josephholubsermons


 

December 5, 2010  

This sermon was delivered at the High Country Unitarian Universalist Fellowship which meets at 4pm on Sundays in the Lord of the Mountains Fellowship Hall. 

A Spirituality of Coloring Outside the Lines

Good-Afternoon to you all!  I feel honored that you would invite me here today and share with you.  We at LOTM are very happy that you are here.  Reaching out beyond the boundaries of our faith community and embracing others is a significant part of who we strive to be.  We have certainly felt your embrace, and I hope you have felt ours.  I will begin my comments today by sharing with you a bit about who I am, and from there connect with my subject for today that I have entitled, “A Spirituality of Coloring Outside the Lines” as the two are enmeshed with one another.

Maria asked me to do a short bio for your bulletin.  Whenever asked, I find that little exercise  interesting and intriguing.  Over the years, my first inclination has been to immediately rush to define myself in terms of where I have been or what I have accomplished.   But I find that is not nearly as important me as it used to be.  In fact, it scarcely interests me at all, not that I haven’t accomplished anything or been anywhere, but the things I have accomplished do not necessarily reveal who I am today- in fact they sort of bore me!    

Accomplishments are relatively static and in the past tense, revealing only what I did yesterday.  They are merely milestones on an evolutionary journey.  I don’t know about you, but I experience myself as a present reality; dynamic rather than static, hence, the most apt way I can describe myself is to say, “I am a follower of Jesus."   I hesitate to even use the word “Christian” to describe myself because it is such a loaded word that brings a great deal of baggage along with it.   Because I do not espouse orthodox Christian dogmas, doctrines and creeds which require one’s assent as central to my faith-experience, there are those who pointedly criticize I am not a Christian – and in that narrow sense of the definition, perhaps they are correct. 

Rather I identify myself as a “follower of Jesus,” for my life and my being are committed to and invested in a dynamic, ongoing and growing engagement with the Sacred, through Jesus, that informs me, shapes me and empowers me in daily living.  It is out of that present reality and state of my being that I speak to you today as a fellow pilgrim on a path to seeking greater enlightenment.  That personal core commitment leads to a distinction that I make between religion and spirituality.  Both words are used excessively and sometimes interchangeably in faith cultures, but for me they are not the same at all – they are very different and very distinct. 

Generally speaking religion takes the shape of external institution that is most interested in conformity and control, self-preservation and self-perpetuation.  I get a lot of email, mainly because I have a web site where my sermons and other writings are published.  People often respond, and a percentage of it is negative and judgmental. Why?- because I do not conform to many of the orthodox beliefs of Christian religion.   

Spirituality, on the other hand, takes us to a place beyond the narrowness and parochialism that religion can easily become and seeks to find profound ways to experience the Sacred that are deeply rooted in compassion and inclusive and self-giving love.  Jesus, living out of his own spirituality, confronted, challenged and took on his religion, seemingly trumping his own orthodox religion with love and compassion at every turn in the road. 

 ·        He vehemently took on established religion when it sold its heart and soul to rigid legalism.

·         He embraced enthusiastically those that religion had fearfully cast into the exile of ritual un-cleanliness and moral inferiority. 

·         When dehumanizing religious law was asserted over love, he affirmed love and grace over religious law. 

·         When the religious aristocracy collaborated with Rome to advance political oppression and economic exploitation of the poor, he was fervently in their faces.

·         He challenged the coercive and hierarchical imperial empire at every turn proclaiming a world where the last would be first, the poor would be filled; the oppressed would be set free; the strong would no longer dominate the weak; a world of social justice, fairness and equality.

·         When his own disciples would have resorted to religiously legitimated violence, he took the sword out of their hand.

Author Robert Fulghum wrote a popular and best-selling book published in 1990 entitled, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  Perhaps you have read it.  It’s a wonderful book that advances common sense wisdom for living a full and meaningful life.  A few of my personal favorite excerpts from his book include:   "Share everything.  Play fair.  Don't hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.  Don't take things that aren't yours.  Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.  Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books, and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK."

For me, when it comes to a dynamic spirituality, I could use Fulghum’s book title only tweaking it a bit,  Everything I Need to Know I Learned Before Kindergarten.

