There is no business like church business.
Several years ago I led a vestry retreat for another church. I had them compose a parish lifeline, much like the one you all did for me when I first arrived at Good Shepherd. The lifeline was focused on times in the parish’s history of great upheaval---times when people had left the church, times when tempers ran hot and the tension was thick. Of course I had my own assumptions as to what those times would be---perhaps the adoption of the 1979 BCP, the ordination of women to the priesthood, the retirement of a rector who had a notorious drinking problem, the leave taking of other priests under equally troubling circumstances, the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson, etc. Was I ever wrong.
These significant events in the history of the Episcopal Church created barely a blip in the collective memory of the parish----but that doesn’t mean there weren’t times of GREAT upheaval in the lifeline. The most stressful time, according to their memory? The time the church decided to move a stained glass window.
A stained glass window created a great chasm between members of the parish. Feelings were hurt, anger was expressed and people left the parish.
Over a window.
Yes, there is no business like church business.
This is nothing new. Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth were emergency interventions by Paul to help this new Christian community resolve their differences. The fledgling community was on the verge of disintegration. His letters were designed to calm the faithful and to get them to stop fighting with each other over matters both large and small and to get on with the business of proclaiming Jesus as Christ the Lord.
It was a good tactic---to have a respected elder of the church scold them out of pettiness and into unity.
A good reading for us as we finish up The Week of Christian Unity, and a good reading for us on our Annual Meeting Sunday.
Parish Churches, Dioceses, Provinces and the Church—big C—as a whole bicker. Kind of like families.
Well exactly like families. Because a church—at the parish, diocesan, national and international level----IS a family. The family of Christ. The Body of Christ in the world is one big loving, yet bickering, caring, yet dysfunctional, joyous, yet aggravating, family.
This may sound crazy, but I think a family—whether our family of origin or our church family---that bickers is a sign of health. When a family holds everything in, pretending that nothing is ever wrong or when, at the first sign of distress, members leave—running away from the messiness of intimacy—then there’s no chance to move through the discord, to resolve the disagreements, to get over the hurt. Instead the feelings of each individual member festers, grudges take hold, bitterness rules and the family—be it in our homes or at church----doesn’t grow. Doesn’t mature. Doesn’t evolve.
The church in Corinth, with the help of Paul, evolved, it grew. Along the way, things got bumpy. Some people left, some stayed and, as a community, they moved through their disagreement and into a new place, a place of greater health, love and tolerance. Families---church or otherwise-- thrive when the bumps in the road are seen as opportunities, rather than obstacles.
Our own community of Good Shepherd has seen its share of bumps, some of which shook many of you to your core.
But, these bumps have taught you—taught us-- that liking each other, agreeing with one another, is not what binds us. What binds us, what makes this community strong, is love. This family is fused by love: love for God and love for each other.
Love doesn’t mean we always like—or agree—with each other. Love means that nothing---not powers, not principalities, not politics, not personalities---will keep us from focusing on the only goal which matters: to worship our loving God and being strengthened by this Love, to go and do God’s work in the world.
This Love—God’s Love as given to us through Jesus--- isn’t easy. This Love stretches us beyond our comfort level, causing anxiety, fear, confusion.
Jesus of course, does this to us. Jesus stretches us.
He came to turn the world—our comfortable, familiar, not too many surprises world---upside down. To Jesus, justice, not comfort, is the goal. To Jesus, love, not like, is the goal. When the church in Corinth began to struggle it wasn’t because of low numbers, a dwindling endowment or because they needed to search for a new music director or a new rector. The church in Corinth struggled because personalities became more important than principles. As the church grew, the people lost site of what attracted them in the first place. In the fear and anxiety of maturity, of evolution, of growth, they became distracted, evaluating each other based on who baptized them instead of what they had been baptized into…..
They differentiated themselves through personalities instead of uniting themselves through principles. It became about the person in the pulpit instead of the God on the altar.
The personality of a church’s leadership is important. People often come to a church because they’ve heard that the leadership is new, vibrant and interesting---but people stay in a church because of the sense of God that pervades the congregation.
People stay here when they realize we’re made up of all sorts and matters of people. Loud folks and quiet. Old, young and in between. City dwellers and suburbanites, Republicans, Democrats and independents, white, black and brown, straight and Gay, rich, poor and in between, longtime members and newcomers---people who may disagree, on any number of subjects, but who, when all is said and done, gather, in love, to share a sacred meal.
Churches are full of all sorts and conditions of people.
Churches are, like families, intimate groupings of people who as much as they share a love for each other, can drive each other nuts. The key is to let the crazy-making make us strong while letting the love keep us sane.
We must remember that our life together will, at times, be strained, but that, regardless of what tries to tear us apart, we remain together, strengthened by disagreement and soothed by love.
For, as Paul tells the church in Corinth, our unity is in the cross, knowing that all of us, different as we are, are saved by the singular act of grace and love on that cross, an act which reminds us that love, and only love, is the church's business.
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