October 4, 2009 World Wide Communion Sunday
Psalm 133; Revelation 21:1-5
My friend Bruce traveled with a clergy group to Israel a few months ago, and told me this story about his group’s visit to the holy city of Sefad, in the hills near the Galilee. Sefad is a city of mysticism and artistic vision; it became a center of the study of kabbalah after the mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria settled there in the 16th century. It is a beautiful place to explore; high in the hills and cris-crossed by cobbled streets almost inaccessible by car, it makes you feel like you have dropped into medieval Europe. Bruce and his colleagues had been led to one of the famous synagogues in the city
center; it is a small place, filled with paintings and fabrics marked
by mystical symbols and intricate patterns. They were studying a
beautiful fresco and dodging groups of other tourists and seekers
when they heard a heavily accented voice speak behind them. What
brought you here? Assuming
the person was speaking to someone else, they went on chatting and
studying the interior of the synagogue. . .but the voice came again: what brought you here? Nervous silence smothered
the soft conversations among the pastors. A third time, soft and
insistent, the voice asked, what brought you here? The
men turned around to see a small old man (a
rabbi? a docent? another tourist?) gazing at them. What
brought you here? He was
waiting for an answer. What to say? There was awkward silence
for a moment, uncertain glances, then, looking confident, the Baptist
minister stepped forward and said in a clear, slow and confident
voice: THE HYUNDAI
MINI-VAN.
What
brought you here?
The
invitation of a friend? Your parents, or grandparents? Curiosity?
Habit? A hunger for friendship, or a yearning for the divine? A
desire to be part of something bigger than yourself?
What
brought you here?
This
morning our congregation is in the fourth week of a five week series
on spiritual antibodies, that is, practices that can help us build up
our resilience to the dis-eases of ordinary or extraordinary stresses
in life, so that we can be more peaceful, purposeful, and joyful day
to day. Living with these practices —intentionality,
relaxation, self-validation, connection, and self-care—
can help us live authentically while we try to fulfill the mission
statement that is each of ours and all of ours, here at Riviera, that
is, to reflect the path of
Christ. This morning is a
special day for us as we rededicate our sanctuary four years after
the hurricanes that damaged it and two years after beginning our
renovation. And it is also a special day on the liturgical calendar,
World Wide Communion Sunday. But in a way that is, I think, typically
Riviera, special days are carried in the flow of the Ordinary, not
interruptions of it nor distractions from something less worthy or
interesting. In a way that is common to many people of faith, we
trust that what we need will be made visible to us in our ordinary
practice, rather than outside of it. We don’t have to go on
pilgrimage, beseech the heavens, or make sacrifices. . .we just have
to show up; show up and pay attention. And so, mindfully and with a
grateful heart, we continue with our ordinary-time little sermon
series; and turn to this morning’s topic, Connection,
and wait to see how the intersection of our special celebration with
our everyday practice will speak in us and through us.
The
fourth antibody is connection. Or put another way, community. This
spiritual antibody is different from the other four, which are
possible to practice alone. You can have, and follow your mission,
by yourself. You can regulate your body and practice relaxation
alone—in fact, it is probably easier for most of us to do so! Same
goes for self-validation! If you don’t have other people around to
rely on for your sense of self-worth, you can find it within, with
God. The last vaccine, self-care we will find is also, almost
completely, a game you play alone. But connection is different. It
requires me both to give of myself, and to give myself up, to others.
It is not private practice, it is that most anachronistic of habits
in an individualistic, factionalized and nuclear-family oriented
culture: the practice of life in community. When we teach these
antibodies in Compassion Fatigue and Resiliency workshops we talk
about connection as having four components. It’s not just enough
to show up, or go through the motions of being with other people. We
all know churches, and professional associations, clubs or cliques
that do that: the people show up, and appear to be having a wonderful
time together, but there is something missing, something wrong. To
practice genuine connection, four qualities must be present.
Real
community is marked by narrative.
It is present when persons listen to, and share their stories.
That’s one of the reasons our worship takes so much time for
sharing the peace, and pays so much attention to the expression of
the prayers of the people, and people from the church occasionally
replace pastors and preachers in the pulpit.
