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Three Witnesses, pt. 2October 14, 2007 Laity Sunday, pt. 2 of 2 Three Christ Church members share their faith on Laity Sunday, a worship experience led entirely by lay persons representative of the diverse Christ Church family. For part 1 of this service, scroll to the bottom of this page, and click on 'Archives'. Hylke Faber We have been reading a lot about Christian love in this service. And even though I find the love topic very tricky, I want to share what I have learned about loving thus far in my spiritual journey. I hope it will serve you in some way. We just heard the Old and New Testament versions of what is called the Greatest Commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. The scriptures use the word “all” four times: Love with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind. A tall order. Much taller than I had imagined when I stepped foot in this church for the first time September 12, 2001, one day after September 11. At that time I thought I got this idea of love: my idea of love then was that I would love whomever and whatever made me feel comfortable. I loved my friends, colleagues and some family, because I felt comfortable with them. You could say I was practicing conditional love. My unspoken mantra was: If you make me comfortable, I will love you. If you don’t, I won’t. Sounds familiar to some of you? So, who was I uncomfortable with and thus withholding love from? Well, I definitely felt uncomfortable with the terrorists. But my list of rejects didn’t end there: it included many New Yorkers, even some of you, some family, some clients and the list went on. But most jarringly, I didn’t feel comfortable at all with large parts of myself. I really disliked those parts that didn’t conform with my expectations, especially in the areas of achievement, sexuality, and relationships. At the time, my strategy of withholding love from places that scared me seemed to work. You could say it gave me a sense of safety. In my conditional love view, I could simply shield myself from large parts of the world that I didn’t have the will or courage to deal with. Let me pause here for a second – and I invite you ponder these two questions for the next few minutes: Are you fully accepting and loving all of you, with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind? And if not, what is the cost of withholding love and acceptance in your life? As I started to reflect on those questions, the costs of my Conditional Love Strategy became painfully obvious. For example, while I was very considerate and loving to my friends, I had no problem snapping at people in the office or the subway without even giving it a second thought. Moreover, I experienced a lot of illness, anxiety and even insomnia. In retrospect, I think my body was telling me that I needed to open up to places had ran away from. Now waking up to reality is one thing, knowing where to start the work of unconditional love is a whole different ball game, in my experience. Prayer and meditation helped a lot in my case. In this way, I discovered that a key part of my rejection of reality was linked to my sexual orientation. I should tell you that, a few years prior, I had fallen in love with another man for the first time, after thinking I was straight for the first 27 years of my life. And until then, I hadn’t had the courage to tell my parents. In the end I did come out to my parents, and I want to share a piece of this coming-out story today, as I learned a few things about the work of God’s unconditional love. So, I planned to tell my mother as she and her best friend, my godmother, were visiting me one Sunday in March a few years ago. In the morning we went to Christ Church and the service started as we are used to: moving music, readings and prayers. Then Steve Bauman started the sermon. He spoke about Luke, his son, and his travel experience through Africa as a 19-year old. The part of the story that made a big impact on Steve was how Luke had been examined at many military roadblocks and how safe and secure he felt despite those obstacles. Luke said that felt that his American passport gave him a special untouchable status. From this story, Steve pointed out how important it is to have a secure foundation from which to live. How much happier people seem to be who have that foundation, even while suffering great adversity. Then, in a softer voice, he started to talk about the responsibilities we have as church community to provide this home of love and acceptance for each other. Steve said: “Each of us, irrespective of our background, our nationality, our spiritual beliefs, our age, our health, our sexual orientation, straight or gay, has the right to be themselves, feel at home in their own identity and in the greater community." As Steve mentioned sexual orientation, I started to cry. In a sense, I felt Steve said exactly what I wanted to tell my mom that afternoon. How much stronger I felt being myself, accepting and even celebrating my orientation. How I felt I had come home. I was so happy… felt so full… I could not have wished for a better introduction to the afternoon. My mom, my godmother and I wandered through Central Park and in the end we found a little bench where we sat down. I was quiet for a while. My heart was making sommersaults. Then I started saying how beautiful I thought the sermon had been. And how appropriate. Then I said to my mom that I had to tell her something important. My godmother put a hand on my back and said "Sees it mar jong" (which means: go ahead and say it, dear). Then I said that I liked men better than women. And that accepting this had provided me with a new home. My mom responded with tears at first. Then with loving comforting words. She said many things among which: “I am so glad you told me. I love you. I think gay fits with who you always have been. And she asked: Are you angry with us that we gave you those genes.... How horrible it must have been for you to hide all this time and how horrible it is that society makes us do this.” Over the years, I have started to see how formative this experience on that Sunday has been. It has helped me to feel freer, feel more secure in my identity, closer to my family, and more optimistic about the future. I now see that it has given me courage to look at other areas of my life where I have been resisting my true identity. And I feel a renewed sense of purpose about my role in this world. Now when I hear ‘love your neighbor as yourself’, I hear a call to help others find their passports and hold these identity papers with courage and curious introspection. I hear a call to being there for others like my mom was there for me that afternoon in Central Park: so understanding and loving, however uncomfortable it maybe at times. I find myself thinking: if God created us, we are God Thoughts. And if that is so, then who are we to reject any part of anyone, including ourselves? More and more, I am starting to feel that this is a large part of our work at Christ Church: open ourselves to each other so we can love and accept each other completely, however uncomfortable that may be at times. Now I have to admit, I find this commandment to love and accept completely still very challenging. Therefore I am very happy with any counsel I can get. In particular, I find Zen master Suzuki Roshi’s words relevant here. In my view he points out a good place to start our journey to love with all our heart, strength, soul, mind. Roshi said: To express yourself freely as you are Previous sermon: Three Witnesses, pt. 1 • Next sermon: Salt and Light All past sermons |
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