Do you remember when you were very young and you received your first coloring book and a small box of crayons?  And you went at your coloring  with passion, freedom and sense of joy.  It didn’t matter if faces were colored purple, the sun blue, the sky yellow or the grass red – and, of course, staying within the lines of the coloring book figures was totally optional – not required.  

One day at the Dillon post office I paused at the counter to sort my mail.  There was man standing next to me, about my age, chuckling to himself.  I glanced over and saw that he had a handful of a child’s colorings, and I noticed the pictures were all colored with scribbling outside the lines. (a proud grandparent perhaps?)

Time went on, and you were given a new coloring book and this time a jumbo box of crayons, the one with all the subtle shades of colors.  Unlike with the first book when you were told to just freely go at it, this time you were given instructions to color within the lines and that certain things were always certain colors, and it mattered!  Over time you learned that it would be better to stay within the lines and color appropriately, because when you deviated you may have been corrected or even criticized.

More time passed, and for Christmas one year you received a paint-by-numbers set.  This was a whole new deal!   Now it was mandated that you stay within the lines and use the assigned color in the designated numbered segment so the picture would turn out the way it was supposed to look. You had to be very careful and meticulous to keep the colors within the lines.   Deviation from the assigned pattern was not acceptable. You colored your world according to the instructions given. 

Of course, what was really happening was that all along you were learning that life was largely defined by lines and colors, and the sacred task was to stay within the lines and learn the appropriate color for each given segment-especially that of your tribe-whatever tribe that may have been.  Your coloring book and paint-by-numbers set was a microcosm of life and before long you figured that out.  One day you took your eyes off the canvas and you looked out at the world and saw that it too was defined by lines and colors.  You also discovered that almost everyone wanted you to live within the lines.  Very few, if any, encouraged you to color outside the lines. So you developed a world view defined by lines and colors-the lines and colors of your tribe.     

You learned there were lines for everything in this world: peer group lines, gender lines, status lines, prejudice lines, political lines, national lines, racial lines, ethnicity lines, cultural lines, economic lines,  and of course, lots and lots of religious lines.   You learned that the countless segments created by the lines all had a designated colors and shapes, and you may have also noticed that some colors were used more than others like red and blue; like black, white and brown being used the most – and most everyone was saying those lines and colors were important, and the segments the lines created had relative value, and you needed to know the difference and, most importantly, conform your life to the way those lines and colors were configured and arranged.    

And we learned the lesson well, as perhaps we have spent the majority of our lives living within the lines, conforming to that which is acceptable to our tribe and coloring the world according to the tastes of our tribe; taking the safer path; traveling the road well-worn.  You may have even been willing to sacrifice some of your uniqueness, imagination and creativity for the sake of conformity.  As a result you have perhaps lived a good and decent life within the lines, coloring your world in acceptable ways. 

 There is a little scenario tucked away in the 5^th chapter of Luke where the Pharisees (the devoutly religious) complained that Jesus “ate with tax collectors and sinners.”  Moments later they also said to Jesus, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.”   (Luke 5)

Translated into the vernacular, they meant, “Jesus, why do your disciples color outside the lines?  Why do your disciples not paint the world using the appropriate colors in the designated segments? Why do your  disciples deviate from the norm of our religious tribe?”

The Pharisees were threatened that a picture was being created by Jesus and his disciples that was non-conformist, maverick and way too free-spirited for them.  They were not following the explicit directions of the prescribed religion – not staying within the lines – not painting with the appropriate colors. 

You see, the Pharisees had spent their lives pretty much painting-by-numbers, staying within the lines, painting the world with only those colors deemed acceptable according to the instructions (that being their interpretation of the Torah).  As far as the Pharisees were concerned, Jesus and his disciples were desecrating their picture of the proper religious life. 

When we look at the canvas of Jesus’ life, it is not  anything close to a paint-by-numbers scenario, but it is a picture of what a spiritual life can look like when the canvas is the world and the paint is the love of God.   

You see, Jesus made it pretty clear that the love of God in all of its shades of colors cannot be contained within a paint-by-number scheme of things.  When you color the world with God’s love, you frequently color outside the lines, and you don’t follow anyone else’s pattern because coloring with the love of God includes imagination and creativity. 

For example:

·         Where the Pharisees colored the religious life as a separation of the clean from the unclean; the righteous from sinners; the in-crowd from outcasts - Jesus colored the world with a spirituality of God’s love that caused him to embrace and touch those religion had painted untouchable.

