Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

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January 30, 2010

Rev. Carl Gillett - Jan 30 2010

This sermon is available as an audio file (MP3.) The Gospel reading precedes the sermon.

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The sermon Text follows:

IRRATIONAL JOY
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Carl R. Gillett

On the occasion of the installation of the Rev. Matthew R. Dutton-Gillett

As Rector of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

Menlo Park, California

January 30, 2010

Isaiah 58:6-11 Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
Matthew 5:1-14

© 2010 by the Rev. Dr. Carl R. Gillett
_________________________________________________

As I began preparing for this day two things came to mind, first I could be quite irresponsible by about choosing what to say today because I’ll be leaving town on Tuesday and secondly I am not really a part of this community in any intimate and accountable way. But then, I do hope that over time I will become more connected with this community since it is in this community that our son and his wife are holding two of our grand children hostage. So I decided perhaps I should be a bit more thoughtful about what I was going to say today.

George Bernard Shaw, who lived and wrote before we became sensitive to gender references in our literature, said this: "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." We heard in the Gospel lesson this morning the words of an unreasonable man. I'm going to invite this congregation today to consider seriously the benefits of becoming an unreasonable church. In fact, I usually edit Mr. Shaw's prose and substitute the word ‘rational’ for ‘reasonable’ and the word ‘irrational’ for the word ‘unreasonable.’ For reasons that I hope will become clearer in a few moments I actually consider Jesus to be an irrational man. Apparently there are others in history who agree with that. There is at least one story in the Gospels about Jesus’ mother and siblings coming to take the poor deluded man home. Then there is the account of his preaching in his home town and nearly being killed.

The concept of right and left brain has become a common part of our social discourse. However, in the purview of history this understanding of the brain is quite recent. One of the early researchers in the field of hemispheric specialization whose name was Gazzangia wrote a book trying to explain the concept of mind. The fact that we don’t know what he said suggests he wasn’t very successful. He concluded that what we think of as rational thought is too slow a process for decision-making. He concluded that we make our decisions at a non-conscious level and use rational thought to explain to ourselves and the world around us why we made that decision. In other words, he concluded that we make decisions in a basically irrational way. People in the advertising business understand that and pitch their promotions to our non-conscious minds.

Whether I like it or not, it appears the many of the most important decisions I make happen outside my conscious awareness, in an irrational part of my self.

I want to tell you a story which is actually a report of an experiment, but I’ll call it a story since I don’t have any statistics or footnotes. I hope this story will lead us into a deeper place and help you see why I am advocating that the church become an irrational institution. Some experimenters constructed a platform of Plexiglas about three or 4 feet off the floor; they attached a Plexiglas tube that was about two feet in diameter and six or 8 feet long to one end to the platform and the other end to a support that held the tube level. They then took some infant children who had just learned to crawl and put one of them on the platform and had the child's mother stand at the other end of Plexiglas tube. Obviously in this situation the child could see mother at the other end and was also aware that it was several feet off the floor. They asked the mother to tell the child with her eyes that it was safe to crawl through the tube. The mothers were instructed to avoid saying anything, making any sounds, or expressing any emotion with their faces and just to communicate with their eyes. As soon as the mothers communicated safety to the children they crawled eagerly through the tube to their mom. Then the researchers took some other children, put them on the platform, and told their mothers to tell the children it was not safe to cross through the tube and again to do it only with their eyes. None of these children would crawl to their mothers. This is taken to be an example of the use of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are specialized neurons that we all have in our brains that enable us to know how someone else feels. Our discovery of these neurons and at least our early learning about how they function are important ingredients in the conclusion that neurology is making that the brain is specialized to be an organ of social interaction. Also notice that this social interaction between the children and their mothers takes place at a non-verbal level, in fact it takes place at an irrational level, at a time when the infants cannot use language. It would appear that science is catching up with the affirmation of that ancient Anglican cleric, John Donne, who taught us centuries ago that no one is an island; that no one lives alone.

