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Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost – August 23, 2009
Normally fashion magazines do not have my name printed on their address labels. In fact, in a cost cutting measure I have let lapse all my subscriptions except for “Bon Appetite,” which I consider essential reading. But other people receive mail in my house and, scanning the coffee table recently in search of something to flip through while I waited to go out, I spied this headline in the September issue of “Vogue:” “Notes on a Scandal: Jenny Sanford opens up about being a political wife and the affair that changed it all.”
For those of you who may not know, or are perhaps too preoccupied with our own state’s leaders’ shameful shenanigans, Jenny is the wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, whose assignation with an Argentinean television reporter as he was supposedly hiking the Appalachian Trail earlier this summer kept late night television comics well supplied with material. Adding to the fun, Gov. Sanford was also one of the most vocal critics of President Clinton and his indiscretion with “that woman.”
Writes the Vogue correspondent, Rebecca Johnson: “While her husband was giving overly emotional press conferences about soul mates and impossible love, Sanford kept her mouth shut and her head down.” Only now, when things have calmed down, and she has moved out of the governor’s mansion with her sons prior to the new school year, did she grant an interview.
Labeling Mrs. Sanford “an unlikely hero,” Ms. Johnson describes her as, “petite, clear-eyed, strong willed, pious without being smug, smart without being caustic,” and goes on to say that when the affair was revealed Jenny Sanford told “the simple truth.” And that is that her children – four boys ranging in age from ten to seventeen - were the most important thing in the world to her. That, as Ms. Johnson phrases it, “She had kicked the lying bum – that being her husband - out of the house when he refused to give up his mistress, but marriage is complex, life is hard and if he wanted to try and make the marriage work, the door was open.”
The Vogue reporter goes on to say that Mrs. Sanford’s one page statement outlining this simple truth - though in different words – she did not use the expression “lying bum,” although I’ll be the mortgage she thought it – her statement was written without the help of spin doctors or media consultants. “It came from her heart and her head,” Ms. Johnson writes. “It mentioned God without making you squirm.”
Let me repeat that last line: “It mentioned God without making you squirm.” Apparently, the question Jesus addresses to his disciples today when he speaks of his identity – “Does this offend you?” – could just as easily be applied to those who fancy themselves fashionistas, someone for whom the latest style is everything; a word my spell check does not recognize but whose meaning is clear to all who pay close attention to shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “Project Runway.” (Like “bridezilla,”an expression also born of reality TV, you can find “fashionista” defined on such web sites as “urban dictionary.”)
Any dictionary can give you the definition of “to offend.” Mine says, “To create or excite anger, resentment, or annoyance in; to be displeasing or disagreeable to, as in, ‘Onions offended his sense of smell.’” You have to wonder, does talk of God offend people’s taste?
Or, could it be, that our talking of God is not what causes offense, but our actually following what God has to say? In what is considered one of the “hard sayings,” Jesus tells the crowd in Luke, “I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
Now, that will get you squirming, especially if you think that he means it, as Mrs. Sanford apparently does. Her husband is not a bad person, she told Vogue Magazine, adding, “None of us are perfect. We are all trying to do the best we can. I also feel sorry for the other woman,” she continued, “All I can do is pray for her because she made some poor choices. Mark made some poor choices. A lot of people were brought down by this and I am sure that is not what they wanted.”
At the end of the magazine’s piece, after commenting that Jenny Sanford’s “willingness to forgive and move forward is probably what has most impressed the world about her,” Vogue lets Mrs. Sanford have the last word: “If you don’t forgive,” she said, “…you become angry and bitter. I don’t want to become that. I am not in charge of revenge. That’s not up to me. That’s for the Lord to decide, and it’s important for me to teach that to my boys. All I can do is forgive. Reconciliation is something else, and that is going to be a harder road…”
Yes it is. No one, least of all Jesus, ever said that traveling his road would be easy; easy to do, easy to understand.
“I am the bread which came down from heaven,” he tells his disciples today. “The one who eats this bread will live forever.” And what is their response? They grumble, as Israel grumbled in the desert, not trusting in God to provide for their needs. “This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” Actually, what they literally say is, “This is a hard word – “logos” – who can accept it?”
