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“Community Life”, Jeff Wright, 9/7/14

Community Life

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

(Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, Colorado

September 7, 2014

To live above, with saints we love

Will certainly be glory.

To live below, with saints we know –

Well, that’s another story!

               —Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Loyal

 Texts: Psalm 148 & Matthew 18:15-20

Presbyterian pastor Alexander Evans tells the story of a man who was shipwrecked and stranded alone on an island.¹ He’d been there a long time, managing to survive, hoping and praying that he’d be rescued.  Eventually, a ship captain saw the man waving on the distant shore.  He dispatched a small boat.  Ecstatic, the man ran across the beach to greet the rescue party.

When they came ashore, they asked about all the buildings they’d seen coming in.  “You’re all alone, right?”  “Yes,” he replied.  “Then what are all these buildings?”  “I’ve had to keep myself busy,” the man said.  “That building is where I sleep when it storms.  That building over there is where I spend most of the day.  That building is where I prepare my meals.  That building is where I go to church now.  And that building, that’s where I used to go to church.”

In all my years in ministry, there’s been nothing more personally discouraging – an aching-knot-in-my-stomach discouraging – nothing in my mind that more clearly signals a failure on the part of the church, than losing a member because of an unresolved conflict.  It’s one thing for a person or a family to leave to find another faith community because they haven’t found what they’re looking for or their needs have changed.  It’s altogether something else if they leave hurt or angry and the community hasn’t been given – or hasn’t created – an opportunity to address the brokenness.  In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus offers instructions in how to seek reconciliation when there’s a conflict in the church.

This text in Matthew’s Gospel isn’t first of all about personal relationships.  There’s good advice here about how to seek reconciliation in our personal relationships: not gossiping about the other, for example, going first to seek healing by way of a private conversation.  But in this chapter of his Gospel, the 18^th chapter, Matthew is concerned about the health of the community as a whole, what it looks like to live together when the living isn’t easy; how the church should respond when a person insists on one’s own way in spite of the church’s discipline, when one’s behavior affects the health of the entire body.

I’m not a fan of this text.  Maybe because I don’t like conflict.  I don’t know many folks who do.  Most of us weren’t raised in ways that helped us deal with conflict in healthy ways.  We were equipped, instead, to respond in unhealthy ways – with silence, by blaming, striking back, avoiding, or just ending the relationship.  I’m grateful that over the years our church’s leaders have learned how to deal with conflict in healthy ways.  It’s not easy: naming the conflict, addressing it, seeking a resolution that is healing.  I don’t mean that we’ve resolved occasions of major conflict in ways that satisfied everybody.  But we’ve not avoided it.  It’s made us a healthier church.

A second reason I don’t like the passage?  I’m not sure about the harsh language that Matthew quotes Jesus as having used when the church has no other choice but to dismiss a member, what historically the church has called excommunication.  “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  In Jesus’ day, those were shaming words.  It just doesn’t sound like Jesus, especially when you know that Jesus had a fondness in his heart for Gentiles, tax collectors and other outcasts whom the synagogue would have shunned.

In spite of my reservations, we know that Jesus had to deal with conflict among his disciples.  He would have given some instructions about how to handle disagreements and misunderstandings and hurt feelings for the sake of his followers’ life together and their mission.  And we know that each of the Gospel writers were more than reporters.  They wrote to interpret Jesus’ teachings for their own communities, and to shape of the practices of the church going forward.

Matthew is addressing the church at a time when it is transitioning from a free-wheeling evangelistic effort anticipating the imminent return of Jesus, to a more settled institution preparing for long-haul ministry and mission.  We know that in times of transition, communities are at risk.  Matthew’s community was at risk.

So is ours.

Over the past few months, we’ve recognized that this time of transition in our congregation might be better described as a time of transformation.² Moving from one reality, one way of doing church to another, stirs anxiety, uncertainty, fear, impatience, a desire to control – even when the change is anticipated, embraced and celebrated.  You remember what our consultant, Jim Griffith, kept saying about this in-between time: Voice your worries!  Speak them out loud.  It’s not what we say that ultimately alienates us.  It’s what we don’t say – our not speaking up to clear the air and work toward healing.  Our congregation already had a good start on Griffith’s counsel.  Over the years, we’ve worked to embrace two practices that shape our life together as a church: making a good apology and giving the other the benefit of the doubt.

