Sermon, September 8, 2002
16 Pentecost; Proper 18, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Gospel – Matthew 18:15-20 If another member ...sins against you 

Have you ever known someone you couldn’t offend? Someone you couldn’t "sin against," as the gospel puts it today?

I have. I want to talk about two remarkable people I’ve known, who have a spiritual maturity that allows them to be courageous beacons of peace and reconciliation in a world of conflict and hurt.

Jim Fenhegan was the dean of my seminary, and Duncan Gray, Jr. was the rector of the parish I grew up in and later the Bishop of my diocese. Both of them were people whom it was almost impossible to offend.

I remember a classmate of mine who was very angry about something at the seminary. He got an appointment with the dean and went in loaded for bear. He came out of that meeting at peace. I never knew what was said between them, but I remember what he said about Jim. "Grisham," he said. "You or I could storm into that office, push Kate Treasure out of the way when she asked us what we needed (she was the dean’s secretary), break through the Dean’s office door, climb over his desk and pop him with a fist right on the nose. When he picked himself up, he’d just wipe the blood from his face and say, ‘I probably deserved that, but do you mind telling me why you hit me?’" Jim has a humility that is powerful.

People will tell you about Duncan Gray’s humbleness. When Will Campbell was writing a book about him, he interviewed dozen’s of Bishop Gray’s long time friends. No one could ever remember him saying a mean or harsh thing about someone else. He has a remarkable ability to accept people, even those who strongly disagree with him. I remember a priest who held a resentment against Bishop Gray for his entire ministry – something about Duncan’s involvement in the civil rights movement – and treated him disrespectfully for decades. Never once did the Bishop react. And I tried to bait him, just to get a rise out of him.

I think the source of Jim and Bishop Gray’s humbleness is an identity and security that comes from somewhere else. Both are grounded in a real and deep relationship with God. They know themselves to be fully accepted, forgiven, and loved by God, and so they don’t have to search compulsively for acceptance and love from others. They are free. You might even say they are bulletproof. They simply do the best they could and leave the rest to God, including the reactions of others.

There are two things about these people that seem to me to be keys to their grace. First, though each of them raised high ideals for those they led, neither of them encumbered others with their expectations of them. Great hope; no expectations. There is something in that formula that frees people from resentment.

Don’t most of our resentments come from our expectations of other people. When I expect you to live up to some standard of behavior I’ve set up for you, if you don’t satisfy my expectations, I’m likely to be resentful. Jim and Bishop Gray both inspired others to high ideals by their words and their actions, but they left us free to do what we would, and refused to break relationship if we failed, even if we failed on purpose or stood in opposition to their ideals.

I remember Jim Fenhegan speaking of someone who was on the other side of one of the church’s hot button issues, someone who spoke acerbically and didn’t fight fair. Jim said with honest passion, "He makes me so mad!" But when you looked at Jim’s body language, he said those words with a huge smile on his face as his head swung left to right negating his message. With his rounded ruddy cheeks and dimples, he looked like Santa laughing, saying, "He makes me so mad!" as though the joke was on him. How silly of him to be mad.

I’ve quoted Texas priest Homer Rogers before. He says it’s a sin to have your feelings hurt. It just means you’ve had unrealistic expectations. When an elderly woman in his congregation took offense at something he said in one of his sermons, she spoke to him at the back door of the church saying, "Father Rogers. Something you said in your sermon hurt my feelings." "Oh that’s all right, dear. I forgive you. What was it I said?"

But, back to Jim and Bishop Gray. I said that there are two things that seem to be keys to their grace. One is their willingness not to project their expectations on to others. The second is that they give people the benefit of the doubt. Each of them practices a remarkable kind of benevolence. They seem to assume that most everybody is doing just about the best they can, and that when we foul up, even on the big things, it probably has a lot to do with the limitations we’ve experienced. Most people are doing as well as they can given what limited insights, resources and nourishment they’ve received. So, we can give people the benefit of the doubt.

Such radical acceptance is a powerful antidote to the possibility of resentment and the seeds of conflict. And these are not people who lived sheltered lives. Both have been deeply involved in the conflicts and controversies of their times. Both suffered for their early promotion of desegregation in the South at a time when politics was against them and savvy religious leaders either stayed quiet or promoted traditions of states’ rights and racial separateness. One third of Duncan’s members left St. Peter’s Church in the 1960's because of his advocacy for Civil Rights.

In the words of the prophet Ezekiel in today’s first reading, they were both "sentinels." They spoke the hard truth to God’s people, reminding us of the costs of injustice and greed. I can hear Jim Fenhagen pointing to the looming catastrophe facing us if we continue to exploit our environment; I can here him speaking with passion of the human loss when people have no access to health care and small problems become big problems through neglect; I can hear him prophesying the division of our nation into have’s and have-not’s unless government intervenes on behalf of the powerless who are at a disadvantage in a greedy system of economic and social Darwinism; I can hear him challenging the powers-that-be to invest in the promotion of a broad education for all lest we squander the potential that is God’s gift of life. And when he took stands on such issues, he never did so in a way that attacked those who disagreed. His purpose was not to curse but to inform. Like the words of the sentinel in Ezekiel’s prophesy today, he has no pleasure in these catastrophes, but would rather that the powerful "turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die...?" And he said all of this with a humble voice, recognizing his own limited vision and accepting the nearsightedness of others. He could say with true empathy, "It’s hard for the politicians. They’re under so much pressure," even as he knew they wouldn’t have the courage to do the things necessary for abundant life.

There was something about these passionate men that made them safe. Jim Fenhagen was a sanctuary where wounded seminarians could be broken and healed. Duncan Gray was a wisdom person who could give a struggling priest the space and support to find a way through. Both of them trusted God to bring about wholeness, so they relaxed the pressure of expectations on themselves and on others. Each had a long view of history. No need to panic. God really is in control. One of Bishop Gray’s favorite hymns is "God is working his purpose out / As year succeed to year."

They are men of peace. People of gentleness and strength. They hold life gently and protectively, as if it were a small, wounded bird. They don’t abandon the struggle by opening their hands and letting things fall to a tragic, separate end. And they don’t grasp fearfully trying to control and hold on, ultimately crushing with power. They create intimate places for relationship and growth. A cupped hand, neither totally open nor totally closed. Bounded by principle and commitment, open in humility and hope. They have created holy places where two or three can be gathered in Christ’s name, and Christ is with us. There is nothing that they have done, that we can’t do also.

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