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January 16,
2005: It Takes One to Know One
Note: This sermon was not preached, because road conditions caused us to cancel worship this Sunday. The same scripture texts were used the next week, but a different sermon was preached. A week ago I attended a Saturday workshop as part of my spiritual formation training. I had no idea what I was getting into, because the informational material made it sound like everyone knew what it was about, so I didn't ask detailed questions. Even the location seemed to be something everyone else knew about, so I trusted the Thomas Guide and my teacher's recommendation, "This would be good for you." The location turned out to be a loft apartment in the Pearl District of Portland. Frankly, that level of urbane sophistication is very heady for this country preacher. The loft belonged to my spiritual formation teacher, who not only teaches spiritual formation but has a spiritual direction practice. He is also a Catholic parish priest, artist and calligrapher, hospice chaplain, and retreat leader. His loft was so filled with art, it was hard to tell how much of it was his work, but one piece held my attention. The focus of the drawing was a pair of arms, from elbow to hands, grasping a broken communion loaf. "This is my body, broken for you." Between the two halves of the bread were glimpses of the human condition. Below the arms were depictions of brokenness and tragedy and the cruelty humans visit on each other-and hints of hope. Over the hands was a pair of eagle's wings, out of which two eagle heads peered in either direction. It was an incredibly powerful picture, and it evoked lots of scriptural allusions. Psalm 91 ("he will cover you with his pinions") and [sing] "He will raise you up on eagle's wings. . ." not to mention Isaiah and "those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles." Those allusions made sense of the salvation represented by the Eucharistic bread, made the hope of salvation more terrible, growing as it did, out of heartache and tragedy and disaster. It reminded me of a story told by Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel, who survived childhood interred in a Nazi concentration camp. Wiesel writes of the whole camp being punished for an inmate uprising, by being forced to witness the execution of the rebels. A small boy was one of those being hanged, and his death took a long time. As the child struggled, someone in back of Wiesel wept bitterly, "Where is God?" Wiesel said he knew that God was with-was in-that child's suffering. It is that hope, that salvation, which is contained in the broken body of Christ in the picture on my teacher's wall. So it was with some surprise that, the day after seeing that picture, I discovered our broken communion loaf, the bread-for-show, the prop we leave on the communion table even when we aren't celebrating communion. Since before Christmas I had known this loaf needed replacing, but I had had other things on my mind, and here it was in a shambles. There was no time before church to get another loaf, so remembering that picture, I broke open the pieces on the plate [bring out the plate]. You might have noticed it. Someone noticed it, because when I got to church on Monday, the pieces had been carefully put back together. Absent mindedly I broke the pieces apart again, thinking about that art on my teacher's wall. This is my body broken for you. When I got to the church on Tuesday, someone had put it back together. Now, it isn't that I need to have this bread in pieces. But it surprised me that it kept coming back together. It reminded me that we (the Church) are the Body of Christ in the here and now, the ones of whom it might be said, "This is my Body, broken for you." And that is also when I remembered that we were preparing for our annual meeting today. Paul's letter to the church in Corinth is good reading as we gather to celebrate the successes of the last year and prepare for the coming year by electing officers. But unless a person read more of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth than what we read today, a body might have the impression that things are rosy in Corinth. After all, Paul praises this church for their smarts and smooth-talking, for their cool and stylin' spiritual gifts. Later we find that it's the very basis of his criticisms-that they have made their faith into a head trip, their so-called rich speech has deteriorated into gossip and backbiting, and cool and stylin' is not the point of spiritual gifts. Paul points to their arrogance about God's gifts, saying they use what God gave for personal one-upmanship. For the last 2,000 years or so, every preacher in the world who has preached from this letter, gives their congregation the impression that the original text included the note, "insert your church name here." In a few minutes, right after this worship service, we are going to gather in celebration and anticipation of this congregation's life, and a word about "loyalty" must be said. The word we've been translating as "faith" means loyalty, and loyalty as it applies to any congregation is a paradox. Paradox means an apparent contradiction is true. On the one hand, Springwater's faithfulness is a corporate act of loyalty. The work of this church cannot be done by individuals. There is too much to do, and we are The People of Committee. Together is the only way we can work as if God's kingdom is here and now. But "together" does not happen unless and until individuals are loyal-to God and to each other. Broken as humans are, we can never be faithful enough or loyal enough to do the work the church is called to do. Not in isolation. Not without an act of God. Springwater is the kind of church that always has more good ideas about what and how to do church than it has people to do those ideas effectively. That is good news and it is bad news. The bad news is that we are forever discouraging ourselves because we don't have volunteers "loyal" enough to do what we think ought to be done for a measly church committee, let alone for the kingdom of God. The good news is that God is loyal. The paradox of church is that it takes personal commitment to the coming of God's kingdom, but that the kingdom comes at all does not depend on any individual. The coming of God's kingdom depends on God, and its coming takes a whole body of people living and working together as if it all depended on them alone, and as if God's loyalty is enough to bring the kingdom. The whole thing falls apart without the individual, but the individual isn't the point. We are called to work as if everything depends on us alone, but our loyalty gives thanks that we can depend on each other, and that it all depends on God. |