I want to begin by thanking Cindy for her gracious invitation to be with you this morning. I don’t want to reveal my age, but the last time I was here at St. James, John Ashey was the rector. You have certainly been through a great deal since that time, and I want to thank you for your faithfulness, perseverance and the obvious creative vitality and pastoral leadership evident in the leadership and ministry of Canon Voorhees. Who else would think of using swim noodles for the socially distanced passing of the peace? I’m glad to be here.
As the bulletin tells you, my last job before I retired in 2016 was to serve as dean of Washington National Cathedral. I had a great time there—what’s not to love about a beautiful gothic building in a dynamic place like Washington, D.C? We put on a lot of programs in my years as dean—working against gun violence, advocating for same sex marriage, voting rights, and environmental activism--but my favorite event was a one-week endeavor each January called “Seeing Deeper”. During that week we would take all the chairs out of the nave and do music, dance, prayer, and other offerings that made use of the entire transcendent empty space and invited people to respond not just mentally but physically. Seeing a big church like that without chairs is a revelation. We think of churches much as we do classrooms—as places where everyone watches and listens passively to a reasoned presentation. Emptying the space out and using it as a place for using not just our heads but our bodies was, as we said in the 1960s, a mind-blowing experience.
The first year we did it The Washington Post ran a front page story [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/national-cathedral-opens-worship-space-to-free-classes-and-more-to-boost-profile-coffers/2014/01/14/216f87b4-7d3f-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html] in which I was directly quoted in perhaps not my most PR savvy remark. Michelle Boorstein, the religion editor, came to our opening night, and as we sat there in the empty space watching a large group doing tai chi, she asked me how this all made me feel. Without thinking two seconds, I enthusiastically pointed to the length of the space and said, “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest.” [“National Cathedral opens worship space to free classes and more to boost profile, coffers” The Washington Post, January 14, 2014]
Now it wasn’t the most controversial thing I said there, but it wasn’t the best quote to soothe the worries of the staid, traditional lovers of a cathedral who already saw this smart-alecky Southern California import as a dangerous innovator and change agent. Isn’t this the place where they bury the presidents? The idea of rollerblading past Woodrow Wilson’s tomb was too much for some, and you can be sure I (and the bishop, and the cathedral chapter) heard about it.
“I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest.” Was saying this a mistake? Yes, in that it scared some people who thought I would actually do something like that. No, in that it was an authentic expression of the real exuberance I felt when I opened myself up to the transcendence of a big, holy space.
This experience of saying something at once unwise yet authentic gets to a kind of doubleness we all experience and which Jesus explores in the Gospel for today [Mark 9:38-50]. He says two things that, on their surface, seem to be in direct contradiction with each other. The first one:
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.”
And here’s the second one:
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
How do these statements conflict? In the first, Jesus tells us not to be a stumbling block to others or to tolerate aspects of ourselves that make us get in our own way. Not to take us into a big word study here, but the Greek word σκάνδαλον literally means “the movable stick or trigger of a trap”, hence anything that would cause one to stumble or fall. It’s where our English word scandal comes from. Jesus uses σκάνδαλον to denote how we can be two kinds of stumbling blocks. We can be a stumbling block to someone else. We can be a stumbling block to ourselves. We can so offend someone with our words or behavior that they will look askance at the causes we stand for. We can so get in our own way that we make problems for ourselves that wouldn’t exist without our helping them along.
To use our example of the day: a smart-aleck dean saying “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest” about a sacred space might very well offend someone and turn them off not only the cathedral but the state of modern Christianity in America. The idea of a priest skateboarding anywhere is probably too much for some.
But then we have Jesus’s second statement:
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Again, not to be a dictionary hound, but the Greek word for salt (ἅλας) denotes a mineral that in Jesus’s day was at once a seasoning, a preservative, and a purifier. If salt has lost its “saltness” (KJV) what use is it? The “saltness” of salt is the thing that makes it worthwhile. If salt isn’t salty, then who needs it?
Seen in this light, a cathedral dean saying “I want to skateboard down it—or have a paper airplane contest,” is doing something, well, salty. For every person who wants to preserve each tradition exactly as it is, there is probably another person who finds our whole church enterprise hide-bound, stuffy, and stodgy. Taken under the rubric of “saltness”, a smart-aleck remark can be taken as a breath of fresh air, a refusal to take oneself or one’s cathedral too seriously.
Now the point of this little exercise is not retroactively to justify my remarks. (Yes, I probably shouldn’t have said it, and yes, I’d probably do it again.) It’s to make a point about this doubleness which all of experience in life. How many times in your life have you said something that you thought was funny but turned out to be hurtful? And how many times have you held back from expressing yourself and so failed to bring your needed perspective to the conversation?
When it comes to self-expression, we are caught in a double bind. A lifelong priest friend of mine used to say, “One person’s painful dichotomy is another person’s creative tension.” We need always to consider the feelings of others and to weigh carefully how our words or actions might injure, offend, or actually abuse someone else. And we also need to be true to ourselves by saying and doing the things that arise from our own individuality. We are no good to the world if we are always stepping on each other’s toes. And we are no good to the world if we squelch the particularity of our own gifts and talents out of fear of being misunderstood.
One of the most helpful distinctions I have learned over the years is the one between intent and impact. My words or actions may have an impact on you that I do not intend. When I offend you—which I have probably done several times by now—you need to realize that my words or deeds may have an impact on you that I did not intend. And I need to realize that, even if I did not intend to hurt or offend you, I am responsible for the impact of my behavior on your heart or mind.
Two seemingly contradictory things are true this morning. Jesus calls us to be aware of our own words and actions and the unintended impact they may have on another. He cautions us not to be a stumbling block to ourselves or others when we speak or act. He asks that we take responsibility for our words and actions.
And at the same time, he admonishes us to stay faithful to the unique “saltness” that is our own particular gift to the world. If you do not bring your own insights and experiences to the conversation at home, at work, or in the public sphere, who will? Your “you-ness” is precious, and it is a sin to hide it like a candle under a bushel out of mere fear of being misunderstood.
We come now to gather at God’s table, the one place in our life where we are both members one of another and uniquely precious just as we are. As we are fed with what Jesus calls the “bread of life”, let us take that bread both as a sign of our togetherness and as an emblem of our uniqueness. Your sisters and brothers are too precious to hurt or offend. And you are too precious to squelch the things that make you “you”. We need both to honor each other and to cut ourselves some slack. Walking this doubleness tightrope is never easy, but we’re strengthened to do it, because before us there is Jesus, who in his life and ministry, shows us how both to respect others and value ourselves at the same time. Honor each other, and honor yourself. It’s a risky business, more of an art than a science. This creative tension is the thing that makes us human. And this compassionate care for us as humans, in all our wonderful, mixed-up frailty and magnificence, is what God’s love for us is finally all about. Amen.
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