Ecumenism an unqualified success
Well...perhaps that is saying too much. But I had the distinct honor of preaching at a service sponsored by the Exton-Lionville Ministerium last night. It's always an honor for a Baptist to be offered a pulpit and I hope the words were meaningful. The text was from Matthew 18:18-22: "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Amen, I tell you, if two of you on earth are agreed on anything and ask my Father, he will grant it. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. Then Peter said, 'Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive that person? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I say to you, not seven times, but seventy times seven (or seventy-seven).'" (A loose paraphrase of the text)
The sermon is below--feel free to chime in with thoughts!
Let me begin my time this evening by saying what an honor it is to be standing here today. It is a true honor to be part of the Exton-Lionville Ministerium, a privilege to be part of such a good group of good people who are working for the Kingdom of God. It is an amazing feeling also to be standing in this beautiful pulpit in this lovely sanctuary, and I do pray that many will grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ in this sanctuary.
I want to particularly thank my colleagues for inviting me to preach today. In the Baptist tradition, preaching is paramount; it is the cornerstone of the worship service; it doesn’t feel like worship if someone has not delivered a sermon. And so it is an honor for me to share this part of
our tradition with you today.
I will tell you up front that preaching in the Baptist tradition is usually longer than in many other churches. I go to school part-time at Drew University in New Jersey and was sitting between my Catholic friend and another Baptist student. And the Catholic said to me, and you Baptists will understand why this is funny, "The priest just would not shut up this week. He spoke for, like, seven minutes." And the Baptist student and I just laughed and laughed; I thought, "Wow, in most Baptist churches I’ve been a part of, seven minutes, you’re still in your introduction!" Now my sermons are actually fairly short for a Baptist, between twenty and twenty-five minutes usually, but it may take a little getting used to for those from other traditions.
When I began to look at this evening’s text to prepare my sermon, I was taken aback by the heading in my Bible for this passage. It says, "Reproving Another Who Sins." That’s what this passage is about, reproving, or rebuking, another who sins. And I thought, "Wow...that’s kind of a heavy theme for an ecumenical prayer service." I mean, let’s get together, let’s have cookies, let’s thank God for Jesus who binds us all together–but let’s not get into such a thorny, difficult issue, like reproving each other when we sin. I began to think, "Why couldn’t I have last year’s text? That was 1 Cor 3:23: ‘...all things belong to you–for you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.’ That was nice and neat and tidy and orderly and uplifting–
But this business about reproving others sounds awfully confrontational, and ill-suited for an ecumenical service; it sounds a bit like the guest you have in your home that keeps on offending people without knowing it, who makes all the wrong religious and political jokes and doesn’t seem to know the carnage he is wreaking. And yet, here it is, reproving others, smack dab between the parable about the lost sheep and a teaching about being merciful to each other.
It seems to me that when Jesus talks about reproving each other, he puts an awful lot of power into human hands. He says to them, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Whatever you enforce on earth will be enforced in heaven; and whatever you tolerate on earth will be tolerated in heaven. The church has the divine authority and privilege of wrestling with issues of right and wrong, with issues of what constitutes injustice; as terrifying as this is, it is also empowering: we are given the right to speak with God’s authority. The message here is clear: the united voice of the church matters. We matter. What we say matters.
But it is more than just the fact that our voice matters. Our ears matter. It is not only what we say, but how we listen to each other, that matters. Since we, as Christians, as a church, are given such a weighty authority, anyone who would choose to bear it alone is a fool. Since God has entrusted us with such power, only those bent on self-destruction would try to carry that power alone. There are many issues today which face the churches where we disagree. Put in the language of this passage, there are things I believe should be bound that others here may believe should be loosed. There are things I believe should be loosed that others here may believe should be bound. The fact that God has entrusted us with such authority ought to fill us with an urgent desire to listen to each other even as we speak boldly about how we perceive God’s will.
