Vivekananda's Way

 

Proper 19B Vivekananda’s Way

How very good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity! Psalm 133

 

September 11, 2001 was a day, among other things, that saw the most unity across the nation and around the world that many of us have ever experienced. Given the current state of disunity and polarity, it is almost hard to remember a time when we really truly cared about one another as Americans.

 

In Mark 8:27-38, we hear Jesus ask the pivotal question for us all: Who do you say that I am? Peter gives it a one-word reply, “You are the christos, the anointed, the messhiah, the messiah.” Jesus tells them to tell no one and then let’s them know what will happen to the christos when he arrives in Jerusalem: be will be betrayed, undergo suffering, be rejected, killed, and on the third day rise again. Peter, we are told, rebukes him. No, that cannot be if you are the christos! Peter was expecting a warlord like Joshua or King David, or a redeemer like Cyrus of Persia – someone who would physically and violently drive out the Roman occupational forces. Making sure the rest of the disciples are watching and listening, Jesus rebukes Peter saying, in part, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

Until the time of the early church, a satan was not the devil or even a fallen angel, but simply an adversary or a tester. A satan would test someone, not lead them into sin, to see if they could be distracted from what they are meant to be doing. A satan was a divider, not a uniter. What Jesus appears to be saying is get behind me, follow me and see what it means to be a disciple of mine – pick up your cross and follow me. This is the path of a true christos. I am a uniter, not a divider.

 

Soon after the time of Jesus, however, Christians began to cast as Satan anyone who was “other” than a Christian. In her book, The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels writes, “I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call ‘others’. Satan has, after all, made a kind of profession out of being the ‘other’; and so satan defines negatively what we think of as human…the worldview of many peoples consists essentially of two pairs of binary oppositions: human/nonhuman, and we/they…so that ‘we’ equals ‘human’ and ‘they’ equals ‘nonhuman.’ [Pagels pxviii] From the earliest days of the church Christians began to see all non-Christians as nonhuman. Despite Jesus urging his followers to reconcile before coming before God’s altar, and to love and pray for one another and one’s enemies.

 

There have been those who have followed in the way of Jesus the christos without dehumanizing their opponents: St Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther King Jr. are two who come to mind. “Their religious vision inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying for reconciliation – not damnation – of those who opposed them...I hope my research may illuminate for others, as it has for me, the struggle within Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that ‘otherness’ is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine.” [Pagels p. 184] This illuminates Jesus’s telling Peter his mind is on human things, not on divine things.

 

Every anniversary of 9/11/2001 sends me back to a Welcome Address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, a kind of World’s fair. It was delivered by the representative from India, Swami Vivekananda:

 

Sisters and Brothers of America,

 

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

 

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.’

 

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: ‘Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.’ Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

 

How ironic is it that Vivekananda delivered this on September 11^th, 1893. Imagine how different the world would be today had we all taken Vivekananda’s words to heart – if even just Christians would take these words, which surely echo those of Jesus the Christos, to heart.

 

How very good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity! Jesus calls us to get behind him, to follow him, to be a uniter not a divider, to learn that to see anyone as “other” is dehumanizing, that to see all persons as human is divine – that to understand the difference between ‘otherness’ that is evil, and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine. May God help us one day to sound the death-knell of all we/they, human/non-human fanaticism once and for all.

Amen.