28 th September: Proper 21

Listening Church, Humbled Church

The texts for today wonderfully and provocatively explore personal responsibility as a willingness to confess brokenness and to solicit new learning. Doing so invites us to distinguish conventional religious authority from the authentic power of self-emptying love. But a sad truth about ecclesial life today is that we witness no shortage of instances – many of which gather global media attention – of well-meaning Christians and church leaders falling short of Jesus’ discipleship call to ‘come, and follow me’. The strength of this call comes paradoxically in personal habits of self-emptying. The people of God are simultaneously called into fellowship and incapable of it apart from covenant and grace. Today’s readings in the prophet Ezekiel, the Psalmist, the Apostle, and Matthew help us to drill down deeply into the root causes of our failures and self-contradictions, into those places deep within where we suffer from a variety of urges: to blame others rather than accept responsibility, to nurture fears which deplete and distort us, to preserve status quo which resists the call to new and transformative learning, to indulge the solitary ego rather than unfurl compassion and appreciate the perspective of others, and perhaps most notably – for Matthew and for us – to pursue and grasp at religious authority as an idol. Our passages illumine these urges so as to pave the sure if costly paths of Christian living – of conversion (metanoia) – which heal us slowly but meaningfully of the shadows deep within a broken human condition.

Surely we can recognize in ourselves the reflex urge to blame, as did Ezekiel in the Hebrew people. YHWH questions and interrupts the status quo answer given to the question of why people suffer. The proverb states, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” and it locates blame outside ourselves – in transgressions of parents, for example, or in God. Ezekiel calls people to own their transgressions through confession and adoption of a new heart and a new spirit. YHWH is the God of all, not of some, certainly not of the righteous. “Turn, and live,” the divine voice beckons. Turn, and live: but first we must own the transgressions which frustrate God’s desire of life for all, including our participation in larger cultural habits and practices which blame and reject others rather than confess personal accountability, which objectify others into an out-group upon which our in-group heaps its blame and fear. The divine voice addresses the “house of Israel” – a corporate body, a people, rather than isolated individuals whose personal piety and morality is their own business – and this should encourage the people of God today to reconsider their own participation in structures of governance and practice which make aliens and are conveniently self-serving, where voices both outside and within the church are refused and even stigmatized. Can we break down and part with all that within us restricts the flow of humility and replicates the status quo of our moment?

The Psalmist sings, and the congregation too sings,

Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness sake, O LORD!

He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

The Psalmist’s words are lovely not merely because of their aesthetic rhythm or cadence or because of edifying hymnody drawn from these verses. They are lovely, too, in the wide and deep horizon of life and growth they open up before us precisely in the midst of personal failure. Like Ezekiel, the Psalmist calls for a listening heart, a receptivity to growth and learning and holiness stemming from a humility that knows and joyfully accepts its vocation to listen, to be humble, to be led. To know oneself as called, and therefore as led, characterizes a humility different in kind from a self-loathing which masquerades as piety. It is a humility that knows oneself rightly as broken yet capable – in God and with others. The Psalmist welcomes in us a listening heart which learns and grows and deepens in receptivity. Ezekiel’s “new heart and new spirit” makes possible the wondrous humility the Psalmist expresses:

Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.

Could there be a finer, more meditative statement on the humility of the “God of our salvation” than what we witness in Philippians 2? All too acquainted with factionalism and party spirit among the people of God, Paul reminds his audience that they are grounded not in themselves as individuals but together, in Christ. In Christ there is encouragement. In Christ there is consolation and love. In Christ there is sharing in the Spirit, and compassion, and sympathy. We members who enjoy fellowship (koinonia) in the body of Christ share the vocation to be of the same mind and same love, to give others space and to regard them as better than ourselves.

Karl Barth, in his stunning pastoral insight, comments on Philippians 2 that “it is not until I see the other’s point of view that I myself really see. By means of others’ thoughts I learn to think thoughts of my own. By giving freedom I am free. By obeying I exercise myself in governing. Always my neighbor is the barrier but also the door. There is no road that passes him by.” ² The people of God who are acquainted with humility of this sort are able to take and appreciate the perspectives of others and find their own lives enriched, confirmed, newly transformed in and by the fellowship of the body. The ancient Philippians hymn celebrates the mystery of self-emptying:

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

The hymn celebrates Christ who reveals his status by letting go of it to partner with the people of God. “From now on,” Barth says, “he is equal with God in the obscurity of the form of a servant. He is in humility the highest.” ³

So too, Christian discipleship comes to itself paradoxically by giving up its sham conventional power of posturing and authority and non-listening, which can only ever be an idol, so as to retain gospel power, which can only ever be service in the Spirit. For the sake of the communion we members of the body already are and yet are called to be, and in service of the reconciliation already made ours but which we have yet to live into and offer to others, we are the ones charged with working out our own salvation, confident that God enables both the willing and the working. The work is underway. Who will join in?

Even as religious authorities in Matthew’s time as in our own are discovered to abuse power with horrific pastoral consequences, and even as Christians continue to live from the shadowy depths of the human condition more than from the conversion and transformation which reconciles and elevates, in Christ all are one body. Let the people say Amen by emptying themselves for each other, by confessing rather than hiding brokenness, by having the same love for each other even when they struggle to be of the same mind, and by bearing compassion for each other even when members of the body harm and discredit others. As Barth noted, “always my neighbor is the barrier but also the door. There is no road that passes him by.” May we listen to each other. May we empty ourselves of false claims and pseudo-power. May we grow into the fellowship of a listening, humbled church.