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Riding the BusOctober 07, 2007 World Communion Sunday As many of you know, Christ Church has a growing network of Covenant Groups, which bring six to twelve persons together at least twice monthly for the purpose of study, prayer, support, encouragement, and accountability for their spiritual life. Increasingly, I’m believing this ministry will be a key component to energizing the next phase of our congregational maturation. I’m part of one myself. Actually, I’m part of several if I count a couple of groups I meet with regularly beyond our family here. I’ve been a part of a couple of professional covenant groups for nearly two decades. All of these experiences have proven very helpful to me over the years. Among other useful things, they make explicit my desire to continue to learn and evolve. Implicitly, they hold me accountable to my better intentions. That’s pretty basic, isn’t it? Holding myself accountable to my better intentions. In here, of course, I’m referencing my better intentions concerning the things that matter most. By the way, if that sounds like a good idea, something you aspire to – holding yourself accountable to your better intentions about the things that matter most – I encourage you to drop Cathy Gilliard a line and tell her about your interest. New groups are forming and re-forming all the time. Cathy’s our covenant group maven. My Christ Church group met this week and I was struck by something one member reported. It wasn’t a big thing in the telling, not some great unveiling, but it stayed with me nevertheless. He said that on a recent bus ride he realized that twenty years ago he would not have noticed nor cared about the people that sat around him. But now, for some reason, that has changed. He now “sees” the people. And, I suppose, though he didn’t go on about this, he cares about them too, or least he could care about them. He could care about them because now he sees them. Like I said, at first hearing this is not a big revealing, but the more I thought about it, the size of this revelation is deceptive. Not much in the telling, but rather significant for the individual. I mean, if one day you don’t see what’s right in front of you, and probably couldn’t even if it was pointed out to you, and then another day the scales have fallen from your eyes and you can see as though for the first time, that’s rather big, isn’t it? He didn’t say this happened all of a sudden, like one day he was blind and the next he could see. Rather, one morning he was aware this transition had taken place. From one vantage point, this is one important purpose of the church – to assist the de-scaling of eyes so that we might be able to actually see the people who inhabit our world, and in the seeing find ourselves caring. Another guy in the group, with a wink and a nod, has expressed the clichéd fear that if he winds up seeing and caring he just knows he’s going to be sent off to India to fill Mother Teresa’s shoes. We inevitably kid him about this every week now, wondering how his plans are developing. He states that classic worry that if one really takes this spiritual thing seriously something dramatic is going to be demanded. And here’s how the dots connect: something dramatic is demanded, but it’s not unlike his friend’s revelation – each of us, really, is called to see the people who ride the bus. To see, and then to care. And this is surely more demanding than contemplating following Mother Teresa because that falls within the realm of fantasy potential. The people on the bus, on the other hand, are a current, tangible reality. And you know how this is in New York. There are all sorts of people who ride the bus. Actually, every sort of person rides the bus. It’s one of the great social mixers. The subway is a sweatier, earthier version of the same thing. People from every socio-economic station, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, national background, sane and not-so-sane… Every sort of person. For those unaccustomed to such diversity it can be quite challenging. And the instinctual response, “Please, let me find my own kind. Let me be with my own kind. Let someone who looks like me or at least thinks like I do or sounds like me sit down next to me…” Have you ever felt that way? It’s natural. Instinctual. And interestingly, unbiblical. As you well know, at nearly every turn in the gospels Jesus extends the welcome to riding the bus to any who would come aboard. They can ride even they don’t have the fare. This drives everyone crazy. And not least his disciples, because the rules of engagement are so daunting as well. For instance, as we heard Jesus tell his friends today: “If a person sins against you seven times a day and says I’m sorry seven times you must forgive.” [1] It’s no wonder they are reported as saying, “Increase our faith!” After all, the demands of the sort of life he reveals seems beyond their ken. It’s like asking them to live like Mother Teresa in some far-off land they do not know, among people they do not understand and quite frankly, don’t really care about. But by their demand for faith, understand what they’re doing – they’re holding themselves accountable to their better intentions about the things that matter most. What better way than flinging a petition to Jesus: “Increase our faith!” You may think the analogy a bit cute, but the disciples have their own version of a covenant group. They study, pray, support and encourage one another and by their bond hold one another accountable to the things that matter most. You will notice this is not necessarily a comfortable task. At nearly every turn in the road they travel with Jesus they’re asked to stretch themselves in ways that they had not anticipated, nor find especially easy. But you will also notice that everything they are asked to do is found right within their immediate environment, the equivalent of noticing the people with whom they ride the bus – to see them, to engage them and to care about them, even, to forgive them. I was struck by something Paul wrote to his friend Timothy. Writing from prison he says, “I’m grateful to God when I remember you constantly… Recalling your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy.” (It’s a very warm and personal letter.) “I am reminded of your sincere faith… God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” So, “join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his purpose and grace.”[2] “Join with me in suffering for the gospel....” That’s the phrase that caught my ear. Not exactly the sort of promo we’d come up with today to advance our market share. Actually, what we more often hear from high profile preachers is how they can help alleviate our suffering. Come to church and find your cure. I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t think there was truth in that. But it’s a bit of a paradox (isn’t it?) this coming to faith. On the one hand, there’s no question that Jesus offers the cure for what rots in our core, and not just our individual cores, but within the collective core of the human community, its systems and corruptions. No question about that at all. But then, that’s half the story, well, maybe not even half. What follows is the spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline that prompts us to join the cause and then to suffer for the gospel. What is this gospel? As members of Christ Church know so very well: Loving God above all things and loving our neighbors as ourselves. That’s the gospel we’re called to suffer for. Why? Because it summarizes our work as humans, says Jesus. As we heard Paul say it to Timothy last week, doing this work of love allows us to “take hold of the life that really is life.” So the suffering Paul references here isn’t the stoic acceptance of say, the pain in your back, although that surely has its own spiritual hookups that are not to be denied, and that we can talk about another day. Paul speaks here of taking on the work of love. And it can begin as simply as noticing, maybe for the very first time, who’s on the bus with you, recognizing that each individual has a unique story, each one a descendent from the same divine genetics that bind the human family no matter how they look, act or sound. This commitment will take us to more difficult places as well. I have a good friend in the ministry who, as an civil rights advocate in the middle of the last century, had huge crosses burned on his church lawn and death threats hurled at him and his family. That’s another form of suffering for the gospel, isn’t it? And yet, you can feel the charismatic draw, the power in this sort of disciplined commitment to the things that matter most, by taking hold of the life that really is life. Strangely enough, I think the real power, the real attraction in what we offer here is located in this capacity to suffer for the sake of the gospel, which is the same thing as the capacity to suffer for the sake of authentic love, to suffer for the truth. On the face of it, it's counter-intuitive that this ability to endure for the sake of things that matter most should be the most compelling attractor. But in these days of trite and splashy substitutes for the life that really is life, when someone actually senses they’re in the range of the real thing, its nearly impossible to resist. At the least, it is very, very hard to ignore. This ability to endure is born from faith. Faith the size of a mustard seed is all that’s required. And I tell you, most everyone has access to at least that little bit. ______________________ Previous sermon: Taking Hold of the Life that Really is Life • Next sermon: Three Witnesses, pt. 1 All past sermons |
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