The Rev.

John Fisher, The Episcopal Church on Edisto, 2 Epiphany, January 19, 2014

Id like to delve into a few themes this morning: overarching them all, the call, or more specifically our call, to discipleship; and then, in the context of that call, the interplay of light and beauty, morality, sex, maturity, and differing visions of authority. These days, the vision of authority that seems to have captured the imagination of the world is that of Francis, the new pope? Why should his shakeup of a church thats pursued a different path from ours since the Reformation matter to us Episcopalians? Among other reasons, it has to do with how he wields his authority . . . how hes promulgated a changed vision. Unlike so many faithful Roman Catholics, including, no doubt, friends we all have, the hierarchy of their church has until very recently focused almost obsessively on a very specific, prescriptive code of ethics. You wanna be a good Catholic, then subscribe to the Vaticans moral dictates, which almost exclusively have had to do with rules for a chaste life. Just be sexually pure and just about anything else - social justice, for example, or abuse of authority or hypocrisy - fades in importance. Morality is almost all about sex or, more specifically, its governance. Perhaps youve noticed how this fixation on purity isnt just a Catholic characteristic . . . how its cascaded into the religion of millions of evangelicals and fundamentalists, including, Im sorry to say, some whove recently chosen to leave the Episcopal Church. How does all this square with the bible? Well, without a doubt, there are biblical screeds against promiscuity, although surprisingly few, especially in the New Testament, more especially in the Gospels. As the Rev. Phil Turner, my rather strict ethics professor in seminary, used to say, the sins of the flesh are the most forgivable of all. The point is that hypocrisy, greed, abuse of power and lack of charity tend to lead us much farther astray than does our libido. Nevertheless as St. Paul in particular asserts, the generous gospel of Christ, although it transcends the prescriptive law of the Torah, isnt a license for licentiousness. Being forgiven, being saved if you will, illuminates a crucial role in our faith for using our minds rigorously and creatively to steer away from simplistic black and white thinking towards a greater, liberating good. Far and away my favorite biblical passage is in the 8th chapter of John, the story about the woman taken in adultery. Im sure you know it: how she was caught and dragged before Jesus by her neighbors, who pointed out to him that obedience to the law demanded that she be stoned to death. They wanted to test him - his fealty to the law, and Jesus didnt dispute their reading of it. Instead, curiously, he drew something in the dirt where he squatted, then looked up and said, let any of you without sin cast the first stone. Slowly the stones dropped one by one to the ground, until there was none left to throw. And Jesus turned to the woman and asked her, who has condemned you? No one, Lord. Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Sin, yes. Welcome to the human race. Condemnation, judgment - those are different questions. Hey there Pope - how about those gay priests? Who am I to judge?, Francis responds, gently turning half a century since John XXIII over on its head and shining a warm and loving light on a darkened issue.

The Rev. John Fisher, The Episcopal Church on Edisto, 2 Epiphany, January 19, 2014

The sin of the adulterer is indeed sin, but then so is the sin of the tax cheat, the scornful oligarch, the covetous neighbor . . . the pridefully pious priest. Any even cursory reading of the gospels will show you where Jesus most frequently took issue. His targets, time after time after time, were pride and arrogance, greed and hypocrisy and false piety. What does our faith demand of us? Is it obedience? Well, yes, but in so many ways thats just one piece of fruit on a very large tree. Is it discipleship? Yes, yes, yes discipleship fits the bill much better. What is it, or as Andrew asks in the Gospel this morning, where is it? Come and see, Jesus answers, come and see. Pull out your bulletin inserts, if you would, and come and see how the Collect for the Second Sunday after Epiphany sets up our call to discipleship. It begins with an image born of Advent and Christmas. Jesus is the light of the world - the light that shines in the darkness. In a life of faith, that light illuminates us to shine with the radiance of Christs glory. And yes, that radiance does lead to obedience, but obedience that comes first through knowing Jesus, adoring him, taking him into our hearts as the forgiven adulterous woman undoubtedly did into hers. Obedience that comes not through enslavement to a strict, authoritarian code but through freedom. In Gods service is perfect freedom, another collect proclaims in what must be the great paradox of the Christian Faith. To be perfectly free is to be bound by the law of love, as the Rev. Daniel Graves has put it. If were truly to be disciples we need to be nothing less than enlightened - not pridefully, the way enlightenment is sometimes perceived, but humbly. Humbly enlightened, as the woman taken in adultery came to be . . . forgiven and loved and lovingly enlightened. I bask in the image of Jesus illuminating our lives, not condemning them no matter how sinful we are, how separated from Gods love. More than anything, he would bridge that separation. He does bridge it, whenever we open up and let the light in. Think about that image of light - Jesus as the light of the world. Think about light and darkness, light and shadow, brilliance and dimness. How much do these motifs, ingrained throughout the biblical message, intersect and matter to how we experience our lives? How much do they affect the choices we make, how we go about our daily existence? Before answering, keep in mind that light and darkness arent exactly the same thing as black and white. Every picture has a shadow, and it has some source of light, the great musician and poet, Joni Mitchell, sings, blindness, blindness and sight . . . critics of all expression / Judges in black and white / saying its wrong saying its right. What a great, haunting insight her song SHADOWS AND LIGHT sets forth. It evokes how intertwined light and shadow are in our lives. With subtlety and complexity, they play off each other, enrich each other. This isnt an endorsement of darkness or sin so much as an appreciation of beauty - perhaps where Jesus focus was as he sketched on the ground.

