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The Timeless Plea of the Gospel
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle October 5, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 60:19-22 John 17:20-26
“It is an impossible situation,” wrote Karl Barth of division in the church, “that whole groups of Christian communities should exhibit a certain external and internal unity among themselves and yet stand in relation to other groups of equally Christian communities in an attitude more of less of exclusion. It is an impossible situation that such groups should confront each other in a way that their confession and preaching and theology are mutually contradictory, that what is revelation here is called error there, that what is heresy here is taught and reverenced as dogma there, that the order and cultus and perhaps the ethics of the one should be found and called strange and alien and unacceptable and perhaps even reprehensible by the other, that the adherents of the one should be able to work together with those of the other in every possible secular cause, but not to pray together and hear the word of God together, not the keep the Lord’s Supper together. It is an impossible situation that either tacitly or expressly, with an open severity or gentler friendliness, the one should say to the other, or, in fact, give it to be understood, or at any rate think of the other: You have another Spirit; You are not within but without; You are not what you presumptuously call yourselves, the community of Jesus Christ.” On this World Communion Sunday, when Christians gather from sea to sea and continent to continent the world ‘round to break the bread and pour the cup, we cannot help to be confronted with this impossible situation of which Barth speaks. Likewise, when we read these words from John’s gospel, when we hear the words of the prayer of Jesus beseeching God that we, his followers, the church universal, may be one, we cannot help but to notice the many ways in which we are precisely not one. One church but more denominations than can be counted, one denomination but so many divisions within, one congregation but sometimes so many conflicting ideas about who and what we ought to be. But more, by both Barth’s words and John’s gospel, we are made newly aware of the open severity of our differences, of the things we say of the other and the other says of us, of the presumptuous conclusions we make about ourselves and about them, the ones who claim to be the church but who, we know, really have it wrong. There is the tale told of a man who was walking across a bridge and came upon another man standing right on the edge, about to plunge to his death. The first man shouted, "Stop! Are you a Christian?" "Yes, as a matter of fact I am." "Well so am I. Are you Catholic or Protestant?" "I'm Protestant," "Well so am I. Are you Baptist or Presbyterian?" "I'm Presbyterian." "Wow... I am too. Are you Presbyterian Church in America or PC (USA)? "I'm PC(USA)," "Me too, that's amazing! We you Northern or Southern before the reunion?” "I'm from the Northern Church. " "I can't believe it, so am I." But tell me are you from the Old School or the New School of the schism in the 1830s?” He answered, "New School Presbyterian.” To which the first man said, "Die you scum of a heretic," and he pushed him off the bridge. Most of us are not in the business if launching the other into rivers below, yet we are in the business of being a part of this thing called the church, which seems such a far cry from being the One Christ prays us to be. “From the outside,” write Kathleen Norris, “churches can look like remarkably contentious places, full of hypocrites who talk about love with fighting each other tooth and nail. On the inside, however,” she continues, “it is a different matter, a matter of struggling to maintain unity as the ‘Body of Christ’ given the fact that we have precious little uniformity.” Our question on this World Communion Sunday, then, is “How do we understand ourselves to be One even as there is so precious little uniformity among Christians these days? How do we confess our faith in unam ecclesiam (remember those words from the Nicene Creed, “one holy, catholic and apostolic church) when we seem to be ecclesiam dividentes? How do we respond to this impossible situation?” As our starting point, we need keep in mind and heart that in the case of the church, human institution that it is, human beings that we are, history speaks of “the actuality and not the truth” of who we are. Which is to say that as you and I are broken and sinful human beings indeed, as you and I have been hurt and wounded and have done the hurting and the wounding, the Christian faith confesses that there is more to us than meets the eye. You are more than the things that you do, or don’t do, than what happens to you or happens because of you. So it is with the church. To the naked eye, the church is equally as broken as any one of its members. The history of the church bears painful chapters of appalling things done in God’s name, of split after split after split after split that would serve to reveal simply how human and finite a crew we really are. The newspaper week after week reveals the same. “We must not try to explain and justify [this] as a development of the riches of the grace given us in Jesus Christ … [or] by the image of the different elements and forces and functions in the one organism, or of the different branches and twigs of the tree, or of the different families of one clan … ” Our history then, if we are honest, simply reveals our sin. Yet even as we are human and so broken and finite, we are, at once and at the same time, called into being and called into purpose and action by One who is not. The truth, though it might not be the reality we see day by day or as we flip back the pages of history, is that the church, no matter what we do and no matter how we divide it, is the Body of