Sermon Transcript for May 20, 2007 What a marvelous day today is. Could this be any more exciting? Today we celebrate a new quality of freedom, and I say a new quality of freedom because freedom is not an end point, freedom is a journey. Freedom is something that constantly opens up to new and different possibilities all the time. So today we celebrate a new quality of freedom, because freedom has always been a quality of this community, and was a quality of this community when it was a “Reformed Church in America” church. I want to pause at this point to acknowledge all those have participated in the life of this community over many years. I celebrate this morning those who have been here for 70 years, and we have some present today, and those who are here for the very first time. I celebrate both alike. I want to stop and honor my predecessor Richard Rhem. I want to acknowledge him for all that he did when he held the position that I now hold. I want to acknowledge Gordie Van Hoeven, who is present this morning, for his ministry in the life of this community. I want to acknowledge all those who are here this morning who were here when this was a Reformed Church over 10 years ago. I want to acknowledge all those who were here 10 years ago, and have taken the journey over the last 10 years, and financially contributed to each of the 10 campaigns to the classis for freedom. I want to acknowledge everyone past, present, and future for participating in the life of this community. I salute every one of you, and I pledge to work tirelessly as the leader of this organization to continue this tradition of exploring greater and more exciting freedoms all the time. That's the journey that we’re on. Let Freedom Reign Nelson Mandela said, "Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.” Nelson Mandela knew what he was talking about. He knew of freedom because he knew it was like to have his freedom taken away. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, and through those 27 years, was given the right to only one visitor per year. That one visitor was for just 30 minutes. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for defying oppressive apartheid regulations. He was only allowed to receive one letter every six months, he knew what it was to have his freedom taken away. And yet how did he use this time in prison over those many years? According to reports he used the time to learn how to negotiate with the Afrikaans guards. He spent year after year learning how to negotiate with them, and he became a role model in prison for bringing people together. Later he was to say that all he learned in his prison was a microcosm of what he would do outside of prison, reconciling people, across all sorts of boundaries, and pointing to all manner of possibilities. In 1995 Nelson Mandela, having been president for just one year, stood in the centre of a rugby stadium. Sports in South Africa, like most things in South Africa, had been segregated. You have to understand, in stadiums of 60,000 people 59,000 of them were white and 1000 of them were black, and the blacks would be held in just one small section of the stadium. And no matter whom the South African team was playing against, the blacks would cheer for that opponent. The South African rugby jersey, like so many other things, stood for oppression. That jersey stood for everything that was corrupt about apartheid. Nelson Mandela, at the beginning of a rugby match, wearing the uniform of oppression, stood there, and the white people in the crowd, who a year before would have thought he was a subhuman terrorist, chanted his name. He was their hero. They chanted, “Nelson! Nelson!” And white players on the rugby team fought hard that day, and they won the game for Nelson. They won the game for everything that Nelson Mandela stands for, and a year into his presidency he was already bringing people together, wearing the very uniform of oppression. Think about our situation here, where in our church title we have the name “church” even though we know that we're an alternative to church as usual. We’re pioneering a whole new way of being church, which over the centuries and around the world has been a symbol of oppression and dogma. We wear the name church to draw people together, to draw people around the exciting possibilities of humanity. We fill the name church with new possibilities and freedom. Inner and Outer freedom I want to distinguish this morning between two different types of freedom. We have freedom that is external to us. Outer freedoms are things like whether you are part of a denomination or not, whether you are part of a structured organization like the Reformed Church in America. That’s outer freedom. But there is also inner freedom, and I want to suggest that our inner freedom is uncontainable. There is a freedom in the human spirit, in every one of us that cannot be contained. It is free, it always has been free, and it always will be free. The human spirit cannot be contained and yet we all know that when we operate out of fear or dogma, we don't feel like we're free. We suppress our freedom, and then we live out of fear. The journey that we're on is about both inner freedom and outer freedom, about moving toward outer freedom, out of the shadow of the Reformed church, but maybe more importantly it's about inner freedom, because you can be a member of the Reformed Church and be very free. And you can be an independent church and still be very suppressed. So our journey is about both- holding together in tandem our outer freedoms and exploring our inner freedoms. The church over the centuries has operated a lot more according to fear than it has according to freedom. And there's an image that I want to give you this morning, which draws out the distinction between freedom and fear. Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Being Watched? The image I want you to consider this morning is the panopticon. The word comes from Greek- pan meaning all, opticon meaning seeing. The panopticon as an architectural model was a vision of the 18th century reformer Jeremy Bentham. He was a liberal reformer who had a vision for the way prisons could operate. The panopticon was a watch tower in the center of a prison and from this tower the guards could see in each of the cells. The genius of the panopticon was that while the guards in the tower could see into each of the cells, those in the cells couldn't see into the guard tower. Stop and think about the control of that. You don't even need anyone in the tower. The very illusion of control kept the prisoners under control. The panopticon as Bentham envisioned it, never became a reality, but many sociologists in recent decades have spoken of the panopticon as an image or symbol of all sorts of institutions that limit control, whether it is schools, factories or churches. Now consider religion as panopticon. Most of us grew up with religion as panopticon, the belief that many churches still encourage, where God is all seeing but we can't see God. God operates a little like Santa Claus- he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! Religious panopticons are like Santa Claus- they function so that God, and by its self-claimed authority the church, can keep people in line by giving the illusion that someone is watching them. The panopticon