A Community of Compassion

Matthew 5:1-12

October 29, 2006

When Martin Luther posted his famous 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church, on October 31, 1517, he could not have imagined that his act of ecclesiastical disobedience was part of a larger movement that would give birth not only to a new church but also to an entirely new social order. If he had known that where once there was one Christian church in time there would literally thousands of denominations, perhaps he would not have been so bold. Perhaps his own need for security – for himself, for his family, for his community – would have outweighed his conscience. Perhaps he would have said, “let somebody else take the heat.” Perhaps he would have been frightened by the very forces of faith and liberty he helped unleash.

But his time demanded a response of conscience and so Luther said, “here I stand, I can do no other.”

We, the heirs of Luther’s original impulse for reform, stand today before a church and a social order in similar need of reformation. Where, then, shall we stand?

Considering the magnitude of the Reformation – whose founding gesture we celebrate today – it may strike you as overstating the case to suggest that the present moment calls for change of similar scale.

Still, when disparate voices begin to sound the same refrain the chorus merits attention.

Thomas Merton, writing 40 years ago, named our times this way:

… we are confused, empty and discontented. We have no spiritual and ethical center. We do not have the motives which would enable us to build a peaceful world, because we do not have a sufficient reason to restrain our violence.[1]

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter famously warned of a “crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”[2]

Rabbi Michael Learner, founder of Tikkun, put it this way just last year:

There is a real spiritual crisis in this society, and it has everything to do with the way we organize our economic and political lives.[3]

Anne Lamott, author and sometimes Presbyterian, puts it this way:

On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.[4]

Different folks respond differently to the stress of the present age.

And if the words of theologians, politicians or writers are not enough, turn the radio on.

U2 sings, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

Jackson Browne sings, “Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon/Hunger in the mansion, hunger in the rented room/Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page/And there’s a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age.”

Or turn to Broadway, and hear this from Rent: “And when you're living in America/At the end of the millennium/You're what you own.”

If these examples strike you as rather random, that’s precisely the point. You don’t have to look beyond what is ready to hand in all of our lives to find voices crying out in the wilderness of contemporary culture and offering various descriptions of the crisis of our age. While the perfect description of our time may elude us, putting one’s finger on the pulse of the age is not all that difficult. What strikes me as incontestable is simply this: we are living in a period of singular crisis and the present crisis is first and foremost spiritual in nature. It probably calls for lots of music, art and chocolate; it inescapably calls forth a new way of living together.

There is a sense, of course, in which every age, every epoch, calls forth a new way of being that breaks with the orthodoxy of any given moment. Indeed, as Brian McClaren, the founding pastor of the Cedar Ridge Community Church, points out in A Generous Orthodoxy,

In the Middle Ages, “straight thinking” was a kind of government function – like right business practices, similarly enforceable by censorship, imprisonment, torture, inquisition, and massacre. In the Modern Era, protest and conquest were the spirit of the age, so “right opinions” were one’s ticket to power and dominance. But in the world that is emerging out of roots in the modern and medieval worlds, perhaps we will believe again that the meek will inherit the earth and that truth is a treasure not best found or held through coercion and threat or competition and dominance, but by humble seeking, sincere faith, resilient hope, patient love.[5]

You can hear in McClaren’s description echoes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “perhaps we will believe again that the meek will inherit the earth.” As that suggests, Jesus faced his own time in the spirit of reformation. The meek were certainly not inheriting the earth in first-century Palestine; the poor in spirit dwelled far from the kingdom of heaven; peacemakers were called many things – but children of God was no more likely then than it is today.

Yet from under the thumb of an oppressive empire, Jesus cast a vision of a future otherwise that still animates dreams and visions 2,000 years later. Likewise, from under the thumb of an oppressive church, Martin Luther cast a vision of a future otherwise that still empowers the church 500 years later. Just as Jesus proclaimed in his time and Luther in his, so I say to you today: another world is possible. Another world is possible.

But it is not inevitable. It will not simply come with the rising of the sun and the breaking of a new dawn.

