Rev. Stina Pope,
May 23, 2004

I was not particularly inspired by the Gospel reading for this morning,
so I let my mind run on to see what I might work with, and what came
up for me was, how are we supposed to live in this crazy world we live
in right now? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s nuts out there. Now one
frequent response to that recognition is to try and maintain the status
quo in here, but that begs the question. Even if we did manage to keep
things the same in here, and I don’t think that’s workable in the long run,
it still doesn’t answer how to live out there. So I want to take a little time
to think through the question: How are we supposed to live?

We have come to the end of the Easter season. Pentecost, the great
birthing day of the church, is next week, and Trinity Sunday, when we tackle
the mystery of the Trinity head on is the week after that. For the past seven
weeks we have had time to think about Easter, and what it means to us.
So there’s the first question, now that the gloriousness of Easter has begun
to fade in our memories, what does being an Easter people mean? How do
we live as an Easter people in our world?

The disciples had the same question. They were living in an occupied country.
The oppressors were the ones who had killed their leader – and he was killed
because he did threaten the leaders, but in an interesting way. So I propose
that the first answer to how do we live now is to look first at how Jesus lived,
and then at how the disciples turned apostles lived, in the light of the
resurrection. So how did Jesus live? We’ve all seen the stickers, etc.,
ad nauseum saying What Would Jesus Do? While I tend to have trouble with
the people who usually have that saying plastered on their cars and personal
effects, I think it’s a fair question.

If we want to look seriously at what Jesus would do, we have to first look at
what Jesus did. When we get the sentimental cloying picture of Jesus out of
the way, we find a rather astonishing figure. We read the Gospel of Mark,
and find someone who was angry, a lot of the time and at a lot of things.
We read the Gospel of Luke, and we find a healer who cared for the nobodies,
the lepers, the women, the poor, the sick. We read the Gospel of Matthew,
and we find a Jew who kept the traditions, some of the time. We read the
Gospel of John, and we find a figure who people are equating with God.

What would Jesus do? Well, it depends a lot on which Gospel you start with,
and where you put your emphasis. Jesus lived in a time which was rife with
uprisings and confrontation with the authorities. People were actively looking
for someone who would rise up and throw the oppressors out of their country.
When it started looking like Jesus didn’t want the job, one theory reads,
Judas tried to tip Jesus’ hand to start the ball rolling as it were. Instead,
Jesus allowed the authorities to kill him. Do you realize that we are the
only major religion which allows its god to be killed? Soooo Jesus wasn’t
political? Wrong! Jesus was highly political, just not in the usual manner.

You remember there are three very interesting stories, starting with the
story about turning the other cheek. Lots of things come in threes,
so if you don’t get it the first time, you still have time to get the point.
So there is the bit about turning the other cheek, carrying the load an extra
mile, and giving the shirt when they demand your cloak. What does it mean
to turn the other cheek? How many times have you heard this used to indicate
that if someone hurts you, you should allow them to hurt you again?
I get a headache thinking about how many women have been told this
as a reason to stay in abusive situations. What does it mean to turn the
other cheek? When we go back to Jesus’ time, we find out that a servant
was slapped with the back of the hand, only, and that a friend was slapped
with the front of the hand, only. So Jesus says, when you have been slapped
as an insult, offer friendship. This is in line with the OT understanding that
the most devastating thing you can do to your enemy is to be nice, to force
them to sit down and eat your food, to accept your hospitality. By doing this
you have heaped coals upon their heads. When you “offer the other cheek”
you are refusing to maintain the status quo. You heap coals upon the
offender’s head by offering friendship instead of hatred. You have changed
the rules. There is nothing here about being meek and mild and opening
yourself up to more hurt. Instead, you have taken charge of the situation
and are demanding a response. When you offer friendship, it catches the
other off-guard, they are off-balance. Who is now in the power seat?

So if we didn’t get the message in that example, Jesus goes on to say,
and if they make you walk a mile, walk a second mile. Again, that has been
misconstrued to say that you should let people walk all over you. Wrong,
so wrong. This story is actually quite hysterical. Roman roads, wonderful things,
still extant in many areas, because they knew to build them with the stones
going diagonally, makes it much harder to dig ruts that way, anyway, as I was
saying, Roman roads had mile markers. A Roman mile was not exactly the same
length as our mile, but it was a long way to walk. Then you need to know that
a soldier’s pack weighed about 50 lbs. They didn’t have lightweight materials
in those days, and a regular soldier carried all of his own necessities. A 50 lb
pack is heavy, and it gets quite hot in Palestine, and the law was that a soldier
could force any able-bodied man to carry the pack for him, but only for one mile.
So picture it, the soldier has found a likely subject, and forced him to carry the
pack for a mile, but instead of putting the pack down at the end of the mile,
this idiot is walking past the mile marker, still carrying the pack. The soldier
realizes that he is now in jeopardy for breaking the law, so he is pleading with
the man to put down the pack. Who has the power here? Who is in charge of
the situation?