You're probably familiar with a concept that is actually derived from the work of Carl Jung. The concept is that personalities have introverted or extroverted characteristics. If I tell you that I am more of an introvert than an extrovert, I'm sure you will know what I mean. A number of years ago I took a group of church folk on a weekend retreat. Now these church folk were all from the United Church of Christ and if you know anything about us in the United Church of Christ, you know that we are not deeply acquainted with many of the traditional spiritual practices. This retreat was to last three days and two nights. At the conclusion of the first day I explained to the participants that they were to keep silent from that moment until after breakfast the next morning. Some of them were bothered about how they were going to get breakfast if they couldn't talk to each other but I assured them they would figure it out. The next morning after breakfast when I invited them to break the silence I was inundated with an avalanche of sound. I was also told in no uncertain terms that we would not be doing that again. I realized that I was on retreat with 40 extroverts and I had just pushed them way outside their comfort zone and into their shadow side. In Jungian terms, the introvert is the shadow side of the extrovert and vice versa. Here is one of the things that Carl Jung had to say about the shadow side: "the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, but adapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids!” We are very ready to presume that that which is in the shadow is evil. If you are reading a novel and the authors said that the innocent and beautiful heroine was being approached by a shadowy figure I am sure that most of us would assume that something bad is about to happen. But we are invited by folks like Carl Jung to realize that there is creativity and even blessing to be found in the shadow. The extrovert who invites herself to occasionally play the role of an introvert and the introvert who challenges himself from time to time to accept an extroverted role sometimes are both involved in healthy growth and change. We might allow ourselves to wonder what we are hiding in our own shadow side.

Jesus was a marginalized figure in his society. Most of the time we church folk prefer to ignore a few details about Jesus. For example, a pretty good case can be made for the idea that Jesus was considered to be and was taunted for being an illegitimate child. We sometimes forget that shepherds to whom the coming of the Christ was first announced, at least from the perspective of urban society in Jerusalem, were considered to be marginalized people who were considered to be unclean. We read a portion of the Sermon on the Mount for the Gospel lesson today. Please note how this reading begins: "when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him." This doesn't say that all the crowds came to Jesus; the idea that Jesus preached to masses of people from the mountain is a Hollywood interpretation of scripture. In fact I think you could read this as a statement that Jesus separated himself from the crowd and that people who really wanted to learn from him came to him. It is interesting, at least to me, to wonder who chooses to associate with an illegitimate man who stands convention on its head, actually talks to women, and teaches what must have seemed to be an irrational gospel to people.

I think we can discover some interesting things about marginalized people by looking at the people who Jesus calls blessed. They are poor, they are grieving, they are hungry and thirsty, they are persecuted, they are reviled, and they are also merciful peacemakers whose motives are pure. Jesus reframes the suffering of these people and suggests that their poverty and their grief, their hunger and thirst are keys to deeper spiritual life. Jesus invites us to wonder if we can use that which is hidden in the shadow side of our personalities to motivate us to climb the mountain so that we may become disciples of a marginalized Christ. Jesus invites us to wonder what sorts of beauty, truth, grace, and love are hidden in the shadows where the marginalized people in our society must live.
We have a tradition at our house that some time in the waning days of Advent we watch a video of Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. You may recall that the ghost of Christmas Present is a tall figure who carries a torch and who reminds me of Jesus admonition that we are the light of the world. One of the realities which the torch of Christmas Present reveals is the undernourished children beneath his robe who are named ignorance and want. The ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that the word “doomed” is inscribed on the forehead of one of the children. Scrooge has a hard time trying to deal with this revelation. I wonder if we actually let ourselves become the light of the world and illuminate the shadow places where the marginalized live, if we will shrink at that revelation or if we will embrace the opportunity to join with marginalized folk to overcome want and ignorance and replace doom with hope.

