The Rev. Fred G. Garry - October 6, 2002
Texts: Genesis 33 and 2 Corinthians 5 A man came into my office one day.
He stood at my door and asked if he could have a moment of my
time. Wearing a clerical collar and dressed in attire appropriate
for an Episcopalian pastor or a Roman Catholic priest I expected
him to be quick to identify himself and his parish. He did neither.
Taking the seat I offered he said, "I was wondering if there
was a chance I could come and speak at your church?" "Speak
about what?" I said a bit confused and taken aback by the
request. People who come to speak at a congregation are almost
always invited and this fellow hadn't even told me who he is.
"I would like to come and speak
about religious tolerance." My social radar is sometimes
a little slow to engage, but with this I was fully aware something
was amiss. "Summit Avenue is a rather tolerant group,"
I said, "what religion or group are you hoping we would
tolerate?" "Well," he took a rather long pause
here, "I am a Wiccan priest and I would like to share with
your congregation about who we are, what we practice, and try
to dispel some of the myths and rumors." He went on for
a bit here trying to offer a kind of survey tour of Wiccan practices.
Then he asked the question again, "would it be possible
for me to come and share in a kind of inter-faith dialogue?"
I looked him dead in the eyes and said,
"no." By the look on his face I believe that either
this was his first attempt to find a speaking engagement, or
others had been less direct. "There is no way I would extend
that offer to you," I said, "yet since you have made
the request in person I think you deserve a rationale for my
refusal."
"There are two reasons I would not
extend such an invitation. The first is that Wicca is not based
upon a belief in God or a deity. As I understand it, your belief
is in nature and by developing a special relationship with nature
you can solicit a level of control over natural substances, something
often referred to as magic. Correct?" He nodded his head
slowly as if he were surprised by the Spartan quality of the
definition. "Such a belief has no basis with the Christian
faith, hence, we can have no inter-faith dialogue, because there
just isn't anything to talk about." He tried to argue with
me for a moment but then conceded if the Presbyterian definition
of faith is faith in God, then in fact we have nothing in common.
"Secondly," I went on, "I
would never encourage anyone to tolerate another." This
surprised him a bit and he asked me to explain. "Well let
me ask you, have you ever been tolerated by someone? Has someone
just put up with you?" "Yes," he said. "Was
this a good experience? Did you enjoy being endured? Did you
feel loved and cared for, accepted and known?" "No,
I did not." "There have been times," I said, "where
I can remember being tolerated, never liked it a bit. In fact
I would prefer hostility to tolerance simply for the fact that
the former is more honest. So if I invited you to come and encourage
tolerance, what I am really allowing is for you to condone behavior
I would never want, and from what you said, neither do you, actually."
The fellow stayed for a while longer.
I really don't think anyone had ever truly engaged him before.
I had a feeling that he was usually greeted by fear, revulsion,
or ridicule. And most likely, rightly so. Witchcraft is old as
the hills; it's paganism. And paganism is a kind of cultural
decay that leads to violence; and violence is less than human.
Something in this strange moment stayed
with me. I mean it's not everyday such a person comes into my
office. It has stayed with me for two reasons the first was that
I felt he was trying to be sneaky. He didn't introduce himself
right off; he wore a clerical collar that is certainly not pagan
garb; and, he said he wanted to speak about religious tolerance
and that just wasn't true. He had a very specific agenda. And
that agenda wasn't tolerance; it was godlessness.
In spite of his ulterior motives the
second thing that stuck with me was the whole notion of being
tolerated. There is something just not right with this. Since
this meeting I stumbled across a book that describes what is
not right with tolerance much better than I ever could. It was
a book by a Croatian theologian named Miroslav Volf. Volf wrote
a book called Exclusion and Embrace. The thesis of the book is
very simple and I wish I could have given the title to the rather
misguided fellow. The thesis is: inclusion is not the opposite
of exclusion.
In the United States today we are very
big into inclusion. Everyone needs to be included, represented,
given his or her seat at the table. We feel that by including
everyone that somehow we are being equitable. Volf argues: this
is a false path. For inclusion, like tolerance, is a false friend.
Being included is like being tolerated. In the end, you can include
people you hate, rather than exclude them, but you can still
hate them. The opposite of exclusion, he argues very well, is
not inclusion, but embrace. It is only when we embrace our enemies,
people we are angry with, those whom we fear, that we can truly
accept them.
For Volf this insight came with a real
struggle. He is Croatian and a Christian. The scriptures don't
call him to include the Serbs, they call him to love the Serbs.
He had to ask himself, is this possible? By asking the question,
the falsity of inclusion became apparent. If he was called simply
to include a Serb in the human race, he could still harbor the
desire and even the belief that these people should all die.
