A Life Worthy of God

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, September 18, 2005

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul is indulging in a bit of “Beam me up, Scotty” thinking. He’s worn out b y the struggle and longing for the next life - one less filled with strife. There are certainly times when this mortal coil is too oppressive and hard but, like Paul, we don’t get to opt out. We have to live out our years. We have to figure out how to be here in such a way that God is honored, Christ is lived and the Spirit is embraced. In other words, we have to figure out how to get along. Paul says, “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about organized religion – partly because it’s my job and partly because I think that for all of its failings, it is truly important to the world. It gives direction s for how we live together. Our collective summer reading, The Heart of Christianity says a lot about the what and why of religion. The author, Marcus Borg writes that all religion is a human response to the mystery, the sacred, or as he calls it, “the more.” All of the religions of the world have at their core, the same basic ideas, while having their unique perspective for expressing those truths. At its simplest, knowing that there is “more” should call for a response – that’s what religion is. It’s about how we are related to that “more” to each other and for each other. It’s that life worthy of God.

Yesterday, the LA Times had a large article on China beginning a national campaign to teach manners and courtesy before the Olympics get there in a few years. Life in the US is rude enough but it’s hard for us to imagine living in a culture where spitting and other liquid functions are regularly practiced on the street. Table manners and other forms of social convention were to some measure discouraged during the years of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Civility and social delicacy, as associated with the traditional Chinese culture, were superseded by revolution and ultimately coarseness. It was a compliment to be called a “big rude guy.” One sentence jumped out at me in the article. “By stripping away civility, China, often destroyed the fundamental trust between people, a legacy its society is still paying for.” Globalization certainly has its downside, but as China is drawn into life with the rest of the world, it must figure out how to get along, starting with small things like “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” as well as business ethics. A vice president for one corporation that is investing in extensive training said, “People are starting to see that operating in a good, ethical and well-mannered way helps you survive in the long term.” All of this sounds like the Golden Rule and the 10 Commandments. China is being pushed to think about how they are living their collective life. I see organized religion as being a presence in your life and your culture that helps to do that.

What really got me started thinking about this was an essay I stumbled upon this week. I actually have setting on my computer called Stumble Upon which will randomly open up really interesting websites. What I found was an essay by Albert Einstein called “The World as I See It.” I find it so extraordinary that I wanted to share it with you and then to challenge you to an essay writing contest using the same title. I’d love to see what we come up with. Here’s Albert’s entry.

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

“My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

“This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

Albert Einstein, this very religion man who did not join with anyone else for the practice of his faith, expressed his understanding of living one’s life in a worthy manner. He was not, however, a stranger to the religious tradition; he was brought up in a culture infused with the ethics and lessons of Torah and the prophets. He then lived to see his greatest achievements turned into the greatest single moment of death the world has ever seen. He looked into the cosmos and he saw “more.” His life was about engaging the mystery – so is yours.