Honest Empowerment
“Honest Empowerment”
Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost and All Saints Day Observed
Year C, November 3, 2019
Ephesians 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31 Luke 19:1-10
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
The choir sang, “Hold Me, Rock Me” which is a song seeking solace and claiming hope that says, “I’ve got a home on the other side.” This presumes, I think, that the “other side” means after we die, as in “going to heaven.” The song has a lullaby feel to it, the different parts overlapping in ways that try to sound soothing and smooth. It was picked today because we are recognizing All Saints Day, and naming those who have died, we trust a larger Reality which includes both seen and unseen, Earthly experience and something beyond the span of a human life, some way of connecting this dimension with other realms; maybe we call that, “heaven.”
With society’s focus last week on Halloween and all things frightening, one of the stories I heard explored Zombies. Many Americans have a fascination with Zombies, and there are television series, movies, books, and bumper stickers which anticipate a Zombie Apocalypse. The “living dead” is the main idea of Zombies, that a body is still functioning but it has lost its soul. The idea of a human without a soul is very scary, and Zombies seem to experience pain, physical damage, and yet are forced to continue their empty existence, trying to pull as much life into the abyss as possible.
This fantasy is linked to reality and has historical roots. The origins of Zombies is found in Haiti, that Caribbean nation only 90 miles from Florida and the riches of Miami, yet Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It was colonized by the French who brought slaves from Africa. The life of a slave was so hard that most of them did not live past their teen age years. They were forced to work without pay to the point of death. They had no recourse, no way out; they were trapped, enslaved. A few slaves independently rebelled, one here, one there. Eventually this spread to a broader uprising and the slaves in Haiti revolted and the French were defeated in 1804. France still insisted that the Haitian slaves, now independent, pay France what to us would be billions of dollars in compensation. It was outrageous!
Also, in 1915 on order of President Woodrow Wilson the United States Marines invaded Haiti, beginning an American occupation that lasted until 1934, in some ways, 1941. Wilson was worried that Germany would invade Haiti, and politics in that island nation was already very chaotic and dangerous. Because of it’s instability, American investors were having a difficult time making money. The American occupation forced the Haitians to improve their infrastructure by building roads, yet it was forced labor and the impoverished workers were not paid. That is the time period when an American author wrote about “the Living Dead,” as Haitian people experience the living hell of political domination, exploitation, and coercion. The author’s book was a best seller, and Zombies were born into the American imagination. (https://www.thoughtco.com/haiti-the-us-occupation-1915-1934-2136374, this is an online article with more information and perspectives. The interview I mention was on National Public Radio, Morning Edition, on Halloween morning).
The song, “I’ve got a home on the other side,” promotes theologies of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. But pushing the fullness of God’s Presence to the future, in heaven, comes at the expense of not recognizing our divinity and God’s sacredness in earthly experience today. The three-tiered universe of heaven “up there”, Earth right here, and hell below, and for many Catholics, Purgatory is in there someplace, this is part of our Christian heritage. But this three-tiered universe is inadequate to lead us forward. Yet, as limited as this theology may be, there is some truth to it that has been quite helpful to people like Haitian slaves. “I’ve got a home on the other side,” is a call of hope and promise for countless millions who are entrapped with no recourse and forced to live an unjust existence. For many, death is a final release from tremendous pain and suffering and violations of human dignity.
But it seems like we have the Zombie thing backwards. It started from Haiti, based on the experience of forced labor of impoverished people and selected classes of society viewing others as sub-human. The slaves were called the Living Dead, bodies forced to work without a soul. But it seems like, really, the ones who are most detached from their own souls are the oppressors, the occupiers, the land holders, the investors, those in charge of foreign policy, the patronizing exploiters. If you are in touch with your soul, centered in Christ, awake to God’s love, then Luke 6:31 becomes less of a command and more a result as it says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” But it’s the oppressors who are in their bodies yet living without a very large vision of love; their souls are blinded and other values, such as politics and economics, guide their actions.
The Apostle Paul shows us a key that unlocks this blindness, inviting larger visions of “the praise of God’s glory.” As Ephesians chapter one begins with the words, “In Christ,” Paul is inviting a theology of two words, “In Christ,” to define our experience, identity, orientation, world view, and hope. In Christ, is our center, rather than ego-centric living or some other value. In Christ our soul finds integration, connection, health and wholeness.