God calls it forth in sovereign love. Yes, I believe this absolutely. But, in freedom we have the capacity to remain enslaved to the present time. In brokenness we can choose to remain broken. In sin we can continue to turn away from God and from the future that God is calling forth.

What does that future look like? The future of God’s imagining?

Jesus captured its spirit and cast a vision from the mountaintop when he cried out for a community of passion and compassion – a community in which the mourners would be comforted and in which lights of faith, hope and love would be lifted high against the darkness; a community in which the poor are blessed and peacemakers are called the children of God; a community of compassion structured by a politics of love and justice.

Where, today, can we find our own Martin Luther? Where, today, can we find people willing to forego security for the sake of conscience? Where, today, can we find a community of reformation unafraid to declare boldly to the world that there are at least 95 more things that need to change?

Well, as I have said to you before, we are the ones who we’ve been waiting for. The task of our time is to name the present age accurately and to cast a vision of a future otherwise.

We have begun tacking our own 95 theses on the door. We have said, loudly and publicly, that the present way of ordering and arranging family life is inadequate and incomplete. We have said, loudly and publicly, that the present way of ordering and arranging church life is inadequate and incomplete.

In the same manner, we must also say that the present way of ordering and arranging our economic life is inadequate and incomplete, the present way of ordering and arranging our political life is inadequate and incomplete, the present way of ordering and arranging international affairs is inadequate and incomplete. These may sound like political or social concerns, but they are first and foremost theological concerns and our response to them must be grounded in the vision that Jesus casts in the Sermon on the Mount.

The vast economic inequality and growing gap between the have and the have nots is an affront to the gospel. The consolidation of political power in the hands of the wealthy at the expense of the poor is an affront to the gospel. Preemptive war is an affront to the gospel.

And yet the church, too timid and tepid to lift again the banner of reformation, acquiesces quietly to a status quo that relegates spiritual questions to the confines of private life all but oblivious to the deep and public spiritual crisis of our age.

“As daily life is stripped of its spiritual dimension by the seemingly unstoppable triumph of market consciousness, as work and human relationships seem to call for a continual deadening of our life energies, as our experience of the world is emptied of its magical and enchanted dimension and increasingly filled with manipulation, self-protection, and consumption, people reach out in desperation for mind-numbing devices to deaden the pain that this loss of meaning and connection to spirit inevitably generates.”[6]

Where is the church? Where is the community of compassion that can respond to this crisis of spirit? Where is the vision of a future otherwise?

Here we stand. We can do no other. Therefore, let us offer, as mere bullet points, and by way of closing, a glimpse at the church of the second reformation. So, then, 9.5 theses for the community of compassion and transformation. Such a community will:

1. Be committed to nonviolence, in its community practices and in speaking a prophetic word to the nations that “they shall study war no more.”
2. Will honor and respect non-Christian paths to the divine, recognizing, as Jesus said, that the “father’s house has many rooms.”
3. Be a community of discernment developing the capacity to explore each one’s call and empower each one’s gifts to serve the commonwealth, that, as Paul said, we might “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
4. Will honor children and uphold families of many kinds, recalling Jesus’ admonition to “welcome the little children.”
5. Will welcome, honor and empower the outcast, the oppressed and the silenced; especially women, gays, lesbians, transgendered and bisexual people, recalling that Jesus came to bring “good news to the poor, release to the captive and to let the oppressed go free.”
6. Will honor and celebrate creation and work to protect it, recalling the psalmist’ words that “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein.”
7. Will live sacramentally and joyously, and develop indigenous rituals of celebration and of sorrow, remembering with the psalmist that we are called to “sing a new song unto the Lord.”
8. Will serve alongside the poor and marginalized, and work in the public square for justice, recalling God’s requirements of us “to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”
9. We will learn together to live simply that others may simply live, recognizing that, like the children of Israel in the promised land, we live in “cities that we did not build, in houses filled with all sorts of goods that we did not fill, drinking water from cisterns that we did not hew, and eating from vineyards and olive groves that we did not plant;” therefore we are connected to one another inescapably and owe a debt we cannot repay except insofar as we leave for our posterity a future otherwise.

