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Christian Civility Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis August 24, 2008, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Daniel 6:1-24 Ephesians 4:25-5:2
“I understand politics,” writes Glenn Tinder, a political scientist with a decidedly theological bent, “to be the conduct of our lives in common…a relationship with all human beings that is comprehensive (with all human beings, on the basis of all major components of a good life) and responsible (prepared for choice and action wherever these are appropriate)….To inquire into our common problems and to act upon them or endure them…in the company of others, is to take part in politics….A governmental official whose thoughts were only of carrying out established routines…would be non-political; a janitor or schoolteacher whose tasks were fulfilled as acts of conscious participation in the affairs of common life would be political. What is crucial,” says Tinder “is inhabiting as articulately and deliberately as possible the entire human situation--being positioned inquiringly and communally, in relation to the great problems of one's own historical era." In that sense, a believer in God and a follower of Jesus Christ can be and do neither without being political, without being involved in the responsible and humane conduct of the common life. What I want to do this morning is look at the conduct of our lives in common--our politics, if you will--not in the sense of what party we support or where we stand on the issues or how we feel about the presidential candidates. Rather I want us to consider the tenor of our politics as disciples of Jesus Christ who inhabit and shape the common life. I want us to consider what might be called Christian civility. Now civility, according to Webster’s New World, has simply to do with the formal politeness that results from observing social conventions: You go first…oh no, excuse me, you go first…no, after you please! Being a Christian in the common life has often been connected with appearing to be "nice" to others (with the emphasis, sad to say, on appearances). In fact our New Testament lesson has been used to encourage such a notion, admonishing the early church as it does against anger and evil talk; instructing us to speak only words that "build up." Put away bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and malice the writer commands. When it comes to the common life, many believe Christians who mean to behave as Christians ought to be nice. Not much fun at a dinner party, but nice. In confirmation of that judgment vis-à-vis civility in general, Robin MacNeil contends that “Civil discourse is boring.” But in receiving an award for just such discourse from Religion in American Life, MacNeil goes on to say so much more about the uncivil tenor of our common life these days. "To an extraordinary degree," he says of his own guild, "broadcast talk is now valued for its stridency and bombast….One person with a huge megaphone, intolerant of contradiction, just sounding off…listening only to what feeds your own anger or prejudice…thriving on intolerance for other points of view…[not needing] to listen to anyone else because [you] know [you] are right." If we are honest we must admit that McNeil’s words also characterize another perception of Christian participation in the common life…and it is not nice! That perception involves religious absolutism in relation to truth and morality which admits neither to doubt nor to error nor to the legitimate voicing of a contrary opinion. "My mentor," recalls Richard Rhem in the Journal of Reformed Thought "claimed the only heresy was to make the gospel boring (back to being nice). I would add another--the heresy of orthodoxy,” he says, “the evidence of a failure of nerve and lack of trust in the living God. It is the heresy of inordinate lust for certitude that seeks premature closure, the shutting down of the quest for truth and growth of knowledge in the magnificent and mysterious cosmos…." Bitterness, anger, wrath, wrangling and slander in our common life come, more often than not, from this lust we have for certitude that closes our minds and opens our mouths against any whose thoughts are other than a mirror image of our own. Therefore if you and I are “to inhabit, as articulately and deliberately as possible, the entire human situation--being positioned inquiringly and communally, in relation to the great problems of our own historical era,” we must speak, in the first place, as those who do not possess the truth. We may be have been claimed by the truth in Jesus Christ, but we do not possess him; we may know him, but we do not comprehend him fully; we may see through a glass darkly, but we do not grasp completely all he reveals about God's will and intention for human life. Rather we are those who speak as pilgrims seeking a home whose maker and founder is God, as disciples whose lives are characterized by unceasing inquiry. We stand in a long line of saints who have—in relation to the great problems of their historical era--dared to articulate the questions, to wrestle with that which threatens the world as it has been ordered, to do business with the alien idea, the contrary opinion, the not-so-loyal opposition, believing that God could have been working through the one who prophesies against them as much as the one who agreed with them! But Christian civility involves more than a certain kind of public speech: it requires a certain way of listening. Again says Tinder: "To listen and speak in a way that is morally significant is to listen for the truth…." So in the second place, Christian civility is a way