Perhaps this is the right text for an ecumenical gathering after all. This text, after all, is a text about our right and our obligation to listen to each other. For as awkward as the ecumenical dance is, for all the stepping on each other’s feet that we might do when we’re together, it is a beautiful and lovely dance. Why? Because it is a dance that honors the spirit of this passage. Jesus goes on to say, "Truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven." And again, the ecumenical dance, though awkward, is beautiful because it is a dance where both partners say, "What can we agree on, so together we can go and ask it of God?" It is a dance that is beautiful because of what Jesus says, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." So it is a dance that is not made beautiful by the grace of the dancers, but it is made beautiful by the presence of God. Though many of us have two left feet, this dance together is made beautiful because the Spirit of God broods over it whenever we actually dance together. We have been given a tremendous right and obligation to listen to each other, that the ecumenical dance might go on in all its awkward, halting beauty.
We both know the alternative, and it’s tempting. If it is not an authentic dance between blushing, nervous partners, it will be a technically beautiful dance, where everyone makes the right steps and no one ever gets stepped on, but it will not have a soul. The music will be pitch-perfect, the footwork astonishing, and the performances awesome, but it will not have a soul. It will be like professional ballroom dancing, where when the two are dancing and they look for all the world like they’re husband and wife; but when the music stops, the two go their separate ways and it’s painfully obvious they never loved each other at all; indeed, they never even knew each other.
The whole point of this first part of the passage seems to be that God has given us a tremendous amount of power in this human life: power to bind and power to loose. God places tremendous authority in human hands, power to agree, power to disagree. In all, it seems that God has put the pace of the ecumenical dance in our hands. Will ours become an ecumenism of trying to find the lowest common denominator, of papering on a wide grin and sending out our best dancers to dance a round or two before we all go home and say, "Whew! I’m glad that’s over!?" Or will we live as ecumenical people in the world, in a way that strives to genuinely encounter each other, to listen, to reflect, to speak boldly, unafraid, believing deeply in each other? Can we live with the occasional misstep, knowing that our dance partners will forgive our faux pas?
What I’m really asking is will our pursuit of Christian unity allow us to see each other honestly and love each other despite what we might dislike in another Christian? Will we be able to love each other, not only when we are happy with each other, but when our rough edges begin to show? We will inevitably disagree with each other and find much that separates us, but will that prevent us from listening to each other? Let it never be–because finding the truth and being where God is is just that important.
Of course, all of this requires a great deal of spiritual maturity. To be able to encounter what you consider to be the ugly side of another person and still love them means that you have come to grips with the ugliness in your own spirit. To be able to listen to someone who is different without being threatened, without reacting out of fear, means that you must be rooted in Christ in a deep way, aware of your failings and your gifts; this awareness only comes through prayer, through corporate worship, service to others and through the Word of God written, preached and embodied in Christ.
If the ecumenical project is to have any meaning, it will not be because professional theologians gather in a room and come up with a statement that few will read. No, if the ecumenical project is to mean anything, it will not be something that happens in ivory towers and is handed down to the rest of us. It will happen, here, during the service, as we sing each others’ songs even when they are unfamiliar, when we sit and stand at different times then we’re used to, when we listen to those crazy Baptists who seem to preach forever! It will happen after the service, when we have homemade cookies, when we eat and drink and talk and learn about each other and build relationships. If the ecumenical project is to mean anything to a hurting and dying world, it will because you and I took tonight and the rest of our lives to know each other better so that we become better stewards of the tremendous authority Jesus has given us, the authority to bind and to loose, the authority to agree and disagree, the authority to be stewards both of Christ’s love and Christ’s truth in a world desperately in need of both.
It seems that Peter, too, was concerned with the amount of power given to the church. Peter, who would lead the church after the coming of the Spirit, seemed to know even then that that kind of power would be hard to steward. Power ordinarily corrupts, after all. People would get hurt. Factions would arise. In his mind’s eye, Peter seems to foresee the trouble that may come when this power is in the hands of people, and so he says, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"
When we receive this power to bind and to loose, when the Spirit comes from heaven to help us incarnate your love, O Lord, how often should we forgive those who hurt us? Should I open my heart to pain seven times before I finally say, "Enough is enough?" We all know how hard it is to make ourselves vulnerable to another person; and it’s especially hard to make ourselves vulnerable to someone who has hurt us in the past. But Peter is willing to do that not once, not twice, but seven times. For this Peter is to be commended.
And yet Jesus asks more; he says, not only the seven times, but seventy times seven. Not only the amount you think you can forgive, not only the times you see as the limit of your spiritual ability, but still more, more, seventy times as much as you think you can. Truly, it will take the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive that often.