9.5 We will eat more chocolate! Couldn’t find a scriptural reference for that one, so it merits only .5 on the theses scale, but if cocoa were indigenous to the Middle East I’m sure that scripture would sing its praises in all kinds of ways!

Remember that Luther’s theses set in motion not so much a singular new institution as long journey into new ways of being together, I offer these as food for our thinking and bread for our journey together.

Let us pray. God grant us wisdom to order our common life according to your purposes, and grant us grace with one another in our inevitable failures. But give us vision that we might not perish in the darkness of the present age. Amen.

Martin Luther taught us that we are all the saints, so let us honor his vision and the wisdom that we have inherited from the saints that have gone before us as we sing our closing hymn, For All the Saints.#526

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[1] Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post-Christian Era (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004) 19. This volume of Merton’s work went unpublished for more than 40 years. For a description of the controversy surrounding the work, see the introduction by Patricia A. Burton.

[2] Jimmy Carter, “A Crisis of Confidence,” July 15, 1979; available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html.

[3] Michael Learner, The Left Hand of God (San Francisco: Harper, 2006) 27.

[4] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005) 3.

[5] Brian D. McClaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervans, 2004) 294.

[6] Learner, ibid. 265.

Rev. Dr. David Ensign

Mourning Into Dancing

(Beginning next week, these things will actually get posted in order. This one came from the beginning of the month.)
Text: Matthew 5:1-10; Psalm 30
October 1, 2006
About six years ago I was fired from the first church I served. Of course, church circles are too polite, and Presbyterians, in particular, too decent and orderly to call it that. But on the Saturday morning when the church’s personnel committee asked me to “dissolve the pastoral relationship” we all knew what was really happening.
It was not unexpected, and a part of me actually longed for it. It was, nonetheless, a shocking plunge into uncertainty, so I reached out to one of my mentors for advice and support.
Advice, I received. As for support, well the first words out of his mouth when I shared the news were these: “David, if we are doing our jobs there will be scars.”
Indeed. And, oh yea, thanks for the pastoral support!
If we are doing our jobs, there will be scars.
Sounds a bit like my favorite line from The Princess Bride, “life is pain, princess. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.”
If we are doing our jobs, there will be scars. Reminds me also of that famous scene from Jaws where Robert Shaw and an very young Richard Dreyfuss are drunkenly comparing scars from various encounters with big fish until the Dreyfuss character points to his chest, mentions a girl’s name, and intones, “she broke my heart.”
Scars. Pain. Broken hearts. These are ours if we are doing our jobs; if we are living into our truest calling. That is to say, if we are human beings, fully alive and engaged in the vocation of human life, yes, there will be scars.
As my pastoral notes of recent weeks underscore, we are living through a particular season of scars these days at Clarendon. The death of Hal’s mother, the illness of James’ sister, the illness of Jim Hewitt’s mother and Reg Mitchell’s mother, and the other places of pain and brokenness that we have lifted in prayer these past few weeks and months – there is a heaviness to our lives together just now.
The wisdom of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for this: a time to mourn; a time to rejoice; a time of birth and one of dying; a time to dance and a time to weep; a time, indeed, for every purpose under heaven.
Ecclesiastes teaches us that all of this is blessed, and that God’s purposes can be worked out through every season – even through seasons of broken hearts and dreams and lives. Of course, it doesn’t always feel as if any purpose can be worked through our suffering.
Mourning, grief, deep sadness – no matter the source or even its severity – often feel utterly empty and isolating. Whether we are mourning the loss of a loved one, of a relationship, of a job, a dream, a home – whatever the loss and whatever its cause, we suffer along. At least, that’s what if feels like.
We’ve moved around enough as a family – more than enough if you listen to the rest of the family – but enough to have experienced a lot of loss, of moving on, of interrupted or lost friendships. One of the most heartbreaking images for me in all of that loss was of Bud, as a second-grader entering a new school in midyear, spending recess during the first few days standing all alone leaning against a light pole in the middle of the playground.
It was, and still is, for me a perfect visual metaphor of mourning. Life goes on in a swirl of activity all around you but you stand alone, separated from life itself, so it seems. And the laughter of the living can feel like an affront to your sorrow.
At such moments – whether they come in the midst of losses staggering or somewhat smaller – we want to shout out to the swirling world, “Stop! How can you find light in the world when it feels so dark to me? How can you go on living when there is so much to grieve?”
Our own loss feels so heavy and so deep sometimes that it is unfathomable that others might not feel it, too.
Of course, that little boy leaning on the light post, though he bears the memory of painful loneliness, was soon swept up in the joy of life once again. Young children have an emotional elasticity that grown-ups lose; and certainly there is deeper pain that being a new kid at school. Still, no matter the losses we endure, even as we suffer alone life beckons out of isolation and into community.
Into this reality Jesus says, “blessed are those who mourn.” The words are not a denial of death or pain or sorrow. In fact, they suggest that the blessing of life fully lived will include mourning and sorrow.
If we are doing our jobs – if we are human beings fully alive – there will be scars. The wounds that leave these scars are real.
Nevertheless, the psalmist celebrates a time when after the lingering night time of mourning, joy will break forth with the dawn. Indeed, the Hebraic sense of time itself – with day beginning not at dawn but at dusk – suggests that the very movement of time is from mourning into joy, from darkness into light. Mourning turns to morning, dusk turns to dancing, and we who grieve find blessing through our mourning.
I have done more than a few graveside services over the years and had families ask if their young children should attend. I always say, “yes, please, bring them for their very presence reminds us that life goes on and that it is good.”
After all, we are a resurrection people. We know that we cannot get to Easter except by way of Good Friday, but we trust that God is everywhere at work in the world calling us through the cross into the garden of the empty tomb, through our mourning into the fullness of abundant life, through our suffering isolation into the beloved community of compassion – of suffering with one another, binding one another up and bearing one another’s burdens.
None of this reduces the mystery of death to something easily domesticated. None of this explains away our suffering. None of this erases the pain of broken bones or wounded hearts.
But it does create in us a deep capacity for incredible strength precisely in the places of deepest woundedness. Only those who have known rejection can know the unsurpassed beauty of hospitality. Only those who have known painful isolation and loneliness can know the life-giving power of community. Only those who have known the passion unto death can know the compassion that leads to life abundant.
Yes, if we are living the lives we are called to, there will be scars. But from the memory of the wounds themselves grows a wellspring of life and a capacity for compassion that is and ever shall be the mark of the community that gathers round the table of the crucified Christ. Let us be that people – blessed even and, perhaps, especially in this season of scars. Let us gather at table. Amen.
Rev. Dr. David Ensign