Generations of bloodshed runs deep. Yet, if he was called to
embrace a Serb, there could be no truth in the act if he still
hated them.
When we left the story of Jacob off last
week, he was in a real bind. Jacob sent a messenger to Esau,
his estranged brother, saying I am coming home. The messenger
returned to say, Esau got your message and he is coming this
way with four hundred men. Jacob assumes the worst: Esau wanted
to kill him twenty years ago, and nothing has changed. A twenty-year
gap had not cooled his brother or eased his anger. Jacob had
cheated him and deceived his father; he had left Esau with plenty
of things to hate. And for all intents and purposes, it appeared
that Esau had spent those twenty years waiting for his chance
to seek revenge.
Thus Jacob began a kind of tactical plan
of spreading his family out so some may survive. To his credit
Jacob goes out first, as a kind of sacrifice. As the two meet
we can only believe that Jacob was filled with tenor up to the
very last moment until Esau took him in his arms and embraced
him, wept with him, and in effect forgave him of his misdeeds.
Now this is what happened. A beautiful
moment of reconciliation. Two brothers who hated one another
and treated each other poorly and had ever lived at odds with
one another, came together in a one of the greatest pictures
of mercy. In fact this is the picture, if 1 were going to say,
this is what heaven is meant to be, this is what Christ accomplished
for us on the cross, this is what the gospel means, if I were
going to choose one instance, this would be it. I mean it is
all here. Other than the story of the Prodigal son, there is
no rival.
There is no rival, yet there is no other
picture that is more sorely neglected, more completely forgotten.
And there is good reason for this. Esau's embrace of Jacob is
way out of the box. I mean... it is way out of how we live. We
preach peace and joy and mercy and grace and even forgiveness,
but if the truth be told we are talking about people we like.
Find peace and joy and mercy and grace and forgive people you
like. But people you hate, people who are all wrong, people who
are not the best, for these we have a different message. We will
tolerate you; we ill endure you; we will include you; we may
even find federal dollars to teach you how to read, but that's
were it ends.
Inclusion and tolerance: we have made
it sound like it is some sort of great vision for a democratic
society, when in fact it is nothing but a veiled distrust, a
veiled fear. Like the adage keep you friends close and your enemies
closer still. Such is inclusion and tolerance. For there is no
embrace.
I struggled over where to end the reading
of Genesis today. I struggled because I could have made it a
really nice reading by just including the embrace. For after
that is a rather depressing picture. If you read the passage
carefully, after the beautiful picture of the brothers holding
one another, after this they start lighting, or arguing might
be better. Esau doesn't want the gift; Jacob doesn't want to
follow. The twenty-year gap had changed these two, but they were
still Jacob and Esau. They were probably still convinced the
other was in the wrong.
I decided to include the picture of them
going from embrace to bickering for one reason. Embrace isn't
magic. I included this because I believe that you should know,
that if you really take this message to heart and you find the
people in your life you keep at arms length, the ones you include
begrudgingly, or the one for whom you hold a grudge, if you take
this message to heart and embrace them, which is what the Scripture
calls us to do, if you do this they will not magically become
the person you want them to be.
This is one of the greatest mysteries
of our faith, for this is how God treats us. In Jesus Christ
God was reconciling the world, embracing the world, knowing that
for most people this embrace would not change them, would not
magically transform their life. This is the deep struggle of
the passages we read this morning. Embrace is what we are called
to do, it is what we believe God has done for all of creation
in Jesus Christ, and we believe that this embrace is the image
of how we should live, be toward one another. Yet if the truth
be told, this embrace is so often not how we live. And this embrace
is rarely offered to others how it was offered to us. The underlying
rationale is that hatred will have more effect upon people than
love.
In this line of reasoning and behavior
though we miss picture of God we find in Jesus Christ. While
we were yet sinners Christ died for us, rose for us, and intercedes
with the father for us. While we were yet. The embrace of Christ,
just like the embrace of Esau is not magic. It is an offer of
acceptance, not a demand for change. Jacob and Esau embrace and
quickly they are who they were twenty years ago. Whatever they
were to become, had been, or were was about a life together.
And so it is with us. Remember the embrace with Esau is just
as it with God. God knows full well Jacob is still Jacob, just
like I am still me, and you are still you. The embrace is not
a reward to offered once my life or your life is what someone
deems appropriate. The embrace is the freedom to live, to stumble
through life, to stumble, though, in the midst of grace.
I implore you to live out the picture
of Jacob and Esau as hard as it may sound. I charge you to remember
it is not magic; it is grace. Be watchful for the ones you tolerate,
the ones you include begrudgingly, the ones you offer a kind
of veiled endurance, be watchful for in these is the moment to
offer the very same grace you received, the grace of God. Amen.
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