We have an amazing ministry in our community and far beyond.  We’ve worked at finding ways to be Serving others and Changing lives.  We’re pretty effective in doing both.  But our life together – how we treat each other here as the Body of Christ: this is the deepest expression of our faith in God.  The quality of our relationships, our working to love one another as Christ has loved us: this is our most powerful witness.  It’s the fuel that powers our service in the community.

In their book, Slow Church,³ Chris Smith and John Pattison describe a healthy congregation as one that cultivates the resurrection of Jesus in its common life, not by coming on Sundays as spectators and consumers but by working at “deeply and selflessly loving our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and even our enemies.”  It’s confronting the deaths that inevitably come in our relationships and making space for God’s healing and reconciliation.  “The main attraction,” they write, “is not the building or even what [our] members do, but who the church is: … a people marked by love for Christ and service to neighbors.”

Our church’s booth at NewWestFest exposed a world hungry for a community marked by humility, authenticity and grace.  Those of us who worked the confessional booth⁴ were surprised by the number of persons who smiled approvingly, gave a “thumbs up”, and engaged us in grateful conversation.  On Sunday afternoon, two women passed the booth.  One of them declared, “I’m a lesbian” – as if mockingly confessing what she thought was an anathema to the church.  I couldn’t resist.

I ran after them, apologized for chasing them, and said, “I just want you to know that we’re not asking people to confess to us.  We’re Christians who know we have enough to confess ourselves.  Our booth is about seeking the forgiveness of others.  My guess: you guys have been hurt by the church.”   The first said, “No, the church hasn’t hurt me, because I don’t care what the church says.”  The second said, “I was raised in a Christian school.  I’ve been hurt by the church, many times.”  I said, “I didn’t personally hurt you.  But I’m part of the community of faith that did.  I’m sorry.”  She said, “Thanks for telling us what you’re doing.  I appreciate it.  I like your shirt, too.  Can I buy one?”  She returned with me to the booth, where we gave her one of the bright lime-green t-shirts that read, “As a Christian, I’m sorry for actions that have hurt others in the name of God.”

Many of you know that each year I try to spend a few days at the Benedictine Monastery in Richardton, North Dakota.  It’s the monks’ life in community – the ways they are around each other; the way they receive guests – that draws me back.  A lot of people believe it has to be an easier life, the monastic life, cloistered from a world of complexity and troubles.  But life in a monastic community is as demanding as life beyond it – because there are human beings in the monastery, folks like you and me.

Janet and I have spent enough time at Assumption Abbey to get to know a few of the monks well.  They confide in us, describing the familiar challenges of living with others: hurtful remarks, misunderstandings, conceits and jealousies, self-centered willfulness; the need for confession, apology, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Benedict actually began his monastic community because he believed that people grow toward human maturity through the joys and the demands of community life.  That it’s in the midst of the challenges in our living together that we discover as individuals who we are and all we can be.

Benedictines take a vow of permanence, meaning that they pledge to stick it out in the monastic community where they made their initial vow – no matter what.  What do you think it would it mean to our church – and for our life and mission together, for our witness to the transforming love of God – if we each took a vow of permanence?  I think – if we kept our vows – there’d be a depth and a quality to our life together that would set us apart in the world.

If you were watching CBS Evening News last Thursday, you might have seen a glimpse of what it looks like: this hanging in, deeply and selflessly loving our brothers and sisters… confronting the deaths that inevitably come in our relationships, our making space for God’s healing and reconciliation.  CBS played a clip of a video from a convent of Redemptorist Nuns in Dublin, Ireland.⁵ The sisters there took up the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  I couldn’t resist sharing their laughter and joy with you this morning, the lightness of their being in community together, and the apology at the end of the video – you have to listen for it – when one of the nuns says, “I’m sorry, sisters!”, in case their play went a little too far for even one of them.

— Jeff Wright

¹ Day 1 website: www.day1.org/6059-from_enmity_to_community

² I’m retiring in April of 2015, after serving with the congregation for twenty-two years. We’re working our way through our transition plan.

³ IVP Books

⁴ A sign was posted to three sides of the booth that read:

It’s our turn to confess to you

Ask questions

Voice your doubts

Share your hurts

⁵ www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zxsgRZiH5k