The Politics of the Kingdom

October 22, 2006

Text: Matthew 7:7-12
The gospel of Jesus Christ – the good news – begins in Matthew’s account with these words, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” From that beginning, then, to this day on which the church of Jesus Christ gathered at Clarendon will take to the streets urging our neighbors to vote no on amendment one when they go to the polls on election day next month.

How do we make that leap? Is there a connection between Jesus’ words and what we do here today? What does any of this have to do with our lives? Is this not a dangerous mix of church and politics? Do we risk reducing Jesus to a precinct captain in a get-out-the-vote drive for a partisan political agenda?

And, falling as this Sunday does, in the midst of a season in which we are focusing on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, what does any of this have to do with Jesus’ words in the center of the gospel?

To begin with, we cannot help but make a leap from Jesus’ time to our own. If we do not make that imaginative connection, the gospel is a dead letter; it has no resonance and no meaning for any part of our lives if we cannot make the leap from beginning of the gospel all the way forward to this day. That is essentially true whether the connections we make lead us to progressive thought and action or in totally other directions.

Of course, it is a bit easier for people of progressive thought to accept this notion of imagination and interpretation. Too often our conservative sisters and brothers cannot or will not make the move, and accuse progressives of not taking scripture seriously when we do not take it literally.

I assure this morning, I am taking scripture with utmost seriousness as I offer an imaginative connection that, I trust, connects directly to our lives this morning.

