Our Gospel
lesson is about relationships in the Church.
That’s also
the main subject of all the Epistles.
The new
Church had not mastered playing well with others.
So Paul
spent about 10% of his adult life converting people to Jesus,
and 90% keeping the followers of Jesus
from killing each other.
So what can
we learn from today’s Gospel lesson?
The first
thing is that people rubbing up against each other
in unpleasant ways is nothing new.
It was
right there at the beginning.
Even good
God-loving people don’t tend to get along.
The second
thing is that working with those conflicts
is not a sideshow in the mission.
It’s the
main action.
Most of the
New Testament is about how to be a community,
how
to weave our differences, our quirks, and out idiosyncrasies
into the Body of Christ.
Going off
by ourselves to study, pray, or meditate
can help us calm down and get some
perspective.
We need to
do that once in awhile.
But the
main action in Christian spirituality is a group process.
We shape
our souls in the process of working out our relationships
with each other.
This is for
my money the best quote in the history of Christian spirituality.
It’s from
St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest mystics of all time.
We think of
mystics off on a hill all by themselves,
talking
to Jesus all the livelong day.
But listen
to what St. John said:
“God has so ordained to sanctify us
through the frail instrumentality of each other.”//
We don’t
become holy through fasting and prayer alone, not even primarily.
The main
place our souls get reshaped to look like Jesus, is right here
in
our relationships with each other.
That’s why
our central act of worship is Holy Communion.
No one can
do Holy Communion by himself.
I can do
the whole worship service by myself
right up to the point where I step
behind the altar and say,
“The Lord be with you.”
Then if
nobody says “And also with you,” that’s as far as I can go.
I can’t
make Jesus out of bread and wine by myself -- it takes you.
The New
Testament is first and foremost about how to live
and grow in holiness together.
If we
actually try to live the New Testament in our relationships,
it will hurt like hell but create a
little bit of heaven in each day.
That hymn
to love in First Corinthians isn’t about romance.
It’s about
our relationships right here in the Church.
But let’s
start with the basics in today’s Gospel lesson.
Somebody in
the Church is doing you wrong.
They’ve
said something or done something that hurts you,
makes you mad, makes you feel ashamed.
Something
about them is a burr under your saddle.
So what are
you likely to do about that?
The way of
the world is to tell a third party about it,
get somebody on your side, gossip about
your enemy,
form an alliance, undercut their
position in the group.
All very
strategic, all very sneaky, all very destructive to the community.
I’ve done
it – and I bet some of you have too.
But look
what the Bible says.
If someone
has sinned against you,
talk to him about it – face-to-face – eyeball-to-eyeball.
I tell you
folks, this Christianity ain’t easy.
Bad
mouthing people behind their backs is so much easier.
But the
Bible says,
“Don’t
talk about somebody before you talk to him.”
If you are
going to blow hot steam on somebody,
at least blow it on the person you’re
mad at
instead of some innocent bystander.
Just
imagine living by the rule:
I won’t say anything about somebody
that I haven’t already said to his
face.
I don’t
know that I could keep to that all the time.
But if I
tried, if I managed to do it even half the time,
it would make two big changes in my
language.
It would
make me say a lot less bad stuff about
people
and it would make me say more hard
honest stuff to people.
I’d have to
grow myself a backbone to do that.
And I’d
wind up looking considerably more like Jesus.
But it
doesn’t stop there.
Suppose I
talk to this person and we don’t patch it up.
Suppose
they push back and we wind up mad as ever.
What’s the
way of the world?
We pull
back to our own corner to sulk and fume,
and probably now we start lining people
up,
telling them our side of the story,
getting allies.
But what
does the Bible say?
We don’t go
line up allies.
We line up
a mediator.
We get
someone to go with us to help us have
the conversation with our enemy.
Now that’s
risky.
It’s risky
because the mediator is going to hear both sides.
We don’t know
what they’ll think.
And their
goal isn’t to vindicate us.
It’s to
patch up the relationship, and that almost always takes
some bending on both sides.
We might
have to bend a bit.
You see
what I’m saying.
This
Christian relationship business takes a stronger character
than most of us have to start out with.
But Church
exists to give us a chance to practice,
to exercise our characters until they
grow strong.
In the
Church, we practice this kind of relationship
so we can learn to treat everyone that
way.
We act
differently in the world and that’s how we change it.
Changing
the world starts with the spiritual discipline of Christian
behavior right here in Church.
But friends,
in my line of work, I see a lot of Church
and I gotta tell you: a lot of folks
don’t use
even the basic social skills
with each other in Church
that they’d use in business.
A lot of folks regress when they come to
Church.
That means
they act worse here than they would on the street.
Maybe they
think they can get away with more here
because we’re supposed to forgive them.
But if
Church is a place
where any sort of self-centered
infantile nonsense is allowed,
then the Church doesn’t make us people
better.
It’s makes
us worse.
If we
wanted the Episcopal Church in Nevada
to seriously go about the business of
changing lives,
the very best thing we could do is for
each congregation
to spend a couple of evenings
or a weekend
hammering out the ground rules
for how they are going to treat each other.
The Alban
Institute provides a handy little booklet on how to do it.
But if
that’s too much, we could start with just step one
in today’s Gospel lesson.
If we’ve
got a beef with somebody in the Church,
we talk to him before we talk about
him.
That means
talk to him face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball.
Don’t send
him an e-mail.
I can’t
tell you how much damage I see done by Church e-mails.
E-mail is
for practical details, not relationship issues.
You got
something hard to say, say it the hard way – in person.
Christian
communication is up close and personal.
It’s like
Communion. It is Communion.
It ain’t
easy. Not by a long shot.
It’s the
way of the cross.
But it’s
the only way to holiness.
It’s the
only way because
“God has so ordained to sanctify us
through the frail instrumentality of
each other.”
