The strangest compliment I am paid
when I do something in my priestly line of work is, “You missed your
calling… You should have been an
actor.” Well, perhaps that is
right. I am here tonight largely because
I am friends with one who did not miss her calling but who heard her calling
correctly to be both a priest and an actress.
Clare is a priest and she is an actress.
And, though I am not her agent and cannot speak for her (or charge for
her), I am fairly confident in saying that while these roles are not confused
for her, she would be the first to argue that they are not discrete departments
in her life, utterly distinct one from the other. Never was I so aware of this as when I saw
her perform at a diocesan convention several years ago. Being a priest and being an actor run
together not only for Clare and for me but for many of us. One of my favorite stained glass windows is
in the refectory of the Cathedral College, formerly the College of Preachers,
at Washington National Cathedral, which bears the inscription quoting its
founder and patron, “If you do not dramatize the message, they will not
listen.” Those who do not particularly
like theatre, especially what they would view as pulpit theatrics—and they are
many—will want to stop and argue this point, and I want to press on to
something bigger. I want to suggest that
Clare’s vocation, and St. Martin’s vocation, and indeed the vocation of all
Christians, is about a presentation of Christ to the Church and to the
World. Shakespeare’ Jacques says in “As
you Like it” that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely
players.” Who am I to disagree with
Shakespeare? Yet I would say as well
that this whole world is a theatre, and the women, men, and children in it an
audience. Our ministry, and this new one
we celebrate tonight, is about articulating, and, if you will, dramatizing the
message so that the indistinct “they” out there will listen, and ultimately be
drawn into the play about redemption which is the best, if not the only, living
theatre in town.
What kicks up this topic, or at least
this connection for me, is the fact that someone—Clare or the Bishop—chose this
date to be the time to celebrate this New Ministry. It is the Feast of the Presentation of Our
Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. But
some of you may remember that it went by another name in former days, now
relegated to alternative status in the Book of Common Prayer: The Purification of Saint Mary the
Virgin. In some ways the whole story of
the Church can be told in those two titles competing for dominance in the
naming of this day. One stresses Law and
the other Grace.
Most commentators that I have read
appropriate the event narrated in our gospel reading as Luke’s way of telling
how the holy family were scrupulous in keeping the Law. Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, and
presented in the temple with the required sacrifice of the poor (the birds
sufficed when a lamb was not affordable) as directed by the Law. Indeed Luke returns to the Temple for the
setting of this story, where he begins his gospel with the account of the
annunciation to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist.
But there is an inescapably dark
side to this trip to the Temple, despite the good intentions of our Holy Family
in keeping the Law. That darksome
dimension lies in the fact that St. Mary the Virgin was considered impure
because she had had a baby. Even when we
make allowances for ancient mind-sets that associate bodily discharges with
uncleanness; even when we have cut the Book of Leviticus some slack; even when
we thoroughly understand the origin of the concepts of clean and unclean we are
left with the fact that human beings are excluded from social contact, not to
mention religious community, simply by being, well human: by discharging blood
or semen; by ingesting the wrong sorts and combinations of foods; by touching a
corpse. Luke will show in the succeeding
pages of his gospel how Jesus’ ministry was largely about setting people free
from such binding strictures. He will
tell us the story about the healing of lepers, who were ritually impure. He will tell us the parable of the Good
Samaritan who, himself an outcast, risked even further isolation by stopping to
inspect a body which might very well have been a corpse. He will impress upon our memories the figure
of the Prodigal Son, who had made himself impure in all sorts of ways, not
least by feeding with hogs. And in all
of this Luke will reveal Jesus as the one who breaks down barriers of
separation and who redefines purity with a radically new moral teaching, which
he talks of in terms of God’s Reign.
Now there is nothing wrong with
being clean. And there is nothing wrong
with being ritually pure. Both are good
ideas. But there is something
fundamentally flawed about seeing human beings as unacceptable, even if temporarily,
simply because they are carrying on perfectly natural bodily functions. I admit that the text makes no issue of this
matter. But taken in its larger context,
it seems to me inescapable that this story signals an end to the old regime run
by those whose regulations, attitudes, led to oppression. Since he was in the temple, Simeon is
presumed to be pro-priestly and pro-levitical.
We imagine that he had been praying all those years for the liberation
of Israel from Roman clutches. It would
be absurd to think that Simeon would have known what true messianic liberation
would look like as it was to take shape in Jesus’ death and resurrection. But Luke knows. Luke knows about the issue of table
fellowship between Jews and Gentiles that threatened to rip the infant Church
apart. Luke knows about the legalism
that his companion and possible mentor Paul fought. Luke knows the gospel that “to freedom Christ
has set us free; stand fast, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
The
question that intrigues me is why this impulse to purification, and its shadow
side the avoidance of human contamination, so compelling for religious
people. We are not living in a
primitive, taboo-laden, society driven by undifferentiated fears, are we? Yet an enormous amount of energy is invested
in trying to keep the Church or society unpolluted. When I was a child in the South the issue was
race. Then it was women. Now it is sex. Around each of these things, people have
energetically built walls to keep other people out, in one sense or
another. The impulse to Puritanism is
not about to disappear.
