Epiphany
3A 2017
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
January 22,
2017, St. John’s Sharon
In today’s Epistle, Paul writes:
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no division
among you, but that you be united in the same mind and of the same purpose.
He goes on to talk about all the ways divisions in the early
Corinthian church occurred.
Apparently, people were breaking into groups depending on who
baptized them and that person’s particular teachings. Instead of being united in proclaiming the
good news and doing the work of Christ crucified, died, and risen, they were
saying, “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos” or “I belong to Cephas” or
“I belong to Christ”. Of course, saying
“I belong to Christ” seems like the goal. Ideally it is. Yet, all too often
when people are in some kind of conflict, especially in the Church, when they
say “I belong to Christ”, they don’t mean that they are part of the whole Body
of Christ and see the gifts of given to all people, but that they feel they are
right, and that Jesus is on only their side, and that if everyone else doesn’t
agree, then they aren’t real Christians.
That attitude leads to even greater divisions then ones based solely on
personalities.
In our day, we still are continually tempted to break into
different groups about one thing or another.
But we were not baptized into different groups. We were baptized into the Body of
Christ. No matter what else we end up
doing, no matter what other groups we end up joining, no matter where we decide
to live or work or worship, fundamentally we are a part of Christ’s Body with a
lot of other people who might be passionate about different things or hanging
out with different people, or trying to live into their vocation in ways we
might not understand or agree with. We
might like everyone to be in lock step unity about everything, we might
especially like people to be in lock step unity with everything that we think,
but that tends not to be the way the world works. Maybe that’s due to our brokenness or maybe
that’s part of way that God has made his children in the fullness of his image
that encompasses so much more than any single human being could experience or
understand.
Yet in the midst of those differences, we have to realize that we
should be moving toward the same place, even if some are on buses, some on
camels, some in ’57 Chevys, and some on Segways. The New Jerusalem where we are all want to be
after our own death and resurrection has “all the kings of the earth bringing
their glory” into it. No people, no
group, or no nation, no matter how odd, is excluded. There isn’t a Democratic heaven and a
Republican heaven, or a heaven for all of one party and hell for all of the
other. They don’t only serve Coke
products in heaven and lukewarm, flat Pepsi products in the other place. When Saint Peter asks you who you belong to
at the pearly gates, he isn’t looking for you to say the Steelers or the
Browns, or, heaven forbid, the Patriots.
(And I know that kind of talk in the pulpit will get me in a lot more
trouble than anything about Democrats or Republicans, but please don’t lower
your pledge.)
This isn’t to say that we can’t cheer later this evening with a
moderate amount of the beverage of our choice.
Nor is it say that we shouldn’t take an active role in the larger life
of our society. In fact, given the moral
imperatives to love our neighbors as ourselves, it would be hard not to be
involved in some way. Yet working hard
for what we believe does not mean denying the fundamental human dignity of
those who disagree with us or destroying others to achieve our own ends.
One powerful example of Christian political work was William
Wilberforce. Wilberforce was elected as
a Minister of Parliament in England in the 1700’s. A nominal Church of England member, he had a
powerful conversion experience and wanted to dedicate his life to God. He was going to resign from government
service and do something that felt more purely Christian, but his Christian
friends told him not to. They said he
could do more service in Parliament than out of it. So he did.
Every year, at the beginning of the session, he introduced a bill
outlawing slavery in the British Isles.
For decades, he introduced the bill and it failed. Once, it almost passed, but four of his
supporters went to the theater that night and missed the vote. Finally, after twenty-seven years in
Parliament, in 1807, Wilberforce saw the passage of the Slave Trade Act, which
banned the British slave trade. He
continued his work, and three days before he died at the age of 73, he heard
that the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, barring slavery in almost all of Great
Britain passed. These laws were felt not
only in Britain, since the British Navy, which ruled the waves in those days,
was empowered to suppress other nation’s slave trading, as well.