Real
community is characterized by trust, and by an ability to confront one another in
love.
Real
community allows us to tell on ourselves, to, as a friend of mine
once put it when she advised me to trust my church with the stories
of my own failures and brokenness, tell
the truth about yourself so that others know church is the place
where they can tell the truth, and be accepted.
Real
community makes us accountable. For what we
say we will do for ourselves, and for what we promise to do for
others. The apostle Paul said it another way—when one part of us
is weak, all of us are weak; and if one of us is strong, all of us
benefit. When we are in relationship in the family of God, what we
do to ourselves matters, and what we say we are doing for the life of
the community counts, as well. We are not a staff-run church, a
spiritual spa where you can pay to show up and have someone else help
you feel better. We are a working community, a work in progress, and
everyone’s participation matters, and matters deeply.
When
we tell and hear our sacred stories, trust each other to confront us
when we need it, tell on ourselves with trust and transparency, and
are accountable for our own actions and for the life of the
community, God shows up, and we are Christ, manifesting as community.
No
matter how well one is vaccinated with the other four antibodies, no
one can be healthy, resilient or spiritually whole without
connection, outside of intentional community. I absolutely believe
that with my whole heart….even though it is REALLY HARD some days,
and I wish that the Hyundai bus had brought me, so I could
leave again, rather than the vehicle of Christ’s body, our common
table and our common life, from which I can never escape.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the German Confessing Church pastor who was executed by
the Nazis for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, said that the
Church was Christ, existing
as community. That’s what
I believe in, that’s what I was drawn to, when I first chose to be
a church person instead of merely a Jesus person. I attended this
little church, a farm house in the country rapidly being overrun by
suburbia, whose people—not too many, usually, stepped up and
volunteered and had fun and asked hard questions and generously
yielded to each other in love. If it was one family’s week to
vacuum and set up the chairs, usually, through the overflowing of
friendship, there were two, or three, and a picnic , or maybe wine
and cheese after….If the denomination fought and argued about
homosexuality or theology, we talked about it in church, rather than
avoiding the conflict, and we learned how to disagree, and stay
together. I had loved Jesus since early adolescence, but at Hope I
fell in love with the Church.
And
I love this church—which today marks a moment in a history…..a
big moment for us, but more because of what it represents than what
it is. We remade this sanctuary, after years and moments and laughter
and arguments, in the image of God, as we see God here…that is, in
the overflowing of friendship that is Christ manifest as community.
We
opened up our dark, stained glass lower windows to the world, because
we believe we should always see it, and know its movements, even when
we are in sanctuary. We got rid of our high chancel and imposing
pulpit because we believe that God comes to us in the immanent and
neighborly, more than in the authoritative and transcendent. We
built a “mother ship” that moves our worship orientation around,
because we believe we must always see ourselves and God from a
variety of perspectives, in order to be engaged and real in the
world. We built our stunning stained glass celtic cross and sheltered
it under a tent of hospitality, because we want to remind ourselves
and show others that the practice of hospitality is the heart of the
gospel, the center of our worship, and the face of God. I borrowed
the title for this morning’s sermon from our friend, Richard
Godbeer who just two weeks ago was ordained into leadership as an
elder of the church. His book, The
Overflowing of Friendship, describes the practice of intentional friendship between men during
the colonial and revolutionary period of our nation’s history. He
makes the case that such friendships—nurtured with intentionality,
practiced across boundaries of ideology and social condition, created
in the men who sought them a particular character of emotional and
spiritual transparency, a character that enabled them, and their
brothers and sisters, to make a new nation. Initially, I thought I
was merely hi-jacking his fabulous title . . .but now, though the
contexts out of which we speak are vastly different, I’m not sure
the principle isn’t the same. For I am advocating a practice of
connection and community that will not merely make you, or me, more
joyful, resilient and spiritually whole; I believe that when we
practice community together we develop our capacity to transform, and
heal the world. This is what the vision in Revelation is about: a
world salted by believers, who, having endured the divisions and
disintegrations and false promises of civil society, have found their
way to the true society, the kin-dom of God, by practicing deep
connection across boundaries of language, nation, and race. We
are salt for the earth, O people….bring forth the kindom of God.