Friends in Christ, I’m going to blow your minds with what I’m about to say. And I can say it with confidence because they’re not my words. I’m not exactly sure who said this first, but it wasn’t me. Are you ready? “The devil is the need to defeat the other.” [marinate]
Now let me just say right off the bat that I’m not talking about a little healthy competition on the playing field….whether it’s a board game, ice rink, or baseball diamond. I love to win, to defeat the other, the opposition as much as anybody. Nothing wrong with sport. The Olympics and World Cups. At it’s best, these are wonderful events that comes along every couple of years…intended (not perfect) in an admirable spirit of unity and global peace. I’m not talking about defeating the other in sports and games.
I’m talking about the way we think, the way we see and relate to each other and the world. “The devil is the need to defeat the other.”
Friends in Christ, we have been saturated for 400 years, since the time of the Renaissance at least, with DUALISTIC thinking.
We have been taught to evaluate the world by sizing everything up to something else. And we do it so much we don’t even realize it. Is it good or bad, is it art or trash, is it holy or is it an abomination, is it brilliant or stupid, is it appropriate or inappropriate? Dualistic thinking. We compare so much: my kid’s grades are better or worse than yours, look at the size of my office compared to my high school buddy’s, check out my level of success, or my level of volunteer involvement compared with the one (or a whole church) who calls themselves “Christian” down the street. Look at what percentage of my income I give. Guess I’m better! Or worse. My level of education, my ability to climb the corporate ladder, make the right investment, to build a better kitchen cabinet, to teach a better lesson, to speak more eloquently, to look more beautiful. “The devil is the need to defeat the other.”
Do you know what that really is? Our ego gets in there and then the devil--the need to defeat the other--goes to work! Watch for it this week. Our pride and our greed gets in there and we get attached, attached to stuff.
Politics in our country: masters at dualistic thinking!
Oops…I just did dualistic thinking…there’s my judgment!
If you’re listening to me, I bet your doing dualistic thinking on me, toward me…right now. Can’t really help it. You’re evaluating me: “Do I like what he’s saying or not, do I like what he’s wearing or not, do I like his tone or his demeanor or not… And we do it throughout worship with our musicians, with our pray-ers, with our readers, with our kids, everyone’s always being evaluated. Right? It can be exhausting. It can wear us down. [pause] Can there be another way?
Well our Gospel lesson today gives us some ideas, a glimpse of God, if you will—a glimpse of the one who is above the devil, above the need to defeat the other.
God presides over us all: As we bicker in this world and cut one another down, as our ego’s battle it out, as our pride leads us down destructive pathways, our God waits for us.
Our Gospel lesson today gives us an invitation in this season of Lent to return again to the one who is above the traps, the chains, the blindfolds of dualistic thinking [pause].
Our Gospel lesson today gives us a glimpse of God, and She’s in the image...of a chicken. Now don’t go falling into the snares of dualism again, here: hear me out… (not my words)
Jesus, we hear in our Gospel today, is longing to gather all the broken world under his wing. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem...” means so much more than just Jerusalem.
This image is so powerful—not necessarily because we imagine God as mother chicken, but—because that makes us little chicks. Our quibbles are like the peeps of little chicks, franticly running about, and Jesus longs to gather us under the warmth of his wing. New mothers and all caregivers know something about the feel of picking up a frantic, crying child, and literally feeling that child’s body calm down in the embrace, literally feeling that child’s body go from a tensed up state of total agitation and fear…to sleep, with nothing more from the caregiver but physical contact and maybe a little song. That’s God the mothering hen! “Loving, mothering God, how might we come to know your presence and your contact in our frantic and fear-filled lives?” Communion, baptism.
Another way is simply by breathing. Slow down and breathe. We need someone to tell us that, don’t we? Jesus says that to us today: Slow down and breathe.
Take any tough issue: Poverty, abortion, war, sexuality and the church, immigration, traditional vs. contemporary music, welfare, health care, gun control — whatever issue gets your blood boiling. Watch yourself fall into the dualistic traps of judgment, ego, pride, greed, attachment…scurrying around like little chicks. It’s natural for us all to do that. [pausing]
Now watch out for the devil, i.e. the need to defeat the other. [slowly] And start to breathe.
One of the ancient Hebrew words for God is YaHWeH. Our OT lesson today tells us that the Word of “YHWH” comes to Abram in a vision. But the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t say YHWH, they wouldn’t even write out YHWH fully. They’d just use the just Hebrew consonants equivalent to Y-H-W-H.
But they really didn’t have to say or write the word for God. [pause] YHWH, you see, is the word that requires the least amount of work for even your mouth. In fact it requires no work for your lips. Saying God’s name—that is, giving praise and realizing the presence of God in our world, in our lives, in our bodies (over all the dualistic quibbles and peeps of our existence)—is as simple as breathing. [try it...]
When we breathe the holy breath with which God has filled us, and through which God abides in us, our ego falls out of the way, the blindfold of our dualism—and all the pride and judgment and attachment that come with it—falls from our eyes. And in our breathing , in our YHWHing, we start to see with the eyes of God. Our bodies and souls calm, like a frantic baby being pulled to his mother’s breast.
But we don’t just go to sleep. In fact, the opposite.
The clarity that comes in knowing that we are sheltered and warmed under God’s wing gives us the courage to act with the compassion, justice and peace of Christ — that is the wisdom and the love of God’s own self. So being gathered under God’s wing actually engages us with the world, but now with clarity and vision, “filled it to the utmost with God” (Luther) in every breath. And, with the very eyes of Christ, we return to all those difficult issues. To our lives. To the brokenness.
We breathe God—calm to our souls, release of our egos—and in so doing we return to the world with lives of service, hope, joy and love. This is the gift of Lent.
[Take some minutes to breathe. Then a bedtime hymn.]
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