Sunday, September 20, 2009

Sermon for Year B, Proper 20: "The Shadow Knows"

Preached on Sunday, September 20th at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Scripture readings this sermon is based on are found here.

“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?”

The question is raised by James, the brother of Jesus and a chief leader in the very earliest Christian community that formed in Jerusalem after Jesus’ crucifixion. The scholars think that next to the writings of Paul, the Epistle of James, or its sources are some of the earliest New Testament writings we have. James’ concerns are for a fledgling church that is just now defining itself, and just now forging a new relationship with some of the beliefs of the past, while at the same time finding that it is at odds with much of the secular culture and much of the religious culture that surrounds it. There are problems within and without. And James is very much concerned that earthly things like conflicts and disputes not become a distraction from things heavenly, as our collect for this Sunday puts it.


But the question James poses to the early church is one that we could ask ourselves about our country today… “These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?” None of us would deny that there are indeed vitriolic disputes and quite harsh conflicts raging in our society -- in town halls, on blogs and on cable political shows and talk radio, and even on the floor of the House of Representatives.

If you’re like me, you’re straining to hear policies debated and alternatives proposed. But, there’s not much of that. Rather, back-biting, name calling and fear mongering seem to have overridden all serious discussion. We are at a different point in our discourse when instead of hearing statesmen say, “I respectfully disagree” we hear, “You Lie!” shouted out during a presidential address before the assembled Congress of the United States. Something very powerful is at play when that sort of language and that sort of tone is used.


There has been a lot of discussion about how much racism – that familiar sin of American society – has been to blame. Many have chimed in and charges are flying.


But some other voices are being heard now, less prominently for sure. And I believe these voices have something to say to us about where our nation is at the moment -- and about what our scripture is saying about it -- but what they have to say is not at all easy to hear.


Speaking from a psychological point of view, some are now saying that something else, something deeper, something darker, is at play in our nation these days. The Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Jung posited the existence of archetypes that are part of our human consciousness both individually in each of us, and collectively in societies and cultures. One of these archetypes is the shadow. According to Jung, each of us houses within our unconscious a shadow, a part of us where all our weaknesses, our shortcomings, our jealousies, our selfishness, our thirst for power, and our anti-social instincts reside. The shadow is simply our bad side, and we all have one. "Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."


Each of us has an ego too and that ego would like us to believe that we’re not bad guys, but good guys, quite good guys as a matter of fact. The shadow is the opposite of the ego’s image of itself, it contains those parts of the self that the ego would like to ignore, those parts of ourselves that we’d rather not own up to.


Shadow and ego and archetype are psychological terms, but we say something quite similar when we talk in theological terms. When we speak in theological terms about this aspect of our humanity, we say that we are all sinners, and that all of us, no matter how good, is in need of God’s grace and mercy.


Because the shadow is so distasteful to us, and because the ego is so strong, the shadow is prone to projection. That is to say, instead of recognizing our own faults, we are much more likely to find those faults in others. We project our shadows onto others and find them guilty of our own moral lapses. Or as folks down South used to say, ‘Be careful who you point your finger at. ‘Cause you got three fingers pointing back at you.”


Our collective national ego is as disgusted by our national shadow as our personal ego is by our personal shadow. Our nation in particular likes to think of itself as good and true, as the land of the free and the home of the brave. And we like to compare ourselves quite favorably to other nations. When I was growing up, we were taught that we lived in freedom while those in the Soviet Union, that evil empire, were not free. Of course, this was at a time when some of us were free, but others of us could not hold certain jobs, go to certain schools, or take certain seats on the bus or drink from certain water fountains. But it was much easier to point out the lack of freedom in our archenemy than to recognize and remedy the lack of freedom in our own nation.


Something like this process may be what is going on in our nation today. Unfortunately for our country, our current president is for some the perfect screen onto which to project some of the aspects of our national shadow -- and almost certainly racism does play into his suitability as an object of shadow projection.


Rumors about the president’s citizenship and therefore his right to be president persist though all the authorities in his home state have completely debunked them. In this accusation, I see a projection of the shadow of the election of 2000 when voting irregularities in Florida – where, need I remind you, one of the candidates’ brother was the chief executive -- left us with what many considered an unduly elected president. Accusations are made that our country will be bankrupted by healthcare reform when it has already been bankrupted by an astronomically expensive and seemingly endless war fought for illegitimate if not nefarious reasons. Cries are heard that our government is taking away our right to choose healthcare options when no such outcry when our government took away our right to privacy and began unprecedented spying on its own citizens. One commentator even suggested that the rhetoric about the alleged ‘death panels’ was in fact a shadow projection of a murderous urge toward the president lurking in the collective unconscious of some. At different points in the clamor, our president is accused of being a fascist and a communist and a socialist, and lest we forget, a Muslim. Another commentator described these epitaphs as a pretty accurate list of our nation’s shadow projections for the last 60 years – all now focused on one individual.


