H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
May 25, 2003
SHAPING HOLY LIVES
Part II
Text: Colossians 3:12-17; Matthew 5:33-37
Today’s sermon concludes the one begun last week: Shaping Holy Lives.
Let me offer these bridging words. Paul begins the Colossians passage:
"You chosen ones, holy and beloved." Chosen and beloved we
"get." The word holy is a bit more difficult.
To try to live a holy life tends to throw us from the peril of pride on
the one side to the peril of despair on the other. At least for me. And the rocks of
despair often seem closer than the rocks of pride.
The psalmist writes, "Worship God in the beauty of holiness."
Can holiness be beautiful? Unless there is some beauty about it, there is no God in it. Is
a holy life possible? Only as God makes us holy. So let there be no pride -- it is not our
doing. And let there be no despair -- God is at work.
Last week I spoke of three qualities of the holy life: Holy Realism,
Hospitality and Humility. Today I add five more.
I
The first three come from Rowan Williams: Transparency, Peacemaking, and
Accountability.
Transparency means that we do not entertain deceit. There will
perhaps always be some measure of untruth in us. But we endeavor not to entertain deceit,
to pull up a chair for it and offer it a drink.
Transparency requires a rugged honesty with the self. We spot the
chasing of fantasy. We let reality itself check the blurring of sense and nonsense.
Jesus had transparency in mind when he taught about the use of the
tongue: Do not swear by any name; for when you do, this implies you don’t tell the truth
the rest of the time. Let your yes be yes and your no be no (Matthew 5:33-34).
Transparency also means not offering a false peace, not faking
reconciliation. It is a forthright facing of what has caused difficulty. When we offer
false reconciliation it often means we have not dealt with our own resentment.
The second quality is being Peacemakers. Paul says, "Let the
peace of Christ rule in your hearts." Rule there. Williams mentioned some very
practical measures here: Avoid retaliation. Don’t enter into gossip. Pray for your
enemies. Why? Because we do not despair of the mercy of God.
Williams asked the question: What is the currency of your institution,
your community? In some institutions the main currency is the exchange of grievance. What
you put into a system you will likely get out. So put into your institution, your
community something other than grudges, grievances and conflict.
The third quality of the holy life Williams enumerated was Accountability.
It is not a word we want to snuggle up to. Who wants to stand as judge or measure over
another? Who wants to be held accountable?
But here is the key. The standard of measure of what it means to be a
human being and a member of God’s people is not you or I. It is Jesus Christ. In the
community of Christ we agree that he is the measure, and we agree to hold each other to a
standard beyond us all.
Colossians calls us to "teach and admonish one another." We
could never do this if our lives were the measure. The measure is Christ. The goal
of our spirituality is the making of Christlike adults. So in the community of Christ we
remind each other of the way of Jesus, and we urge one another along that path. We let
each other know when we’ve slipped, and we pick each other up when we fall.
Here is the importance of the phrase in Colossians: "Let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly." In the Benedictine life there are periods every day
where they listen to scripture and hear the word of Christ. How can the hearing of Jesus’
words be more a part of the daily rhythm of our lives? The early Church, following the
rhythm of Jewish daily prayers, said we should pray the Lord’s Prayer three times every
day. There could be worse places to start.
Think of the words you on a daily basis let dwell in you and affect your
mind and heart: Media commentators; T.V. stars; some person’s critical remark. Dr. Phil
and Oprah are fine. But let us find ways to let the word of Christ dwell richly in us.
An essential part of Benedictine spirituality and of Christian community
is the fourth quality I will mention today: Stabilitas or Stability. The
Benedictine monk not only takes a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience;
there is also the vow of stability. This means he will stay in monastery with those
same brothers for his whole life, unless assigned elsewhere by the abbot.
This commitment says, I will stay through thick and thin. It says, I
have a better shot at wholeness and holiness if I stay here with people who know me well,
than by changing communities every time things get difficult.
What could the quality of Stabilitas mean to us in a non-monastic
setting?
It means that sameness will not lead to bitterness. We will discover new
and creative ways to respond to one another. Habitual response kills the spirit of
relationship and of community. Such is the sin of the rolling of the eyes.
It means, as Colossians says, that we bear with one
another. And that we learn the holy art of forgiveness from the One who has forgiven us.
We all hunger for a place, a space of stable relation where we can grow
without fear.
We need a place where our shadow-side can be faced, where we can look at
our needy, dis-eased and imperfect self without fear and find a path of healing and hope.
The message of the gospel and of every church seeking to embody the
gospel is this message:
If you look at your unwholeness you will not die.
Here, in Christ’s community, you can face your unwholeness without
fear, without self-despising and be able to grow into the person God has made you and
called you to be.
The last quality of the holy life then is Hope. Hope does not
despair in the mercy of God, God’s mercy to me, or for another or for the world.
It trusts in the power and love of God in the midst of the most terrible
loss, darkness, cruelty, injustice.
Paul uses the word patience. Patience is a cousin of hope. It
refuses to adopt ungodly, unethical or violent means to achieve good ends because it
trusts God’s power and love to prevail. Hope believes that time is on God’s side. In
the kingdom of God the ends do not justify the means; the ends are present in the
means!
Hope keeps us working with imperfect people and imperfect institutions
because our faith is in God, not in our human capacities. Hope encourages adult-adult
relationships with our key institutions. In adult-adult relationships we do not require
our institutions to be perfect in order to be good, in order for them to achieve God’s
purposes. Neither do we have to be perfect in order to be good and to be used by
God.
Hope trusts in the power and love of God to redeem the world, even when
we cannot see God’s way prevailing. As Paul wrote: Who hopes in what he, she can see?
Hope waits for God (Romans 8:24-25).
Kathleen Norris has written a poem entitled "Afterward." It
tells the harrowing story of a thirteen-year-old girl raped and killed along with
twenty-three other children by soldiers in El Mozote. As the girl was
repeatedly raped, she sang hymns. The singing frightened and confused the soldiers.
Finally one of them shot her. She kept singing. Then she was shot a second time and still
she sang. Then one of the soldiers took a machete and
"... hacked through her neck
until at last, the singing stopped."
Afterward, they are still afraid. They wonder what was going on with
this girl. Kathleen Norris closes the poem with the words:
is it fear,
or singing, that has no end.
That is the question, isn’t it? "Is it fear, or singing, that has
no end?" People of hope wager their lives that it is singing that will not end. That
is why we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord with all
our hearts – or making as much melody as we can make – the singing itself forming our
hope, making our lives a song of thanksgiving and praise. Yes, we "faith": It is
singing, not fear, that has no end.
The poet Hopkins wrote:
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s
self and beauty’s giver.1
Such is our best worship and best music and best living of our lives
toward holiness.
1. "The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo"
