(quotations in this sermon are borrowed from Diana Butler Bass' recent book Christianity after Religion.)
(The story of Hillel) …
a young man asked his rabbi to teach him
the whole of the Torah while he stands before the Rabbi on one foot.
The rabbi reacts with anger and says the young man’s
request is disrespectful and silly … the young man spends many long months
searching from town to town asking Rabbis the same question over and over: “Please
teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand before you on one foot …” And
over and over the Rabbis react with anger, and hostility – some strike him,
some chase him away with a broom and ALL of them drive him away …
Finally after many months of wandering, the young man
stands before the great Rabbi Hillel who was renown for his wisdom. He knocks
at the door and when it opens and he finds himself face to face with the great
Rabbi … with great reluctance he offers Hillel his quest: “Please sir, teach me
the whole of the Torah while standing here on one foot.”
The rabbi smiles and says, “young man this thing you
ask is easy. The whole of the Torah is simply this: That which is hurtful to
another, you do not do. All the rest is simply commentary …”
This story came to
mind for me repeatedly this past week as I reflected on happenings and conversations
I’ve been having lately:
We live in a truly fascinating
time … on one hand, the Church is increasing irrelevant and people don’t care
much about us and what we do, while on the other hand, when the United Church
speaks up about the Israeli-Palestinian Issue, or the Northern Gateway
Pipeline, or any of the other items that hit the floor of the recent General
Council in Ottawa, we are told quite clearly and emphatically that The Church
has no place in politics and that we should stay out of it …
Last week we found a message left on the voice
mail at the Church conveying a similar theme … although the caller began by
asking what was wrong with the United Church and why we couldn’t act like
Christians … the topper for me was the comment by this anonymous caller who
said “Jesus must be turning over in his grave” at what the United Church is
doing lately … THAT made me chuckle … obviously, the caller had skipped a few
Sunday School lessons and over looked a little moment like Easter and the EMPTY
grave it celebrates!!!
It’s hard to take the
critique “you’re not being very Christian” seriously when it is offered by
someone who misses the fundamental idea of what defines us as Christian – the Resurrection!!
But to be honest, I’ve
spent a fair bit of time this week reflecting on what it means to be in the
United Church and what our role is within the public forum … and I’ll be honest
and say my stand is that we are by our very nature highly political … The old Methodist
saint Egerton Ryerson was highly active politically when he helped craft the public
education system we enjoy in Ontario today … JS Wordsworth was highly political
when he became involved in fighting poverty in Winnipeg, stepped up during the
Winnipeg General Strike AND helped found the CCF … the latest issue of the
Observer has a list of clergy who stepped away from active pulpit ministry and
entered the political realm and other areas of life BECAUSE of their faith …
The list of political
action goes on and on … even this morning as I finalized this sermon, I was
being highly political as I enjoyed my fair trade coffee. Buying AND selling
Fair Trade products is a political act!! Colombian coffee is a blatant attempt
to counter the dominance of the drug trade in that south American country by offering
another option for impoverished growers … buying and selling Guatamalan coffee
is a commitment of solidarity with the Mayan people who are being crushed politically
and economically under the heel of a repressive system … fair trade not only
seeks to change the world, it promotes values of justice, equality and economic
fairness in the face of our global system of trade. Our choice of coffee IS a
highly political thing!!
Supporting the food
bank is highly political. Every donation of food, clothing, and support is a
statement to our politicians and our socio-economic leaders that the system is
broken and in need of reform!!
We can’t help but be
political – because politics are its core is about people. Politics arises from
the greek word Politikos which means “of or for the citizens”.
If we are to live our
faith as Hillel suggested so long ago – a legend Jesus was no doubt familiar
with, and who took to a new level – we are going to be concerned about the well
being and the affairs of our neighbours and our fellow citizens … faith
ultimately calls us to be political, because our faith is not about dogma and
belief. Faith is about relationship and building community and caring for one
another here, and in the other corners of the world whether that corner is down
the street, up the highway, or half way around the world.
The church is called
to be political, because politics are ultimately about the affairs of the
people!
One of my mentors in
ministry was the Evangelical United Brethren preacher Reverend Mervyn Reuber.
Rev. Reuber was to my family, our pastor on so many levels … he married my mom
and dad, he was there the day my family buried my grandfather and my dad … he
was a friend, a minister and as I drew closer to ordination – he was a mentor
and an inspiration to me. I know not long after mom’s funeral last year I
shared the stories of being given his stoles by another friend and colleague
who also knew Mervyn … but Mervyn, in his 80’s shared with me as a young preacher
just starting out on this fascinating and frustrating journey, his wit and
wisdom and observations of the Church.
I cherish his
letters, and his voice rings in my ears from time to time as I think about his
counsel … his strongest lesson was the observation about the Church.
Reverend Reuber said –
“the church ain’t no namby pamby, warm pink fuzzy social club that gives you a
hug then sends you back into the world – it is the Church, the very body of
Christ working to share and proclaim the Gospel in the world …” he went on to
express the importance of the Church holding to what it believes and daring to
offend people in the process.
To Reverend Reuber,
the Church was and is a political action.
In my readings this
week, I continued wrestling with the book “Christianity After Religon” in which
author Diana Butler-Bass reframes the Church in the modern era and found a
resonance in her words with the counsel of Reverend Reuber … Butler-Bass
suggests that we need to redefine the Church using the lessons that come to us from
the first moments of the Church’s existence
Rather than relying
on doctrine and dogma and statements of belief to unite us, she urges us to go
back to the very moment when the Church came into being.
