Saturday, June 2, 2012

Obligation

My mission today is clear.  Finish this just as quickly as humanly possible.  La Donna has just gone to take the crazy dogs to the kennel for their weekend away, while we prepare the house to receive various and sundry tomorrow afternoon.  It is graduation party weekend.  Not graduation, that’s next Saturday.  But open house party tomorrow afternoon.  Y’all come.  Can I say that?  Might as well, that’s what an open house is about, opening the house.

But before we open it, we have to clean it.  And not just clean it, but mom clean it.  See if it were up to most of us here at the house, we’d look around an nod, saying “yep, good enough!” And then sit back down and read or watch or whatever.  But there is one in the house who has a higher standard.  Who sees the tumbleweeds of dog hair rolling in the corners.  Who notices the layer of dust on our precious screens that we’ve managed to look through and around and completely miss.  Who sees the piles of papers and books and important stuff that “we’ll get to when we get a moment” and declare that the moment is now!  We’ve got work to do.

Obligation.  Not one of our favorite words.  Almost anti-American in some circles.  Freedom is the highest ideal, it seems.  Don’t fence me in.  Don’t lay burdens on me.  Don’t cramp my style.  Hey, it’s a free country!  Right?  Well, yeah.  But ... but.

If we are going to value community then we enter into the whole arena of obligation.  Don’t we?  If we choose to come down out of our caves where it was just us and our complete freedom, and live with other people then we have to make room and make allowances and decide that maybe it isn’t just what I want and how I want it, but that there really is something called the common good and that sometimes I have to set aside my own preferences for the moment and to participate in something bigger than myself and my own freedom.  Whew.  Living in community is hard work.  And sometimes uncomfortable work.  But also glorious.

Seriously?  Yes, seriously.  We are fed the lie that it is all about ourselves, that getting what we want when we want it is the best way to find fulfillment.  But the reality is that giving ourselves away, that sacrificing, that living for and through someone else is not only more fulfilling, but is in fact the reason for our existence.  The old catechism asked what was the purpose of the human being.  The answer was to love God and enjoy God forever. 

So if we were meant to live in relationship, with God and with others (after all, Jesus told us that the most important commandments were not about self, but about relationship - love God and love neighbor), then the whole idea of obligation begins to rear its not so ugly head.  Its lovely head?  Its head of potential and possibility?

Which means, it seems to me, that obligation is a good thing.  It helps us be more fully us.  More fully alive.  Claimed, you might say.  Or at least Paul might say.  And does say.  In our passage for the week.  You do remember this is a bible study in the end.  And that I’ll eventually get around to that.  Like now:

Romans 8:12-17  So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh--  13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!"  16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-- if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Paul could have used a marketing course, don’t you think?  You can’t get too far by telling people that we need to suffer.  Talk about the benefits and not the burdens, talk about the joys and not the heartache.  We always have to start off with something like “OK, he didn’t really mean that ....”

Paul doesn’t mean that bodies are bad.  The whole spirit verses flesh thing is wildly misunderstood.  In our current context one way to reinterpret that dichotomy would by to say “if you live according to self you will die, but if by the Spirit - the love of God and others - you put to death the desires of the self in isolation, you will live.”

OK, it doesn’t flow like Paul’s prose, but it helps us see the point he is making.  Can we live acknowledging our obligations?  Can we live as debtors?  Not to ourselves.  We hear that - “you owe it to yourself!”  Paul argues that our ultimate debt is to God, to grace.  We owe it to love. 

We owe it to those who have loved us when we weren’t all that loveable.  We owe it to those who saw in us what we couldn’t see for ourselves.  We owe it to those who let us be wrong because that was the only way we would learn. 

We are recognizing our graduates this weekend.  Not just the one in my house, but all those who are connected to Aldersgate.  Congratulations, we will say.  Honor their achievement, pat them on their back, join in their hopes and dreams for tomorrow, we’ll do all that stuff.  But mixed in all that congratulatory talk will come, subtle and with a gentle spirit, that they are debtors.  And I’m not just talking about school loans here.

They are debtors to love.  Debtors to the Spirit who shaped them, who claimed them, who offers them a future with hope and fulfillment and joy.  And that they experienced that Spirit most vividly through those who walked beside them every step of the way.  May have been parents, may have been teachers, may have been fellow students, may have been a combination of all the above and more, maybe it was the church that nurtured them and told them that they were worthy of loving, that they were the beloved of God and it was our honor to guide and shape and love them.

We are all debtors, we like to think we are free and unfettered.  But we are bound together, in human community.  And the truth is that we are better that way.  We are able to be glorified, to reach our full potential, to claim the gift of eternity, because of the debts we accumulate.  Because of the relationships we are blessed to live in.  Because of the community that we are becoming. 

And it is our privilege to suffer in service to those relationships. 

Now, where is that dust rag.

Shalom,
Derek

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