The Rev. John Fisher, The Episcopal Church on Edisto, 2 Epiphany, January 19, 2014

Speaking of beauty, I wish Bruce were up here preaching to give more depth to what I remember learning about in Art 101.Chiaroscuro in art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition - an artists technique - the interplay of dark and light to achieve a sense of volume and fluidity. As I understand it, Chiaroscuro came into its own first with the work of the 17th century Italian master, Caravaggio. Ive been privileged, blown away in fact, to see two of his renditions of one of my favorite biblical scenes, the Supper at Emmaus, at which the risen Christ becomes known to the disciples in the breaking of the bread. The earlier of these, at the National Gallery in London, is strikingly bright and beautiful but static and stylized, not nearly as moving as the rendition of the second, hanging in Milan, painted 5 years later, in which the juxtaposition of light and shadow somehow makes the scene mesmerizing, jumping off the wall with vibrancy and spiritual depth. Ive never before or since seen a painting like this that made me want to sit and look at it for hours, soaking it in. It made me feel blessed. O.K., so what? What does a beautiful painting or a particular style have to do with discipleship? Well, in addition to a hope that you share my belief that our faith is informed and enriched every bit as much in the arts - painting and music, drama and story - as it is in our biblical, historical and liturgical heritage and in the nature of Gods creation, the point Im trying to underscore is that a great part of the call to discipleship is a call to the nuance and mystery that maturity affords us. This isnt our forebears religion . . . not entirely. Weve evolved, weve grown in knowledge and understanding, although perhaps not in faith, from those first nomadic tribes gathering around campsites in the wilderness trying to discern the hand of God in the world and community encompassing their vision. Developmental psychologists will tell you that there are few things more primitive in the makeup of our thought processes than black and white formulations. We start out in early infancy seeing the world were born into as either good or bad, and only gradually and painstakingly evolve to see that almost everything and everyone has elements of both, that the world out there is more disappointingly gray than we may wish. But we do grow into that realization, which is why the doctrine that says were all sinners - all of us from Hitler to Mother Theresa - has such resonance. Beneath our modesty, we all know our goodness; and in our hearts, we know how far short of it we continually fall. Thats not to say that theres never a place where were called to draw some pretty firm lines. Jesus didnt invite Andrew and Simon and James and John to half a discipleship. Rather he continuously urged them and the others and us to take it all in, not just some trees but the whole forest. Equivocation isnt the same as nuance. Ive never forgotten my 11th grade history teacher proclaiming that neutrality is a pimple on the face of creation.

The Rev. John Fisher, The Episcopal Church on Edisto, 2 Epiphany, January 19, 2014

Nevertheless, more often than not, black and white thinking is both the product and progenitor of small-mindedness - failing to use all the great gifts our Creator bestows on us - including gifts such as intelligence, reason, discernment, subtlety, and nuance. To spurn those gifts is a desecration of the temple that is our mind and body. Who am I to judge? If ever there were a motto our times could well employ, I cant think of a better one than that. The call to discipleship is a call to seek the light, not to judge the darkness. The truth is that theres much of value and great beauty to be found in the dark shadows that infuse and punctuate and interplay with our lives and world, a beauty and value we can only behold and enjoy when we let our light so shine before others that they may see our good works and glorify our God in heaven. Amen.