Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20 –Year B
September 24, 2006
Wisdom 1:16-2:6; 2:12-22 / Psalm 54 / James 3:16-4:6 / Mark 9:30-37

These days, I’m acutely aware of the human tendency to divide reality in two. These days, polarization is the name of the game. And the game is being played for higher and higher stakes. In all areas of human interaction, we seem to have forgotten how to find common ground. Instead we declare war, glaring at one another across widening chasms that are bridged only by an exchange of fire – be that in the form of insults and accusations, torture and intimidation, or bullets and guided missiles. I am reminded of a line from William Butler Yeats’ sublime and chilling poem, “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Polarization doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process – an accretion of small hurts untended, little disagreements unresolved. The two parties have to move apart in order to make room for their accumulated baggage. Distance makes it easier to see how different, how very other, the other is. Faced with otherness, fear arises, widening the gap. So far apart now, shouting becomes the only way to communicate and everything begins to sound like threat. The will for reconciliation dissipates as the momentum of separation increases. And so on….

Anglicanism is a case in point. We have always had our extremists, our arch-conservatives, our flaming liberals. But we have also had a strong center. We have, in fact, been well-distributed across the board. Now, we share in the divisiveness that currently defines the human condition. We have become so polarized, the common board perilously strained by the weight of so many folks rushing to its extremes, that the center may well not hold, may indeed crack right through.

The great irony in this state of affairs is that we Anglicans have long understood ourselves to be people of the middle way, the via media. When our particular brand of Christianity came into being during the turbulent years of the Reformation, it was conceived as a middle way between the warring extremes of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Our theology, our liturgy, and our polity all express elements of both -- the best of each, we like to think.

This via media did not evolve in an atmosphere of saintly serenity. The process was a complicated and messy mix of politics and religion, machiavellian machinations and surrendered faith. There were all sorts and conditions of people involved -- great thinkers, martyrs, inspired theologians, political power brokers, thugs, and heads of state on both sides.

In worship, the pendulum of change swung between the elaborate practices of Rome and the austere approach of the Reformers, depending, during that politically unstable time, on the faith professed by England’s monarch du jour. For the people in the pew, none of this was academic. Being of the wrong persuasion during that era of shifting loyalties could mean loss of land or life.

But, the center held and, when the dust finally settled, it became clear that something new had been birthed, a way of being church that was container for both mystery and rational thought, that allowed for a broad spectrum of worship styles and theological takes but agreed on the centrality of the sacraments, that placed responsibility for worship in the hands of the people via the Book of Common Prayer.

It has always been hard to pin Anglicanism down. We only sort of have a central authority, and only sort of have an institutional structure, and only sort of have a statement of belief. This allows for a rather remarkable flexibility, a broad center that has incorporated some pretty varied ways of being Christian. Although there have been partings of the way – the Methodists and the Quakers come to mind -- we have managed to hold together for four and a half centuries. Until now.

I’m not sure what makes this feel different. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Anglicanism, which after all developed on a small, culturally self-contained island, has now spread throughout the world, taking root in radically diverse cultures unimagined by the founders of the faith. Perhaps the influence of the present age’s context of polarization in all aspects of human interaction is unavoidable.

I remind myself that, although there is much unraveling going on, we haven’t yet come apart. The center still holds. And I remind myself that, if it does not, being broken is not always such a bad thing. “This is my body, broken for you…” Still, I find myself wondering if, in the 21st century, the middle way is a viable path.

You may well be wondering what, if anything, this has to do with today’s scriptures. Well, to a certain degree, I’m speaking what is currently on my heart as a sometimes rebellious lay person and a fairly faithful lover of the church. But these ponderings were inspired by our readings. By the polarity present in the Wisdom passage, for instance – really really bad guys vs. a really really good guy. No middle ground there.

At least the sinners in the Old Testament reading take responsibility for their lousy choices. Perhaps that’s why their Biblical book is called Wisdom. In the psalm, however, all fault is projected outward onto the designated “other”. The psalmist makes no attempt at self-examination, but rather asks God to ruin the perceived foe and then calls God “good” for doing so. Yech.

The Wisdom passage was written about a century before the birth of Christ. The psalm is a much older work and could be said to represent a less evolved, more tribal consciousness. Be that as it may, it models a divisive way of functioning that, archaic though it may be, is alive and well and growing stronger today.

Given the tendency toward duality in the Old Testament passages, the New Testament passage from James is a revelation. I quote: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it… ” In other words, according to this New Testament teaching, the source of our unhappiness is not out there and someone else’s fault, but within us and our own responsibility. The writer of James is zeroing in on that aspect of human nature which cannot be satisfied by what the world gives, that hungry part of us upon which advertisers and politicians and purveyors of religious fundamentalism prey.

The writer of James tells us that “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.” If asking for what the world gives is asking wrongly, what, then, constitutes asking rightly?

The epistle does not tell us directly, but rather presents us with a quote it introduces as scriptural: “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us". The funny thing is there’s no line like this anywhere in existing scripture. It may be that it is a quote from some text considered sacred by the early church that didn’t make it into the canon. It certainly presents a strange and compelling image – that of God longing for union with the spirit God has placed in us.

If God’s yearning is for reunion with the part of God’s self which has been planted in each human, than isn’t it possible that our hunger, which we erroneously attempt to fill in other ways, is really for the rest of God that completes the portion we each have been given? I believe that it is. I believe that to ask rightly, according to James, is to recognize that we are incomplete without God and to surrender ourselves in every way to being filled by God. Recognizing what we lack and asking for what we need are signs of true humility. And James tells us that God “gives grace to the humble.”

Imagine ourselves graced by the completing spirit of God! I think we would then be filled by what James calls “the wisdom from above” and goes on to describe as “…first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” What would happen if we were to carry these reconciling qualities into all our interactions? James says, “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

What happened to transform the Old Testament stance of duality and projection outward into this New Testament understanding of mutuality and interior amendment of life? Christ happened, of course. Through Christ, something new entered human consciousness, something quite capable of bringing the world into alignment with the realm of God, if enough of us were to actually put it into practice.

Now, let me attempt to wrestle this rather unruly sermon back to the Anglican middle way. Whether the Anglican Communion stands or falls, our practice of willingly holding our opinions lightly while committing to conversation with those with whom we disagree, remains a spiritual practice that is profoundly connected to the Spirit of Christ and absolutely essential for the healing of division in the world.

We are called to become people of the middle way, not to stave off denominational disintegration, but in order to be of service in the world. Our task is three-fold. First, we must recognize and take responsibility for the ways in which our misplaced hunger has damaged ourselves and others. Second, we are to offer that hungry place as a dwelling for the Spirit, James’ “wisdom from above”, accepting with humility and patience whatever process of transformation this may require. And, third, we must allow our new-found wholeness of spirit to take us into the world as peacemakers, into the dynamic center which is the middle way.

The middle way is not simply a matter of putting up with what we disagree with. It is, rather, a powerful spiritual practice, a willed willingness to stand together in the center with those with whom we disagree, while trusting in the power of the “wisdom from above.” It involves being willing to be changed, as well as being willing to be agents for change.

We can practice this spiritual discipline in every setting inhabited by human beings.

When we do, a third energy arises, the spirit of the middle way – living, vibratory, uniquely neither this nor that, an energy that belongs not to our dualistic reality, but to the realm of God, where either/or becomes both/and, where us vs. them becomes I and Thou, where black and white becomes a whole glorious spectrum of color, where healing and an entirely new way of being can become reality.

I believe this third energy, this middle way, is what Jesus is about when he says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." And I believe the Spirit of Christ is a center that can surely hold, a power that can change the world. AMEN.