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It Matters, January 6, 2008 |
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Written by Jeanne Knepper
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008 |
IT MATTERS
Matthew 2:1-16
January 6, 2008
Last Sunday, just before worship, Anthony gave me a picture of himself. It is a wonderfully sweet picture of him hugging his little sister Aurora. It made me think of all the times I’ve seen him tending to Aurora, carrying her on his back, going to her as she cried, eating the coffee hour food she took and then didn’t want. He’s a good kid, and his love and care for his little sister was shining out of that picture. It makes me feel good to look at it.
Just as it made me feel good, the week before, when Christo came up, all excited, to show me his new shoes, the ones with a roller wheel in the heel, so he can lean back and glide around the rooms. Dana told me that he has learned that he can save his small allowance to get things he really wants, like those shoes. Have you been noticing that Christo is growing up in this, his first grade year? He is learning to plan, to save, to raise his hand, to give others a chance. Christo is still exuberant—and I hope he will be always—but he is growing up into being a person who can choose good and constructive behavior in lots of ways.
As I watch these two boys, and all the other kids we claim here, I give thanks for their families, for all the people in their lives who are teaching them to be generous, responsible, loving and lovely young people. It is a challenging task, to raise boys and girls to be thoughtful, generous and loving men and women, and I want to honor all the people who choose to pour their love and care into the long-term and steady vocation of raising a family.
We celebrated New Year’s Day last week. Each New Year’s Day the Pope, this year Pope Benedict XVI, delivers an address to celebrate the World Day of Peace. On Tuesday, he delivered his address, entitled, “The Human Family, a Community of Peace.” In this address, he claimed, and I would agree, that the family is “the primary place of humanization” for the person and for society, and a “cradle of life and love.” Pope Benedict went on to identify the family as “the first and indispensable teacher of peace,” and to claim that families enable their members to experience peace and to learn the “vocabulary of peace.” I expect you can join me in agreeing that this is essentially true, and in celebrating the families that are raising the children in our midst.
But then, politics came into it. We shouldn’t be surprised. We know, from our lesson, that King Herod was moved to anger, not homage, by the birth of the child Jesus, for he was told that this birth heralded a new distribution of power in the world, that this baby would grow up to be a king who would lead the people like a shepherd. And so, Herod responded to the reality that he didn’t know which child in the area of Bethlehem would grow up to be this shepherd-king by ordering that every child in Bethlehem, every boy under the age of two, must be killed. Here was a man intent on retaining power, even if it meant destroying families of the kingdom he was to rule over.
Pope Benedict is also a man who holds a great deal of power. He has been engaged, recently, in a strong Vatican campaign to protect the “traditional” family against proposals to extend rights to gay couples or to other unions and families outside traditional marriage. In this campaign, he has decried attempts by Italy’s government to give legal status to de facto couples and he has denounced the Spanish government for passing legislation that recognizes gay marriage and legislation that facilitates divorce. He has applauded rallies in Madrid and in Italy that involved thousands of people marching to defend “traditional” families by denying the rights of “non-traditional” families to be recognized as families at all, by law or by faith.
Lest we think I might be exaggerating the strength of his pronouncement, hear these words from his address:
The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes the primary place of humanization for the person and society and a ‘cradle of life and love,’ The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, ‘a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order.’ . . . Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace. This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, . . .constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.
I read of Pope Benedict’s address on Wednesday. I cried. In simplified language, I heard him claiming that my choice to defend the integrity of my family, of David and Betty’s family, of Carolyn and Barbara’s family, of Dana, Love, Christo and Sammy’s family, of gay or lesbian-headed families, single-parent families, intergenerational families, adoptive families—of all our families—our choice to defend our families, in all their strengths and varieties constitutes “an objective obstacle on the road to peace.”
Did it cross your mind, when I was talking of what great boys Anthony and Christo are, to think that one of them has a family that strengthens world peace and that the other has a family that, by its very existence, by our support, undermines world peace? Isn’t that absurd, on the face of it?
When we ask, why did Herod seek to destroy hundreds of children, the answer is pretty clear—he was afraid of what one of them might do, when he grew up, to undermine his power and dominion. He murdered the babies to protect his belief in the rightness of his views and power. And, when I ask what would motivate Pope Benedict XVI to attack “non-traditional” families, I find a similar motive—that the babies of those families might grow up—as some of them already have—to put the lie to beliefs that undergird the power of patriarchy.
This is strong language. I know that. It hinges on a basic valuation that undergirds the choice to approve or disapprove of non-traditional families. That valuation is this: are people created to adjust themselves to predetermined roles, called “natural” and fashioned by God for the good of all being, so that any deviation from predetermined roles undermines the ground of being; or are people endowed by God with freedom and dignity to choose for themselves how they will live, to join God as co-creators of an on-going creation? Either side of this question carries strength and liability for harm and damage. We cannot choose one or the other and believe that it will be a pathway free from danger. The question, then, is where do we locate the greater danger, in insisting that those who are different conform themselves to strict guidelines, or in giving latitude, knowing that, sometimes, it will be used irresponsibly? To put it yet another way, which do we trust more, as we attempt to live into the Realm of God: the power of authority, with its danger of rigidity and tyranny, or the intentions of the people who are actually raising the children of our church and community? Could we imagine a pathway that builds up the parents—in any family—and supports them as they try to guide their children toward responsible and loving, peaceable adulthood, without imagining for a moment that we must cut one family down to support another?
In moments, we will recognize and install the lay leaders of this community for the next year. Some of you have accepted the positions to which you are being called with eagerness, and some with trepidation. Some of you feel well-qualified, and some of you are nervous about whether you can do what we are asking of you. Some of you may be wondering whether it is important, this responsibility we are asking you to carry, for all of us. I tell you it is. We are here to be a place where children and adults can be called into the fullest development of who they are created to be. We are here as a witness that God is yet at work, working out the wonder of creation in all its beautiful fullness and variety. We are a people living into the pathways of peace, which rests, I believe, on a full respect for the dignity and well-being of every person, each of us a child of God, called to be Christ—liberating, threatening, and full of God’s grace in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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