·         Where the Pharisees drew a line they would not cross when it came to fellowshipping with those religion had excluded – Jesus painted far beyond the numbers with God’s inclusive love of the outcasts and marginalized, and he sought out and enjoyed their fellowship, and he joined them at their tables which signified his acceptance.. 

·         Where the Pharisees had drawn up hundreds of laws for the proper observance of the Sabbath, considering these laws forbidden lines one could not cross – Jesus brought his eraser to class and  expunged the rigid Sabbath observance lines by coloring the world with the bright colors of doing things forbidden on the Sabbath: like healing the sick, plucking ears of corn to eat, and publically affirming a crippled women in the synagogue which was pretty much a boy’s club.

What vexed the Pharisees was that their canvas of proper religion, drawn in detail with innumerable lines and the rather drab colors of exclusion, was being replaced by a canvas of a dynamic spirituality that was lineless and filled with the dazzling colors of the life and energy of the limitless love of God. 

There is another gospel passage that intrigues me, and I have explored its depth of meaning for my life for decades.  The older I get the more I appreciate the new dimensions of meaning that emerge from it for me. The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of God?”  That is a question about the lines and colors of power and prestige.  Jesus then  put a child smack into the midst of those proud and insecure disciples, and he said, “Unless you become like children… (you will never get it or understand when it comes to God’s ways in the world).  

“…become like children…” says Jesus.   Do you remember when you were very young and you received your first coloring book and a small box of crayons?  And you went at it with passion, freedom and sense of joy.  It didn’t matter if faces were colored purple, the sun blue, the sky yellow or the grass red – and, of course, staying within the lines of the coloring book figures was totally optional – not required.   “Become like children”  Yes, we are back to where we began.

A spirituality of coloring outside the lines means to recapture something we knew and experienced long ago, even before kindergarten,  but somewhere along the way were taught otherwise; taught it was childish and unsophisticated and erroneous.  But Jesus said, “Unless you become like children…”  For me a dynamic spirituality is to paint, with freedom, reckless abandon and joy, the world with the bright colors of the love of God in all of its expressions outside the rigid lines that cultural and religious tribal mind-sets have carefully drawn.

My own personal faith journey these days of my life is an intentional journey into the spirituality of coloring outside the lines, the dimensions of which I can never fully reach or comprehend – that is why it is a ongoing journey that every day invites me to go deeper into love and surprises me at every bend in the road.  On this journey I have discovered that:

…a spirituality of coloring outside the lines encourages me to treat each human being equally and with dignity, to see the face of the Sacred in the last and lost and least; to even see a sacred face in those I don’t like, those I fear and even my adversary - in contrast to - religion that can often marginalize, dehumanize, categorize, and demonize those people it has quarantined and put on the other side of some religiously legitimized boundary. 

…this spirituality helps me to seek and advance a communal and holistic paradigm of faith community, respecting all the ways we are diverse and to erase the boundaries of fear that can exist between us – in contrast to – religion that often follows an imperialistic paradigm sacrificing the colorful textures that exist among us in an effort to make us look and think and believe alike.

…this spirituality opens me up to live every moment with a consciousness of God’s amazing love and grace that can be transformational in terms of the way I relate to the world and to others – in contrast to – religion that is often held captive by its insistence of its assumed role as a rather narrow mediator of grace.  

…this spirituality places me firmly in this life and understands “salvation” to mean “being made whole in love” - a love I live out in relationship to others and the world – in contrast to – religion that first defines “salvation” as an afterlife reward for correct belief and often minimizes the urgent problems humanity and the earth as secondary or ignores them altogether as insignificant.

...this spirituality is comfortable with ambiguity and invites critical thinking - in contrast to - religion that tends to advance simplistic answers and see only two shades of colors (black and white that are not even colors) when it comes to most everything.

So my friends, whatever your tradition, theology or creedal foundations, I invite you to break out the crayons and paints and a blank canvas, and color the world with the colors of the love of Jesus. Paint with the bright and dazzling colors of the love of Jesus those that religion has painted with the grays of exclusion .    Dare to experience life and people outside your rigid lines and little segment of life.  Get connected with others outside of your tribal boundaries and bias lines.   And remember the Dick-and-Jane books, and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all – LOOK - there are opportunities everywhere!