Matthew 23:1-12
Fr. Ross Mackenzie, Priest-in-Residence
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William Shannon is a retired Roman Catholic priest, aged 86, and living now in a convent in Rochester. He’s got a wonderful sense of humor. He has painful arthritis, so he has to sit when he celebrates Mass. All the nuns do. I assumed it was out of respect. He said, “Yes, it probably is. But most of them can’t stand anyway.” His publisher asked him a year or two ago to write a book about life after death. The title he chose was, Where Do We Go from Here?
He and the publisher were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Rochester. They talked about the book, Where Do We Go from Here? After dinner, Bill opened his Chinese fortune cookie. It read, “You’re nearer than you think.”
When I saw him last, I asked him about how his mind has changed over his sixty years as a theologian. He said that the longer he lived, the less certain he became about things he’d been so certain about as a young priest. “Meaning?” I asked. “Oh, about God, heaven, hell and the Christian life.”
That just about covers the waterfront.
I am convinced he’s in the right place. To be certain is not to need faith. Certainty means, “I know for sure.” Faith means, “I trust for sure.” Certainty is bumper sticker Bible religion: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Faith is reaching out to a Mystery you cannot begin to define in words, knowing you will be held.
Certainty was concrete-embedded legalism of the religious establishment that confronted Jesus on that day described in the Gospel. They “tie up heavy burdens,” Jesus said, “hard to bear.”
Heavy religious burdens, hard to bear. This is what they taught me in catechism class in Calvinist Scotland about God, heaven and hell, and Christian conduct. I emphasize “was taught.” This wasn’t what I took in. I learned about:
God, that he was (quote) “immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, and just and terrible in his judgments.” Not the God you’d want to meet in a dark alley.
About:
Heaven and hell, we were taught that some of us, not further defined, “are predestinated to eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.” Imagine sending a Get Well card with that on it to someone in ICU. And then about Christian duty, that we were to be strictly aware (quote) “not only of the danger, but also the filthiness and odiousness of [our] sins.” So the Christian’s duty was one largely of avoiding temptations of sin. Boys, especially, were warned against cherishing any lust. Cherishing lust? I never even kissed a girl until I was 17.
“They tie up heavy burdens,” Jesus said, “hard to bear.” Contrast what the religious establishment of his day said with words from Jesus we find further back in Matthew: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” “My yoga–my yoke, my discipline–is easy, and what I lay on you you can carry.” So let’s apply that easier yoke and lighter burden of Jesus when it comes to God, heaven and hell, the Christian’s duty.
First, God. I can prove God to no one. For God is the unutterable mystery before whom we can do no more than kneel in reverence; and through whom creation springs into being out of non-being.
The God I know in my now uncertain years is not a remote, unfeeling deity, but in, and under, and with, and through all things, nearer to us than the breath in our lungs, closer than the blood in our veins. This is the God in whom we live and move and have our being, whose one and only name is Love.
Whose one and only name is Love. So, when you saw
In New Orleans: a 6-year-old boy holding a 5-month-old child, leading a group of five toddlers to safety in downtown New Orleans; you saw Love, therefore you saw a shadow of God.
And when you saw
In Iraq: male nurse Charles Peworski, injured with 12 other Marines in a sandstorm-induced, multi-vehicle accident in Iraq, immediately triaging three seriously injured victims, treating them for shock and multiple head, neck and limb injuries–and doing it all one-handed, because of his own broken arm, you saw compassion, therefore you saw a shadow of God.
So in the years of my welcome uncertainty I know God
less in the majestic language of the Nicene Creed and more in the human longing for the God dimension that surges up unbidden when we feel utterly lost and abandoned;
less in the subtleties of high-minded theologians and more in the dogged devotion of ordinary folk who express their faith in simply turning up for weekly church services;
less in those who use God as a battering ram on almost every issue from crime and punishment to foreign policy, from health care to the judiciary and more in poets and artists and movie makers who seek to reclaim faith-full themes such as mystery, longing for meaning, and the transformation of suffering through love.
Second, heaven and hell. On the issue of hell, forget it. Of that I am certain. We humans have been better creating hell than any deity could be. I wonder, though. Could there be a purgatory after death–if you don’t like that, call it a place of therapy–where we have a chance to grow to become fully compassionate human beings? A God who consigns one to heaven and one to hell doesn’t seem to have enough playing cards. If there is such a place of trying again, I’ll bet on God’s being willing to wash away any dirt we have as tenderly as ever a mother washed a mud-bespattered child.
On the issue of heaven, I place the following bet:
Death is the unique point between time and timelessness, when we give up our earthborn limits and allow the Mystery we name as God to take possession of our spirits. Here’s a question. Will I, when dead, remember that I was born in Edinburgh, got married to Flora, and had three children and eight grandchildren? And that I was priest associate at St Luke’s? I don’t think it matters
Huston Smith, old man like me, puts it beautifully in one of his books:
After I shed my body, there will come a time when no one alive will have heard of Huston Smith, let alone have known him, whereupon there ceases to be any point in hanging around. As long as I continue to be involved with my individuality, I will retain the awareness that it is I, Huston Smith, who is enjoying that vision.... For me, though, after oscillating back and forth between enjoying the sunset and enjoying Huston-Smith-enjoying-the-sunset, I expect to find the uncompromised sunset more absorbing. The string will have been cut. The bird will be free.
So that’s why, even at the grave, at the least certain place in any human life, we may stand firm and make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Finally, Christian conduct. Enough of tying up people with heavy burdens of rules for right and wrong conduct. Enough of rules about God and regulations about faith. Enough about controlling people with guilt.
We get all the guidance we need from the Jews: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.” And we get all the guidance we need from Jesus: “Take my yoke, my discipline, upon you, because when you do, you will do the works of mercy, which are the shadows of the presence of God.
Amen.