Christ, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, called to proclaim the acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. The truth, our confession, is that the church is One in Jesus Christ. As justification cannot really be understood apart from the real knowledge of one’s sin, so the church’s unity cannot really be understood and claimed apart from what Barth calls its “unfortunate disunity.” Any conversation or thinking about the church’s unity, then, in the first place, needs to start with the reality of our disunity, with the articulation of our differences one from the other, that we might begin to understand what underlies them and begin to unearth a common origin and purpose. Beginning in this place, be it understanding why we are Presbyterians and not Baptists, or why we are Presbyterians who fall on one side of issues in our denomination and not the other, or why we are members of the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill who fall on one side of the session’s decision or another, beginning in the place of our “unfortunate disunity” lets us look to the center which underlies our position and prevents us from seeking an easy unity with others that is not the kind that God intends for his church. What I mean is that God does not intend for us to compromise what we know of Jesus Christ and what we believe to be true as we seek to be One church. We cannot simply “get over our differences” and be the church. Would that it were so easy. God detests nothing more, I think, than a sham or an easy answer that would have us “fake it” to the world around us. I do believe that where questions of love and truth are sacrificed, we are not on the way to the one true church. So what we are called to do in the second place, on this World Communion Sunday and on every day of the year, as we are members of this unfortunately disunited, broken and divided church, as we dig underneath the dross of our division to its substance, is to be as sure as we can that we are here for the right reasons, for the right reason, Jesus Christ. Now I know that there are plenty of reasons that bring people through a church’s door. Flannery O’Connor once wrote that, “most people come to the church by a means that the church does not allow.” But we, in the church, must constantly ask ourselves why we are here. Is it because of habit or because of the heart’s true desire? Is it to serve Jesus Christ or to serve our own egos or our own agendas? Is it to work out the mission of the church or to work out our own issues of guilt or anger or who knows what? For as much as the church’s move toward unity oddly has to start with looking at it’s disunity and sin, so it has to start with the individual Christian looking within and claiming the need for grace. It is World Communion Sunday, but it begins, it must begin in the individual human heart. When all those within the church by God’s grace confess to our own misguided ways and confused purposes, and so re-center ourselves on the One who makes us One, we are on our way to being the true church, unam ecclesiam. There is still more. For as we are those who would seek to be the One church we are and the one church Christ pleas for us to be in practice, we are called not simply to understand our own position and be sure, in heart and mind, that it is consistent with the Word of God as much as human beings are able, we are called to listen to the others who are doing the same, even now, even this morning, in churches round the world. “If we are seriously to hear Jesus Christ,” continues Barth, “then we must hear [those who are separate from us] even if for their part they give no sign that they are able and willing to hear us … it may be that they have something to say to us which we have to hear for our own sake … In the realization of faith in the one Church in face of its disunity, the decisive step is that divided churches should honestly and seriously try to hear and perhaps hear the voice of the Lord by them and for them, and then try to hear, the voice of others.” To be the one church we already are, by God’s grace, in the third and final place, we would do well to sit with open ears and open minds and hear what others, other churches, have to say. Of course, such words send our hackles skyward, as we imagine categorical condemnations of the things in our lives that don’t fit in the lines: the child born out of wedlock, the divorce that was necessary if any semblance of life was to be maintained, the homosexuality that could not be denied any longer, or as we imagine their words about a church that ordains women, or includes gays and lesbians, or does not hold to scripture’s inerrancy. The truth is that underneath those broad and painful strokes of division, are things that cut deeper, things that bring us, perhaps disagreeing, but to the center of our theology, to Jesus Christ. When you and I can really listen, without jumping to anger or aggression or our own close-mindedness, without quick response of a defensive word, without heart and mind shutting down as the conversation goes on, then and only then, will we really begin to understand one another, to tease apart our differences, to find and understand this one Christ who calls us all into being, this Christ who calls us into One being. We come to this table, we gather with Christians around the world this day to feed on Christ’s real presence and be given strength for doing the work of the church with our hands and hearts, we gather shoulder to shoulder with those with whom with agree and with whom we disagree, with those who understand the work of the church much the same as we and with those who understand the work of the church much differently than we. Nevertheless, by God’s grace, as we do come to this table, may we be granted faith enough to trust the real presence is indeed there, that does, despite so many appearances to the contrary, when its seems an impossible situation, make us one. Thanks be to God. Amen. |