How do we do that? In a sense, the Sermon on the Mount itself provides the key. Jesus repeats there this phrase, “you have heard it said … but I say to you.” In that one gesture, Jesus indicates a great deal about the kind of community he is gathering to himself, and the kind of community we are called to create as his followers today. It is a community born of and tied to a tradition. Indeed, if “you have not heard it said,” then you begin at a great disadvantage. This word comes first and most clearly to those who belong already to a tradition of moral and spiritual thought. In other words, the word of Jesus comes here to an already religious community – that is, to one bound back to a tradition of reading sacred texts.

At the same time, Jesus here insists, that community will also be one of rereading. “You have heard it said” … “but I say to you.” For example, “you have heard it that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’”

Now that ancient saying may sound somewhat brutal to our ears, but actually the notion of “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” represented a great leap forward in justice from a time when an injury suffered in a fight – say a lost eye or broken tooth – might instigate a bloody feud leaving entire tribes maimed. Into that frontier justice, the “men of old,” as Jesus puts it, crafted a more merciful and balanced justice marked by the traditions of the law as encoded in the sacred texts of Israel. An eye for an eye being a much more balanced sense of justice than, say, an entire family, a whole tribe, for one injured eye.

Then along comes Jesus saying, pull out those ancient texts and let us reread, let us reinterpret that founding principle of justice and mercy and push it toward a commonwealth of belovedness in which “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”

So how do we, today, make the connection between the gospel as it comes to us in our sacred texts and the good news that we, at CPC, feel called to share with the world? Well, we listen to that ancient story of imagination and rereading and we engage in imaginative reading ourselves.

As we read and reread, we begin to see the contours of a relationship between Jesus’ words and our actions today. Now it’s clear that Jesus speaks here to an audience that already has some connection to his tradition. On the other hand, he also clearly aims beyond the confines of the established community. The Sermon on the Mount is no pep-talk to the club of the saved. Rather, Jesus’ words call forth a radically expanded understanding of who’s in and who’s out. After all, “everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

You don’t have to meet some culturally or ecclesiastically defined set of guidelines to ask, to search, to knock, and when you do ask, when you do search, when you do knock, you will be received.

Indeed, I cannot think of a more comforting and, at the same time, more challenging and prophetic a text for us to hear this morning as we prepare to go door-to-door for justice than these few simple words: “knock and the door will be opened.”

On a deeper level, Jesus’ words challenge us to understand the good news as fundamentally inclusive. Where Jesus has issued an invitation, we have no business erecting a barrier; and that’s the good news of the gospel sadly missed by the framers of the Marshall-Newman amendment, who act in the name of a narrow, tribal, conservative and constricted view of scripture and of marriage.

Of course, one might fairly ask of me – straight, married, obvious insider to the religious community – what has any of this to do with me, or with you if you are not part of an unmarried couple? What has this to do with “the rest of us”?

The other week, when Hannah and I were tabling over at the Metro stop – handing out cookies and flyers about amendment one, an African-American man stopped to talk with us. It was not perfectly clear where he stood on the issue when we began talking, so when he asked, “so, why should I be opposed to this amendment?” I turned the question back to him, asking, “well, why should you be?”

He simply said, “discrimination never stops with the first target.”

It was his own, deeply personal way of saying what Martin Luther King often said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

We are all connected, joined in an inescapable web of mutuality. I cannot stand by and see my friends suffer without sharing in their suffering and being compelled to act to end it.

By speaking out today we give life to the golden rule that Jesus articulated in the Sermon on the Mount. “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

And when we see anyone discriminated against – knowing that we ourselves would not like to be victims of discrimination – we are compelled to act; just as we would have others act for us when the tables get turned. We are all connected. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

At a level deeper than the words of this amendment – deeper even than its potential and serious unintended consequences – at a level deeper than all of that, this amendment is about us – each and every one of us. It names us and it defines the kind of commonwealth we share.

If, as I have suggested often this fall, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount casts a vision and articulates a founding constitution for the commonwealth of belovedness, then Marshall-Newman, if passed, would leave in its wake a constitution for an impoverished commons of bigotry, discrimination and injustice.

So it is in the name of Jesus’ vision and for the sake of a commonwealth of belovedness that we walk the neighborhood this day. Now some will say that doing so dangerously mixes politics and pulpits, and lowers that high wall of separation between church and state. More dangerously, some may say, we risk reducing Jesus to political spokesperson for our side of a partisan divide.

