A Dozen Days of Advent
Looking at the Gospel message of the day immediately after watching the Republican debate on CNN. The differences were dramatic. On the one hand is Jesus telling his followers that “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” On the other is a double handful of men who would put themselves forth as being unique in history as the best person to lead our country. I have to say, there wasn’t much humbling of the self going on today.
But it would be easy to swipe at the candidates and go my way. It occurs to me that the message from the Gospel today is not unlike the view I described of Jesus’ birthplace. I have to wonder who would the humble of our time be. It certainly seems that everyone in America feels entitled to everything the world has to offer. That isn’t necessarily exalting yourself, but it remains the antithesis of humility.
Our pastor likes to ask us who we are in the message. Are we Jesus as he talks to his followers? Are we those followers who are naturally seeking to be exalted? Are we the humble servants who kneel at his feet? Or are we the ones sitting in Moses’ seat? The message is slightly different from each perspective.
We would all like to think that we are the humble servant being pulled to our feet and pushed by Jesus himself into the seat of honor. Surely, there are times when that is true for everyone. But if the whole of the message is: “Don’t worry. Be happy. Things will get better.” then Christianity takes a giant step towards being the religion of slaves and sheep as described by Nietzsche.
For myself, there is always a danger of seeking to be the one who is exalted. Maybe it is because I never quite fit in as a child or maybe it is because I am just as human as everyone else, but I want credit for what I do. I affix my name to my writing because, on the off hand someone else refers to it, I want someone to know it was originally mine. Even as I write that, it seems like a horribly small-minded thing to worry about (especially since I don’t get paid for this, though I’d like to get paid and turn this pseudo-hobby into a career [ahem - hint, hint]).
Perhaps the message to those of us who would be servants is something along the lines of: “Don’t worry if you are recognized for what you do – just make sure you do it. Just as the manure-strewn stall is a grand enough place to host a King’s birth, the paper-shuffling and bumbling about is a grand enough position in his entourage.”
This reminds me of an off-color joke my late brother used to tell about how the anus became the body’s boss. When the anus told the rest of the body that it wanted to be boss, they laughed at it. So the anus went on strike. Soon enough, the brain couldn’t think, the eyes couldn’t see, the legs couldn’t walk, etc. So the anus became the boss. (There’s a message in there about my brother’s relationship with his boss.)
Hmmm. So even if we are the anus of Jesus’ entourage, then our job is still vital and we should still endeavor to do the best we can at it. Not the prettiest Christmas thought to be had, I suppose.
The Daily Episcopalian has posted a paper by Rev. Canon Marilyn McCord Adams called Homophobia is a sin whose end time is now. It has some good points on the issue of tolerance. Her strongest point, in my mind, came early:
The human side of the Church–like the text of the bible–cannot escape human fallibility. Her calling–like that of individual members’–is not to boast of being ‘holier than thou’, all the while claiming Divine sanction for her institutional policies. The human side of the Church is no more 99 and 44/100 percent pure than her individual members are. Rather the Church is summoned to vigilance, to institutional circumspection which is ever on the lookout to identify the systemic evils to which it gives rise; to repentance and works meet for repentance that seek to uproot them. Nor is this a temporary and passing assignment. When it comes to social and political arrangements, our institutions will always be riddled with systemic evils. Because it proves so difficult to uproot any one of them, because we can’t dig out all of them at once, we are everywhere-and-always tempted to status-quo acquiescence. Our calling is to the exact opposite: to discern which ones are ripe for uprooting and to take the lead eradicating them, beginning in the garden behind our own house!
The message for me? Probably the one that seems to keep cropping up on a weekly basis at Bible study – I have a task set before me, I should quit dinking around and do it.
Now that would be a miracle.
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