Matthew 18.15-20
Dear God, thank you for creating us in your image and not
the other way around. Amen.
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| Church is not about excommunication. It is about honest relationship! |
I called my mom to ask her to help me with this sermon. I
knew that she would recall what happened in my childhood, because she was
there. What I wanted to remember specifically was a time when she and my dad
required me to apologize to someone I had wronged. I knew this had happened,
many times. I could still feel the pang in my stomach and the feeling of utter
aloneness when I approached the person I had wronged. It is, no doubt, a
feeling you have experienced and it is certainly not limited to childhood. And
yet, I can’t remember whom I approached or what the wrong was. So, I called my
mom. I knew she would remember because she assigned me the task that caused the
feeling in the first place.
On the phone, I explained what I was trying to remember. My
mom remembered that it happened but she, like me, couldn’t remember a specific
example. She did remember when another child in my pool of friends was required
to apologize to her. But that just wasn’t going to work as an example for this
sermon. It did prove something. It is not so important what I did, but how I
responded to it.
The feelings of guilt and taking responsibility are
difficult to swallow, but living in community requires us to do it. Today’s
gospel lesson is about living in a community of honest relationship what we
hope is the church.
Jesus asks us to do some challenging things. He challenged
us by saying: Take up your cross and follow me, turn the other cheek, and love
your neighbor as yourself. Jesus also taught and lived out a radical
hospitality that welcomed Pharisees and tax collectors, Samaritans, lepers,
prostitutes and just about everyone else beyond even the marginalized. There is
an expectation that we should set a goal of doing the same. Jesus asks his
followers to do many things, but the passage of gospel from today is probably
the most challenging and the least practiced of all.
To boil it down to its essence, if you are wronged or you
witness a wrong, don’t stew and fester, approach the one who wronged you. Don’t
bring a fist or club or gun, open up discussion and hear them out. If that
doesn’t work, get others to be intermediaries and witnesses. If that doesn’t
work, bring it to the whole community. And the opposite is true as well, if you
know that you have made an offense, apologize and seek reconciliation.
For me, this is probably the most challenging of Jesus’
teachings. I don’t want to ruffle the feathers of others, I want to brush off
being wronged and instead seek the path of peaceful nonresistance. But Jesus
tells us that is not the church. The church requires us to honestly encounter
each other in order to grow our relationship with God and our neighbors.
But Jesus’ command also requires those who are confronted to
listen with a discerning heart and to take the encounter as a sign of love.
That may even be more difficult. If someone accuses us, we want to escape, to
run away to a safe place where we can maintain the status quo of our lives.
To be frank, that is one of the major reasons that church
attendance and membership have fallen, precipitously, in the past several
decades. It is easy to be faithful and to live according to a moral code if you
are the arbiter of your own system. The purpose of the church is to challenge
each member, in love, to push our spiritual lives to the test and to deepen our
relationship with God. Instead of being the personal judges of what is right,
the church requires its members to work together and to challenge each other.
That is difficult so many people just leave.
Today it is not uncommon to encounter people who define
themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” This designation can mean
different things to different people. When I meet people who label themselves
in this way, they say something like this: “Church is kind of dull, takes a lot
of time, and there are these people there that ask questions and think. I
discovered that I can experience God while sleeping or when I walk the dog.
That is my church. It really feeds my soul and makes me a more complete
person.” I may be paraphrasing and I certainly don’t want to mischaracterize
but essentially church and the challenge of growing faith are replaced by the
quiet of one’s home or the opportunity to play 18 holes (as a golfer I know
this is a temptation).
But that is not the church. See there are a few things that
church does that make it a unique experience.
- We
read and reflect on scripture that helps us put context on the lives we
live. This is not something done from the golf course, it requires a
commitment of time to reflect, ask questions, and even challenge what we
know as truth. No matter how hard one tries, this is not something done
alone. It’s kind of like playing tennis against a wall. When you hit the
ball at the wall, you know it will come back and even where and how hard.
The same is true when you challenge your faith and spiritual growth. If
you know the response already, then you are avoiding the real challenge.
- The
traditions and prayers of a church have been passed down for a reason.
Someone might say they are dull and boring because they aren’t pop
culture-like, but they are tried and true ways to deepen one’s spiritual
life. A church maintains these traditions, passed down by a great cloud of
witnesses over many generations. By following their example, one can learn
how to feed the soul. It requires one to step out of the culture and into
a church.
- A
church is a place of community. That means that there are others who care
for you, and as our gospel lesson teaches us, are there to lovingly point
out ways to change and grow in relationship with God. This is not
available on a long bike ride or when reading the Sunday paper. Church and
spiritual growth and religious traditions force us to break out of the
regular so that we can focus on God. It is what the 10 Commandments calls
Sabbath.
- A
church is also a place that gathers together to do great things to fulfill
God’s mission. Yes, we take our blessings and our growth as a community
and we put them into action. From collecting food for the hungry,
providing education, and advocating for justice and peace for all people.
Of course this can be done on an individual basis, but the symbiosis of a
church multiplies that mission to a greater degree.
There are expectations within a church community and, if we
are doing it well, we can respectfully disagree about things and, at times,
might actually hear an honest reflection of a fellow seeker that results in a change
of our being. A church community is much more than a fancy building or
extraordinary programs or the personality of the minister, a church boils down
to the trusting relationships that challenge us to remain together and serve in
ways that fulfill God’s mission.
In a blog post earlier this week, Lillian Daniel, a UCC
minister in Illinois, points out that those unwilling to be engaged in a
community of growth are safely ensconced in the norm of “self-centered American
culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions
dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating.” (blog link)
That is exactly what Jesus wanted people to avoid. Instead,
he wanted people to grow by being in community, a community he called church.
And this church thing wasn’t just about being nice and hanging out together. It
was an opportunity to grow and stretch so that we can be better prepared to
face the ups and downs of life, to love as we are loved, and to reach out in
service. That means that we, as a church, have to continue to welcome new
voices and perspectives into our life and never be satisfied with where we are.
There is always more to do and to accomplish in fulfilling God’s mission in the
world.
Today we are baptizing a new member into the Church.
Sebastian Pell will soon be the newest Christian. We celebrate this baptism in
the church community because it is more than just the parents and godparents
who will be responsible for raising him up in the tradition of the apostles. It
is the responsibility of each and every church member to challenge and love
Sebastian in his new life in Christ.
It is not easy being in a church. It should be a place where
you feel comfortable being yourself and also know that you are loved. A church
should be a place that requires you to reflect deeply on how you live. It
should be a place that is committed to reaching out to help others. It should
be a place that consistently deepens your faith. It should be a place that
invites questions and accepts feedback. A church should be a place that opens
your heart to God. That means that sometimes you will feel your chest tighten
when you are confronted or when you risk yourself in relationship with others.
The individual instances may soon be lost to history (like they are to my mom
and me) but the act matures us as children of God. That is what it means to be
a church, a place where two or three are gathered in loving relationship with
each other. Baptized into a family who teaches us to live in the Spirit of
Christ.
The Rev. Dr. Kurt Gerhard (kurt@stpatrickschurchdc.org)
St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church (www.stpatrickschurchdc.org)
Proper 18A
Matthew 18.15-20
September 4, 2011
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