First, let’s be clear: Jesus is not a Republican … or a Democrat. GOP does not stand for God’s Own Party, and neither is the election of any Democrat going to bring about the coming of the beloved community or the reign of the kingdom of God. The rise or fall of the issue we speak out on today will neither amplify nor silence the still small voice of God calling out for justice and for truth in the public square.

But let us also be equally clear about this: God’s voice does persistently cry out for justice and for truth precisely in the public square; and the God of the Jewish and Christian scripture is everywhere always on the side of the outcast and the marginalized. Jesus does not proclaim power for the pious, nor triumph for those who trivialize our politics by focusing exclusively on our sex lives; instead, Jesus proclaims good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed.

Jesus calls us to lead holy, compassionate, loving and sacrificial lives of service to one another. His call to us is personal, but never private; and it is inherently, from the first words of the gospel, political.

Repent, for the kingdom has drawn near. Notice the language: repent – turn from your old way of living – personal; but not private, for then this word: kingdom – an inherently political word choice suggesting powers and social structures.

Repent, for the kingdom has drawn near.

In other words, turn your life around for there is a new order emerging – a new social order – and you are called to participate in its fulfillment. It is an order founded on a profoundly inclusive vision of human society in which the traditional structures of power no longer pertain: the outcast are welcomed, the orphans and widows empowered, those previously considered sinners have a seat of prominence at the welcome table.

The poor receive the entire kingdom; mourners are comforted, the meek inherit the earth, and peacemakers are called the children of God. This is the good news of the gospel. This is the commonwealth that we seek. This is why we walk.

Ask, and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock, and the doors shall be opened. Let it be so, for all of God’s beloved, and for Christ’s church gathered at Clarendon. Amen.

Rev. Dr. David Ensign

Many Colors, Many Coats

October 15, 2006

Text: Matthew 5:33-48
We are something of a strange family. I suppose every family is strange it its own way. Our way of strangeness was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago at one of the back-to-school nights when one our children’s teachers returned to us a book left behind after class earlier in the day. It was Marx’s Revolution and Counter Revolution.

As we accepted the book, delivered with a wry smile and a friendly inquiry about our child’s future political aspirations, I had to wonder, “what have I wrought?” After all, this was the child who I had snuggled and read postmodern philosophy to when he was an infant. Lots of children are raised on Dr. Seuss; not so many on Dr. Derrida.

Of course, the Marx tome came off the bookshelves in my study here at church. There are probably not a whole lot of sermons written literally or figuratively in the shadow of The Communist Manifesto. As I said, ours is something of a strange family, and I am, truth be told, something of an odd Presbyterian pastor.

Odd enough, in fact, to suggest that there might be something of a manifesto – not communist, but definitely economic – in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I’m odd enough, even, to suggest that the economics of Jesus look no more like our current free market ideology than did the economics of Marx – which is not to suggest that Jesus was a Marxist any more than it is to suggest that Marx was a Christian.

It is to suggest, however, that the economy of grace that Jesus envisions calls forth a truly radical critique of the market values that shape contemporary American life and culture, including, inevitably, our own lives and the life of the church.

Driving across rural Maryland last weekend, I was graced – graced by the sight of turning leaves, migrating birds and autumn wildflowers. I could hear the words of Jesus, “consider the flowers of the field: they don’t work, they don’t worry, they don’t even have to get dressed, yet not even George Clooney or Jennifer Aniston – with their People Magazine “best dressed” awards – look so fine.” OK, maybe Jesus didn’t put it exactly like that, but you get my meaning.

We have been given so very, very much: a creation of splendor, enough for the day, life itself. We live in an economy of gracious abundance.

And yet … and yet we seldom live such that it feels that way.

A few weeks back, Cheryl and I prodded our boys to do some cleaning of their room. Insert your own punch line. Anyway, one of the tasks was to clean out a closet that had a collection of outwear – coats, jackets, sweatshirts and so on, many of which no longer fit anyone in our household. The idea was to sort through and keep what was still useful to us and donate away the rest. I didn’t get the whole memo on this one. So, after Martin did an excellent job of pulling all of the clothing out of the closet, I packed them all up and gave them away – assuming, wrongly as it turned out, that the sorting had been done already.

