Sermons

January 21st, 2007
Better Together

Reverend Linda Saffrey


Seasons of the Spirit curriculum encourages us to think of “community” as people united through mutual care. The Body of Christ is a community where we can be our true selves, where all people have a valued part, and where we seek to grow with support from one another. I would add that building community is the work we do in co-operation with/partnership with the Holy Spirit.

In the city of Corinth, one of the Roman Empire’s major trade centres, some enjoyed great wealth. Many laboured and slaved at the edge of poverty. (Not unlike the city of Toronto and this neighbourhood of Parkdale). In Corinth divisions that beset the city created factions in the church. Allow me to make this generalization. People tend to want to play the same role in their church community – have the same status – which they do in their workplace, family and so on. This can have both very positive or disastrous effects! In Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth he uses the metaphor of the church as a body to argue for the positive role of diversity. Everybody counts! Each person does not need to be the same or think like me. Nothing new here! Paul also emphasizes the need to honour those who might be thought of as inferior by some. He emphasizes a very egalitarian, inclusive church community.

The church is a place where people of different socio-economic, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, people of all ages, and at all stages on the journey of faith – come together. Here’s an irony, sometimes those differences threaten to tear the church apart. We need variety to enrich our life together, so that we continue to grow spiritually, so that we are open to the new thing that God will do. It is the Spirit of God who forms us as community. We need unity, which is different than conformity - where people are expected to adopt the party line. Unity is based on our care for one another, motivated by love, and by the common good of the whole community. Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, said that “God exists between people.”

St. Paul said, If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honoured, all rejoice together. Someone has said that this variety and diversity is no accident. “God arranged it so that all members would not have the same gifts.” (Texts for Preaching) The inclusivity of God, the freedom to go where God chooses, is perhaps the most difficult truth to accept. When Jesus introduced this new (not so new) idea in a sermon in his hometown of Nazareth it did not go over so well. We’ll hear more about their response to Jesus next week.

Jesus was the guest preacher in the synagogue of his hometown. According to Luke, Jesus had been baptized, tested in the wilderness, filled with the Spirit, and had gained recognition as a teacher elsewhere. Jesus preached a short sermon. He read the text from one of the servant songs in the Book of Isaiah and announced fulfillment of this familiar, ancient prophecy. He identified himself as the one referred to in the text. He clearly spelled out the kind of ministry he came to pursue. It was to be a ministry to the poor and outcast, the blind and un-affirmed. Jesus made a bold claim that day. I am the Christ! Salvation has become real and visible today. Jesus vows to turn longing for the reign of God into reality – just not in Nazareth, for them!
In my home church, in Sudbury, where gifts are nurtured, and many candidates have come forward for ministry, Bill experienced a call. But Bill grew up in that church – and when the congregation got wind of what was happening I remember the clerk of session saying – “Little Billy, I used to baby-sit him”, and, much to the delight of Bill’s mother, chair of worship, Gladys told the oft-repeated story of the day Billy refused to eat his mushroom soup. (We feel both wonderment and bewilderment at the gifts in our midst!)

I think it’s safe to say that the synagogue at Nazareth wanted to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ ministry. Because Jesus is the son of Joseph he belongs to them. Perhaps they have a sense of “entitlement” – a word we hear a lot today.

Entitlement keeps them from being open to God’s initiative. But Jesus also knows that a prophet cannot do the same job in his hometown. And Jesus’ ministry is prophetic. Luke begins with Mary’s Magnificat and the teaching of John the Baptist. The Spirit is upon Jesus. He is anointed to preach. He uses the language of liberation: captives freed; inclusion of outcasts; release of Christians in jail; recovery of sight – to the physically blind and to enable others to see what has been hidden. And he makes reference to Jubilee. Which is to say: the gospel demands a certain attitude about possessions. Followers of Jesus will find that they are expected to share.
“Those who are included in the liberation of Jesus’ ministry come from within and from outside Israel. It is not the theme of liberation per se that offends the good folk of Nazareth, but the awareness that liberation includes those outside their own circle.” (Text for Preaching) Folks who preach a radically inclusive community are generally not well received – no matter whether in their hometown or not.

Stephen Scharper, U. of T. professor, in column in Toronto Star, January 20, 2007 writes about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – remembered for his famous mountaintop speech, had a national holiday named in his honour, but was often scorned in real life. He and his family received up to 40 death threats a day. Scharper writes: “We often forget that he was a Baptist minister, and that his Christian faith and black church community served as wellsprings of his activism. Yet our recollections become particularly dissipated when it comes to his powerful indictments of poverty, state-sanctioned violence, and unchecked U.S. militarism, especially in Vietnam.”
Scharper also makes reference to a speech, as pertinent today as 40 years ago, April 1967 when addressed to a meeting of Clergy and Laity concerned about Vietnam war:

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution,” Rev. King intoned, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Anticipating the eventual Jubilee of international debt relief campaigns of Canada, U.S. and U.K., he said, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, This is not just.” King’s words could have been written yesterday. They speak across the years inviting us to ponder what our own dream as a society might be. King also cautions us to ensure that our collective dream is not a nightmare.” (Stephen Scharper)

In hallways I’ve been re-reading the statements about why people come here. One caught my attention, and I can’t quote, but something to the effect that – I thought I was open-minded – but I’m changing still. In community our gifts should be making impact and we should also be changed by the experience of other’s gifts. I was aware on Sunday evening – how much each one adds to the worship experience, and the mission here, just the presence of each with different understandings and perspectives, different experiences and life-circumstances, different abilities – all with capacity to rejoice in God and make a contribution to enrich the lives of brothers and sisters. I’ve been pushed to think about inclusion in regards to communion – how theologies exclude and categorize. Together as a church we are challenging one another about how we welcome people who are here for first time, or newer folk.

We could adopt the “10 foot rule” from an Emerging Spirit workshop offered last fall. Respect boundaries, people’s need for personal space – but if someone is sitting within 10 feet of you – it’s your responsibility to welcome them. Reach out! Life in community is not a piece of cake! We are, by the power of God’s spirit, better together. We are the richer for this diversity.
In the book, Holy Sweat, by Tim Hansel, he tells of a guest preacher in a rather large church who began, “There are three points to my sermon.” Most people yawned at the point. They’d heard that many times before. But he went on. “My first point is this. At this time there are approximately two billion people starving to death in the world.”

The reaction through the congregation was about the same, since they’d heard that sort of statement many times before, too. And then he said, “My second point…” Everybody sat up. Only 10 or 15 seconds had passed, and he was already on his second point? He paused, then said, “My second point is that most of you don’t give a damn!” He paused again as gasps and rumblings flowed across the congregation, and then said: “And my third point is that the real tragedy among Christians today is that many of you are now more concerned that I said ‘damn’ than you are that I said two billion people are starving to death.” Then he sat down. The whole sermon took less than a minute, but it is in many ways one of the most powerful ones ever given. He was reminding us that we are called to walk the talk, live the message of good news.
We are servants with The Christ in his ministry to a broken world. We are the Body of Christ. By God’s grace may we choose to hear and see and act - through the eyes of God’s love.

Amen.