But there
is a Messiah, come to save us from all this.
And the wonder of this Feast of the Presentation is that the Messiah is
brought to the Temple. He is presented. Interestingly enough, there is no requirement
in the law that the boy be presented in the temple, only that the mother be
purified. So, in a sense, we can say
that presenting Christ is a voluntary act.
That is the
vocation that Clare and the people of St. Martin’s have been issued: a call to volunteer to present Christ. The question is how are you going to present
Christ. How are you going to speak the
message? How can you dramatize the message so that people will listen?
Take a cue
from Luke. Simeon announces a messianic
theme when he tells Mary and Joseph that the child will be the cause of the
falling and rising of many. Jesus is not
some sentimental wimp that is basically about making people feel good. Jaroslav Pelikan in his fascinating book Jesus through the Centuries demonstrates
how each age gives Jesus a makeover in its own favorite image, so that we have
in the Constantinian period Jesus the Emperor and in the Middle Ages Jesus the
Monk who Rules the World. We will never
get it exactly right nor ever do him complete justice. But it is fair to say that Jesus is not your
favorite drinking buddy, the enforcer of upper-class snobbery, the one who
hates the other political party as much as you do, the cheerleader for American
causes, or the endorser of your resolutions at diocesan convention. And it is also fair to say that there is
some variety in the portraits of Jesus in the New Testament. If we are going to present Jesus to the
Church and to the world, we need to give ourselves to studying the
character. While my view is certainly
not definitive, here are some things that strike me about the Jesus I would
present:
·
I see Jesus as a person of authority, whose
authority comes from his own sense of who he is and what his life is
about. He inherited a 400-year-old
script that called for Messiah to be a military hero. Instead I believe he drew from a little noticed passage in
Isaiah that inspired him to be a suffering servant.
·
I see Jesus as courageous, never once willing to
capitulate to the forces that would have
squelched him and his message
·
I see Jesus as compassionate. Never once do I read a story of his saying to
someone who is distressed or beleaguered or sick or fragile or psychologically
vulnerable, “You know, it is a good idea for you to be weak or sick or
frightened or distressed. It will do you
good. Buck up!” Instead I hear him asking, “What do want me
to do for you?” and “Do you want to be well?”
and, “You give them something to
eat.”
·
I see Jesus as taking no foolishness when it
comes to caring for the poor, the outcast, the marginalized. A study of his parables shows that well over
half of them are on the theme of inclusivity.
A study of his teachings in general reveals that the subject most on his
mind was wealth and poverty. A study of
his miracles reveals an astonishing concern for those without effective medical
care.
·
I see Jesus as a light to enlighten the Gentiles—the
nations. One of my life texts is from St. John’s Gospel, “The true light that
enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” I have no trouble believing that the Light
that is in Christ is in fact what dwells in and enlightens everyone, which
leads me to conclude that the Chinese man and his American compatriot who rode
with me on the train to Providence today have something to teach me. And when Renaldo begs money from me on Newton
Street in Washington, I dare not forget that when I give or refuse, a man
bearing the image of God and the Light of Christ has come into my circle.
·
I see Jesus as the glory of his people Israel,
the one who is utterly dedicated to the God the Creator and God the Liberator.
If you don’t like my portrait (and
this is not all of it), I challenge you to create your own. More than that, figure out what kind of life
you have to live in order to present Christ to the world so authentically, so
dramatically, so compelling, that those who see you will actually listen.
Theodore
Dreiser’s character Sister Carrie is a girl of modest means from a little
Midwestern town who makes her way to Chicago.
She refuses to sink into financial ruin, as does the man she is married
to. Carrie is a survivor. She is a scrapper. Little by little she gets first one part and
then another on stage, incrementally building for herself a career. She meets Ames, who befriends and encourages
her. Ames says to Carrie,
“The world is always struggling to express itself—to
make clear its hopes and sorrows and give them voice. It is always seeking the means, and it will
delight in the individual who can express these things for it. That is why we have great musicians, great
painters, great writers and actors. They
have the ability to express the world’s sorrows and longings, and the world
gets up and shouts their names. All
effort is just that. It is the thing the
world wants portrayed , not the portrayer or writer or singer, which makes the
latter great. You and I are but mediums,
through which something is expressing itself.
Now our duty is to make ourselves ready mediums.”
The thing the world wants portrayed, is dying to have
portrayed, is in fact the Light that enlightens the Gentiles and is the glory
of Israel. The world wants to hear about
hope, not damnation; to see compassion, not selfishness; to experience
generosity, not greed. We in the
world—and in the church—crave to see someone, some people powerfully present a
Christ who is not psychotic or neurotic or precious or unreal, to whom they can
relate, whom they can follow, and who will call us to a higher, truer
life. You and I, Clare and St. Martin’s,
are but the actors through which the Divine Character is expressing
himself. Our challenge is to make
ourselves ready to dramatize the message not only with our lips but in our lives.
© Frank Gasque
Dunn, 2006
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