October 25, 2007
Bouquets
Pent 22/25C Lk 18.9-14
“When I have arranged a bouquet for the purpose of painting it, I always turn to the side I did not plan.” — Renoir, to Matisse
I came across these words as a kind of suggested “text” for a book on space photography. They were meant, I think, to emphasize the profound beauty of nature beyond earth, a beauty quite beyond anything we humans might have to do with arranging. Perhaps that kind of beauty of earth one sees in those remarkable photographs taken from our moon. (Timothy Ferris, “Space Shots,” Pantheon, 1984)
Much of what we undertake today seems exceptionally preoccupied with arranging and rendering “bouquets.” We classify people and institutions into molds, into systems, political or economical, social or religious, geographical, sexual, or racial. And then we exalt our own notions and constructs. We are anxious about order and authority, defining and redefining it.
In the process of such introspection, we do not often stand beyond and reach for perspective. We do so at the risk of compromising rather than appreciating the beauty of the creative gifts of God or nature or whatever, rather, I suppose, like the story of Adam and Eve, denying its stewardly commission in the Garden.
This does not seem to me to be the purpose of the religious life. But then, what is?
The Gospel (pharisee & publican) this morning tells of two such purposes. The one is to be bound like the Pharisee into a neat and rigid and above all Religiously Correct system in which, ultimately, there is only security and no risk at all. The other is rather like the tax-collector, and that is to confront and embrace and often be overwhelmed by the devastating ambiguity of one’s own human being.
To be human, we’re taught to believe, is to be created in the image of God. A very important way we can look at that affirmation is not that we are visual clones of the Almighty, but that rather are we imagined into being by God. Our tradition suggests further that this means we are set free to choose, and that freedom of choice is the purpose of our humanity and thus our religion as we understand it. God’s imagining of us grants us the freedom to choose: to choose to love, to choose to reason, to choose to create, and to choose to live in harmony with God and all God’s creation. (BCP p 845) Nowhere in that short litany is there the suggestion that these personal and deeply intimate choices must be right, only that they be free, untethered by “oughts” and “shoulds.” That is the kind of freedom that more or less defines freedom. It is the risk that always comes with grace, both God’s and ours.
I’m skeptical of the fixation with and insistence upon rightness that pervades so much of our political and religious thinking and policy-making. I am struck by the theme of those who seem to need an Anglican Covenant as if our faithful following the Way has somehow become a pejorative, a move for us to become better masters rather than better colleagues and companions on this journey, searching, stumbling, risking, adapting.
Spiritual maturity, I believe, may be assessed not by how right we are, but by how freely we live into and become our human being as God imagines it — how well we live with change, how clearly we make our choices, how imaginative we ourselves are, how vulnerable we are willing to become, and how committed we are to these goals even as they lack the clarity we might desire. It is a vain heart, I think, that wastes itself in the oxymoronic pursuit of righteousness, for righteousness, by its very nature, comes least of all when it is pursued.
Let us not overlook that both men in our parable came into the temple to pray, the one, to “amen corner” apparently just to review for God his resumé, the other to the back of the bus, as it were, to take stock of his sins. Only one seemed truly aware of why he was there and what might be found there with which to begin his healing.
I’m aware that today’s collect speaks of faith and hope and charity as much as gifts, as well as goals. It speaks of God’s promise as accessible only through love. Perhaps as we arrange, step by step, our lives, as did Renoir his bouquets for the purpose of ordering them, even striving to become more faithful, more loving, more hopeful, yes, even more righteous, may we not turn them around to that side of us we did not plan, that just fell into place, and there find new beauty, even new freedom, in the view beyond of the One who first imagined us.
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