I preach a lot about contemplation, and disciplines like Centering Prayer. Notice the name? Centering? This name intentionally claims our Center “in Christ” rather than our own limited expressions and understandings. Those French in Haiti, for example, who stole the land from indigenous people, and forced slaves to work to the point of death, were living in ways that assumed God was blessing them and calling them by laws of conquest to embody the Doctrine of Discovery, in which the Pope blessed the taking of land and officially sanctioned exploitation of non-Europeans. We can look back and honestly say that those Europeans had a false doctrine, an incorrect mandate, and do not summarize the fullness of God’s call; their expressions of Christianity were flawed.
We can also look back at the experience of Haitian slaves who lived a miserable existence to the point where Zombies are now the depiction we’ve inherited. But we can also say their experience as “the living dead” does not summarize the fullness of Christ’s intention for the world. Notice Paul uses words like “promised Holy Spirit,” and “inheritance toward redemption,” and “come to know him.” These words have movement, momentum, and power as creation groans with birthpangs and humanity lives through stages of infancy into a “spirit of wisdom and revelation” as evolution draws us forward as a species, deeper into God’s intention and purpose.
Because any particular life is limited, and has a context that is time-bound, culturally conditioned, and situation-specific, our minds and the thoughts they produce are also limited and unable to capture the fullness of life and faith. Our ego-centric minds were never intended for such awareness, and inherited assumption like the Doctrine of Original Sin really developed by Augustine in the early centuries of the church once it became the religion of the Empire, don’t allow for much optimism. Our minds have limits. It’s the heart that truly locates us “in Christ.” And Paul knows that we default to the mind, especially in Western culture. But the Christian gospel is such good news that it’s mind-blowing!
Paul prays that God may give a “spirit of wisdom and revelation” as the Ephesians, and us, come to know “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” But then he uses language of contemplation, of experiential faith, not calculated faith or measured doctrines or beliefs. He prays that God gives us a “spirit of wisdom and revelation,” so that, “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”
How do you know “immeasurable?” Our minds can’t grasp, “immeasurable.” Our hearts become the tool of spiritual perception and receptivity, as our soul is grounded and rooted “in Christ.” Paul, the Mystic, is calling us to enlightenment through the eyes of our heart, (it’s right there in Ephesians), for the glory of God’s praise.
The passages in Luke are illustrations of this deep dynamic, showing Zacchaeus climbing a tree in order to see, when really he’s seeing with the eyes of his heart and that is what changes his life. He finds his center “in Christ.” Jesus declares that salvation has come to his house that day, and Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham. This is another way of saying that Jesus reveals what it means to live as a whole human being, not defined by our limited measures or society’s prejudices, but by faith claiming our identity “in Christ.” This universal revelation of God, shared with Zacchaeus and all the world, has a way of relativizing everything else.
Politics can’t capture the fullness of God. Economics can’t either. Family values, culturally conditioned, are not broad enough to include the outsiders or those who don’t fit in. Even religion can only use metaphor, pointing through story and illustration, to the praise of God’s glory, as “words of truth” help discerning hearts receive “wisdom and revelation” found only “in Christ.” Christ is not bound by any rule or authority or power or dominion, and no name in this age or any other limits or hinders the creative power and Presence of Christ, who “fills all in all.”
As the cries of enslaved Haitians echoes through the ages, merging with the suffering of people claiming hope that there is another side to Reality, may God’s Grace fill us with wisdom and revelation and help us open the eyes of our hearts to receive the peace given, offered, and found “in Christ.” May our experience of the Ultimate relativize everything else so we don’t end up idolizing and be led astray. May our soul find vitality and sing to the praise of God’s glory, as love shines the way to fullness In Christ.
As Evelyn Underhill puts it in regards to living an active faith in Christ,
“To be a spectator of Reality is not enough. The awakened subject is not merely to perceive a transcendent life, but to participate therein; and for this, a drastic and costly life-changing is required.” (http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/proper26c.html, Meditation two).
The name, Zacchaeus, means pure. May we, like him, find purity of heart, in Christ, both NOW, and forever. Amen.