Rules

Some rules build up the Kingdom of God and some rules do not.

My niece who is now six-years-old is fond of coming up with rules. They are often hilarious, as her insight provides a funny glimpse into how a child views the world, but on another level these rules are remarkable and sometimes even a little breath-taking, as I get to see how a child envisions justice and even God’s presence in the world. The following are some of my favorites:

As a six-year-old:
-Don’t flush anything but the toilet. (Practical advice)
-Never yell at your daughter—if you are a mama.
-Be careful where you step. (Helpful around my apartment complex it seems)

As a three-year-old (these fall into “thou shalt not” category):
-Don’t touch a turkey while it’s cooking.
-Don’t mess up the settings once they are on the table. (Proper Southern Etiquette)
-Don’t interrupt a blessing. (As a priest, this one is a reminder to keep blessings short and sweet!)

I love these rules. I love them because they are funny. I love them because they don’t just reveal who this child is, but how the innocent see the world. It’s almost as though through these rules we get a glimpse of how God might rule the world.

Rules are peculiar though. As the rules we make do not always provide justice and protection for all, or give us an image of God’s way of ruling, but instead they write in stone a certain prejudice or a practice of discrimination. We can clearly see now that racially segregated restrooms, drinking fountains, and schools were not just a problematic practice, but they choked the very breath from the Body of Christ and prevented the Kingdom of God from existing let alone thriving. While this example is easy to spot after the fact, we still make the same mistakes today. Whether it is passing legislation to deny service to gay and lesbian couples, to keep black or Latino/a voters from easily making it to the polls, or humiliating transgendered persons when they are simply trying to use the restroom, state and federal politicians around the country are sponsoring laws that are once again maiming the Body of Christ and halting the spread of God’s Kingdom.

Of course, Jesus witnessed this type of discriminatory rule making. When he engaged with the people in Chorazin and Bethsaida, they attempted to shut down his cousin John's and his own ministry. The people in these places misused their understanding of the Torah to ridicule both John the Baptizer and Jesus himself. When John came with his radical message of repentance and fasting they said he had a demon and told him to lighten up. Then, when Jesus came fulfilling all Scripture and bringing with him the Good News to outcasts they called him a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend to the sinners. They changed the rules to discriminate as they saw fit. They did everything in their power to feel comfortable where they were, but Jesus said "Woe unto thee." They were missing God at work because they had such a narrow view of how God worked into the world.

The one “woe unto thee” rule my niece uttered that I did not mention earlier is pretty profound. She said, “Don’t ever make the children of God be bad!” However, I feel that is exactly what happened to tax collectors and sinners in Jesus' day and it happens today when we turn our spiritual relationship with God Almighty into a list of rules that exclude people. As one Episcopal Café writer put it, “Whenever you draw a line in the sand, Jesus is on the other side of that line.” (Bowie Snodgrass, “The relativity of modern morality,” Washington Window, Vol. 73, No. 11, November 2005). When we use our religion as brick and mortar to build a wall between ourselves and others Jesus is on the other side of that wall from us. When we use our religion as demolition crew to knock down bridges Jesus stands on the other side of that gulf from us. When we use our religion as a stick to draw a line in the sand Jesus will be on the other side of the line from us. When will we Christians learn to be more like Jesus who embraced the outcasts?

Jesus summed up all the commandments very simply, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength...Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31, Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27). While quite often we try to narrow down who are neighbor is, Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan made clear for us that neighbor is an infinitely applicable term that extends even to those we believe we are to mistrust, to fear, or even to hate. We are to love all our neighbors regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, country of origin, or any other category we may make up. And, we are to love not with some halfhearted gesture, but with the best of our abilities.

Love does not discriminate. Love does not shut off. Love does not do violence. Love equals respect. Love equals openness. Love equals laying down our own agenda for the building up of Christ’s Body and God’s Kingdom.

We have an opportunity in the world today. Using legislation, policy, and our votes we may create a society that keeps us comfortably divided, racially separated, and fearful of LGBTQ neighbors. Or, we can see what Jesus continually did, that is side with those on the other side of hateful rule-changing, wall-building, bridge-destroying, and line-drawing.

"Don’t ever make the children of God be bad!” A three-year-old has a better grasp on following Jesus than many politicians who claim a Christian identity. As we continue in this polarizing, divisive, and hurtful trend of new rules perhaps we would be better served to figure out how our neighbor might want to be respected, understood, and loved. Of course, it's not a rule or law to love God and neighbor it's simply the Greatest Commandment.

