Different cultures at different times
get worked up about
different things.
Our culture for the past few centuries
has been obsessed with
sex.
In 1st Century Greece, they were pretty easy going
about who slept with whom
and how.
But they got mightily distressed about food.
It was a huge moral and spiritual issue.
Aside from the kosher question,
there was eating meat left
over
from pagan
sacrifices.
To eat that meat was an act of worship
of the pagan god,
like what happens in Holy Communion.
And to eat food from a pagan
temple
was to make that pagan god
a part of yourself
just as our receiving the
sacrament
is taking Christ
into ourselves.
The other side thought pagan gods did not exist,
so to be hung up about
eating meat from their temples
was actually
acknowledging false gods.
To us, it may sound pretty silly.
But the things that get our blood up
might sound silly to the
good people
of 1st Christian Church,
Corinth.
It wasn’t that long ago that we were insistent
that women must wear hats
in church.
Times change, issues change, but people don’t change much.
We will always find something to squabble over,
and there will always be
at least two sides
with powerful
arguments to prove they are right.
Enter Paul with his letter to the Corinthians.
Paul was always writing about how to be the Church.
Some of us may not care that much about how to do Church.
But the idea is that Church is where we learn how to function
in our families, at
school, at our jobs, and even in politics.
Church is supposed to shape us for the rest of life.
So how we do Church matters big time
for our whole life, not
just Sunday morning.
Paul is writing to the smart folks
who think the people who
refuse to eat meat
from the pagan temple are
just superstitious.
Paul demonstrates to them right off that he is a bright guy too.
He reasons through the whole thing and agrees with them.
He says they are right.
But just as the smart folks are about to spike the ball
and do a churchy victory
dance,
he goes on to the
disturbing next step.
Being right doesn’t matter.//
Paul says “Sure you know stuff,” but the thing is:
“Knowledge puffs up. Love
builds up.
Anyone who claims to know
something,
does not yet know the main
thing.”
Paul says to Group A, you are right. Group B is wrong.
But do it Group B’s way out of love.
Life does not consist in being right.
In fact being right can be our excuse
to out all that is worst in our characters.
Life comes not from being right
but from being loving.
Now this is not a simple thing.
I have seen a lot of churches miss Paul’s point
in one of two directions.
Some just keep on fighting over who’s right.
In years past, the church in its rightness has severed ears,
lopped off heads, and
burned people at the stake
because they were wrong
about this or that.
A lot of congregations still divide up
and go head to head over
the issue of the day,
drive each other out
rather than bend their will
when they are so
cock sure they’re right.
And let me tell you, no issue is too small to divide a church.
No nicety of ritual, music, architecture, or cuisine is too small.
My old church had a perpetual wrangle over
whether to put the name
tags in the narthex
or the fellowship
hall.
It is a principle of church life, that the smaller the issue
the hotter the debate.
then mixes in a poison pinch of codependency.
In this mistaken way of doing church:
the most angry, fragile, volatile, needy,
dogmatic,
bombastic, or whiny person
wins – we do what they say.
Out of "love," we enable their pathology.
Out of "love," we cow-tow to their dictatorship.
I call it the nutocracy of the church,
meaning we are ruled by the nuts.
I have known churches that deliberately choose the least competent,
least intelligent, least
emotionally balanced person
in the congregation
as senior warden
to make
him feel better.
The problem is: that ain’t love.
Giving the nuttiest person in the room their way
doesn’t just hurt the
church and undercut God’s mission,
it makes the nutty person
nuttier.
It feeds the flame of madness.
Prayerful conversation.
On any issue – moral, theological, political, you name it –
ask the church’s position
and you’ll hear:
The Roman Church says x.
The Lutherans say y.
The Presbyterians say z.
The Episcopalians are in
prayerful conversation about it.
I used to think that was just wishy-washy.
Now I see that prayerful conversation has a wisdom to it.
Prayerful conversation is an art and a spiritual discipline.
It takes courage and kindness, integrity and patience.
Prayerful conversation is expressing ourselves honestly,
telling out story, saying
what we have at stake
--
without trying to change the other person’s mind.
Instead, we listen to them, ask genuinely open questions
-- not to challenge -- but to get a better
understanding.
to float up as an organic
consensus
instead of resolving
issues with win lose votes.
That’s how African tribes work things out.
They call it Indaba.
Nelson Mandela was a young radical
who knew the ANC was right
and apartheid was wrong;
but that puffed up
knowledge just landed him in prison.
That’s where he took up the discipline of conversations
with people who held
different views.
He chose to assume they must know something he didn’t,
and he wanted to
learn.
That process of conversation effected a peaceful revolution.
One of our greatest living philosophers Jurgen Habermas
argues that we create our
personal value and meaning
through participating in
social institutions – like the church --
and the lifeblood of those
institutions is not their principles
but their
conversations.
When Frank Griswold became Presiding Bishop
he called on all of us to
step back from our
dogmas and
certainties
to engage in conversation
with each other,
curious, compassionate
conversation
as an act of
Christian love.
In a world divided and polarized,
when extremist rigidity
fractures civil society,
we need the Church to
bring back the lost art of conversation.
We can learn it here, then take it home,
take it to work, take it
to the city hall.
When we are not too sure of ourselves
to listen to one another,
our world becomes far more
interesting,
and livable.