was presented as a humane measure because it was a step away from Victorian brutal punishment in prisons. Yet I want to suggest to you that, as a concept, it ate at the very heart of freedom, by getting inside the prisoners heads. And it's hard to even operate as a normal human being when you feel like you are being watched the whole time. From Panopticon to Lighthouse As an alternative to church as usual, we have moved beyond religion as panopticon. Because I want to tell you that there's no external authority watching. You have the freedom to craft your own religion and you don’t need to operate any longer out of fear. Consider the image of a lighthouse instead of the panopticon, where each of us shines light, and the world also is a light shining back to us? If you have any motivation to live a just and peaceful life, it will come from within and radiate in all that you do. Freedom is first and foremost an inner quality. Our organization is attempting to take this adventure to becoming a lighthouse rather than a panopticon. We're not watching you and we’re not waiting for you to make a mistake. We want you to make mistakes. We want you to go on the adventure, try things, experiment with ideas, and see what happens. It's what being progressive is all about. We are modeling some organizational structures that attempt to be a lighthouse rather than a panopticon. The very notion of membership is beginning to be an outmoded classification. We have people who participate in the life of this community who don't even live in the Tri-Cities. We have people all over the world participating in the life of this community, and appreciate that which is a lighthouse about this community, and are being a lighthouse back to us. A group in Benzie County meets every Sunday and uses our resources, as they are meaningful for them. We don't tell them what to do. They have complete freedom to craft their own community and do what they want to do on a Sunday morning. They usually watch a DVD of our service, but they can fast forward whenever the sermon gets boring. Imagine the freedom! These are just some examples of what it means to become a lighthouse of a community rather than a panopticon. It's a wonderful opportunity. One of the reasons the church has always operated as a panopticon is that it functions out of fear. I want to come back just briefly to the stadium in South Africa. One of Nelson Mandela's colleagues said, "Only Nelson could wear the uniform of the enemy. The liberation struggle that we are involved in is not so much about liberating black people from bondage, it’s more about liberating white people from fear.” That is very similar to the journey that we are on. It is a journey about us being liberated from fear and being a lighthouse that automatically liberates those who participate in the life of this community. The notion that freedom comes as a cultural change, an inner change as much as it does an outer change, is an important distinction. Outer Freedom Without Inner Change I experienced this in my Anglican (Episcopal) tradition: In my hometown of Sydney, Australia, women are not allowed to be ordained as leaders of the church. Can you believe that? Believe it! Women are not even allowed to teach in groups where there are men present, and in fact, not allowed to teach in groups where there are boys older than 12 present. This is extreme discrimination. That's the church that I grew up in but couldn't stay in. I went from there to Auckland, New Zealand, in to a liberal church. It is a church where women had been ordained for over 20 years. What I discovered in Auckland was that even though women could be ordained in the church, and had been able to for many years, not many women wanted to be. Why would a woman want to be ordained into a male structure? What guarantees do women have in their career in a church that is built and structured around men’s values? The point is that until the culture changes, and the inner world changes, there's no point in changing the outer. There's no point in seeking liberal reform if the culture doesn't change as well. It’s often a culture of fear even in a liberal church. There is another experience that I’ve spoken about before that touches on the issue of sexuality and fear. When I was in Sydney I had conversation with a bishop. He wanted to talk to me about sexuality because he heard that I was way too open on that issue. He called me in for conversation and in the course of the conversation he told me that he was as open and affirming as I was, just as accepting. In fact, he told me his daughter was a lesbian, and he would love nothing more than to see the church open up to people like his daughter. I sat across from him with my jaw dropped and said, “Why don’t you tell people!” And he said, I can’t do that because I am too afraid that it will ruin my career.” You’ve all had your own experiences of institutional hypocrisy. Hypocrisy so often grows out of fear. The Early Church and Freedom We are an alternative to church as usual that is crafting an adventure, not ruled by fear, but by inner freedom. That's the exact tension that the early church was dealing with. You heard the reading this morning from Acts Chapter 15 in which early churches were dealing with the issue of circumcision. This is not our issue today, but it was an issue in the first century. People were coming out of the Jewish tradition who still believed that circumcision was essential to religious purity. Gentiles didn't embrace that tradition, and yet they were together in community trying to find the boundaries of freedom. What was essential, and what could people choose to take or leave? St. Paul, in other places in the Bible, spoke of circumcision of the heart. This was inner circumcision- inner purity, inner justice. This was a church that was young, and I wonder whether those who were here 10 years ago, those who were very involved in the dealings with the classis, if what you heard in the reading from Acts 15 was some type of parable of this community's journey. Instead of going to Jerusalem they were going to Muskegon. They were dealing with a council much like the Council of Jerusalem, talking about whether they had the right to self-determination, and where they had to tow the line according to orthodoxy. The journey of the early church is the journey of this church. Let Your Light Shine Let me end with a call to be the freedom that we want to see in the world. This adventure that we are a part of is exciting to say the least. Opportunities abound. Challenges and pitfalls also stand before us. I want to leave you with ultimately the challenge of inner freedom. In the words of Marianne Williamson, who was quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech: 1. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Thank you for your presence and your participation in this community. Thank you to those who have participated for decades before us, and who will participate for decades to come. Your presence, your liberation from fear, will automatically liberate others like a lighthouse. People around the world will be liberated by the presence of this community and we have the opportunity to be part of that. Let your light shine. It will unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
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