The Creatures That We Are


Sermon preached by John C. Hall on October 23, 2005
Texts - Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

and Romans 7:14-15

For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

I'm going to begin by saying something about human nature that will sound uncomplimentary or even a little harsh at first, so please bear with me.

Think about what happened after hurricane Katrina hit. All those people were wandering around bewildered. Many of you probably saw the interview with a man who told the reporter he was trying to hold his wife's hand in the flood, but then she said, “You can't hold on. Take care of the children.” And then she was swept away and he never saw her again. About 900 people died in the hurricane and flooding. And there was a great outpouring of money from all over the country, and a lot of anger that the federal government was so slow to respond.

Now think about the earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir. Estimates are that 100,000 people died under the rubble. There is still no water and medicine to help the injured in hundreds of small villages. Rescuers can't even get through the mountain roads. You may have noticed that the outpouring of money, and sympathy, hasn't been so great - not what it was after the hurricane.

It seems that it's not so much the depth of the need that gets our attention. What gets our attention is whether the people belong to us. The people of Louisiana belong to us in a way that the people in Pakistan don't. We know people in Louisiana. If a hurricane like that hit Rhode Island, we'd care more. When someone in our own family is in trouble, we really care. What would Jesus say about this?

Jesus taught that the two great commandments are to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and then in other passages, when people ask him “Who is my neighbor?” he says “Your neighbor is everyone. This is what the story of the Good Samaritan is all about. Your neighbor is the foreigner. Your neighbor is the outcast, the leper. The neighbor is your enemy.”

In many passages I could cite, Jesus even downplays kinship relations, what we call “blood relationships.” You could make a pretty good case, based on Scripture, that the “Christian way” is to care about the people of Pakistan and Kashmir just as much as we care about our own children and parents.

But that's not the way we are. That's not what anyone does. What's going on in this preference we have for people close to us? What's going on is human nature. This is the way we are built. You've probably heard me say this before. I find myself saying it quite often. We are tribal creatures.

We are built to care more about the people close to us than the people far away or the people outside our circle. It's coded in our genes to care more about the people in our own family than the people who live down the street, and to care more about the people down the street than the people in the next town. We care more about the people in our own church than the people in some other church. We care more about people who think like us than people who have what we consider crazy ideas. We care more about the American soldiers in Iraq than we care about the insurgents.

This is so automatic that we hardly notice it. I remember after the 9/11 attacks, there was an outcry at the suggestion that the hijackers be named, or even counted, among those who died on those flights.

Being “tribal” means, when it gets right down to it, we are going stick together and oppose anyone or anything that threatens our group. This is how the human mind and morality evolved. Human culture, and the human nervous system, all of this evolved because small groups, with codes of behavior, with standards for cooperation, help us get along with each other. They help us hunt and gather food. They help us survive storms and droughts. They help us fight our enemies.

Parents will protect and defend their own child before they'll protect and defend someone else's child. Would anyone recommend that it should be any other way? This is how God made us. It's hard to see how the world would work at all if people didn't prefer those who belong in their own circle.

This is what culture is all about. Culture, language, laws, literature, religion, all of this forms a symbolic world that holds people together by giving us a common way of seeing the world.

And there's more to human nature. Jesus said, “Fear not.” But the truth is we are made to be anxious. Our anxiety is very often exaggerated compared to the real danger, but that's a safety mechanism. It allows for a margin of error. We want security. We want comfort. When we're hungry, we look for something to eat. We band together to get it. We're tribal and territorial. We're not that different from other animals. If I could have a chat with Jesus, I'd want to say, “If all these things are all so sinful, then why did God make us this way?”

But, of course, what Jesus might answer is: we're a different kind of animal. What makes us different is our ability to see that this tribalism and territorialism creates certain problems. We do desire pleasure, comfort, and security, but we can also envision a better way of living as a world community. Here, Christian inclusivity and concern for all people become very useful. God also gave us aspirations. We have ideals. So, we're divided creatures. We have an inner battle between the way we are and the way we would like to be.

And here the verses from Paul come into play. This is quite a confession on Paul's part, and a useful psychological insight. He says, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

Hmm. What does Paul do that he also hates? What is St. Paul's dirty little secret? Wouldn't you just love to know that? Plenty of people have speculated. Maybe Paul had some carnal habit that he couldn't quite shake. Maybe he drank too much. Maybe his sexual appetites were a problem. Those are the major theories I've heard, based on other things Paul said.

Whatever it was, he didn't do it because he hated it. He did it because he liked it. What he's really saying is: I don't always do what my ideals tell me to do. Sometimes, my appetites, my human nature, wins.

It's not hard to see this in ourselves. We say things like “I know I shouldn't buy clothes from China or Vietnam where child worker are paid 50 cents a day, but I like cheap clothes, especially when the quality is high. It's better for my family. I know the people of Pakistan are suffering unimaginable horrors, but next week, I have to put new tires on my car. Not only that, but my own children want to go to Disney World. I know that my car puts greenhouse gases into the air, but taking the bus is so time-consuming.”

We might as well face it. We're like Paul. We're torn. And our self-interest almost always wins the battle. But since we're also creatures with ideals, we also need to pray that God will change us, and make us want to be different.

There are many things to resist in the world. The “system” is one - the system that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. The system continues because it serves many people very well.

Resisting the system begins in each of us. It begins by admitting that part of us doesn't want to resist it. We don't want to resist it because it serves us pretty well.

The Spirit of Christ, if we pray for it, can make us want different things, higher things. It can help us feel more sympathy for people in Pakistan. It can make us more generous. It can help us be at peace with life's anxieties and life's disappointments. This is what the church calls letting the old Adam die, so that the new Adam, the Christ, the new creature, can be born in us.

This is the struggle we face. And in this too we are not alone.

The mission of First Church is to engage and support people in worship, learning, fellowship, and service, so that all may find in our community the Spirit of the living Christ.  We are an Open and Affirming Church: All are welcome into the full life of our community regardless of their race, age, gender, nationality, marital status, economic situation, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation.