The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
This has been a hard week to be a Christian! Throughout our nation this week we have seen some startling behavior. A number of individuals that we hold up as icons, even role models in fields ranging from sports to entertainment to politics, have engaged in behavior we can only describe as rude, boorish, even angry outbursts and disgraceful, childish reactions, leading an associate from my old law firm to email me, asking if I was interested in starting a consulting business with her – we could market ourselves as behavioral consultants for celebrities and public figures, she said, with the motto, “We will teach you how not to show your behind in public.”
But this rash of bad behavior, crossing all lines – gender, race, creed, sportsmanship, professionalism – and the national reaction and discussion of the value of civility, have been yet another reminder to people of faith that we are truly pilgrims, singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.
We have also seen behavior this week that was more brutish, more deeply troubling, though I’m not sure we have connected the two in our national debate – a young woman, brutally murdered, her body stuffed into a wall, with the only apparent explanation being anger boiling over into rage, unchecked emotion giving rise to unspeakable violence. Truly, we Christians are strangers in this land, where a fellow human being can be killed so thoughtlessly, and disposed of so easily, as if she were garbage to be tossed in a dumpster.
These have been sad days, disappointing days, but what we have seen, unfortunately, is nothing new in our history as humans. James describes it in the passage from the Epistle today: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. 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.”
And what was the offered solution, in the time of James?
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you…[for] Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…
For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
That’s the solution: Gentleness, born of wisdom.
James speaks of ambition, calling it wicked and evil. This isn’t a value that we hold today; ambition is something that is admired and praised, and rightly so. And ambition is not a bad thing, but ambition without regard to others is unspiritual, devilish, and ambition at all cost is truly evil.
In Judaism, there is a concept called, in Hebrew, tikkun olum, which roughly translates to “repairing the world through personal action.” Jews are taught to strive towards tikkun olum in every action, every interaction, so that in making every exchange with another person holy, the division between God and the world will be worn away.
Psychologists have a similar concept, and it is called Transformational Change. The theory is that all anger, all aggression, finds its genesis in fear. When we find ourselves in an interaction that makes us afraid – whether it is fear for our physical body, fear of loneliness, fear of not being as important as we’d like to be, fear of not getting the respect that we need – that fear quickly resolves itself in anger, and aggression, and we lash out at whatever, whomever, is making us afraid.
In Transformational Change, the idea is that when we find ourselves in a situation where we are feeling fear, we hold onto it, we sit with it and let it resonate in ourselves until we figure out what is causing it, and then we decide how to respond appropriately, and make the conscious choice not to simply project our fear into the world as anger.
And so, as we enter out from this place today, as Christian pilgrims into a chaotic and sometimes harsh world, may we all have the courage to be the change we wish to see, may we repair the world in all of our actions, and may we be guided by gentleness, born of wisdom, all to the glory of God.
AMEN.