Isaiah 42 and Matthew 3: We Wait Like the Coastlands, Like the River Banks

Those of you who have had the privilege of meeting my four-year old niece Emmeline might already know this, but she can be a bit of a handful… in a good way. She is the consummate extravert and rarely wants to do anything that involves being by herself or being quiet (save for bath time of which she said, “It’s the best part of the day.”). In addition to this she is what my family refers to as a “busy body.” A busy body is someone who cannot keep still, a boy who must touch all the buttons on the elevator or the girl who must touch all the books in the pew rack at church.  My sister, Emmeline’s mother, often says this element of Emmeline’s life reminds her of me. She’ll say to me, “You need to spend a little time with your niece to see what it was like to be around you as a kid.”

From my family’s stories, I was just like my niece. I could not keep my hands to myself, I wanted to touch everything (I think that is now referred to as an experiential learner), and I often got into trouble around this. Like when I put safety pins in the electrical socket not once, but twice or when I pulled a sewing machine down on top of my head or when I ran into countless other things because I was too busy “playing” to pay attention. I constantly wanted to go and do and achieve. This is just how I am wired. Yet, there was one week out of the year that was different.

My family goes to the beach for a week every year. We diligently prepare, we meticulously pack, we excitedly wait, we always stop at Redbar, we recount old trips, we cook together, we spend time in the sun, we explore something new, and even with all of these traditions mostly we do nothing. For a child who was a busy body this part of the vacation always confused me. I did not understand sitting still or being quiet. So it took some time for me to comprehend that this was part of why going to the beach was so highly regarded in my family.

One year, when I was just old enough to look forward to traveling to the Gulf, my parents allowed my sister to invite her friends to go with us to the beach. At first this really annoyed me, as it meant that instead of getting a bed in a room I had to sleep out in the living room area on a pull-out-couch…
And yet, one night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, and all the lights had been turned off in the beach house, and the stillness of the night had surrounded me something happened.

In the middle of the night I awoke from my sleep, which is not something that happens to me very often. I sat up on the pull-out. As I sat in the darkness, I felt something reach from deep within me, from the depths of my being, and it caused me to feel at once an intense fear and an overwhelming comfort. In the midst of this moment and this emotion I felt the urge to get out of bed. So I crawled from the creaky couch and I went to the gulf-side porch to observe the stars on this cloudless night. In the complete silence that was that night, the gulf’s pounding of the coastline reverberated in the air and in my soul. I began to gaze at the stars and I found myself feeling immensely small in comparison with the universe. Looking back, I understand this moment of feeling small by thinking I am this one human being, one of several billion people on a planet, a planet which is one of several billion in a galaxy, a galaxy which is one of at least 100 billion in the universe.

Still somehow in this moment of smallness I felt a tug within me to recognize that I AM here within this universe, this galaxy, and this planet, as part of what God created. I sat in the perfect tranquility of that moment and I just listened. The child born with an instinct to do in a family of doers, I just did nothing for the first time in my life that I can remember. So I sat there with a front row seat to the vast expanse of interstellar space, and I waited. I waited like the coastland waiting for God’s teaching.

Later in life I had more of those moments, and maybe you have had them too. Typically it was then that I would wonder, “What is the meaning of life?” “Is there life somewhere else out there?” “God, what am I supposed to be when I grow up?”

Words from Isaiah 42, “God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you: I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”

We are the coastland waiting. We wait to be taken by the hand. We wait to be kept. We wait for our eyes to be opened, to be taken out of our dungeons, to be given the light. We wait like the coastland, like a shoreline, like a river bank.

Waiting on the shore of Jordan’s banks, we see Jesus comes down to the waters of baptism. One who needs no repentance of sin enters into those waters to be like one of us, to take on our full humanity.  Suddenly as Jesus comes up from the water, the Spirit of God descends like a dove, gently landing on the Christ alighting on him. We hear a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

In our waiting like the coastland, like the shoreline, like the riverbank we observe the fullness of God: Father, Son, Spirit coming together as one. We get a glimpse of the inner life of God, and as we wait we are invited to participate in this life. Jesus was baptized that we might be baptized with him, that we might die with him, that we may be raised with him. We wait for God’s teaching, we participate in the life of God, and we with Christ hear: “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased.”

We are God’s beloved, we have been given the light of Christ, and now we are called to share that light with all those whom we meet. We are called to work with God, to hold the hands of those who are in darkness, to share with them the gentle light of Christ, to share God’s Spirit of healing with those who are blind, to give them sight that they are a beloved of the Almighty One.

We are God’s beloved, and we continue to wait like the coastland, like the shoreline, like the river bank to see the Trinity here among us, to participate in the fullness of God’s life, and to share the light we have been given.