CLOWNS AND CONFLICT

I just ran across this old sermon which I shared with a congregation a few years ago. As you might imagine, it was a congregation in conflict. The sermon didn't solve it. Things got considerably worse before they got better. But today they are as good as it gets when it comes to fulfilling the hopes I put forth here. 

A story about human nature and the mission of Christ.

In my last parish,

             we set up a yahoo group to help us form community.

A yahoo group is an on-line discussion fellowship.

Anyone can post what is on their mind.

A few weeks after we started the group,

            someone posted that they had been browsing the web

            and came upon the web site for Trinity Church, New York City.

He saw they had celebrated a clown Eucharist and said

            “Isn’t that interesting? I wonder what that is.”

To which someone replied that when St. Francis does a clown Eucharist

            they would leave.

About a dozen folks piled on with the same opinion.

Before long, it went beyond the question of liturgy

            to a general discussion of the character of clowns.

It started with someone saying clowns reminded them

            of mass murderers.

Another said clowns reminded her of child molesters.

Eventually, someone said that clowns actually are

            mass murderers and child molesters.

A young adult posted:

            “You folks seem to have some issues about clowns.”

Feeling attacked, the anti-clown voices grew more strident.

At last this provoked a pro-clown response.

After a couple of pro-clown posts,

            one veteran church member outed himself,

            confessing, “I have been a clown with the Shriners

                        for 30 years and I have never molested a child

                                    or murdered a mass.”

Then the anti-clown voices charged back in.

 Now remember, no one had even hinted

            that the church should do a clown Eucharist.

Wes Frensdorff by the way was a great lover of clowns

            and would have been all for it.

But it was not an option on the table at that church.

Did we lose Church members over this?

I don’t know -- but within 3 months,

            several of the clown combatants were gone.

Now the moral of the story may be: don’t form a yahoo group.

Or it may be to avoid talking about religion, politics, or clowns.

But changing the subject doesn’t change the tone of the conversation.

I have seen folks leave a church over a dispute

            concerning where to plant a rose bush.

One Sunday, I was once sitting on a church porch

            before the Eucharist with some folks

            who were squabbling over the placement

                        of a new altar rail.

A newcomer walked up and no one spoke to him

            because they were too focused on their dispute.

After a few minutes the newcomer shook his head,

            walked away, and never returned.

Now this may all just be human nature.

But how we deal with it in the Church

            is a matter of profound spiritual importance.

What is the mission of the Church?

Catechism answer: “to restore all people to unity with God

            and each other in Christ.”//

That’s what salvation means.

That’s why we can’t be saved alone.

It’s a group project.

There’s a Mormon billboard with a perplexed woman asking,      

            “Does God have a purpose for my life?”

Well, if we are the Church, the answer is,

             “Yes. God has a purpose for our lives.

            It is to restore all people to unity with God

                        and each other in Christ.”

So: how are we doing with that?

The Church in Corinth wasn’t doing so well with it

            when Paul wrote 1^st Corinthians.

They had found a dozen things to get cross ways about.

In 1^st Corinthians, Paul tried to solve all their issues

            -- their version of clowns, rose bushes, and altar rails.

By 2^nd Corinthians, it had just gotten worse,

            so Paul got down to the real issue

                        – how they were treating each other.

They all accepted the grace of God,

            but they were not gracious to each other.

Paul had some strong words about that. He said,

            “As we work together with Christ”

            -- big reminder there that we are not doing church

                        the way we do a service club or school board

            – we are “working together with Christ”

            – that ought to make a difference .

“As we work together with Christ,” Paul wrote,

            “we urge you not to accept the grace of God in vain.”

That’s strong.

He says we can accept grace, but it doesn’t matter,

            it doesn’t save us, unless we live out of it – graciously.

 St. John said the  same thing in his First Epistle.

“Anyone who claims to love God but hates his neighbor

            is a liar,” John says.

We can love Jesus all day long

            but God’s not as interested in that

                        as how we actually treat each other. 

Paul says to the Corinthians,

            “we are putting no obstacles in anyone’s way,

            so that no fault may be found in our ministry.”

Brothers and sisters, we are here to do ministry

            – ministry to each other

                        and ministry to the world.

The first rule of ministry, like medicine, is: do no harm.

Put an obstacle in no one’s way.

I have done a post-mortem on all the dead churches in Nevada.

And I have found someone’s fingerprints on each and every corpse.

Not one died of natural causes like a mine closing.

They all died of people more concerned about getting their own way

            than they were about each other’s souls.

 That’s what Paul was warning the Corinthians about.

We are saved through our participation in the Body of Christ,

            and the Body of Christ happens when we put each other first.

We have yet another General Convention on the horizon.

And already I see signs of liberals and conservatives

            maneuvering to get their way.

That is exactly what Paul called a work of the flesh – the opposite

            of the works of the Spirit.

I would like just once to see the conservatives worrying

            about not putting an obstacle in the way of the liberals.

I would like to see the liberals worrying about not

            putting an obstacle in the way of the conservatives.

