"That you be united"-Sermon for Epiphany 3, I Corinthians 1:10-18
While on sabbatical back in the summer of 2017, my family and I traveled much of the expanse of the Rocky Mountains as they traverse the spine of our country…all the way from the top pf Montana to New Mexico. And part of what draws me to the mountains, to which I have been traveling much of my life, are the water ways. The rivers and creeks that run from mountain tops to valleys, as they carve through rock and soil, beginning the waters long journey to three great seas the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico…watering the earth all along the way…plants, animals, and humans alike…literally providing all of us life. Other than the rain that falls across our country, it is the snow melt from the Rocky Mountains that is the primary fresh water source that we all depend on…our biological and geological waters of baptism…if you will…the elixir of life that fuels all living things. And in addition to the awe-inspiring beauty that is the mountains and all the theological musings that the waters coursing their way through them provides, it is the fish they contain, if honest, that also draw me. I am an avid fly-fisherman. And of all the places one can fish and of all the sorts of fish one can catch, I personally find nothing more moving, more invigorating, more challenging, or just simply more fun…then trout fishing in a mountain meadow. And as I have spent most of my time doing just that in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, in particular, it is seeking, catching, and always releasing cut-throat trout native to Colorado that is sort of the heaven on earth experience of fishing for me.
And, while on sabbatical, it was in just such a place with rod in reel in hand, fishing on a mountain lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park with Ashley and good friend named Scott, who is truly a master angler, that I had an experience that resulted in a poem I wrote and that I would like to share. The poem is called “Spawning” and here goes:
Don’t cast over there
My thoughtful friend
Gently suggests
But why
For I see the big ones over there
Because they are making babies
Is his reply
It is early summer and the cut-throats are spawning
Securing their future at the places where the small waters become big
The miracle of life in my presence
A microcosm of a shared future
Human, fish, all living things reproducing, thriving
Mutuality, reciprocity, and interdependence
Will we give one another the peace and space required to make babies
Or maybe just more future fish to be enjoyed
Or not
For what evil is in me
Why is it so hard to keep from just one last fly thrown in that direction
Why is the hunt
The catch
The picture
The victory
The big fish
The story I can tell
My own satisfaction
An ego stroked by competence on the water
So powerful
So uncontrollable
So utterly corrupted
The good news is I did not make the cast
Probably out of not being shamed by my friend
Than anything more noble
Maybe there is hope
Or maybe the end for us all has already been written
On my own heart
And, I share this poem…this real moment of human fragility and even brokenness…to suggest that even in paradise…or what for me is paradise…there is also sin…at least as long as this human is present. For my own desire…the desire for the next conquest…the big fish that I can write home about and regal to my friends in just one more whopper of a fish story…genuinely led to my, almost, willful choice to disrupt an act of creation…established by God at the very beginning of time…so that life may be bountiful and thrive. Though this moment in time and in my life may be a little thing when placed against the backdrop of all the violence that exists in our often death-dealing world, I think it is still descriptive of what we call in theological language sin. This separation, that can be violent or just simply hurtful, when we place ourselves…our desires and needs, presumption of privilege, and sense of self-sufficiency…between ourselves and another. For the word separation and the actual experience of separation, often cause by a disordered sense of self, separation from God…from creation…from other humans…is for me if not sin entirely…certainly an expression of it. Thus, sin for me is that hard-wired, instinct level compulsion to places ourselves over another…that often results in what we might call a sinful action, a self-interested choice, that wounds, that acts out, in such a way that creates distance between ourselves and another, what I might call a ruptured relationship. Sin separates us from our beloved…separates us from the one who we actually need if we are ever really going to be whole and whole-hearted. For as I said, once again, just last week…I need you and you need me. If anything, every single day, I need to be closer to God, to humans and to the earth. For these are the relationships that feed our souls…that provide the physical and spiritual nurture and care required to live a life fully alive, particularly when life is hard…real hard…like losing one of our own beloved children…which we all did…as a family of faith this week
And I believe this is why Paul, at least in part, in his first letter to the Corinthians that sits before us today cares so very much, speaks so passionately about, our need for unity within the family faith. It is not only about right belief or good theology or the ability to work well together in accomplishing shared goals…all of this matters…but even more fundamentally it is about our heart about our physical and spiritual well-being…our ability to thrive and grow…to make both meaning and a difference. For our ability to live a whole-hearted, fully alive sort of life, our God created and intended life, is, and always will be, all tied up in each other. Paul is not asking for an agreement on all matters of the mind…that we all think the same way…that we all imagine God the same way or vote the same way or organize our households the same way. He is not calling for a unity that is rooted in whose leadership style speaks to us or whose rhetoric moves us or whose vision we find most compelling. Instead, I believe Paul is calling for a connectedness, a unity, that transcends our inevitable disagreements on the best way forward when facing any particular challenge. A unity that can only be forged through an other-directed love…that sees in the other…the object of our love…nothing less than our own chance for salvation. God is the author of our salvation, graciously given to us to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but we know it…we experience it…we live it…right now…in this present moment…a lived experience of health and peace and joy and purpose…in the life we forge together…we share together…all bound up in one other by the great connective tissue that is God’s love.
Today we come to our 11###sup/sup###, if my math is correct, parish meeting together. I believe the first was in January of 2010. And we will speak of many good things we hope to accomplish together…building strong ministries that serve those in need, practicing a sort of hospitality that builds friendship and welcomes newcomers, falling more deeply in love with God through prayer, worship and study, and finding and building a new permanent home that will allow us to grow and be catalyst for the vision that God has placed before to “grow in relationship, love all well, and seek intimacy with Christ”. But all of those good things begin, find their genesis, in a strong foundation, that is not constructed of bricks and mortar, but of love for one another…an unbreakable Holy Communion of human hearts.
Which takes me here at the end of my thoughts back to my beginning…to those spawning fish in that lovely mountain lake and the poem they inspired. I don’t actually believe any sort of end, in a nihilistic sense, is written on my heart…or any of our hearts…for that is where the love of God resides and that love is always a place of beginnings…of possibility and imagination and hope and endless energy. And the key to unlocking all of that wonder…all of that power…is to have enough courage to share it, to share our hearts and lives, entirely with each other…to move past the misguided notion of self-sufficiency and, instead, lean into the whole-heartedness offered in mutuality…to turn our backs on the sin that is separation…and turn toward connection…turn toward our salvation found in God’s own love, which is known most wholly in a life lived together….human hearts finding peace and purpose, hope and new life in an unbreakable bond of affection…an authentic sort of unity from which all that follows flows…a spawning of new and abundant life where the small waters…that’s us individually…become big…that’s us all together. Amen.