Before we leave this example, let me assure you, I don’t think that shadow projection is exclusive to the political right in our country. Back in the 80s & 90s, I can remember a few ACT UP demonstrations where the rhetoric shouted at the then president -- shouted loudly by, among others, myself -- that rhetoric could well be illuminated by this type of analysis as well. And I have the therapy bills to prove it!

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“For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, ‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions… He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us…’”


This Old Testament reading from Wisdom, our reading from James and the writings of Carl Jung all seem to carry an understanding of this flaw in our collective humanity, this disposition that causes us to see in others that which we are guilty of ourselves, to fear in others what may lie within our own souls. But what does the gospel say?


Well, once again in today’s reading from Mark, we find Jesus explaining to the disciples the nature of his messiahship. And once again, the disciples seem to miss the point. As in our gospel last week, the disciples are unable or perhaps unwilling to come to grips with the fact that Jesus will ascend not a throne but a cross. And after that cross he will descend to the grave, from whence he will rise again.


The disciples find something untenable in Jesus’ teachings about what will befall him. They want to deny the shadow side of Jesus’ mission -- his crucifixion – and they long for the triumph and reign they have long expected for the long hoped for Son of Man. So, in today’s gospel when Jesus is trying to help the disciples understand what lies ahead -- that it is not triumph and glory but suffering and death that lies ahead -- they instead redirect their attention and start to discuss who is going to triumph among themselves. Who among the Twelve will have the most glory?


Jesus responds by presenting the disciples with an archetype, not the shadow archetype, but a different archetype. He presents them with a child. Now, in ancient times, children were almost non-entities. There is very little about them in ancient texts about home life, civil law, even in medical texts. Children don’t seem to enter into the public consciousness until they are adolescents. Of course, infant mortality was a huge factor in the ancient world and it may have been that it simply didn’t pay to become too emotionally or psychically aware of children until they were of an age when their survival was more assured.


So for Jesus to present a child as one whom adult men in traditional Jewish or Hellenistic society should welcome, should become aware of, is quite shocking. But as Jungians will tell you, the child is an archetype that carries great meaning for the human conscious.


In Jungian thought, the child archetype -- and the divine archetype in particular -- is associated with new life, new beginnings, and represents paradise regained. But the divine child’s shadow is that it is defenseless against negative forces in the world and often succumbs to them. Jesus is one example of the divine child archetype and he does indeed suffer at the hands of negative forces. But Jesus asks the disciples in today’s gospel to welcome the child, to accept what the child represents, new life, redemption, and paradise regained, rather the earthly power and prestige -- for themselves or for him. Heavenly things rather than earthly concerns.


Now, am I saying Jesus was a Jungian??? No, nothing like that. In fact, the opposite is quite true, Jung was a Christian. Let’s just make sure we know which is the cart and which is the horse between the two. And the Scripture is not a thinly veiled Jungian trope. But the Scripture is a living thing, and we can approach it in every age, with whatever knowledge we have, we can look through many lenses see its truths; and it can help us make sense of our sometimes troubling world -- and our sometimes troubled souls.


We are sinners – no matter how proud we are of our great good works, or our acts of charity or our political correctness. No matter how sure we are they we are right and they are wrong; that we are good and that they are evil. We are all shadowed sinners in need of God’s grace. The more we accept this of ourselves, the more we can recognize that others are not responsible for our sins. And the more we recognize that we are all sinful in what might be roughly equal measure, the more we value the unifying incarnation and reconciling death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.


For in Jesus, the redemption and rebirth of the divine child is granted unto us. In Jesus, the darkness of death is transformed into light perpetual. In Jesus, the shadow is redeemed and the ego is emptied out of earthly concerns, to be filled with heavenly grace and the benediction of a loving God.


“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” Well, I think we’d have to answer with a resounding, “Yes.” Our conflicts do come from our cravings at war within us. They do come from coveting something we cannot obtain, wanting something that we cannot have.


But these things we want, the objects of these cravings and covetousness, are even now passing away. You don’t need healthcare in heaven!


Now it may sound as if I think the political process is a vain thing, not worthy of our ultimate concerns. Not so. It is important to take part in our world. To work for justice, to forge peace, to open the doors of prosperity to everyone. These are worthy pursuits indeed.


But watch out for when you become too sure of your opinions and too proud of your political triumphs. We may yearn for one political outcome or another, but as James tells us, God yearns for the spirit that he had made to dwell in us. And regardless of the outcome of the latest election or debate or controversy, as James tells us again, it is to the humble to whom God gives his grace. Amen.


Jung, C.G. (1938). "Psychology and Religion." In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131

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