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.
One side said, to eat that meat was an act of worship
of the pagan
god.
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 silly.
But the things that get our blood up
might sound
silly to the good people
of 1st Christian
Church, Corinth.
It wasn’t so long ago that we insisted
that women 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.
We 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 -- and 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 act out all that is worst
in our characters.
Life doesn’t come from being right; it comes from being
loving.
Now this is not easy.
Most 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.
with a poison pinch of codependency.
In this mistaken way of doing church: we pick
the most angry, fragile,
volatile, needy, dogmatic,
bombastic, or
whiny person – and 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.
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.
So, what’s the middle road, the Anglican Way?
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 our
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.
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.
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.
We live in a polarized world.
Hate crimes in American cities increased 20% last year,
while murders by white
supremacists doubled.
Our political leaders ignore good governance
because they
are lost in a sporting theory of politics
that’s all
about which side wins.
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.
