When
I first walked into the nave this morning, I had to suppress a wave of
disappointment. “The chairs are
back.” This past week we took the chairs out of the central
expanse of the cathedral, an experiment we called “Seeing Deeper”. For five days the center aisle was entirely
cleared of chairs, and we used the space to try out a wide array of different
offerings: Tai Chi on Monday, a cappella
polyphonic choral music on Wednesday and Friday, Muslim noon prayer, the
labyrinth and healing prayers on Thursday, an all-night vigil Friday night into
Saturday. And we used the space in a
combination of ways. We moved the
musicians around the space in the evening concerts and held our regular Daily
Offices in a chapel we rarely use, St. John’s Chapel over here behind me to
your right. And there was plenty of time
for walking around in the open, empty nave.
“Seeing Deeper” was a powerful
experience for everyone who entered it.
We allowed the building to do its work in us simply as a transcendent
space. But for those of us who regularly serve here, much of the power of the
week lay in the way people responded to it.
As the week went on the crowds grew, and especially in the evenings the
cathedral was filled with people who were obviously moved by the sheer beauty
and elegance of the building. And as the
week went on I found myself increasingly moved by the depth of the spiritual
search that so many people in our world find themselves on.
In this morning’s Gospel [John
1:29-42], Jesus encounters two of John the Baptist’s disciples and asks them
what they are looking for. They respond
with the Hebrew word, “Rabbi”, which means teacher. Do they mean that they’re looking for a
rabbi? Or do they mean that they
recognize Jesus as their rabbi? It’s
hard to know. But Jesus’s next statement
changes the terms of the discussion. He
says, “Come and see”. We know that they
have been looking for him. It turns out that he has also been looking for them.
As
the passage unfolds, one of the two (Andrew) goes and gets his brother, Simon
(who will become Peter). He tells him,
“We have found the Messiah.” As we think together about this little story, it’s
clear that what we have here is a parable of the spiritual search that all of
us are on. Whether we come to church week after week, or wander in because
we’ve heard about something mysterious and beautiful, each of us is looking for
something. We may not use the words
“rabbi” or “Messiah” to describe it. But
by whatever name we call it, we are drawn to the possibility that something
ineffable lies beyond.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus
poses a simple question: "What are you looking for?" This
story asks that we acknowledge a truth about the relations between God and
us. All the time we have been searching
for God, God has been searching for us.
Christians have come to name that search “the call”. God calls to us, as in this story when Jesus
invites Andrew and his friend to “come and see”. Jesus not only calls this first pair. He calls Simon and changes his name to
Peter. In this encounter Jesus’s
followers not only get a life; they get a community. And more than that, they
find their true identity. The one we
have been looking for turns out all the time to have been looking for us. That one knows that we need life and purpose
and meaning. They have always been on
offer and are ready, any time, for the taking.
Today’s Gospel prompts
two thoughts. One concerns this story’s
mysterious, gracious implication that God has called each and all of us into
fellowship with Jesus and each other. Just as we sometimes take the givenness
of this cathedral building for granted and miss the transcendence that is
always present, so we find ourselves strenuously looking for one who is seeking
us at the same time. The other thought has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.
whose national holiday we celebrate tomorrow.
Because Dr. King preached his final Sunday
sermon in this pulpit, we here at Washington National Cathedral feel a special
connection to him. Yet I think he remains a misunderstood figure in American
life. I love King’s writing, and I’ve taught several of his pieces to high
school and college students. As great as the “I Have a Dream” speech is,
though, its over-exposure tends to obscure the sharpness of King’s theological intelligence
and make him sound like a bit like a greeting card. The great Cornell West
refers to this process as the “Santa-Claus-ification of Martin Luther King”.
Sentimentalizing King blunts some of his
force; he had, after all, one of the great, analytical minds in the history of
the Christian tradition. If one point this morning is God’s search for us and
the call to follow, the other point is that God is always leading us toward
some place specific. Yes, God is looking for us, but God is looking for us with
a deeper purpose than only to love and bless us. God is looking for us to be disciples, witnesses,
agents of love and blessing ourselves. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and
witness give us a good image of that specific place toward which Jesus asked Andrew
and Peter to go then and you and me to follow today.
One of King’s greatest achievements was the
letter he wrote to the Birmingham, Alabama clergy when he was imprisoned in the
Birmingham Jail in April of 1963. The white clergy had criticized his practice
of civil disobedience, calling him that favorite phrase of the 1960s, an
“outside agitator”, and he replied with a defense of civil disobedience
grounded in a profound analysis of Christian history. The letter is usually
referred to as “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Here is one bit of what he says
near its end:
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge
of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of
justice, I have no despair about the future. . . . We will reach the goal of
freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is
freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the
destiny of America. . . . If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not
stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom
because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are
embodied in our echoing demands. [Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”, April 16, 1963]
Like Jesus,
like Andrew and Peter, Martin Luther King, Jr. answered God’s call to follow.
Like them, King understood that the call was not only to follow but to go with
God toward a specific place—the place Jesus called the “Kingdom of God”, a zone
of blessedness, peace, compassion, and health, a place where we experience the
world on God’s terms, a place where the blind see, the lame walk, the prisoners
go free, and the poor have good news preached to them. King knew that the
Kingdom of God was less about his own personal salvation than it was about
building a world where wrongs are set right and all of God’s precious children
can share in the abundant blessings God holds out to everyone.
If you are here
in church this morning, I will bet that you, too, are searching for the one who
is behind and in this transcendent space, the one we come to know in word and
sacrament, music and liturgy, fellowship and service. That one is already searching for you, and
that one holds out to you the gift of life, of identity, of community, of
meaning and purpose. That one calls you into a life in which you can become not
only a seeker of God but a seeker with God of others, a life in which you serve
as an agent of love and justice, healing and hope in the world. This search and
call are not only about being found and saved.
They are about a new life in which we, as Jesus did, offer life and hope
to others. That new life takes as many
shapes as there are people, but this weekend we honor one unique life and
witness that transformed our nation and our world.
God called Martin Luther King, Jr., and in
answering he gave himself up to a vision of America and humanity that continues
to inspire and bless us today--a vision of justice, equality, compassion, and
love. This vision is more than a dream. It’s the destiny God holds out to all
of us. It’s a picture of how the world and
the universe finally are. God’s search for us has led us first into this
cathedral and now out into the world. “What are you looking for?” “Come and
see.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment