Sermon Transcript for June 10, 2007 I was researching for a writing project when a quotation riveted my attention. It so engaged me that I have made it the theme for today’s sermon: ‘true love consists in this; that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.’ My thoughts wander to an evening when a storm was threatening, so I hurried to finish my purchases and speed home. But the heavy rain kept me confined under a shop awning where I, and a homeless street man I knew well, sheltered. He opened his umbrella – his treasured possession - and offered me its protection. This was a moment of profound transformation. We stood together, two ‘solitudes’ with our separate life histories and independent existences, for a moment sharing his generosity. I was the parish priest, he was a homeless man – both of us had totally different identities and life experiences. There was no room in this space for any sense of difference that mattered. He offered me protection under his umbrella, and in that moment of standing shoulder to shoulder we were no more than two solitudes in need of each other. The street man blessed me with protection. In the same moment, he would also salute me and call me by name, as I would call his name. This was a relationship that had no judgment in it about the other. Neither of us saw the need to serve or meet the other through pity or sentimentality –our humanity alone bonded us. Under the protection of his umbrella we two solitudes bordered and saluted each other. And nothing more was necessary; it was as if life for both of us had its supreme moment in a simple act of acknowledgement. The quotation drove me to read the original from which my research author had selected it. This morning I offer his explanatory words also to you as the substance of my sermon: We are only just now beginning to look upon the relation of one individual person to a second individual objectively and without prejudice, and our attempts to live such associations have no model before them … The humanity of woman, borne its full time in suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere femininity …, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it … There will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being. This advance will (at first much against the will of the outstripped men) change the love-experience …, reshape it into a relation that is meant to be of one human being to another, no longer of man to woman. And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and kind and clear in binding and releasing) … consists in this; that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other. At a first hearing you may have thought these words were written in a feminist publication of the 1960s or 70s. You may be surprised to learn that they were written in 1904 by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the great lyric poets of modern Germany. Before the social upheavals of two world wars he signaled the radical sexual and relational changes that continue to mark our generation. His own dark life haunted his writing. It is easy to dismiss his ideas as a response to a confused childhood or to unfulfilled relationships. But read more deeply and you sense the profound yearning of the human spirit to be free. That spirit breaks through the dark side of his own emotions and he tells us a truth we ignore at our peril: ‘true love consists in this; that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other’. Two solitudes, two separated individuals, with their own history and life experience can bring their difference and their individuality into a space where love can flourish. This is a dream still to be fulfilled. The emotion expressed by Rilke was an emerging theme of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One hundred and thirty years ago the French novelist Emile Zola challenged what he called the ‘shallow and disposable’ fashions of theatre and art. He urged writers to explore the complexities of life with all its failings and confusion. In that spirit Henrik Ibsen, and a new generation of playwrights, critiqued the basic conventions of their society. And their dreams also are still to be fulfilled. In 1879, in Copenhagen, Ibsen produced his play A Doll’s House. Immediately hostile responses greeted this stage presentation of a disintegrating marriage. The play evoked stresses about restrictive marriage and divorce laws. It highlighted the plight of women in a repressive patriarchal society. The heroine Nora turned her back on household comfort, family responsibility and male indoctrination to find her own ‘solitude’. Judged by modern norms the play is melodramatic and contrived, but to its first audiences it was a revelation of a world yet to be born. German censors demanded that the ending be changed and that Nora return to her husband and family. In 1889 Ibsen 's Doll's House played to packed audiences in Sydney’s Criterion Theatre. Crowds poured into the streets debating the play into the early hours of the morning. The sensation made headlines in the daily press. This was a play that seemed to be born out of time. When in 1892 Sir Alfred Stephen presented his divorce law reform (Divorce Amendment and Extension Act) into the New South Wales Parliament, he faced opposition across the chamber and also from the most conservative forces in society, led by the various churches. Nora, and women like her, could be beaten, abused, refused rights and remain without power in society and all to preserve the sanctity of a man-made dogma about human relationships. The ‘solitudes’ were sacrificed to the religion of conformity. This is an unfinished story but the dream of Ibsen and his like remain powerful prophecies of what is still to come. Why all this history? Because their story is still unfinished and we are their inheritors. Though their names may be unknown to many in this audience, we still need to give thanks for great American prophets who have shaken our world before its time. I could have spoken about famous