Two Sermons for the House of Bishops Meeting, March 2001
2001; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 83; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-6214
Autores Tópico(s)Biblical Studies and Interpretation
ResumoMichael Battle is Assistant Professor of Spirituality and Black Church Studies at Duke University. He is the Vice Chair of the M. K Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. These two sermons were preached in the context of the spring gathering of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, 2001. They give us a chance to share something of the spiritual nourishment and reflection that is an important part of the bishops' work together. The sermons speak particularly to the challenges of leadership for mission, a theme also explored at the retreat by Professor Ronald Heifetz, author of Leadership Without Easy Answers. NATURAL INTENTION To learn the language of leadership is a most difficult enterprise. a professor, I can relate to Ron Heifetz's challenge to translate such language in diverse contexts. To name a leader in our context proves difficult because there are so many interpretations of the word leader. Was Moses a clear-cut leader? Well, I suppose you would receive a particular response from Aaron and Miriam. Was Saul a leader? David would give you a particular answer. For Jesus as leader, ask Judas Iscariot. For Martin Luther King, Jr., ask Malcolm X. For Desmond Tutu, ask some priests in the Cape Town Diocese. All of this leads me to believe that to learn the deepest things carries a steep price that too often we are unwilling to pay. Therefore, the Church suffers. Matthew Lawrence describes such suffering in his article in The Living Church (March 14, 1999): Bad Preaching 101: This class is devoted to the art and practice of bad preaching in the Episcopal Church. By the end of this course, you will have mastered the basic skills required to preach the radical gospel of Jesus Christ while minimizing the risk of actually being crucified yourself.... You will learn about these and other useful techniques: Boredom as a Diversionary Tactic; Modern Methods of Academic Evasion, including the Uses and Abuses of 19th Century German Terminology; Mining the Obscure Riches of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations; Making the Most of Crying Infants; and the Magic of Poor Sound Systems. Today the Psalmist says, As I learn your righteous judgments, I will praise you with a pure (Psalm 119:7). However, do not make the mistake of thinking that learning righteous judgments naturally leads to praising God with a pure heart. Teaching and learning Jesus' righteous judgments often leads to despair in his disciples before there is praise and purity of heart. When the disciples learn from Jesus, they seem to be more in pain than in praise, their constant refrains being: How can this be so? How long must we suffer? and How then can anyone be saved? I want to propose the following thesis: Learning from Jesus and then praising God is more an intentional step than a natural one. It takes practice to learn from Jesus and then to praise God. We have an example of this in today's Gospel. The context is Jesus sitting on a hill teaching the disciples and the crowds. I learned on an archeological dig that Jesus most likely sat on a smaller hill, with the larger crowd sitting above him. Interestingly enough, Matthew does not distinguish between sermon and lecture or between teaching and preaching. Jesus was doing both at once. You have heard it said, Love your friends, hate your enemies. 11 But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:43). Now, I don't know about you, but upon hearing Jesus' words here, I don't naturally go to praise God when I learn Jesus' righteous judgment to love my enemies, and even more to pray for my persecutors. My natural tendencies are more in line with survival and cursing than loving and prayer. At the heart of what Jesus teaches us is not so much natural response as intentional practices. For example, in the remaining pericope, Jesus teaches us that we typically have two kinds of enemies and that we must supererogate the loves of these enemies. …
Referência(s)