of listening for the truth in a time infected by what Shakespeare's Falstaff called "the disease of not listening." "You cannot have civil discourse," Robin MacNeil reminds us, "if one side is shouting at the other and unwilling to listen." But Christian civility requires more than simply being quiet while another talks (back again to being nice). In his memoir, Battling for Peace, Shimon Peres recalled how his study of the Talmud taught him “at a young age that nothing in the world is one-sided. If you see only one side of an issue,” wrote Peres “you have not studied it properly." How often I have listened to another long enough to be able to refute the argument…to make my point…to assert my high-minded opinion. It is what I just did for the last three days with my family! But what many-sided truths we thereby miss along the way! Consider again the cacophony surrounding the issues of our day—abortion, global warming, racial and ethnic divisions or sexual orientation, economic justice, health care reform and all manner of Presidential politics. In every case we have lost the art of listening because somewhere we learned to listen for confirmation of our answer rather than to struggle with the complexity of the common life. Blame it on the sound bite; blame it on the inerrancy of scripture; blame it on the infallible Pope. We have ceased to struggle honestly and openly with the density of the cosmos. Such honest struggle involves hearing the other side in such a way that one never ceases to be astonished and humbled by what there is yet to learn in the give and take of difference. Christian civility, in the second place, requires us to listen for life's complexity. Though in the third place, Christian civility requires of us even more than our earnest listening to the complexity of the issues before us. Christian civility--a quality of human interaction which seeks to bear witness to God's grace toward the other in Jesus Christ--is a listening for the reality of the other. When I think of marriages or unions or friendships that have any hope of surviving…when I am privy to a family in which parent and child live with some modicum of mutual respect…in such households love is embodied in the way family members listen for each other--neither assuming nor presuming to know--but continuing to be astonished by the ever evolving gift of the other's "otherness." Imagine if we listened for one another in this society: if those whose incomes are such that they cannot imagine living on credit listened for the anguish of a family just one illness away from eviction; if those who have had every opportunity in the world listened for the child born into the fifth generation of poverty; if those who are in the majority listened for the person excluded because of race or religion or sex or sexual orientation. Note that listening is always a greater challenge for those who, one way or another, are in power. Such listening, such paying attention has been known to call out of you what you never knew you had to give…or has allowed you to discover within your self what you never imagined could be so. Jesus listened for the least of these along those dusty roads--the woman at the well, the man at the pool of Bethesda, the soldier with a dying child, the thieves crucified on either side. Jesus listened amid the brokenness for the person he knew God had made perfectly; and as he listened, he revealed what it means for us to be human and to conduct our lives in common. But something else happens when we listen for one another in the home or the halls of Congress; on the media or within the classroom and the church. I do not know if you have ever noticed but there is a frightening and humbling power accorded you when you find that another is really paying attention…is listening not simply long enough to interrupt, but listening for you, for your substance, for your self. It is a power not freely given another in the give and take of civil duties; but it is the power Christian civility may risk because we are upheld by the God who in Christ has listened for us. Well finally, Christian civility--because it eschews certitude on behalf of probing inquiry…because it tenaciously listens for the complexity of God's world…and also listens for the reality of each of God's children, Christian civility finally is practiced by those who have staked everything on the incarnate speech of God, on the Word of God, the Word that is love. “Only through love that listens and speaks through communication that cherishes those heard and addressed,” says Tinder, “can [we] be fully accessible to a destiny,” open to the life given us and given the other by God to live. The name of the love that cherishes us is Jesus Christ. Were it not for his life and death and resurrection, we most likely would not know how far our common life has fallen from the civility God intended in human history. He is the truth in which we may stand and by which we are saved: the truth of God's forgiveness and mercy toward everybody and every body politic. No one rested in that assurance more completely than the man whose life bears witness still to the power of Christian civility to reshape and renew the common life of the world. On the day after the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler had failed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Eberhard Bethge, "I am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world….That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia….How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray when we share in God's sufferings through a life of this kind?": through a life of Christian civility. Thanks be to God. |