Self-Expansion or Common Enterprise?

"We're an overconfident species." So writes columnist David Brooks in The Modesty Manifesto printed in this past Friday's New York Times.

He goes on to write that "there's abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted from a culture that emphasized self-effacement -- I'm no better than anyone else, but nobody is better than me -- to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion."

This is possibly, he believes, a reason for some of our current problems in the United States. We have so inflated our sense of self, so fallen into narcissism, that political leaders are no longer motivated to listen to those who disagree with them, making it nearly impossible to reach the sort of compromise, let alone consensus, that allows us to make the difficult decisions that will have a long-term impact on the United States.

"Citizenship, after all," he writes, "is built on an awareness that we are not all that special but are, instead, enmeshed in a common enterprise."

I think Brooks is on to something here that speaks directly to a central challenge for congregational life in these early years of the 21st century. We in the church are trying to create religious communities in an age in which people are looking for personal spiritual fulfillment. In other words, it seems to me that so often people seek a church because they are yearning for self-expansion.

Understand, please, that I'm not being critical. Too many people have been hurt or pushed down by the church, their schools, or some other institution (or even their families). As Jesus did with the woman who committed adultery (see John 8:2-11) we need to lift people up, proclaiming to them that they are not condemned but loved. There are a lot of people out there who need some healthy self-expansion.

Yet didn't Jesus invite us to give up our selves and follow him? Are we not inviting people into a divine community, into a religious citizenship that is, to use Brooks' words, "enmeshed in a common enterprise"? To create this community, don't we need to invite people to look beyond their own personal fulfillment to work for the fulfillment of the whole? And is it not true that, paradoxically, each of us finds our truest sense of fulfillment when we give our selves over to the Jesus we experience and make manifest together?

So, it's Lent and for those of us who gathered at church on Ash Wednesday, we've been invited "to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word" (Book of Common Prayer, p. 265).

There's a lot of "self" in that invitation, but somehow I'm thinking that all of this spiritual "work" I'm supposed to do during Lent is not supposed to be all about me, that it's not all about my personal relationship with Jesus.

What might happen if, during Lent, we focused on our relationships with both Jesus and each other, if we focused on our "common enterprise." That might even lead to some transformation, an expansion not simply of the self but of the community.

I'm thinking that -- perhaps -- that could be just what Jesus wanted.

Peter Gomes: Authentic and Faithful Disciple

The Rev. Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University, died this past Monday, February 28. This is a tremendous loss for the Harvard community, but I believe also for the church in the United States.

I did not know Gomes. I never met him and never heard him preach (though I wish I had). I've read one of his books and know I should read more.

There are a variety of places you can read about his life and achievements: on the Harvard Divinity School website, on Wikipedia, and in obituaries in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.

I want to share one quote I read in the paper this morning. In 1996 Gomes said this in an interview with the Boston Globe:

"[My mother] always told me that I must invent my own reality. Reality will not conform to you. You must invent your own and then conform to it. So I did. I am an authentic and an original . . . I will not allow myself to be known simply as an African American, no more than I would allow myself to be known as gay or conservative. They are all bits and pieces of a work in progress. I am a child of God."

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all live with this sort of authenticity? What might the world look like if we had enough security to live as fully and courageously as the people God created us to be? What might the world look like if we all recognize and admit that we are works in progress? What might the world look like if we could see each person we meet as a child of God instead of the through the lens of our own reality and perspective?

This, I believe, is the essence of what we are called to create as leaders of Christian communities. We need to create communities that invite people to discover who they are as children of God. And once they have discovered this (or begun to see themselves as works in progress), we need to be communities that support and equip people to live authentically and faithfully at home, at school, at work, and in their neighborhoods and communities.

Isn't this why the church exists? Isn't this why Jesus told us to go forth and make disciples?

Thank you, Peter Gomes, for living your authentic and faithful life so publicly for the rest of us. May you rest in peace.