Reverb: Phil Woodward

Reverberations made by Phil Woodward at the 7-17-04 COTA service:

A pet peeve of mine is inflammatory bumper stickers. (Karen frequently alludes to bumper stickers, so I thought this would be a safe route.) I apologize to any of you who display them; I’ll get over it. My distaste comes from the fact that the vehicles’ owner is choosing to identify him- or herself with an agenda, and in a sense welcomes a label, a stereotype. I have thought of producing my own bumper stickers in response: “Pidgeonhole me!” or “Now that you know my agendas, don’t bother getting to know me!” or even, “I heart propaganda.”

But I don’t need to be sarcastic and inflammatory in my reaction against sarcasm and inflammation. The truth is, it’s really just a coping mechanism, because I find myself pretty bewildered by controversies. I’m not a very opinionated person (though I think I was at one time), and I can feel really threatened by those who are. I am scared to death of being conservative, and I am scared to death of being liberal. I am afraid of being conservative for fear of being naïve, anti-intellectual, destructive, legalistic; I am afraid of being liberal for fear of the slippery slope toward relativism, pluralism, and the abandonment of the Gospel. I know people who are delighted to espouse one or the other of these labels (conservative and liberal, I mean). Perhaps some of you are among them, and think my fears betray serious misunderstanding. Fair enough. My fears remain, nonetheless. I have spent time among both camps. I have been the liberal among conservatives, and that can be a bit distressing when they begin to distrust you, but by and large it’s pretty fun—it’s easy in such circumstances to congratulate yourself as the enlightened one among the naïve, or the mature one among adolescents. But it’s not quite so fun to be the conservative among liberals—which I have also experienced—because in those cases, you’re the one being patronized.

I have desperately hoped for someone or something to lift me out of the fray. I have asked, Do I have to locate myself on the political spectrum? Is there something I can just aim for, instead of trying to keep everything in balance? How can I be free of worry that I’m not being blinded by sectarian ideology? Everyone has opinions, but who has wisdom? Someone must.

Each Saturday I walk here from Queen Anne, where I live. The walk takes about half an hour. As I walk, I try to sort out my current psychological and spiritual condition in preparation for the service here. A few weeks ago, as I was walking, I again felt a strong sense of bewilderment at the political spectrum, and I again felt lost and small. But since I was in a mode of prayer at the time, instead of getting lost in the issues, I brought before Christ my whole state of my mind. “What am I supposed to believe?” I asked. And I sensed this response: “Come to me.”

A similar thing is going on in today’s Gospel text. Jesus visits the two sisters, Mary and Martha, and while Martha attends to her tasks, Mary sits and listens to Jesus. Martha knows what needs to be done—and there’s too much of it! She is appalled that Mary would leave her with all the responsibilities. She says to Jesus: “Tell my sister to help me.” Jesus responds, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

I have been worried and distracted by many things. I think the whole Church has. What are those things—those critical issues, those key agendas, that have kept Christians—on both the left and the right—from sitting at Christ’s feet in adoration? The story is a bit of a scandal to me, actually. I can imagine Martha responding to Christ, “What do you mean, Jesus, ‘there is need of only one thing’? There is need of lots of things! Look at the dishes, the carpet, not to mention the worn-out upholstery, the leaky faucet—actually, Jesus, I could use your help on that…” and so on. But isn’t that our world? There are so many needs. How can Christ say to us today, “Be still. Come to me. Sit at my feet,” when the world is in a state of political, intellectual, economic, social and ecological chaos?

Tim Dearborn—the former Dean of Chapel at Seattle Pacific University—has a saying that really bothered me the first time I heard it. He says, “Christ frees us to not take ourselves so seriously.” My response was, Why wouldn’t I want to take myself seriously? I always have. But over time, I realized that this is exactly the joy and freedom of the Gospel: if I really take Christ seriously, I don’t have to take myself so seriously. Dearborn writes, “If we understand biblical faith, we will understand that what Christ has already accomplished is far more determinative, significant, complete, and important than anything yet to be done.” This is how the first Christians saw Jesus. Albert Nolan writes that, to the first followers of Christ, “Jesus was experienced as the breakthrough in the history of humankind. He transcended everything that ever had been said and come before. He was in every way the ultimate, the last word. His Spirit was God’s Spirit. His feelings were God’s feelings. What he stood for was exactly the same as what God stood for. No higher estimation was possible.”

And this is, of course, the Apostle Paul’s grand vision in Colossians chapter 1. Jesus is the beginning, the first born; he has the first place in everything; in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell; through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. Jesus is everything. Our hope rests not in our social programs, our family values, our good theology, but in Jesus. We cling to Jesus. We take Jesus seriously. We are freed not to take ourselves so seriously.

And when we come and sit at Jesus’ feet, what do we hear him say? He says this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” So we are commissioned, not in worry, but in love. Christ lets us loose on our broken world, free to love.

Some may worry that this is all a concession to laziness. But surely Christ is not calling us to that. His life was never marked by laziness; but nor was it marked by worry. Some have called him the only savior without a savior complex. He lived in the freedom of love, powerfully and gracefully meeting needs. His call, I contend, is not to laziness but to courage: courage to believe that Christ’s kingdom is near, though we cannot engineer its coming; courage to trust in Christ, not in completed, water-tight theology; courage to love, though the brokenness in the world continues; courage to rest, to sit at Christ’s feet and adore him, while there is still work to be done.