox’s program was his insistence that the process be a joining of academic learning, “head learning” he called it, and what he called “heart learning.” For the heart learning, we explored ways to access what formed our deeper self, our unconscious, through experiential classes in art, movement, music, writing, dream work, ritual, and drumming. Only about ⅓ of the people there were professional religious folks, and were all seekers. The title of my sermon comes from Jeremy Taylor, who wrote on and led groups in dream work. (There are all kinds of references to significant dreams in our Scripture, even in Jesus’ birth stories.) As we shared certain dreams that had stood out in our memories, we were invited to let others help us hear the dream by saying, “If it were my dream, I’d wonder about….” We couldn’t tell the other person what it ‘meant’ so to speak - Jeremy’s point was that we were each “uniquely blind” to what our own dreams were saying, because we were caught up already in the conscious working through of our own problems.
He would ask, does a fish know what water is? Are people aware of the air? Its all around us, we breathe it, it blows on us - do we ever think much about the fact that we walk constantly through this gaseous mix and move painlessly though its atoms? So are the customs, habits, inherited ways of behavior, neuroses, and assumptions that seemingly guide the ways we act and react - not only do we not stop and think much about them, we are also unable to see ourselves and our troubles with objectivity. Its much easier to see what someone else is struggling with and tell them what they oughta do, whether they want out opinion or not….its difficult to see ourselves and our own problems in that way, because we’re caught up in it..
So Jesus pithily says, “Take the log out of your own eye before you try and do the delicate removal of a speck from someone else’s.” We usually don’t even know our log is there! Again Jesus says, "When we’re blind, how can we lead other blind people No one can see! You will all fall off a cliff!"
This is an admonition to know ourselves, to know and address our own faults; to let the Spirit show us where we’re too caught up in stuff to see straight. I am a great fan of counseling - its perhaps a way of what our spiritual forebears called ‘the examen,’ that is, examining our own motives, actions and feelings in prayer - and perhaps a bit of confession thrown in, too. Good counselors don’t set themselves up so much as knowing the answers - they help us look at ourselves in a more conscious way, we get an outside voice looking at our functioning...or non-functioning. And we don’t have to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a big crisis to go - check it out when it begins to pinch! We do it for physical pains - My daughter has been having a significant pain in her side, and her GP has ruled out appendicitis and other infections because she doesn’t have the signs of infection in her bloodwork or anything bad on the X-ray. But she still has the pain. She called me the other day in frustration, because she’s been referred on, and feels like she’s being stupid and that they’ll say its all in her head, and she’s just being a hypochondriac. So she doesn’t want to make any more appointments - but she still has the pain, but its probably nothing she says…. I encouraged her to make the appointment, as she still had the pain. Better to check it out as a bearable pain that let it become something that’s a bigger pain. Just because its not obvious at first glance, the pain is a symptom for a reason.
Mental health is the same way. Ever since I’ve been a pastor, I’ve had a counselor I go to for my own self-discovery, for my own mental health - and as a safeguard for unconsciously working out things on you all, my congregation. Kind of like a supervisor, where I can let off steam and learn why something bothers me so much. It keeps me humble; and it supports me in my work. Hopefully it keeps me out of trouble. And if there is trouble, I have a place to look at it in a less-involved way. I’ve considered it part of my spiritual practice. Getting the log out of my own eye, which I’ve become uniquely blind to.
Do you remember back a bit when we all wore huge glasses with our initials in the corner? After a couple days, you no longer noticed it - our brains filtered it out. We became blind to it because it seemed normal. And I still remember the first pair of glasses I got that had a bifocal adjustment - until my brain got used to it, it made me nauseous. Then I didn’t notice it anymore - I acclimated. Lots of the “logs” in our eyes are like that - we’ve acclimated to them, and forget that our seeing is actually impaired. Its true emotionally and mentally as well.
So these brief parables are yet another way of telling as Christ-followers that how we live is important - not just what we believe, but how we live. Following Christ isn’t just a mental assent to some propositions or good ideas - following Christ, being a disciple, changes our behavior. Changes our inner self. Transform us into a person who bears the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, kindness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, compassion. Makes us the person who has built their ‘house’ on the rock of Christ, where it is still standing after the storms are over.
I think the same things are true of the church. We can be uniquely blind to the habits and ways we’ve gotten into that are no longer serving us, if they ever did serve us. We can’t see it because we’re in it; we need the Spirit of God to show us, and we need to respond and be transformed. There are parts of a church’s culture and habits that make it distinct, yes; there are also parts of the culture and habits that may actually be holding that church back. It takes courage to look at our ways, things that we’ve taken for granted, and be willing to remove those logs in our eyes. We here at Indiantown endured a major trauma time a few years back - a tearing of friendships and even families - over an interpretation of Scripture, no less. We have persevered through the storm, and are beginning to turn our eyes to the future. We hunkered down and kept the church going, and now are ready to look outside our walls again, ready for mission. Its a good time to take stock of things, look at our traditions and our church culture, and see how we’re doing as a church in God’s eyes, and how the Spirit wants to move us forward. I know we’d like things to be as they were before; I think we’ve healed, not without grief and regret, but are ready now to turn our eyes to serving now, as we are.
In our sad wisdom, we might pray earnestly for our United Methodist friends, who are entering a similar testing time themselves right now. If you’ve been following the news of their General Council this past week, you know that they took the opposite road from we Presbyterians in dealing with the persons in their congregations and leadership that have a differing sexual orientation than the majority. We grieve over the furor sure to effect their churches in the coming years, and the pain they will know. Evidently some United Methodist leadership has approached the Presbyterian and Episcopalian leadership to get some benefit of our experiences….Its hard - even those of us who have sought to follow Christ for years still don’t always control our tongues, and still let out angers carry us away; and our living of faith is always at different levels of understanding and maturity. And as we know, sometimes the stated issue is more a beard to disguise latent power struggles and control issues which we are still fall victim to, and to which we humans are also prone. I hope our Methodist friends evidence more grace with each other than we did. There is so much fallout, so many people hurt. There are always differences among people, and strong feelings about those differences - I wish the lessons of living as the church were easier to learn.
Continue to pray for our Ruling Elders, as we sit in session this afternoon and consider some ways of moving forward. I hope many of us have continued to pray diligently for Indiantown church and our ministry to the people in this area. I was greatly encouraged by the visit of our co-moderator, the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, and the message of hope she is bringing to the denomination church by church. And I am also encouraged by our presbytery leadership, and their openness to seeking ways forward as well. I am able to see the hand of God gently leading and healing us, renewing our hope and faith after times of trouble. May it be so. AMEN.
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