Ecumenical relationships, like any relationships, hurt from time to time. Those of you who are married can remember the first year of marriage with your spouse. It’s not easy, is it? In premarital counseling, I often mention to couples how tough that first year is. I am a firm believer that God gives marriages the tools to succeed; certainly that is the case with Jill and I. My wife Jill is a mathematician and a good one, and she appreciates order in her life and in our home. I am not so orderly; I am spontaneous and free and sometimes can feel stifled with too much order. Six and a half years into our marriage, we are to the point where each of us are using those tools for the good of our marriage, and for the good of each other. At times, Jill brings much needed order out of chaos. At times, I bring something new that breaks up a rigid routine. Each is a powerful tool that God is using to change and to grow us through the good gift of marriage. I would not be the same person without her, and she would not be the same without me. Marriage is part of the way in which God is making us into a new creation.
But those tools God gives us are sharp. And in the first year of marriage, when it is not exactly what you expected, when you are still clumsy at using those tools, as often as not, you hurt each other with the same tools that God gives you for building. The same traits that are now gifts to our marriage, we used to use against each other. Not intentionally or maliciously, mind you; but we used to see them as tools to get our own way, and now we see them as tools to build something together, from which together we can reach out in love to the world.
It is the same for those of us here tonight, in our life together. The tools that have been given to us to build up the church and reach out in love to all the world are effective–but they are sharp. And from time to time, if we have any authentic relationship, we will hurt each other. In fact, the only way the process won’t hurt is if we don’t really get to know each other. Then nothing hurts–but nor is anything built. But if we are together to build a safe place to reach out to the world in love, we occasionally will hurt each other.
In this we must remember the words of Christ: "Seventy times seven." It is on the foundation of forgiveness that a true home can be built–in marriage or in the churches. It is forgiveness borne out of the love that rejoices in the truth and bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, a love that never fails. When we have a foundation of forgiveness, then we can talk about things that used to paralyze us. A foundation of forgiveness will allow us to build something resembling a home together, though it is nothing like the home that awaits us, one built not with human hands. A foundation of forgiveness allows us to walk in the light of Christ and lay down our arms and become completely vulnerable with each other.
It is when we learn to forgive that the dance can truly begin; and a world without music can watch the halting beauty of the dancers, and maybe–just maybe–begin to dance with us. May it be so.
The sermon is below--feel free to chime in with thoughts!
Let me begin my time this evening by saying what an honor it is to be standing here today. It is a true honor to be part of the Exton-Lionville Ministerium, a privilege to be part of such a good group of good people who are working for the Kingdom of God. It is an amazing feeling also to be standing in this beautiful pulpit in this lovely sanctuary, and I do pray that many will grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ in this sanctuary.
I want to particularly thank my colleagues for inviting me to preach today. In the Baptist tradition, preaching is paramount; it is the cornerstone of the worship service; it doesn’t feel like worship if someone has not delivered a sermon. And so it is an honor for me to share this part of
our tradition with you today.
I will tell you up front that preaching in the Baptist tradition is usually longer than in many other churches. I go to school part-time at Drew University in New Jersey and was sitting between my Catholic friend and another Baptist student. And the Catholic said to me, and you Baptists will understand why this is funny, "The priest just would not shut up this week. He spoke for, like, seven minutes." And the Baptist student and I just laughed and laughed; I thought, "Wow, in most Baptist churches I’ve been a part of, seven minutes, you’re still in your introduction!" Now my sermons are actually fairly short for a Baptist, between twenty and twenty-five minutes usually, but it may take a little getting used to for those from other traditions.
When I began to look at this evening’s text to prepare my sermon, I was taken aback by the heading in my Bible for this passage. It says, "Reproving Another Who Sins." That’s what this passage is about, reproving, or rebuking, another who sins. And I thought, "Wow...that’s kind of a heavy theme for an ecumenical prayer service." I mean, let’s get together, let’s have cookies, let’s thank God for Jesus who binds us all together–but let’s not get into such a thorny, difficult issue, like reproving each other when we sin. I began to think, "Why couldn’t I have last year’s text? That was 1 Cor 3:23: ‘...all things belong to you–for you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.’ That was nice and neat and tidy and orderly and uplifting–
But this business about reproving others sounds awfully confrontational, and ill-suited for an ecumenical service; it sounds a bit like the guest you have in your home that keeps on offending people without knowing it, who makes all the wrong religious and political jokes and doesn’t seem to know the carnage he is wreaking. And yet, here it is, reproving others, smack dab between the parable about the lost sheep and a teaching about being merciful to each other.