“Logos,” of course, holds multiple meanings, as does much of John’s Gospel. On one level, it means word referring to what is said; here translated “teaching.” On a deeper level, it refers to the logic behind the words, an ordering principle - think “logic.” And, on a still deeper level, the Logos is Jesus himself, the Word, so named in the very first sentence of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Now note that the word translated “difficult” or “hard” has nothing to do with intellectual comprehension. Originally, it referred to dry, and thus hard, ground. When it was used of people, it took on the meanings of “harsh,” “severe,” “demanding,” and, yes, “offensive.”
That’s Jesus, the hard word come down from heaven, God incarnate; that’s Jesus, the hard word who became flesh and lived among us full of grace and truth; that’s Jesus who took up his hard cross and suffered for the harsh world’s sake; who expects all who follow him to make himself a part of themselves. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” (Some say that this sentence, which admittedly can cause difficulty, needs to be understood as the equivalent of John’s Last Supper). To accept Jesus as the true bread from heaven is to find in him – his word, his life, himself – the full revelation of God, one that leads to eternal life. And that’s where things can bog down for some.
Theologians refer to this as “the scandal of particularity;” that is, that it was at a particular time, in a particular place and in a particular person that God fully revealed his purpose and his presence.
“Does this offend you?” Jesus asks. The verb John uses is the same as “to scandalize” or “to cause to stumble.” Does what I say about who I am offend you? Is it scandalous? And the answer, then and now, it seems, is yes.
That scandal, that offense, is just what’s causing the disciples so much difficulty because to walk in the eternal path is to walk a hard road in this temporal life; some can do it, some cannot. John says, “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” As one commentator put it, “The group gets smaller as the stakes get higher.”
As some of his recently formed followers choose to depart by a different path, Jesus asks the twelve – his original disciples – “Do you also wish to go away?” A poignant, heartbreaking question isn’t it, remarkably straightforward, no nuances. The choice is up to us. The door is open.
Each day Jesus extends himself to us, his essence, his nature, offering the living bread which came down from heaven; offering the words of eternal life. All along he has told us that there will be obstacles, there will be opposition; there will be those who take offense. Among his other so called “hard sayings” are these from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account.”
Well, those of us who long to make Jesus a part of our lives don’t encounter such overt oppression in this society, as some Christians do in other parts of the world where practicing our faith is against the law, an offense punishable by deportation, imprisonment or even worse.
Here, the only criminal risk we seem to run from a public pronouncement of faith is a citation from the fashion police; God talk is just not “en vogue,” following the prevailing practice or style. Seldom does it make people outraged; it just makes them squirm. We find ourselves being careful how we speak.
It’s remarkably easy to offend someone – a wrong word, a wrong look; a wrong gesture can be enough to generate grumbling. Unintentional offense is usually easily remedied; you apologize and make a sincere effort not to make the same mistake again. Repeated offensive words or behavior will usually narrow your social circle, making your group smaller, and forcing people from your presence. It’s hard to imagine anyone choosing to live that way.
Most of us, in order to get along – and in order to have people to talk to – do our best to cover up those parts of ourselves that we believe others would have difficulty understanding or accepting. Only to a carefully chosen few do we choose to reveal all of who we are; only to a few do we share our essence, our nature, simply and truthfully.
Jesus, who cared little about giving offense, spent his time giving truthfully of himself to those whose very existence was enough to cause others to squirm: shady tax collectors, contagious lepers, pleading, bleeding women, to name a few. He gave of himself with no assurance that he would be favorably received. In fact, with the exception of the women who remained faithful until the end, those he had earlier chosen to follow him will deny him or run away, offended by the sight of their messiah hanging with his body exposed between two thieves on a cross. Even Peter will stumble, the one who today says that he has come to believe that Jesus is the “holy one of God,” demonstrating that he is finally catching on to what all this offensive talk of coming from the Father and abiding in his presence is all about.
He gets it and then he forgets it; it happens to us all; life is hard and we stumble along. In our complex existence we need reminding of some of the hard, decidedly out of vogue teachings every so often. And, thanks to the mysterious workings of grace, we can discover eternal truths even in sources devoted to a celebration of what is fleeting. God forbid that this fall you should be caught wearing last year’s shoes!
Yes, it is possible to mention God without embarrassment; it is possible to be pious without being smug; it is possible to forgive. Go ahead, dare to offend; dare to be scandalous; dare to be an unlikely hero and speak from your heart and your head; someone may be taking notes.