The Razor's Edge

September 17, 2006

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 1:20-33; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

Melanie had the remarkable good fortune of beginning her professional acting career by landing a large part in a new, and much anticipated, Broadway musical. Just months after walking off the graduation platform she would be walking onto the Broadway stage. She had only been in the city a few weeks when she was picked up by an aggressive agent, a friend of one of her college professors. It was only the third audition that gave her this great opportunity. Melanie felt very, very fortunate. She was certain her positive mental attitude motivated by what she thought of as a spiritual commitment to succeed is what gave her the edge.

A few days into rehearsal, it became apparent that the producer, towards whom Melanie had a viscerally repellant reaction, was interested in sexual favors. She rebuffed him with as much grace as she could muster. Several days later an assistant director suggested she had better reconsider her situation if she expected to work in any future productions, let alone this one. Didn’t Melanie know, he asked, how powerful this man was? This was no fantasy. This producer could make or break her. Lots of hot, young women would give their right arm for this opportunity, he assured her.

Surprised by her vehemence, Melanie told him she wouldn’t put up with such harassment. But then, she added something that completely caught her off guard, something unplanned, something very much off track for her, something that would change the way she thought about herself. In the heat of the moment she said to the assistant director, “You know, I’m a Christian.”

This surprised the assistant, who burst out laughing. That was the last thing he expected to hear. For that matter, it was the last thing she expected to say. Melanie reported that she blushed a bright red and regretted the slip of the tongue. Where had that come from, anyway? She was hardly some sort of pious type. In fact, she wasn’t even sure what she really believed.

She had begun attending church, but, come to think of it, even that decision was sort of unconscious. Walking by church one Sunday, this church, as a matter of fact, just at the hour the service began, she spontaneously decided to check it out. And wasn’t she surprised by how tears started to flow midway through the service and didn’t stop until she got back to her apartment? Her spotty religious childhood hadn’t prepared her for the deep feeling, the deep place, the deep meaning that seemed sensitive to the touch.

The word “Christian” had always described someone else, and probably someone she didn’t particularly like. Certainly she had never claimed this identity as a matter of moral urgency. This is what Melanie wondered about when, a week later, she was dropped from the production in favor of the attractive understudy. She was just “too green” the director said. And, she kept on wondering about it two, four, six months into her career as a waitress when she finally found her way into my office.

As she told her tale, I realized there was no question Melanie had a genuine, an-A-number-one- Epiphany-of-the-First-Order. It whomped her on the side of the head, and she was still reeling from the blow. It had two components: professional and spiritual. The professional part was easier, or as she said, less surprising. Of course she knew the world was full of jerks. She just had never had it quite so personally demonstrated. Though still upset, she felt she would survive.

The spiritual part, what she referred to as “this Christian thing,” was a bit more perplexing. She realized she needed to pay attention to her slip of the tongue. She thought it might mean she had staked a claim, chosen a path.

And then, it wasn’t so much her identity as a Christian per se that really mattered, but that she had this powerful connection with God which had direct, immediate bearing on how she would order her life. The word “Christian” was a symbol. This is what so surprised her. This was her wake-up call: being a seeker and follower of the deep truth was a kind of calling, even for an actor, wasn’t it? And, it was potentially pretty costly.

In thinking back on the experience, Melanie still had regret – the musical went on to great success. She was pretty confident that had she played the cards differently, she would have had her name in lights. Yet she was also certain that, if confronted with the same situation, she would make the same decision. It was a matter of her fundamental identity, her dignity and integrity.

Melanie’s consciousness-raising put her on a rather narrow road. It was a road whose goal was true life, and it cost her something. She didn’t have it completely figured out, but she knew her earlier vague notion of success motivated by some sort of spiritual mishigosh was, at best, an inch deep. The life issues were very much larger than she first recognized. And, for her to live with integrity was going to be rather demanding, really. That’s what we wound up talking about – how demanding it was to live a life that attempted to follow the Christ path.

In part, what intrigues me about Melanie’s story is how she came to become attracted to church: it wasn’t by some marketable programming or snazzy come-on, like the trendy and well-turned-out prosperity Gospel preachers, who proclaim that what God wants most of all for you is to be materially successful; all you need is proper motivation, and Jesus is just the motivator you need. Melanie’s inspiration came from a much homelier place, a place of deep engagement with life-as-it-is.

Over the years, I have heard wildly divergent variations of Melanie’s tale. Hers was one of the earliest I received in my 20 years in New York. Since then, I’ve had conversations with a wide array of actors, singers, dancers, designers, artisans of every sort; not to mention entrepreneurs, bankers, doctors, lawyers, and clerks, waiters, city employees, teachers, ministers, sales men and women, retailers, wholesalers, bartenders and doormen.

Here’s what I have heard and learned: a life well-lived, a life that day by day attempts to conform to the deep truth, to the deepest, most profound and life-giving wisdom, is in part about walking the razor’s edge. It is a demanding and sometimes costly proposition. Inevitably, one discovers that the issues of human dignity, integrity and mature love are the nobler venues of human engagement. That if one goes through life without consciously engaging these, one has largely missed the point of it. And, a church that doesn’t front these as the main course has squandered its highest calling.

Here’s the thing about this message: it isn’t naturally popular and it doesn’t market well. On the other hand, if this message is put out with integrity it will inevitably attract a following. Why? Well, because it rings true. It resonates with the sonorous chords of life’s music.

Surely this is why Jesus had a following. Given the wisdom he shares, how else to explain the fact we’re still talking about him 2,000 years later? You heard about this just a moment ago when Cathy read the gospel lesson. Remember how Peter received the news that life entailed suffering for the Son of Man? That’s not what Peter had signed up for. He was riding the road to glory and triumph.

And then, this teaching: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. What does it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Well, that’s a very different kind of wisdom than we normally hear these days, isn’t it? Even from parts of the church which have been captured by the lesser gods of our culture, in the forms of consumerism and politics. I think the very best we can do is to try to re-present the deep wisdom – Christ’s deep wisdom – as best and as clearly as we can, and let the music speak for itself.

Because the truth is that the real task for all of us is to get our lives synched up to God’s music. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s why the healthy church will often find its voice on the side of less popular causes, speaking a discomfiting prophetic word. Matters of human dignity, integrity and mature love slice through the content of our individual lives, as well as our common life. These things are what give our common life substance and meaning.

I have spent years unpacking the significance of carrying my cross and losing my life in order to find my life. I haven’t finished with it yet. I suppose I never will finish with it. But, I know that if I keep that paradoxical wisdom front and center, it helps me stay focused on what really matters about my continuing presence here as a living, breathing, expression of God’s infinite love. I also know that keeping this wisdom front and center provides us, as a community of faith, as Christ Church, with our deep purpose.

And this is important: this deep wisdom binds us together in the most resilient bonds forged from the same furnace that flung the universe into its vast expanse. Bonds of love. Bonds of life stronger than death. Bonds we celebrated in baptism a few minutes ago. All of us, together, bound up by God who is pleased to give us himself in the homely form of a carpenter from Nazareth. Thank God for him.

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