men – infamous depending of your opinions - like Joseph Smith, prophet of the American New Jerusalem. Literary critic Harold Bloom has described him as a primary founder of ‘the American Dream’. I might have given over this sermon to Martin Luther King whose every word and action is carefully recorded and whose misdemeanors are hushed. Instead I have chosen to speak about some astonishing women whom history has largely ignored. Women prophets have made an enormous contribution to the radical transformation of America and the world. Ella Baker, activist and civil rights organizer, makes a fascinating beginning for this study of prophetic women. Married for twenty years, but silent through all that time about her marriage, she gave unselfish leadership to the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. Her ideas impacted beyond those circles and her influence was felt throughout the women’s movements of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Her belief that racism underlay colonialism and imperialism, war, the oppression of women, the politics of crime and punishment, and the exploitation of labor gave her an international audience. She drew Martin Luther King’s support behind the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. King was the dominant figure in this history and Baker the woman King eventually clashed with over leadership style. She criticized his unchecked ego, the patriarchal structures he set up and the way his decision making excluded the grass roots. In Baker’s worldview, ‘strong people don’t need strong leaders.’ Baker was the true revolutionary. Her sole life interest was politics. Her dream, for a more humane world where solitudes could border protect and salute each other dominated her agenda. She spent her days working for a world that even now waits to be born. America has other prophets, as single minded but more eccentric, whose story needs to be heard. Carrie Nation, nearly 6 feet tall and 175 pounds, described herself as ‘a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn't like’. Her bands of women prayed and sang hymns outside the Kansas saloons. Then, at a signal from Carrie, they would brandish their concealed hatchets and shouting ‘Smash, smash, for Jesus’ sake smash’ destroy the saloon bars and terrify the owners. Prize-fighter John L. Sullivan was reported to have run and hid when Nation burst into his New York City saloon. Yet beyond this eccentric behavior Nation, with others in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, once the largest women's organization in the United States, took up issues ranging from health and hygiene, prison reform, and world peace. Nation was part of a movement working for the liberation of women – and in doing so for the liberation of men from the stereotypes society had placed on them. I add to this list of prophets Helena Petrovna Blavatsky who founded in New York in 1875 the Theosophical Society and through her chief disciple Annie Besant, raised issues about contraception and family planning. She had a dream for the transformation of family life. Her work helped many women to begin the difficult journey of being responsible for their own bodies as ‘solitudes’. We also are her inheritor making her principle of action our own. Her legacy is for an ‘open-minded inquiry into world religions, philosophy, science, and the arts in order to understand the wisdom of the ages, respect the unity of all life, and help people explore spiritual self-transformation.’ Each of these women was complex, contradictory, and never a model of probity or gentleness. All of these women were unconventional and all left a legacy yet to be fulfilled in a search for the energy that makes two solitudes protect and border and salute each other. They were prophets to their generation and a challenge to each of us - male and female - to support the cause of freedom from irrational dogma and oppression. If the men in this audience will hear me, when these women spoke about the liberation of their own gender, they were speaking also about the liberation of men from every stereotype that would limit them. They challenge us all to become ‘solitudes’, people living our own destinies without attempts to control others. Jesus their Forerunner And Jesus was the forerunner in this tradition for all of these women. They understood him differently, and mostly from the edges of the formal churches, but they saw in him a radical opponent of conventional society. Like them, he also was a prophet of his time, his words colored by its conventions and his language shaped by its images. He shared their complexity of character and even in the Gospel accounts we catch a glimpse of his limitations. Today’s bible reading from Matthew 25 is the briefest segment from two long chapters, which are a series of parables about the end-times. Many preachers find here a field day for teaching about the Rapture and the perils of the Millennium. But Jesus, the discomforting preacher from the 1st century, eludes these strange figments of 19th century religion. On the surface of things, Jesus’ images about hell-fire and damnation remind many of us of a pulpit world we hoped we had left behind. But the urgency through chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ words makes his meaning abundantly clear - those who fail to love their neighbour or to live justly face eternal consequences. That preaching carried its own 1st century imagery. Language about Hell was drawn from the daily burning of refuse in the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. The derived word Gehenna has passed into our language. This dramatic image is itself a parable of the powerful regret that can eat at the human heart when sorrow, loss, tragedy or willfulness find no healing or forgiveness. Hell is where ‘solitude’ has become isolation and where the human spirit translates this as exclusion, racism, power and contempt of others. Jesus uses this most dramatic imagery to awaken his hearers to the need for ‘solitudes’ to strive all their lives to border, protect and salute every other human being. Jesus’ entire life story is uncomfortable. He comes from Nazareth; we know his brothers and sisters, so how can he be a prophet? Jesus is the son of Marry – but to call a Jewish boy the son of his mother is to hint at some family disgrace. This is a man not worth listening to; his limitations are too alarming. Jesus is so like the women prophets I have named in this sermon. All of them bring limitations that distract their audiences But read more deeply: beyond the images of the times there is another story of greater passion. Jesus is intent on showing the true quality of love – and that also is a dream yet to be fulfilled. The stories about Hell are everyday as are our own accounts of the Axis of Evil and the moral conflicts that seem to shape our least decisions. Right now in Australia, State governments are debating stem cell research and at once the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, has announced that the Catholic Premier of New South Wales will be refused Communion if he supports the Bill. In the face of life changing legislation, dogma is once more seen repressively – not reasoned debate about social and human evolution, even God-evolution, but a call for the past to control the present. I hear the same thrust of debate on American Television. Everywhere in the Gospels Jesus challenged this attitude. And everywhere he urged on people the true love that engages their ‘solitude’. What is clear from his teaching is that the inner being, the spirit, is the place where true love dwells; from the heart, he says, come the qualities that make us human. When people ask where God or God’s Kingdom might be found, he pointed to the inner life and then asked people to think from within to what was about them. Here is how one of his followers summarized this teaching: ‘God is love’ and if we are in any doubt what that means he adds ‘if anyone sees their brother or sister in need and does not have compassion for them, they are liars and the truth is not in them.’ Jesus was consumed by the stupendous realization that love and God are not abstractions but are the intent of the heart, the engagement of the solitude for the other, whoever they may be. And that is the key to today’s two readings. They suggest two profound ideas. The first was signalled in Ian’s sermon last week that ‘God is where God does’. The second is that love is seen in the doing of mercy and without sentimentality or pity. But love is first the profound awareness of what is inward for you and me as ‘solitudes’. Look up the Internet and see how many charities and Christian financial houses call themselves Matthew 25. I am sure most of them are worthy of your support, but pause before you do this, because one thing more is asked of you and that is to awaken to your own inner dream, to sense your own human connectedness, to touch the place where hope dwells. Every parent knows this truth – children are not to be coerced but helped to enter their own inner place where maturity is born. Marriages work on the same principle and that is how we respond best to our neighbors. God bless you for standing alongside people, cooking meals when they are needy, scrubbing floors when illness strikes. But the heart of loving is first to know yourself as ‘solitude’. At some point each of us have to trade our pride and self-sufficiency and accept the protection of the offered umbrella and then border and salute the other human being. At that moment, the hardest lesson of all is to learn to say each other’s name with affection. This is the key to progressive religion, which calls itself ‘being human, being love’. Here, we name each other. This is the simplest yet the hardest of all tasks. In this congregation and in our wider communities we learn to speak each other’s name with gentleness. This will mean taking the hard journey that avoids unnecessary criticisms, harsh judgment of difference, blindness to the joy and grace in another’s being. And it will bring us to some reconciliation with the complex faith paths we have traveled, owning what is best in those traditions and always looking for fresh and vitalizing faith discoveries. We will discover that racism and sexism have no place among us as we learn to bless each other with protection. What matters is our integrity and the dream of what it means to be truly human. And that will be living love from the strong-house of the inner being, ever-learning fresh ways of bordering and protecting each other. 1Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, New York: Vintage Books, 1987, p.78. Readings ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did it to me.” "I was just at church, and they were praying for the homeless," Larry said, holding the day's belongings in a bag beside him. As the subway screeched to a halt, I heard him quip, "I decided that I should pray for the housed." Larry was sick of handouts, sick of condescension. To Larry, as a longtime guest at the homeless shelter at which I worked, Christian compassion seemed like little more than a masquerade, a power trip for those fortunate enough to be in the seat of the "giver" rather than the "receiver." Larry's complaint about Christian compassion resonates with Friedrich Nietzsche's depiction in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Through the voice of Zarathustra, Nietzsche diagnoses Christian compassion as "pity"—a belittling, demeaning approach to the sufferer that shames rather than restores. Sufferers do not want pity, according to Nietzsche; they don't even want solidarity, when it comes from people descending from on high to be with the sufferer below. Sufferers also want to be givers. To only receive and never to give is to be dehumanized, to be belittled. ‘How can a Christian live out the commands of Mathew 25 - without the pity? Todd Billings, assistant professor of reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.
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