Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
May 4, 2008
John 17: 1-11; 20-21
In July, 1995, Chicago was wrapped in a deadly heat wave. For days the mercury hovered in the three-digit zone, with heat indices reaching 120 degrees. During that time, 739 Chicagoans died of heat-related causes. Emergency crews reported finding inadequate or nonexistent ventilation in the residences of the dead. Persons living with cardiac or pulmonary weaknesses were susceptible and of these, the elderly were most susceptible. But, says Peter Marty, a Lutheran pastor, “What major media accounts failed to report was another deadly killer – the absence of community. The majority of people who died in the heat wave died alone. They had no one checking on their attic apartments or their windowless lives. No family, friend or neighbor showed up to discover the severity of their plight. Sixty-eight of these people died so anonymously that Chicago officials buried them in a mass grave.”
Concludes Marty, “The absence of community does not require a heat wave or cold spell, much less hundreds of deaths, to make its presence known. It surrounds us in a daily way – in our neighborhoods, our work lives, and the anguish of our own souls. We may not always be aware of this void, but the scarcity of a deep sense of community can wreck havoc below the surface of outwardly busy lives, just as it occasionally makes the ultimate claim on an elderly individual living alone. From the ethos of our economic life to the chatter of talk radio, our society is busy promoting the appetites and fantasies of the individual more than it is encouraging an investment in the larger aspirations of a community.”
Words of T.S. Eliot from his 1934 play, The Rock, come to mind: “What life have you if you have not life together?”
Ah yes, life together in community. Peter Marty, and many others, insist that we need to be in some kind of community, connected with other humans, if we are to have any hope of fullness of life. And for people of faith, that search for community, that hope for community, often begins with the church… this church. How are we doing?
I once heard this story: A young rabbi found a serious problem in his new congregation. During the Friday service, half the congregation stood for prayers and half remained seated, and each side shouted at the other, insisting theirs was the true tradition. Nothing the rabbi said or did moved anyone toward solving this impasse. Finally, in desperation, the young rabbi sought out the synagogue’s 99-year-old founder. He met the old rabbi in the nursing home and poured out his troubles. So tell me,” he pleaded, “was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?”
“No,” answered the old rabbi.
“Ah,” responded the younger man, “then it was the tradition to sit during the prayers.”
“No,” answered the old rabbi.
“Well,” said the young rabbi, “then what we have is complete chaos. Half the people stand and shout, and the other half sit and scream.”
“Ah,” said the old man, “that was the tradition!”
Sometimes, when two or three are gathered together, there is conflict and disagreement, yes even in church. Sometimes this whole community thing, this “one in the spirit” thing, can be tough to pull off, can leave one wondering if it is really worth the effort.
Remember this Fred Craddock story? I’ve shared it before. He says, “I had a friend when we were in Columbia, Tennessee, who was the pastor of the largest church in town. In many ways he was a very successful minister, except his church was always full of problems. Whatever happened in the church, whatever people said or did, he reported it to me as a big problem. He was sick and tired of it. I saw him downtown one day and I said, ‘How’s it going?’”
“He said, ‘Terrible. I’m thinking of quitting.’
“‘Aw, you’re not going to quit.’
“‘And why not?’
“‘Because you don’t want to quit.’
“He said, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to buy a little piece of land over in Arkansas in a rice field, and I’m going to build my own church. It will have a study where I can do my work and a beautiful tall spire, and that will be it. No sanctuary, no Sunday School rooms, no Fellowship Hall, no members…just me and God.’”
And there are days… when that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. There are days when ministers sit around and reflect how much easier the job would be if we just didn’t have to worry about people. And I am quite sure there are days when church members sit around and reflect how much easier church life would be if it weren’t for those darned ministers. And there are times when it is just hard to get along with anybody. In the classic words of a church member of long ago after a congregational vote did not go her way: “There’s nothing wrong with this church that couldn’t be fixed by a few funerals.” It’s easy to sing, “One in the Spirit,” but much harder to live it. We talk about the need for community, but life in community can be challenging. I’ve always liked Henri Nouwen’s definition of community as, “that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” And yet, it just might be, in the words of Peter Marty, that great communities, great congregations, form, “where people with a dizzying variety of backgrounds and experiences take an interest in the mystery and mess of each other’s lives.”
I have to believe that this was what Jesus was thinking as he prayed for community and unity for his people: “Father, all mine are yours and yours are mine…protect them so that they may be one as we are one.” “May they reach out to each other as I have reached out to them; may the care for and love each other as I have cared for and loved them; may they see beyond their disagreements and differences and begin to see themselves as I have seen them – a new people, created and called by you.”
There was a memorial service for a person, not a church member, but connected to our church. She and I disagreed on every imaginable social and political issue. It would have been easy just to write each other off. Except that, through our involvement together in community, I knew that she had given much of her life to caring for a daughter with significant learning disabilities. And I knew that wherever she lived, she had worked with parents and children in similar circumstances, and had even taken leadership in starting organizations to work with these families and provide help and support. I disagreed with her, but oh how I cared for her. In community, we learned a little about each other’s heart, we got involved in the mystery and mess of each other’s lives. That is the hope of our life together.
When we are at our best, the church is one of the few places in our society where people of widely diverse views can come together and have a civil – at least mostly civil – conversation. Now it doesn’t always happen, but I’ve seen it. In committee meetings, Bible studies, around a table at Family Camp, I’ve seen people hang in there with each other, keep talking and listening, thinking about another point of view, getting to know the one who holds that view and, even learning something from the other. And the more we can do that, the more this divided, angry world of ours is transformed, and ourselves as well.
I’ve always liked these words of Frederick Buechner: “We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, hunger to feed each other these things. We hunger not just to be loved, but to love; not just to be forgiven, but to forgive; not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better or worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that, for that very reason, there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.”
This is the awareness Christ calls us back to time and time again – to see ourselves and each other as he sees us…as one people, held by, claimed by, sustained by the love and grace of God, knowing that there can be no peace and love for any of us until there is peace and love for all of us. When we forget this, we are diminished and crippled as human beings. When we remember this and act on it, we become better people than we could have been if left to our own devices.
I think back to that pastor who wanted to build a church with no program and no people. That would be easier, no doubt about it. Trouble is, Jesus just won’t let us take the easy way out. He insists on showing us this Gospel meant for all people, even people who stubbornly refuse to vote or think or even interpret the Bible the correct way, which, of course it my way. It’s hard, rubbing our differences against each other. But our text makes it clear that Jesus clings to a broader vision of the future and a greater hope for our humanity that we have ever imagined.
Yes, we and this very human institution called church, stumble along, make mistakes and wonder if it’s worth it. Ah, but there are moments – I’ve seen them - moments of grace when divisions heal and the light shines through, moments when we accomplish far more together than we could ever have accomplished alone. There are those times when we truly are more than the sum of our parts. The Spirit, in spite of our defenses and uncertainties, breaks through and are caught up in a power, a hope, beyond our individual selves. And in that moment, we become the Body – the community – the unity – we are called to be. Oh yes, it is well worth the effort.