For Butler Bass the
Church was born not when the councils sat and defined our faith through creeds
and theology, not when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and sent the disciples
into the world, not even when Jesus appeared to the disciples hiding in the
upper room. For Butler Bass, the Church was born in that moment on the shore of
the Sea of Galilea when Jesus approached the fishermen mending their nets and
sorting their catch and uttered the words: FOLLOW ME!
Follow me … come and
join the community.
No asterix, nor
conditions, no formulas – just an open invitation to join
The church formed
listening to stories, sitting around the fire TOGETHER, swapping tales and
building relationships. Butler Bass writes of this process:
The early community that followed Jesus was a
community of practice. Jesus’ followers did not sit around a fire and listen to
lectures on Christian Theology. They listened to stories that taught them how
to act toward one another, what to do in the world. They healed people. Offered
hospitality, prayed together, challenged traditional practices and rituals,
ministered to the sick, comforted the grieving, fasted and forgave. These
actions induced wonder, gave them courage, empowered hope, and opened up a new
vision of God. By doing things together, they began to see differently. (Pg 207)
This is a reversal of
how we’ve learned to do things … we start with a notion of “if you want to be
here, you HAVE to believe …” we offer classes and lessons on what to believe, and
then we wonder why we’re shrinking.
Instead, using a very
Biblical model of Jesus and his followers, we start with the invitation: “Follow
Me”, then move to building community and making room for anyone who steps into
our circle, then together we define our actions and our behaviours and our way
of being in community and THEN LASTLY we begin to share our beliefs recognizing
and EVEN celebrating that not everyone believes the same things, but that
together we are embodying and embracing the very image of God in our midst.
We are returning to
the ancient idea of Imago Dei – image of God … imitating God, not in a frivolous
and disrespectful way, but in a deeply committed and intentional way.
We are living the
lessons of Hillel … we are embodying the ideas of Rev. Reuber and moving beyond
the silliness of Church as social club – we are BECOMING the very body of
Christ present and real in the world by sharing our values, living our beliefs
and BEING in community with one another.
Butler Bass offers a
marvelous example of how this should work in the church by citing a knitting
group as a case study.
A knitting group
exists because the participants and members share a love of knitting. There are
seldom tests to be filled out to join, classes to be taken, or a statement of
belief to be affirmed. Instead the people gather because they want to knit:
Imagine joining a knitting group. Does anyone go to a
knitting groups and ask if the knitters believe in knitting or what they hold
to be true about knitting? Do people ask for a knitting doctrinal statement?
Indeed, if you start knitting by reading a book about knitting, or a history of
knitting, or a theory of knitting, you will very likely never knit.
If you want to
knit you find someone who knits to teach you. Go to the local yarn shop and
find our when there is a knitting class. Sit in a circle where others will talk
to you, who you how to hold the needles, guide your hands, and share their
patterns with you. The first step in becoming a knitter is forming a
relationship with knitters. The next step is to learn by doing and practice.
After you knit for a while, after you have made scarves and hats and mittens,
then you start forming ideas about knitting. You might come to think that the
experience of knitting makes you a better person, more spiritual, or able to
concentrate, gives you a sense of service to others, allows you to demonstrate
love and care. You think about what you are doing, how you might do it better.
You develop your own way knitting, your own theory of the craft. You might
invent a dazzling new patter, a new way to make a stitch; you might write a
knitting book or become a knitting teacher. In knitting, the process is exactly
the reverse of that in church: belonging to a knitting group leads to behaving
as a knitter, which leads to believing things about knitting.
Relationship
leads to craft, which leads to experiential belief. That is the path of
becoming and being different. The path of Transformation. (pg 203)
The path of
transformation!
We use these words at
Easter as we stand by the EMPTY grave and celebrate the Resurrection and say it
is ALL about Transformation.
Living our faith –
being Church – all of what we do and say together is about transformation …
One of the best
examples of that transformative path comes from the lessons taught by the Amish
Community in Pennsylvania who in 2006, endured the senseless murder of 5 young
girls in a rural school house:
Although it now
seems more quaint than radical, the insight that Christianity is a way of life
in community based on practices is still on display in Amish country. Through
the mirror of contemporary Amish communities, it is easy to see that experiential
faith can become as stilted as dogma. Human beings have a tendency to freeze practices
around particular cultural expressions, as the Amish have around an early 19th
Century way of life. Indeed, with the horse and buggies, prohibitions on
buttons, and restrictions on dating and marriage, the whole business appears
less an encounter with Jesus than a hyperconservative and closed tradition …
That is, of
course, until a gunman walks into an Amish one-room schoolhouse and shoots ten
girls – and the community forgives him, attends his funeral, comforts his wife,
and sets up a charitable fund for the family of the man who murdered their
children. If they had been “conservative” in the political sense that most
people understand, they would have demanded justice, marking the murder’s
family as outcasts, or at the very least held a long and extended grudge
against him and his relatives. The Amish experience of Jesus demanded
otherwise, however. They were called to forgive, in an immediate and powerful
way, as Jesus would have forgiven. No questions asked. (pg 212)
The path of transformation
that IS the Resurrection is the ONLY thing that can allow someone to stand
before such a tragedy and speak words of forgiveness …
As the Risen Body of
Christ, ultimately, being Church is about eagerly anticipating with joy and
excitement and enthusiasm, the coming of God’s reign offering mercy and justice
to all! And this is a highly political thing … JS Wordsworth offered that
lesson a century ago when as a Methodist preacher he began tending to the
poorest of the poor in Winnipeg’s north end, and challenged others to do the
same …
At the end of the
day, it’s about living our faith and seeking to do justice, love kindness and
walk humbly with our God …
May it be so – thanks
be to God … Let us pray …
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