Wilberforce certainly ruffled feathers and challenged a variety of
interests as he fought to stop slavery.
Nevertheless, as a rule, he reached out to others and respected even
those who disagreed with him. His desire
to see all people released from bondage to live the fullest life of the Kingdom
of God extended to slaves, as well as slavers and those defending him. Even when being horrified at their
sometimes-brutal behaviors, he wanted them to be part of the great Kingdom of
God.
Psalm 146 struck me as I read it in my own personal devotions
yesterday. Verse two in the Prayer Book
(which is often marked as verse 3 in other editions), says: Put not your
trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them.
While certain people may have good ideas, or even be excellent
role models, in the end, for what really matters, there is no help in
them. We may want to, or even feel
called to, support a certain candidate for office, or work for a certain boss,
or even wear a particular black and gold number on our t-shirt. That’s OK, as long as we remember that our
help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, and our salvation
comes through his Son, Jesus Christ.
This principle is crucial to our churches, as well. Paul was addressing the church in Corinth
with his words, but we don’t do a very good job of following them. We can easily walk to churches that in the
past have said, “I belong to John Wesley,” or “I belong to the Pope,” or “I
belong to the Patriarch of Moscow” or “I belong to the Patriarch of Constantinople,”
or “I belong to John Calvin,” or “I belong to Martin Luther,” or “I belong to
Willow Creek,” or “I belong to Henry VIII.”
(OK, no one in the Episcopal Church or Church of England really says
they belong to Henry VIII, but you get my meaning.) We have spent centuries focused on the
doctrines or practices or other boundaries that we have decided will separate
us. These people don’t do communion
right, those people don’t stay morally pure.
These people put on a concert of loud modern music, and those people
drone dull ancient chants. These people
have the wrong understanding of the atonement, and those people we just don’t
like. None of these divisions serve the
proclamation of the gospel nor the work of feeding the hungry, clothing the
naked, or healing the sick. Saint Paul
calls us all back to basics – to our common baptism and identity in Jesus
Christ. He even goes so far as to say
that he is not preaching with eloquent wisdom.
His goal is not to make an impressive point that convinces us to be on
his side, but to point back to what is central – the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus.
Of course, we can’t all fit into the same building on Sunday
morning, so we are going to have our individual congregations. Different people will have different
emphases, and do things in different ways.
No problem there. God even gives
different congregations different missions.
At St. John’s, our purpose is to Worship God, Care for People, and
Grow as Christians. We do that in a
variety of ways, but that is what we are here for. That purpose doesn’t mean
that we aren’t committed to all the work that God has for his people, but we
have to focus somewhere. Other
congregational purposes may be slightly different, but we can work together
with different congregations with a variety of missions, all as part of the Body
of Christ. In fact, just like we need
priests and welders and millwrights and teachers and doctors and stay-at-home
moms and dads, and just like we need apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors
and teachers, we also need various congregations that are more evangelical and
more charismatic and more youth-focused and more sacramental and more
conservative and more progressive and more traditional and more experimental to
do the entire work that God has given us to do.
Sometimes those differences will lead to conflicts, but conflicts can
actually help us grow deeper in a fuller life of faith if we maintain the bonds
of the love of Christ even in the midst of our conflicts. The difference is whether or not we decide to
walk toward each other in the midst of our disagreements, or use our
disagreements as an excuse to walk away from each other.
On the night before he died, Jesus himself prayed for his
followers that “they all may be one.”
Saint Paul calls us to live together in ways that don’t add obstacles to
be removed before Jesus’ prayer comes to fruition. We want to find our deepest identity in Jesus
Christ, in ways that unite us with all other baptized Christians, no matter
what other accidents of our life might seem to separate us. We all look forward to spending eternity
together in one great, new, holy city, and the more we prepare to live there in
this life, the more likely we will find our way through the door in the
next. I appeal to you, brothers and
sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement
and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same
mind and the same purpose...For the message of the cross is foolishness to
those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of
God.