In case you still have not gotten the message of what would Jesus do,
there is a third story, and again, if you don’t know the history, you miss the
point entirely. The important historical points to know here are: first, a cloak
was like a tent to a homeless person, it was warmth and shelter for a poor
person, second, a man’s “shirt” was at least knee length, it was his main garment,
and third and very important is who is shamed by nudity. In our society, the person
who is nude is shamed if they are seen nude. In Jesus’ society, the person who
caused the nudity is shamed, not the person who is actually without clothing.
Now think about what Jesus says: if you owe money, and the lender demands
your cloak, give him your shirt as well and go naked. What Jesus is saying here
is that to demand a man’s cloak is morally unacceptable, so you should shame
someone who makes this demand by stripping. By taking off your shirt and standing
there in your underwear, you make it clear that he is engaging in shameful behavior.
Again, who is in charge at this point? By standing there quietly in your underwear,
you have brought shame on the powerful.

What would Jesus do? He would turn the tables. He would act powerfully,
but with a different kind of power. For those who are used to being in charge,
this is threatening. We know the names of some of those who have used this
kind of power in our time, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, MLK. And we know the names
of some of those who tapped into this kind of thinking because they were there
when Jesus was killed. We call them apostles, witnesses, the ones who have been
sent out. Before Jesus was betrayed, they were disciples. A disciple is a person who
sits quietly at the feet of a leader. Jesus gathered a group of disciples, as did any
religious leader, and started teaching them. They sat at his feet and learned.
Then something changed, and they were hauled to their feet and sent out to tell
others. Or perhaps they leapt to their feet and ran out to tell others. But when you
read the accounts of people who have been changed like this and who have gone
out and done amazing things, what you hear mostly is a sense of they “couldn’t not”
do what they were doing. Any normal human being would look at the situation and say
“no thanks” but they didn’t have a choice. They had to go out. What we don’t know
is the names of the others, the people who didn’t make the newspapers. Here is where
we come in. The Christian Church didn’t start because of twelve disciples, but rather
because of a whole group of folks who were shocked out of the way things had been
by what they saw happen. They had purpose and drive and were filled with the Spirit
to tell people the good news that God loved all people. It wasn’t easy – Peter had
to go to the Jewish people in the church in Jerusalem and tell them that God loved
the Gentiles as much as God loved them, and that the Gentiles didn’t have to become
Jews for God to really love them. It was a bitter pill for them to swallow, about as
bad as hearing that God loves gay people and that they don’t have to act straight
for God to really love them.

In the early 80’s, Bruce Garner and I came out to Grace Cathedral for the first Episcopal
AIDS conference. We were so inspired by what we saw happen at the cathedral,
that we went back to the Bishop of Atlanta and told him that we wanted to host
healing services in the cathedral, that we wanted him to preside at the first one,
and that we wanted him to send out a pastoral letter to the diocese indicating that
the Episcopal Church in north Georgia was going to deal with this epidemic.
We were so overcome with what had happened at Grace Cathedral that we never
considered not walking in and telling the bishop what needed to happen. He was so
overcome with our report that he agreed to it all. Ten years later, when Sue was the
director of AIDS housing in Atlanta in the early 90’s, we went to an Episcopal AIDS
conference in Washington DC. We, and everyone else there, were just exhausted.
We were fighting a losing battle, people dying all over the place, the government
baulking at funding anything of significance, it all felt futile and at the same time
we knew we had to keep going. It felt like all we could do was to just keep putting
one foot in front of the other. Into this gray morass of a meeting came Steve Charleston,
Bishop of Alaska at the time. He literally bounced in, shouting Good News, I bring you
good news. We looked at each other, has a cure been found we wondered? We sat
forward on our seats, transfixed. Good news, he said, God loves us, all of us,
just as we are, loving us into God’s embrace. He stood up there and called us back
to ourselves, reminded us of why we had gotten into this business in the first place,
reminded us that we were lovers, that we loved those we served because God loved us.
In less than an hour, he picked that entire conference up, and we went out from
that session grinning, hugging each other, joyful, empowered.

Good news, I bring you good news. How are we to live in this world? Like Jesus
told us, we are to turn the world on its head, taking power by doing the unthinkable,
embracing the leper, loving our enemies, forgiving in the face of death. How are we to
live in this world? Like the apostles, we are to call others back to their true selves,
reminding them and ourselves in the process, that we are lovers, that we love because
God has loved us. Good news, I bring you good news.

And how are we supposed to get the energy to do this? Jesus told the disciples,
wait in Jerusalem, and you will be given power. At the end of the service, the deacon
or assisting priest often says, go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the
Holy Spirit. Jesus told the disciples, I will baptize you with fire. They prayed and
waited for the spirit of God to fill them, and boy, what an explosion!

How are we to live? We are to live in the Spirit, God’s greatest gift to those who
will receive it. Jesus promises the Spirit to all who ask, and it’s your choice.

So how do you want to live?