It seems to me that when Jesus talks about reproving each other, he puts an awful lot of power into human hands. He says to them, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Whatever you enforce on earth will be enforced in heaven; and whatever you tolerate on earth will be tolerated in heaven. The church has the divine authority and privilege of wrestling with issues of right and wrong, with issues of what constitutes injustice; as terrifying as this is, it is also empowering: we are given the right to speak with God’s authority. The message here is clear: the united voice of the church matters. We matter. What we say matters.
But it is more than just the fact that our voice matters. Our ears matter. It is not only what we say, but how we listen to each other, that matters. Since we, as Christians, as a church, are given such a weighty authority, anyone who would choose to bear it alone is a fool. Since God has entrusted us with such power, only those bent on self-destruction would try to carry that power alone. There are many issues today which face the churches where we disagree. Put in the language of this passage, there are things I believe should be bound that others here may believe should be loosed. There are things I believe should be loosed that others here may believe should be bound. The fact that God has entrusted us with such authority ought to fill us with an urgent desire to listen to each other even as we speak boldly about how we perceive God’s will.
Perhaps this is the right text for an ecumenical gathering after all. This text, after all, is a text about our right and our obligation to listen to each other. For as awkward as the ecumenical dance is, for all the stepping on each other’s feet that we might do when we’re together, it is a beautiful and lovely dance. Why? Because it is a dance that honors the spirit of this passage. Jesus goes on to say, "Truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven." And again, the ecumenical dance, though awkward, is beautiful because it is a dance where both partners say, "What can we agree on, so together we can go and ask it of God?" It is a dance that is beautiful because of what Jesus says, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." So it is a dance that is not made beautiful by the grace of the dancers, but it is made beautiful by the presence of God. Though many of us have two left feet, this dance together is made beautiful because the Spirit of God broods over it whenever we actually dance together. We have been given a tremendous right and obligation to listen to each other, that the ecumenical dance might go on in all its awkward, halting beauty.
We both know the alternative, and it’s tempting. If it is not an authentic dance between blushing, nervous partners, it will be a technically beautiful dance, where everyone makes the right steps and no one ever gets stepped on, but it will not have a soul. The music will be pitch-perfect, the footwork astonishing, and the performances awesome, but it will not have a soul. It will be like professional ballroom dancing, where when the two are dancing and they look for all the world like they’re husband and wife; but when the music stops, the two go their separate ways and it’s painfully obvious they never loved each other at all; indeed, they never even knew each other.
The whole point of this first part of the passage seems to be that God has given us a tremendous amount of power in this human life: power to bind and power to loose. God places tremendous authority in human hands, power to agree, power to disagree. In all, it seems that God has put the pace of the ecumenical dance in our hands. Will ours become an ecumenism of trying to find the lowest common denominator, of papering on a wide grin and sending out our best dancers to dance a round or two before we all go home and say, "Whew! I’m glad that’s over!?" Or will we live as ecumenical people in the world, in a way that strives to genuinely encounter each other, to listen, to reflect, to speak boldly, unafraid, believing deeply in each other? Can we live with the occasional misstep, knowing that our dance partners will forgive our faux pas?
What I’m really asking is will our pursuit of Christian unity allow us to see each other honestly and love each other despite what we might dislike in another Christian? Will we be able to love each other, not only when we are happy with each other, but when our rough edges begin to show? We will inevitably disagree with each other and find much that separates us, but will that prevent us from listening to each other? Let it never be–because finding the truth and being where God is is just that important.
Of course, all of this requires a great deal of spiritual maturity. To be able to encounter what you consider to be the ugly side of another person and still love them means that you have come to grips with the ugliness in your own spirit. To be able to listen to someone who is different without being threatened, without reacting out of fear, means that you must be rooted in Christ in a deep way, aware of your failings and your gifts; this awareness only comes through prayer, through corporate worship, service to others and through the Word of God written, preached and embodied in Christ.
