Nevada Diocesan Convention, Fallon
A Larger Life
11 October 2013

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

I wonder what Amos would have to say if he went to Washington, DC right now.  That basket of summer fruit is an image for end-times and judgment, a reminder that the bill is coming due.  The prophet is telling folks what’s coming, and it’s not pretty.  There is far too much exploitation of the poor, manipulation of truth, and subversion of fair business practices and the consequences of that perversion of justice are going to doom the nation.  And if you think God is going to offer comfort in the midst of it, you leaders are profoundly mistaken.  Amos lived in a time much like ours and his message resonates just as much today.

Now, I know there are people who think politics doesn’t belong in church, even though our most frequent prayer is that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.  Politics is the art of living in community, and Jesus’ ministry was pretty clearly focused on God’s vision of justice and on living in right relationship with neighbors.  We can’t avoid the political questions if we’re going to be faithful Christians.  What we’re here to consider in this convention is a “larger life,” one that expands our concern for others and our ability to love neighbors as ourselves.  That is a political question as soon as we start to think about public relationships, for loving neighbors in the larger society is called justice.  We heard it in John’s letter:  “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

Amos loads on the critique to get the attention of his audience, in much the same way Jesus calls some people a brood of vipers.  It’s a challenge, intended to get people’s attention without completely alienating them, but the aim is to bring to mind another vision of how things ought to be and could be – that prayer that God be our earthly governor.  When we can see, even briefly, the distance between what is and what could be, our heart begins to break.  Amos is trying to break open the hearts of his hearers:  ‘famine is coming, and you’re going to be lonely and lost, and yearn for the presence of God in your lives, but you aren’t going to find it’… until your heart breaks.  Even a little arrhythmia or a lump in your throat is enough – life in the shell of defensive self-righteousness or greed or power-mongering isn’t ever going to bring a sense of holy abundance.  Let your heart break – break open – and live.

There are opportunities and examples all around us.  The Las Vegas Review-Journal is doing a series this month on domestic violence, with invitations to get involved.[1]  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have invited fellow billionaires to let their hearts be broken by global poverty and give half their wealth to address it.  The evangelical community in this country has changed its position on global warming and environmental destruction because of what climate change will do to the poorest among us.  Every public school needs trusted adults to volunteer as mentors and role models for children.  Your heart can break open if you’ll let it.

Thursday morning Dick and I went to a funeral for an aircraft mechanic who became a friend over the ten years we knew him.  He was almost old enough to have been one of the Tuskegee airmen, and served more than 40 years in the Navy and the Air Force as a mechanic and an instructor.  He was crusty, had a brutal sense of humor, and was an amazing teacher.  I saw some of the obstacles he put up with – and the ways he let heartbreak produce more life.  We got a glimpse of the largeness of his life in the friends and family gathered to celebrate that life.

Sometimes the heartbreak comes very close to home.  When the suffragan bishop of Olympia was consecrated in 2005, her father was present.  He’d been the bishop of San Joaquin in the 70s and 80s, and was adamantly opposed to women’s ordination.  When his daughter was ordained priest, he didn’t attend.  He’d never taken communion from her, but at the end of his life he showed up when she was made a bishop.  As the service ended, he took off his cope and put it on his daughter.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  I asked her later how he had changed his mind.  Her response?  “He didn’t change his mind, he changed his heart.”

Hearts and lives get larger by being broken open.  Are you ready for yours to grow?  That’s what Mary is singing about:  “my soul magnifies the Lord.”  She is saying yes to that opening, that magnifying capacity of a heart ablaze with passion.  She is saying yes to letting her heart grow larger, stretched by the love of God.  It happens in the ways she sings about, lifting up the poor, and taking the haughty off their perches until their hearts are broken open, too.  That magnifying soul can set the world on fire, if we’re willing, powered by the light of the son.

What’s the catch to break open your heart?  Duke Ellington wrote the music and Paul Francis Webster put it into words, “My poor heart is sentimental, not made of wood.  I got it bad and that ain’t good.”[2]  Ella Fitzgerald sang it, but the reality applies everywhere.  She’s “got it bad, and that ain’t good,” her heart is broken because her love is not returned in kind.  Amos is singing the same song – God’s heart is broken because his people aren’t loving anybody very well.  The human story is nigh on eternal – we keep on breaking God’s heart and the hearts of those around us.  Yet finding our own hearts broken just might generate an expanded capacity to love others more boldly and more completely.  The lament of the broken heart can produce compassion, what the biblical tradition calls “mercy.”  Heartbreak can strengthen the heart muscle.

Mary’s story is a roadmap for us all.  She gets news that can’t have been welcome – you’re going to be an unwed mother – in a society that could stone her to death for adultery.  It’s no more welcome news for Joseph.  Yet something in each of them opens to larger possibility.  Mary begins to turn outward, thinking of Elizabeth, and goes off for a visit, perhaps looking for solace and wisdom.  Each of them receives love and compassion – and the hearts of all are enlivened. When God’s own heart breaks open into human flesh, the hearts of the whole human race get an invitation to break open in return.  Life laid down for others, love in action, is God’s answer to human brokenness.  Let’s pray that our representatives in Congress will suffer a bit, along with the hungry and the unemployed and the sick.  We won’t see any change until there is a little mercy.

And we will see change – in God’s good time, with a little help from friends who are willing to suffer a bit and lay down their self-concern in favor of others.  It’s already happening.  A larger life is emerging – all it takes is a broken heart.  Gotta sing the blues before you can see the light.