Thank God for "Newman's Day"

Last week’s gospel was an invitation to abundant life – abundant life in Christ.

This week we get a road map for how to get there. In his Last Supper discourse Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life. So now we must decide, just as the disciples had to. Are we going to follow that road or not.

Since we have to decide this each for ourselves I’m very thankful that we have Newman’s Day. I really mean it: Thank God for Newman’s Day!

The more enthusiastic forms of the Newman’s Day observation raise some important questions not only for individual Christians, but also for the entire Christian community.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams points out that it is only God who can show us who we really are. He further says:

“I can’t see any way of being Christian that doesn’t involve you at some point saying that it is in relation to Christ that human beings become human as they are meant to be.” [quoted in Difficult Gospel: The Theology of Rowan Williams by Mike Higton (New York, 2004), p. 32]

So I think every choice we make about our souls, our bodies, ourselves is completely tied up with the question of how an act makes us more or less human in the deepest sense, and more and more like Christ.

If we accept the invitation to abundant human life in Christ, then I think we have to answer questions like these [suggested by Higton’s review of Williams’ theology]:

“How can I be a manifestation of Christ to those around me?”

“Are my choices and acts a gift to the Body of Christ?”

“Are my choices taking me toward the way, the truth, and the life or are they taking me in another direction?”

“What are my obligations – if any – to others as they make their own choices?”

I don’t know about you, but I go through a lot of my life not thinking much about these questions. I know this is an odd confession coming from a priest, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true. These are critically important questions, but they are not always uppermost in my mind. They should be, but they’re not.

I suspect we are all like that. It takes effort – sometimes extraordinary effort – to remember to conform our lives to the will of God, to align our will with God’s will.

But that is what we are called to do. And it’s even harder when those around us tell us that we should lighten up and not take this morality thing so seriously.

One of the aspects of our lives that we have to consider when we ask ourselves whether our choices and acts are a gift to the Body of Christ is how we care for our bodies and, since we live in a community, how we react to how others care for their bodies. We like to think our bodies are own to do with as we like, but scripture says otherwise in many places. For example, St. Paul writing to the church at Corinth wrote: “…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

This is why I thought it was remarkable when a student was quoted in an article about Newman’s Day in the Daily Princetonian on Friday as saying “No one really wants to look like they're completely ‘anti’ an event like this…”

There’s a part of me that wants to agree with her. Nobody wants to be a killjoy. And Episcopalians have never been teetotalers or advocates of temperance movements. Though not an Anglican, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw probably expresses our position on alcohol pretty well when he said: “I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.” Since we are aware that all of creation is a gift to us from God, we do not shy away from having a good time and alcohol can be a legitimate part of that for us just as it was for Jesus and his friends.

But Newman’s Day is something else altogether. There are very few people who can consume 24 beers in 24 hours and still have their dignity intact. It is hard for me to understand how we can think of ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit and still engage in that kind of self-degrading behavior.

Well, we might all be able to agree on that. At least I hope so. But let’s push this further. What about “having a good time” on Newman’s Day by going to Prospect Street and watching others drink themselves to oblivion even if you only drink moderately or not at all? How does watching this spectacle from the sidelines square with our call to be a manifestation of Christ to those around us?

Whenever we re-new our baptismal vows – the vows we make and re-make that are so basic to our Christian identity – one of the promises we make is that we will “respect the dignity of every human being.” So that means we respect our own bodies and those of others too.

I wonder whether we would participate in a gathering in which some of the people present were telling racially offensive or anti-Semitic jokes, or would we walk away? Would we stand around and watch two people who barely know each other engage in a public sex act or would we walk away, or least avert our eyes? I hope that Christians would quickly distance themselves from lending even tacit consent to those behaviors which clearly lack respect for the dignity of all human beings.

I want to suggest to you that you consider these things when you think about hanging out where people are intentionally degrading themselves with alcohol. I really don’t want to tell you definitively to avoid going to the Street when this is happening; I’m just asking you to think about what this means and consider how your presence squares with your identity as a Christian.

By now I imagine some of you are getting uncomfortable with this. You probably didn’t come here tonight to have these kinds of demands for self-reflection put on you. But I have to take this issue even further and into a realm where our discomfort becomes even more intense.

I have suggested that degrading yourself with alcohol is a transgression of baptismal vows and that watching others engage in such behavior might – might – be as well. But as Christians, what is our obligation – if any – to take positive action when we see our roommates and friends demean themselves this way? Is there any obligation on our part to say something, to intervene in any way?

We often tell ourselves that what somebody else does is their own business. This is a core American value and a very, very secular one. It is a view that ignores what Austin Farrer so eloquently says “We are all members of one another, and one of us is Jesus Christ.” It is a view that ignores that love demands that we admonish one another when admonishment is called for (see 1 Corinthians 4:14, Colossians 3:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Even the word “admonish” rankles, doesn’t it? It calls to mind people we don’t want to emulate who are judgmental and “holier than thou” and who hector others about behavior that they consider wrong. Even worse, it calls to mind people who hypocritically condemn behaviors of others that they themselves engage in. It calls to mind people who offensively impose their ideas of morality on others.

But I want us to ask ourselves if there isn’t some creative way we can express concern without hectoring, and show our love for others without judging them. Think of all the examples in the gospels when Jesus gently and lovingly admonished those who were wayward. If we really are part of the Body of Christ, is there a way we can show concern for those who degrade themselves with alcohol in a manner that shows Christ to them – in a way that is an invitation to abundant life and not a condemnation?

I pray that we might all answer yes to these questions, no matter how much they challenge us and make us squirm. There are times when we are confronted with a clear right and a clear wrong and that confrontation makes demands on us. I think Newman’s Day is such a time.

The Christian moral vision does not require an abandonment of the world, worldly things, or worldly pleasures. But it does require us to find how to make these things meaningful. The Christian moral vision is not a solo proposition, only dealing with our own private behavior. As members of the body of Christ – who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – we are called to be keepers not only of ourselves but of all our brothers and sisters. God grant us the grace and courage to accept this challenge to love. Amen.