"Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
I believe that it has to be the function of religion in this modern age to herald forth that old union of beauty, goodness and truth.... Religion must stand as an ally of the poet and must encourage all that is beautiful and worthy in the heart of humankind. It must ever ask the question, "When the Lord looks into the heart of man, what will he find?" Will he find a whole heart, or will he find a broken one? Will he find beauty ... and reverence, or will he find only a left ventricle and a right ventricle, a naming of parts? Will he find a deep yearning for unity, or will he find only alienation? In short, when the Lord looks into our hearts, will he find a home there, or will he find a prison?
If religion maintains any culture, it must be the culture of coherence, and not the culture of separation. In fact, where there is the culture of separation, religion must work to transform it. The Church, as a vessel of salvation, must certainly work to transform it, since separation is the language of hell. Yet, alas, even the Church has allowed the culture of separation to invade: Ever since the enlightenment, religion has become increasingly sectarian, increasingly individualized. Thomas Jefferson said, "I am a sect myself," and Thomas Paine, "My mind is my church." Who can speak of the Church Universal, the Church of the saints and martyrs, of the workers and the supplicants, of the poor and the rich, the dying and the just born, the church in the community of God?
And I ask, who can hear the gospel of Christ in the midst of this seemingly never ending debate over who Christ was? The saddest, most divisive thing within the Christian Church is that the debate rages on: Half of us say, "He's God!" and the other half recoils in the name of reason and proclaims just as loudly, "He's man."
As if it mattered. What is important about Christ is not his status as either god or man, but the content of his heart....
If we identify Jesus as anything, let us identify him as a poet, as one who can transform the culture of separation by calling forth a culture of coherence, as one who speaks ever of "the old union of beauty, goodness, and truth." Call him Chevalier as Gerald Manley Hopkins once did. Call him Savior, if you must, Redeemer or Friend or Lord, but do not simply call him "god" or "man" for either one can only serve to place him on a shelf.
Let us not worship Jesus, but let us listen to him. Let us listen to him and to all other poets, living or dead, who call us forth, who request of us our very lives, who bid us to follow not according to outer document, but according to the inner spirit...
(Excerpted in the July/August 1991 Anchor from a sermon preached by the Rev. James A Blair on May 26, 1991, at UNMC.)
Posted by Sue Mosher at May 26, 1991 12:00 PM