Our epistle lesson today admonishes us to speak the truth in love and thus grow up in every way into Christ. It also seems to me that if we are part of a community that speaks the truth in love that we will also be part of a community that hears the truth in love. If we know that our leader is a marginalized and irrational man we might wonder what truth we will hear from the marginalized and the irrational folk in our midst. If Carl Jung indeed is right in suggesting that there is creativity and innovation in our personal shadow side, then it seems logical to me to suppose that there is creativity and innovation in the shadow side of our society. If we insist that we are going to be reasonable and rational people then we will continue to embrace the social system that forces certain individuals and groups into the shadows; that marginalizes people and suppresses the truth, the creativity, and even the joy that we might have shared with them. Carl Jung reminds us that we don’t reap the benefits of our own shadow resources because “convention forbids” it.

Our research on the brain is telling us that we are designed for loving relationships and that those relationships are established, nurtured, and supported in emotional, irrational, and nonverbal ways. Jesus whole life involved establishing, nurturing, and supporting relationships that defied social convention and rational expectations. Perhaps it is not surprising that we are discovering that human beings are created to manifest the lifestyle that Jesus himself taught us. If we let ourselves grow up and mature by speaking and hearing the truth in love, we are letting ourselves become the people we were created to be. The brain research also tells us that we can stunt our own growth and development by the so-called rational categories that we impose upon ourselves.

A pastor and a church that are beginning a new relationship with one another would do well to consider the importance of establishing a relationship that is primarily an intuitive, felt, and lived reality. I believe we can live our way into being the people we are called to be by exploring the resources in our shadow side and I think that's true of individuals, of societies, and of churches. I believe we will all be richer as we allow ourselves to be more inclusive of all that is within us and all that is around us. However, if we insist on imposing conventional and ordinary expectations upon our life together we risk stunting our growth and losing our connection with the irrational one who invites us to love our own marginalized parts and those whom our society has marginalized. This church, a joint enterprise of pastor and people, is invited to make explicit the hidden and implicit realties cloaked in the shadows that together marginalized people may be drawn to the light which that enterprise will bring to the world.

It is reported that Jesus taught as one who had the authority. Yet it has been pointed out frequently that much of what Jesus taught was contained in what we refer to as the Old Testament Scriptures. What gave Jesus his authority? I honestly think it was the fact that he himself was a marginalized human being. The circumstances of Jesus birth and origins were used by God to empower his teaching. If we are going to join forces with Jesus then we will have to deal with the marginalized parts of ourselves and the marginalized people in our society. The story about the infants crawling through the Plexiglas tunnel reminds us that our rational categories and logical constructs do not begin to explain the fundamental realities of human relationships. When I first encountered that story I found it very hard to believe because it didn't fit my rational categories. That reminds me of how tempted I am to force the facts to fit what I think. We have found it easier over the centuries to make Jesus into a logical, rational person because that perspective causes us less discomfort and fits him into our rational preconceptions. However, it seems to me that we have projected so much on him that we can’t see him or hear him. We have to get back to admitting that we are irrational and often marginalized ourselves in some ways in order to identify with the irrational, marginalized Christ who calls us to reach out to the marginalized people around us.

In the shadows, in the marginalized realities within us, and within and among the marginalized people in our society are dynamic, creative forces that would, as Jung put it, vitalize and embellish our lives. There is irrational joy lurking around the edges and in the shadows. The irrational, marginalized Christ brings joy when he reframes human suffering and hopelessness. Enlarging the circle of our concerns to draw in the parts of ourselves which we repress and marginalize as well as the parts of the society we repress and marginalize will increase our joy and the joy of all who share this world with us. Let us put relationships ahead of rationality and logic; let us put intuition ahead of tradition—let us admit we are marginalized as long as anyone is marginalized and dedicate ourselves to increasing the joy in the world by heartily embracing the leadership of an irrational and marginalized Jesus. Let us embrace life and joy now, latch onto the present and leave the theories for later. Let us join with one another in promoting inclusion, battling discrimination, and celebrating joy instead of wallowing in depression.
Let us commit ourselves to a process of spiritual and emotional discernment—a process of discovering what God, working through our intuitive gifts, is telling us. In that process we will find irrational joy—joy that makes no sense to rational, logical minds, but that offers hope to a world filled with nonsense. Amen.