Sermon prepared
for
by Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor
Reformation
Unconstipated
Christianity
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I
realize that it’s irreverent to put these two words together for my sermon
title, but on this Reformation Sunday I beg for your indulgence. (That’s a good word for Reformation Sunday
isn’t it: indulgence?)
If
I were to ever write a booklet on Christian spirituality, this is what I would
title it. I’m not just trying to be
gross or funny. That
first word is one of the best descriptions of the kind of faith that Jesus
Christ was preaching …for all kinds of reasons.
So,
let’s talk about it. If the year was
1892, instead of 2003, and I said some fellow was constipated, your first
thought would not have had anything to do with his body functions. Your first assumption a century ago would be
that I was saying he was a bit dull, pious, and stingy kind of fellow.
Webster
still puts it like this: the transitive verb “to constipate” means “to make
immobile, inactive or dull.” That’s
it. So, an “un-constipated” Christianity is the opposite. It’s a Christianity that is active and
bright, and moving.
However,
before we run too quickly from the physical analogy, I think it’s worth
learning about a wonderful Old Testament Hebrew word, meh-geem, and its New Testament
Greek equivalent (that’s even more fun to say), splagchna. Both of these words, meh-geem and splagchna, are usually translated
into the English Bibles with the word “heart” …except in the Old King James
version.
In
all the translations I checked, only the King James version
held onto the more literal meaning of meh-geem and splagchna, which was “bowels.” We talk about emotions and feelings being
“from the heart.” In both Greek and the
Hebrew thought, the seat of emotions, love and compassion was “from the guts.”
We
get close when we talk about “visceral feelings,” “gut instincts,” or we tell
someone to “have some guts.” For the
Greek and Hebrew mind this is how they felt both the emotions and the will to
act on them, from the gut.
And
this idea was even applied to God. If
you look up Isaiah 63:15, Isaiah was begging God to look down from heaven and
to help him. In most translations it
sounds something like this, “Where are your zeal and your might; the yearning
of your heart and compassion?” But the
Old King James says it even better, like this, “Where is
thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding
of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me?”
I
know that is a graphic image to apply to God, and our first impulse is to be
embarrassed and to run to the newer translations that say “heart” instead of
“bowels.” I find that to be a bit
dishonest with the Bible, and it misses a much more
powerful image to hear that God’s grace and mercy for me is a visceral
connection. God loves me, not just with
his heart, but with all his vitals. That’s
passion, that tells me about a God with the kind of
ferocious love that a mother might have protecting her children.
And
when Paul was writing to Philemon that he was sending Philemon’s slave, Onesimus, back to him, our translations usually say, “I am
sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.” What Paul really wrote was, “I have sent him,
that is, I have sent my own bowels, back to you.”
This
is exactly how Greek and Hebrew parents would talk about their own
children. Children are not just the love
and beat of their hearts, but all their inner vitals. Mothers, you know that it’s more than your
heart. When you send your children away,
or worry about them, it’s visceral; you feel it with all your vitals.
…
So does God! To love someone like this
is an unconstipated love. If unconstipated
means active, moving, lifegiving, and, yes,
relieving, then that is an exact description of God’s love, and the kind of
love and action into which we Christians are called.
I
also like this image because it brings lofty words like “grace, mercy and
heaven” right down to earth, where we need it the most. God doesn’t just love me for the noblest
parts, the heart and mind. He even loves
me inside and out. Veins,
nerve snapses, bone marrow, intestines and all. God isn’t stifled by our Victorian sense of
what we think is dirty, private, or embarrassing. He loved me.
He knows every bit of me, and yet he still loves me.
Some
of you know a few of the legends of Martin Luther. There is the well known story of how he was caught
in a lightning storm and prayed to St. Anne, promising to become a monk only if
God would spare his life. There is also
the rumored ink-stain on one of his study walls, where it is said he threw his
ink bottle at the devil one night while they were arguing.
There
is a lesser known, but somewhat better documented, legend about the exact
moment that Luther had his revelation from God.
Later in life, Luther was recalling the frustration of that moment. He was studying the Book of Romans in order
to lecture on it and he kept bumping into the passages that spoke of the
“righteousness of God.”
Luther
had always thought of this righteousness as something God had, and something we
humans needed to get in order to have a right faith, to get a right
relationship with God. Really, finally
we needed to get this righteousness in order to be saved from the fires of
hell.
Then
it happened. Luther said, “The Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit gave me this revelation
in the cl.”
That last word abbreviation, “cl.” was an
abbreviation for the polite Latin word cloaca. The cloaca was used
for one of two places, either the latrine, or the private adjoining room. Luther said that he received the revelation
from the Holy Spirit in the private room.
For
those of you who saw the recent Luther
movie they kind of touched on this idea.
You’ll remember the scenes in the small room where Luther was almost
physically wrestling with his fears and the devil. It connects to Luther’s well-documented
belief that these rooms, the cloacae,
were a favorite hang-out for the devil.
This is actually where Luther occasionally argued with his fears and
Satan’s temptations.
In
that moment, in that place, that very earthy place, vulnerable, alone, while
Luther was trying to reach out to God for insight, he said God sent him the
Holy Spirit, and everything changed. The
Reformation began in that low and humble place.
God has a tendency to start his greatest works from earthly humble starts.
Luther
suddenly realized that individual humans were not being asked to make themselves righteous to get saved. They were being offered the very
righteousness needed for salvation by God, because of Jesus.
In
his own words, Luther said, “This immediately made me feel as though I had been
born again, and as though I had entered through open gates into paradise
itself. From that moment, the whole face
of Scripture appeared to me in a different light.”
It
had opened up. The grace of God had
opened up, and God’s mercies sounded once again…from his inner vitals, through
Luther’s and to ours. We are connected
to God.
I
don’t think we realize how much we need to hear this message from God, and I
mean really hear it. We take it for
granted. “Oh yeah, God loves me, this I
know.” This is not something to take
lightly. If God loves us as much as
Luther was saying he does, this is an incredible mercy, like a ferocious mother
bear, willing to face death, even death on the cross for us.
Grace
is freely given, but it was not cheap, God paid the price …in his own
blood. And why? Because he loves us that much,
…with guts.
Beyond
that, because he wants us to love, to be able
to love, to be free to love him, his
people, and his creation, like that: with our guts, with emotion, with mercy,
with compassion, with movement and action, meh-geem and splagchna,
with heart and guts, unconstipated Christianity.
This
kind of Christianity can mean hard work, and sacrifice. The difference now is that you can truly love
God—and obey him—not for what you want him to do for you, but for what he has already done. The difference now is that we can truly love
our neighbors, not just because we’re trying to earn our wings, but because we
see others a little more the way that God does…like us…needing mercy, and
getting it. Offer it.
There’s
much more that needs to be said about the Christian life that we are called to
live. But today, I ask this: let
whatever is constipating your Christianity, whatever is getting in the way of
your truly trusting and loving God, let it go.
Whatever you don’t trust about his grace, it’s time to let it go, and
truly become a part of it, instead of getting in the way.
Accept
God’s love like you don’t deserve it, but accept it as an unchangeable fact
that he does love you that much, with his very life. That fact is what makes the last verse in the
next hymn unshakable: “Were they,” were hordes of devils, “to take our house,
goods, honor, child or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win
the day. The kingdom’s our forever.” Amen.
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