Twentieth Fourth Pentecost, Proper 26, 2005: 

It is reported that the following variant of the Book of Genesis was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It has not been officially verified by Biblical scholars. 

And Adam said, “Lord, when I was in the garden, you walked with me every day.  Now I do not see you anymore.  I am lonesome here and it is difficult for me to remember how much you love me.”

And God said, “No problem!  I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will know I love you, even when you cannot see me.  Regardless of how selfish and childish and unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourself.”

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam.  And it was a good animal.  And God was pleased. 

And the new animal was pleased with Adam and he wagged his tail.  And Adam said, “But Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and all the good names are taken and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.”

And God said, “No problem!  Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG.” 

And Dog lived with Adam and was a companion to him and loved him.  And Adam was comforted.  And God was pleased.  And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that Adam’s guardian angel came to the Lord and said, “Lord, Adam has become filled with pride.  He struts and preens like a peacock and he believes he is worthy of adoration.  Dog has indeed taught him that he is loved, but no one has taught him humility.”

And God said, “No problem!  I will create for him a companion who will be with him forever and who will see him as he is.  The companion will remind him of his limitations, so he will know that he is not worthy of adoration.”

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam.  And Cat would not obey Adam.  And when Adam gazed into Cat’s eyes, he was reminded that he was not a supreme being.  And Adam learned humility.

And God was pleased.  Adam calmed down with the strutting and preening, at least until Eve came along.  And Cat did not care one way or the other.

The Gospel of Matthew continues the teaching that Jesus did with the intimate circle of disciples.  He was sensitive to the human tendency to abuse titles; to strut and preen.  He was aware of the inordinate desire for recognition and that such desires could lead to false pride and a hypocritical relationship with other human beings, as well as with God.  He instructed his followers, both then and now, to forget about titles, degrees, and egotistical deeds.  He asked that proper emphasis be placed on service to others.  Jesus saw titles as unnecessary baggage and that folks have a tendency to trip over them.  He told his followers not to ask that others call them rabbi, for they had only one rabbi and everyone else would be a student.  The followers of Jesus were not to call any man “Father,” since there was only one Father in heaven.  And the disciples were not to call anyone Master, because there was only one Master, the Messiah of God.

The context for this teaching moment comes just after the attorney for the Pharisees had tested Jesus.  The question was concerning the greatest commandment.  The answer, remember from last Sunday, was to love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

Loving titles and positions of honor simple stood in the way of doing that, Jesus said.  The scribes and Pharisees loved the title “rabbi” and loved the places honor at feasts and banquets.  The loved the best seat in the synagogue and being the center of attention in the marketplaces.  They loved to pray on the street corners in order for others to admire their eloquence and in order for people to know under what rabbi they had studied.  In order to be noticed they added length to the fringes of their prayer shawls and the widened the phylacteries that adorned their heads.  None of this had anything to do with loving God and certainly did not show love for neighbor, Jesus said.

It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with titles, anymore than there is anything inherently evil with having a lot of money or possessions. 

It is the love of those things that leads to difficulty.  When the title is worshipped the troubles begin.  And we most assuredly have our titles.  King, queen, emperor, duke, duchess, earl, count, countess, pope, bishop,  rector, vicar, deacon, pastor, reverend, sir, madam, Mr. President, lord, and lady are just a few of the titles available to us.  We have in the Episcopal Church the Most Reverend, the Right Reverend, the Most Reverend, the Most Reverend and Right Honorable, or the Barely Reverend which I apply to myself most often.

So, what’s the problem?  Titles have some legitimate use in the world but they also contain some dangers.  Titles can separate us from others in an artificial way.  They may lead to egocentric thinking and behavior.  They may lead some people to think of themselves more highly than they should and may even think of themselves as more important than others of lesser rank.  That’s where the problem becomes most devious and difficult.     

I believe it is true that more people are led down the primrose path of self-delusion by pride, pedigree, and pocketbook that anything else.  Pride in where one lives, the brand of car one drives, the name of the university from which one graduated, the church ones family has attended back to the Mayflower, are very often used to separate folk one from another.  Being born, strictly by genetic roulette, into the “right” family and learning to be snotty about it tends to create a class system that leads to more than just glass ceilings.  Wealth, either inherited or made the old-fashioned way, may well lead to callousness toward those who have very little and we become like the rich man in the Lazarus story who sin was that he just didn’t see the poor man literally outside his door.    

Notice that Jesus did not condemn the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees.  What is condemned is that they did not practice what they preached.  Instead of making it easier for people to find and worship God, they added burdens to the seekers.  And they wouldn’t lift a finger to help carry the load.  They knew who they were and those thought that alone would tell them who everyone else was.  Not so!  That is what the Lord of this life and the life that is to come condemned.

The human tendency is, if we pay too much attention to titles and other external definitions, to squash those who are different, those who are not like us.  That’s the human way.  Our limited experience tells us we can recognize those who really don’t belong.  But that leads to the easy answers, the obvious ones, the wrong ones.    

The model we have for living our Christian life is the one called Jesus the Christ.  We will never reach that level of perfection, but that is the object of our aim.  The greatest among us will be the one who serves.  All who exalt themselves and become defined by a title or a position, instead of having the title define a function and the position determine the degree of expected service, will be humbled.  Those who humble themselves through service to others in the Lord’s name will be exalted.  In the final analysis that is the only means by which the church and the disciples of Jesus the Christ will have any authority in the world.      

We may learn that humble lesson from the teaching and life of Jesus or we could buy a cat.  Amen.