If the ecumenical project is to have any meaning, it will not be because professional theologians gather in a room and come up with a statement that few will read. No, if the ecumenical project is to mean anything, it will not be something that happens in ivory towers and is handed down to the rest of us. It will happen, here, during the service, as we sing each others’ songs even when they are unfamiliar, when we sit and stand at different times then we’re used to, when we listen to those crazy Baptists who seem to preach forever! It will happen after the service, when we have homemade cookies, when we eat and drink and talk and learn about each other and build relationships. If the ecumenical project is to mean anything to a hurting and dying world, it will because you and I took tonight and the rest of our lives to know each other better so that we become better stewards of the tremendous authority Jesus has given us, the authority to bind and to loose, the authority to agree and disagree, the authority to be stewards both of Christ’s love and Christ’s truth in a world desperately in need of both.
It seems that Peter, too, was concerned with the amount of power given to the church. Peter, who would lead the church after the coming of the Spirit, seemed to know even then that that kind of power would be hard to steward. Power ordinarily corrupts, after all. People would get hurt. Factions would arise. In his mind’s eye, Peter seems to foresee the trouble that may come when this power is in the hands of people, and so he says, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"
When we receive this power to bind and to loose, when the Spirit comes from heaven to help us incarnate your love, O Lord, how often should we forgive those who hurt us? Should I open my heart to pain seven times before I finally say, "Enough is enough?" We all know how hard it is to make ourselves vulnerable to another person; and it’s especially hard to make ourselves vulnerable to someone who has hurt us in the past. But Peter is willing to do that not once, not twice, but seven times. For this Peter is to be commended.
And yet Jesus asks more; he says, not only the seven times, but seventy times seven. Not only the amount you think you can forgive, not only the times you see as the limit of your spiritual ability, but still more, more, seventy times as much as you think you can. Truly, it will take the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive that often.
Ecumenical relationships, like any relationships, hurt from time to time. Those of you who are married can remember the first year of marriage with your spouse. It’s not easy, is it? In premarital counseling, I often mention to couples how tough that first year is. I am a firm believer that God gives marriages the tools to succeed; certainly that is the case with Jill and I. My wife Jill is a mathematician and a good one, and she appreciates order in her life and in our home. I am not so orderly; I am spontaneous and free and sometimes can feel stifled with too much order. Six and a half years into our marriage, we are to the point where each of us are using those tools for the good of our marriage, and for the good of each other. At times, Jill brings much needed order out of chaos. At times, I bring something new that breaks up a rigid routine. Each is a powerful tool that God is using to change and to grow us through the good gift of marriage. I would not be the same person without her, and she would not be the same without me. Marriage is part of the way in which God is making us into a new creation.
But those tools God gives us are sharp. And in the first year of marriage, when it is not exactly what you expected, when you are still clumsy at using those tools, as often as not, you hurt each other with the same tools that God gives you for building. The same traits that are now gifts to our marriage, we used to use against each other. Not intentionally or maliciously, mind you; but we used to see them as tools to get our own way, and now we see them as tools to build something together, from which together we can reach out in love to the world.
It is the same for those of us here tonight, in our life together. The tools that have been given to us to build up the church and reach out in love to all the world are effective–but they are sharp. And from time to time, if we have any authentic relationship, we will hurt each other. In fact, the only way the process won’t hurt is if we don’t really get to know each other. Then nothing hurts–but nor is anything built. But if we are together to build a safe place to reach out to the world in love, we occasionally will hurt each other.
In this we must remember the words of Christ: "Seventy times seven." It is on the foundation of forgiveness that a true home can be built–in marriage or in the churches. It is forgiveness borne out of the love that rejoices in the truth and bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, a love that never fails. When we have a foundation of forgiveness, then we can talk about things that used to paralyze us. A foundation of forgiveness will allow us to build something resembling a home together, though it is nothing like the home that awaits us, one built not with human hands. A foundation of forgiveness allows us to walk in the light of Christ and lay down our arms and become completely vulnerable with each other.
It is when we learn to forgive that the dance can truly begin; and a world without music can watch the halting beauty of the dancers, and maybe–just maybe–begin to dance with us. May it be so.
posted by Rev. Michael Jordan at 11:47 AM
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