Congruity is an important word for me. It challenges me to live my life in such a way that all the components fit together. Such a demand for integrity provides ample opportunity for critique on how I am doing. For instance, if after preaching this sermon and celebrating this Holy Eucharist, I return to our home only to demand subservience in others and domination by me, I am living an incongruent life. Another way of saying it, of course, is that I am living a hell of a life...and certainly making life hell for others. We all remember the cynical command, "Do as I say and not as I do." This is incongruity. Children, of course, recognize incongruity better than most...or, at least, they are more willing to point it out. I propose that one of the reasons our society is in the fix that it is in is because our kids hear us say one thing and do precisely another. How are we living out our faith in God as love? Is it by loving? Or does that come after our job, after our toys, after "Seinfeld"?

When our lives are not congruent, I think we go a little crazy. Beating your wife is crazy. That one's pretty easy. If you say, "I love you", and then act in precisely an opposite manner that is a pretty good indication of insanity. But what about singing a hymn of forgiveness and still bearing a grudge? Isn't that crazy, too? Or confessing a creed and then living as if God is dead? Isn't that more than a little nuts? How many times have you seen people claiming to be Christian do the most un-Christ like things? I don't mean just shooting a doctor who performs abortions (although that is certainly crazy), I mean the way we live out our lives as if the very last thing we believed in was grace? I will never forget my confirmation days when my pastor used to rant and rave over how much God loved us. I figured that if God really did love me, God had a really odd way of showing it. How many churches have you been associated with that are crazy? Boy, I could list a few including the one I serve. Because every time I choose efficiency over ministry, the church goes a little nuts. Every time we decide that paying the bills is more important than paying attention to people, call the paddy wagons. Congruity is part of what it means to enter into the Kingdom of God. To live with congruity is to live as God intends us to live.