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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
6 January 2008Epiphany“Significant Other”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
The Feast of the Epiphany, which we are celebrating today, could be called the "Feast of Inclusiveness."
Before the birth of Jesus, human beings were divided into various tribes and nations. These divisions were rigid; rarely did one change the tribal identity one was born with. If people moved to another country, they still kept their identity; they rarely adopted the citizenship of their new nation.
Religion, too, tended to be part of a person's tribal self. Thus the Hebrews had neighbors in northern Israel called "Samaritans." Although an observer might have thought the Samaritans were Hebrew, they in fact only acknowledged the first five books of the Old Testament. To the Jews, therefore, the Samaritans were heretics as well as members of a different tribe; so while the two groups lived in neighboring villages, they had little to do with one another.
This was the way the world was divided when Christ was born. You were in the tribe or you weren't. The Hebrews even had a word for non-Hebrews: "Gentiles."
Thus the arrival of "wise men from the East" at the manger of Jesus signaled an amazing effect of the birth of Christ. Not only were the wise men acknowledging the birth of a future tribal leader for the Hebrew people; they had come to worship one who would be their leader, too. These Gentiles "from the east" symbolized all persons from other nations and tribes who would one day recognize the divine in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now while this inclusive interpretation of the Gospel was questioned, it still survived as the orthodox view. Some of the first Jewish converts to Christianity, including the disciple Peter and Christ's own brother James had to struggle with this view. But, eventually they were won over.
In fact, Christians detected numerous passages in the Old Testament where Jewish Prophets also recognized that their God was for all people. There was a seed of universalism already planted in the religion of Israel.
Today, the worship of the One God over tribal gods has been so complete that it has become something of a cliché. "Inclusive" can even seem exclusive! It can now refer to a narrow kind of "political correctness," whereby people will trump up charges of being "excluded" so they can then capitalize on their supposedly inferior status.
In the religious sphere, minority religions claim rights to follow their own tribal customs—to be "included" as proper religions. But, here too, political correctness can be self-serving — as in the case of religious groups who want to practice animal sacrifices. Surely it's possible to have different religious beliefs without making animals suffer.
Yet we should notice that inclusiveness has become a cliché for a reason. There is an undeniable truth in the universal vision of Epiphany.
By saying God came equally to the Gentiles, we are saying that there really is no such category as "Gentiles." We don't have any place to pigeon-hole people we don't like. We are all in the same category — we are all children of God. Politically correct or not, we are all preachers of the inclusive Gospel.
Yet while this universal Gospel has been widely proclaimed by the Christian churches, especially in recent years, it is not so easy to put into practice. We can preach it, but we have trouble living the principle from inside. In real life, I don't feel that everyone is a fellow child of God, just like I am.
I think these feelings point to a deeper, philosophical problem about the limits of how close human beings can get to each other. Philosophers sometimes call this the problem of the Other.
When they talk about this problem, the word, "Other" is spelled with a capital "O." The capital signifies how difficult it is really to know an "Other" person.
The problem is especially common in everyday relationships. You are having trouble getting along with a friend. You know the person very well. You've been through all sorts of common experiences with him. Yet aren't there times when you just can't figure out why he's acting the way he is? "What was he thinking?" you say.
French Existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus claimed that our inner lives are so cut off from each other that we are hardly ever able to make a truly human contact.
Sartre wrote, for example, in his famous work, Being and Nothingness, that "the Other-as-subject can in no way be known nor even conceived as such." In other words, we can't get to the inner subjectivity of another person.
Modern novels and films reflect this understanding of human beings. Men and women are portrayed as continually drifting in and out of relationships. They can't get beyond the difference between their individual selves and Others. They can't fall in love because they can't communicate!
Now if this view of human beings were in fact true, then "inclusiveness" really would be an empty cliché. How could we possibly feel at one with human beings in separate cultures and distant lands if we could never know what was going on in the head of the person right next to us whom we are trying to love?
But I think the existentialists did frame the question in the right way. The real problem isn't tribalism; the real problem is sharing our inner lives.
That's why we should never take for granted the Christian belief in inclusiveness. For if we believe God has revealed himself to everyone, then we must also believe we all have something in common.
As the poet and Anglican priest John Donne said, "No man is an island." We all are part of God's realm and that means we are brothers and sisters under the skin.
No person is irreducibly "Other." However important tribalism is at some levels, it is never the highest value. Labels are only labels — human words that help us categorize people, but which don't describe the ultimate structure of the universe.
By contrast, words like "epiphany" point beyond the human. An "epiphany" is a "manifestation of the divine." When we are able to penetrate the barriers that separate us from our fellow humans — well, that is an "epiphany!"
I find that I myself am often impatient with pronouncements in favor of "inclusiveness" because the speakers seem to feel an exaggerated outrage that some category of person is being "excluded."
My own view is that human beings always make distinctions — they always exclude because to put someone in one category is necessarily to keep them our of some other category. Rather than condemning people for doing this, we should be amazed that these categories aren't as rigid as people think they are. The Spirit of Christ helps us to get beyond the boundaries that seem to divide us.
Thus, we who are members of urban churches often marvel to see people worshipping side by side whom we would never expect to find in the same room. People from very different economic backgrounds, from different parts of the world; people with different experiences are part of the epiphany of inclusiveness.
Just to give two out of many possible examples: this Christmas, a young Taiwanese woman who is now working for a bank in London traveled to New York to worship in our church where she was baptized in 2006. And several times over the holidays, an elderly retired librarian came to our church to mourn the recent death of a loved one.
Both persons are part of our parish family. I told them I planned to refer to them in this sermon, and they didn't mind — because they know that in this community they are not "Other." Whatever categories might have divided them from people in the secular world didn't apply within the fellowship of the Christ child.
Here, you are not one of the "Others" with a capital "O." Here, the barriers are lowered. And the only category that counts is "child of God." The light of Christ shines out of the darkness and welcomes you in.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.