My first reaction upon learning of my mistake was an instant of minor panic as an image of shivering children ran through my mind. That was replaced almost immediately by a moment of internal scolding: “darn it, I just gave away our kids’ coats and now I’m going to have to go out and buy new ones.” That feeling lingered, and was only very gradually replaced by the clear realization that, first, my children will not be cold (after all, we live in Virginia), and, second, that although it was inadvertent and inefficient, making up for my accidental charity will probably set me back, oh, about a dozen mochas and maybe a handful of orange-chocolate chip muffins.

We live in an economy of gracious abundance. We can afford to give away more than a box of coats – even by accident. Nobody has to sue us for our outer coat; just put me and Martin in charge of cleaning a few closets. We’ll joyously and cluelessly give them all away.

Then we’ll wind up getting outer wear from the outer edge of American pop culture – a Deadhead shop in Rehobeth, where they put many colors into many coats, and sweatshirts, and t-shirts and just about anything else that can be tie-died. As I may have mentioned, we’re a strange family.

But that’s OK, it seems to me; perhaps even perfectly appropriate, because Jesus calls forth a certain strangeness in the Sermon on the Mount. Turning other cheeks, walking extra miles, giving up coats. None of this makes sense according to the dominate models of our day. It’s no way to achieve security. It’s no way to build an institution. It’s no way to set a budget.

One doesn’t turn the other cheek; one stands and fights and stays the course. One doesn’t walk an extra mile – we drive them, sure, on ever longer commutes into the isolation and insulation of suburbs and exurbs built further and further from the city and its concerns – but we don’t walk extra miles; not to participate in any subversive action (as Jesus’ suggestion could imply) nor to build deeper relationships with disagreeable others (as some interpreters understand this suggestion). Isolation and insulation are more agreeable than either confrontation or relationship.

And giving up coats? Well, perhaps in charity, but certainly not if it’s going to leave us bereft – naked to the world and at the mercy of forces we cannot control.

Giving away, turning cheeks, extra miles that cannot me measured in terms of productivity – our economy does not account for any of these gestures and thus they have no value – at least, no market value.

Nevertheless, as Einstein noted, “not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts.” In the economy of the commonwealth of the beloved, value arises precisely out of what we let go of, what we give away, what we surrender.

Ultimately, of course, what Jesus asks is that we surrender ourselves; that we give up the illusions of control and power that come wrapped in the measurable markers of productivity, power, and the purse. Jesus asks us, “what good does it do to gain the world if we lose ourselves in the bargain?”

We are a strange family – and now I mean all of us, the church here at Clarendon. We are a strange family that is trying to live into the call to be a mission-driven community of faith. We are called to live according to a different set of values, not marked by a market of consumption but by the strange insistence that our lives have value only according to what we give away.

This is not the sermon I intended to preach on this open house Sunday morning as we celebrate our mission partners in the pastoral care center and the child care center. But maybe it will turn out to be appropriate anyway, as we seek a way forward: a strange family of faith called to a way of living together so very much at odds with the dominate culture. After all, a deep and abiding care for children is also very much at odds with the dominate culture – despite what we might hear from pandering politicians and those who celebrate family values even as they destroy any public support for families. Likewise, compassion for those on whom the dominate culture takes a heavy emotional toll is at odds with that culture.

In any case, that would be my hope and my prayer. Let us pray:

“God of grace and God of glory, pour out your spirit on your people, called to be these days an exile family of faith living according to values that strike the broader culture as exceedingly strange. We give thanks for the abundance with which we live; and we pray for the wisdom to perceive it even when our own fears and insecurities blind us to all but the scarcity the culture wants us to see. We life up our mission partners who care for children and help so many hear good news about their own belovedness. And we pray for your church, here at Clarendon, that we might also know and trust our own belovedness and the gracious abundance with which we live and love and minister. Let us be light and more light for a darkened world and let us be salt for a world that has lost its savor. Amen.”

-- the Rev. Dr. David Ensign