If we all just switched sides, the issues would be the same

            – but the spirit of the conversation would be different

                        as night and day. 

It would be the difference between the way of the world

            and the way of Jesus.

After 2,000 years somebody ought to try the way of Jesus,

            and it might as well be the Church.

Our shared mission is to restore all persons

            – that would be all persons – left and right, straight and gay,

                        old and young, charming and not so charming

             – all persons – to union with God and each other in Christ.

The purpose of life for each and every individual Christian

            is precisely the same thing.

So: how are we doing at that?

Most of us do not come naturally equipped for that mission.

Most of us come wired to try to get our own way,

            to gather with people who make us feel at ease

                        and keep our distance from people

                        who make us uncomfortable.

That’s our human nature.

But we also have a Christ Nature.

We got it at our Baptism.

We just need some practice living into it.

The way to living out of our God Given Christ Nature

            is just that practice, practice, practice.

We can also pray.

We pray for each other,

            especially people who we are not at ease with.

One church in this diocese that has more veterans than any other,

            and observes veterans day with more flare than any other,

            also prays for terrorists by name every Sunday.

We practice and we pray.

As today’s Collect says, God will help and govern us,

            if we bow our will to him.

It is by God’s grace we can care for each other

            beyond the constraints of human nature.

It is by God’s grace, with our active cooperation,

            we can carry out the Church’s mission

            and keep faith with the purpose of our lives.

THE ASCENSION FROM RELIGIOSITY INTO CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.

We celebrate Christ coming at Christmas,

            but what are we to make of his departure?

What do we make of our Lord flying off and leaving us behind?

John is a funny gospel because it doesn’t always tell the Jesus story.

The other gospels had already done that,

            so John isn’t that interested in the story.

He’s interested in showing us what the story means.

Today’s Gospel lesson doesn’t tell the story of the Ascension,

            but it tells us what the Ascension means.

It explains the profound shift in the story and the change in our religion

            that happens at this point.

In capsule form, we find it in a single verse:

            Jesus prays to the Father:

            “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

Jesus has passed the torch of the Christ light to us.

We have been given the mission.

We are the ones to reveal God’s love as Jesus did.

Jesus was preparing his disciples for this. When he taught them,

            “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you . . . .

                        Now love one another.”

The shift in our religion is from a relationship with Jesus

            to a relationship with each other.

That is why in our Baptismal Vows which we will renew today

            we promise “to seek and serve Christ in all persons.”

This is why John in his first epistle says,

            Anyone who claims to love God but hates his brother is a liar.

            If he does not love his brother whom he has seen,

                        he cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

The Christianity Jesus leaves us with at the Ascension

            is a profoundly humanistic religion.

But that humanism can get lost in our religiosity.

I think for example of a well-loved Cursillo song.

I am all for Cursillo and there is something legitimate in the piety of this song,

            but I see a problem.

It goes:

            Turn your eyes upon Jesus

            Look full on his wonderful face

            And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

            In the light of his glory and grace.

I get the piety. I even like the piety.

But if thinking about Jesus makes “the things of earth

            grow strangely dim,”

            that’s not the kind of religion we read about in John.

Jesus says head on, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world.”

Quite the opposite, he says:

            “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

Biblical Christianity is a deeply worldly religion.

James Fenhagen, the late dean of General Theological Seminary,

            said in his essay “The Anglican Way”

            that Anglican spirituality is an intentional practice

            of “holy worldliness and worldly holiness.”

We are not set apart from the world,

            not set apart from the human drama

authentic Christianity is lived up to our chins in the human milieu.

That’s what the Anglican priest and poet John Donne meant

            when he wrote,

            “No man is an island

             Entire of itself . . . .

            I am involved in mankind.”

This holy worldliness, this Christian humanism

            consist of two basic practices:

First, we act as Jesus to others.

Second, we find Jesus, not just in the Bible,

            not just in the sacrament, not just in prayer,

            but in other people.

It is as simple as our baptismal vow

            to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

We want to show our love for God, we show compassion to one another.

To be Christ for others and to find Christ in others,

            we have to know something about Christ.

That’s what he rest of the Jesus story is there to teach us.

It shows us what to do and how to be.

And it shows us what to look for in others.

As we read the Gospels,

            we find a Jesus who is sometimes strong, wise,

            merciful, forgiving, reconciling.

That’s what we are called to be.

But we also find a Jesus who was homeless,

            rejected, and condemned.

That’s Christ too. 

When we experience those things,

            we are experiencing Christ,

And when we see others enduring those hardships,

            we see and serve Christ in them.

Some brands of religion are attempts to unite ourselves

            with an eternal transcendent God

            in order to escape “the changes and the chances”

            of our “all too human” life.

Christianity turns the religious project on its head,

            because or goal is to unite ourselves to a God

            who chooses to live this human life.

Our faith is not an abstraction.

It is not an escape from this life.

It is a plunge deeply into reality,

            especially the reality of caring for one another.