Sermon, July 6, 2003
4 Pentecost; Proper 9, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, July 6, 2003
4 Pentecost; Proper 9, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Divided, Yet One
Gospel - Mark 6:1-6; Epistle - 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
There have been several studies claiming that our nation is divided right down the middle. About half of us want us to move in one direction; about half of us want to go the other way. A parishioner who has worked at a high political level in Washington told me that the sophisticated science of polling is showing pretty consistently that just under 45% of Americans are solidly committed to vote for whoever is the conservative nominee, and just under 45% are certain votes for the more liberal candidate. He said that the last few national elections have veered toward whichever candidate could attract the 12% to15% swing vote in the middle. The 2000 national election was a virtual tie -- 50,996,582 votes for the Democratic candidate Al Gore; 50,456,062 for the Republican candidate George W. Bush. Ralph Nader pulled in almost 3 million and other third party candidates another million votes. In percentages that’s 48.4% Gore; 47.9% Bush. A dead heat. And in the votes that really counted, it was 4/3 in the Florida Supreme Court, 5/4 in the U.S. Supreme Court -- Florida’s 25 votes providing Mr. Bush with a five-vote margin of victory 271/266 in the Electoral College.
And yet, how peacefully that election was handled. It had a transcendent quality. There was a civil passing of authority -- no riots, no wars. The Democrats did not recruit an army or flee the country in disgust. This nation trusted the rule of law and peacefully inaugurated a new leader. We continue to agree to disagree, and to respect the rule of law.
But we remain divided. As long as there are human beings, we will live with divisions --disagreements over things we care about deeply. We all live with people who just will not accept or understand things that we are absolutely certain and convinced about. And no matter how we explain it to them, educate them, show them the light, they stubbornly refuse to consent to the truth that is obvious to us. How can we live with them?!
In this room this morning, meeting at the altar receiving communion together, are people who care passionately about things that matter deeply to them. Some of you want to protect the health of restaurant and bar workers and patrons with a smoke-free city ordinance. Some of you want to protect the freedom and property rights of business owners and individuals and oppose any such ordinance. Some of you want to honor the life-long loving relationships of committed gay couples. Some of you want to honor the ancient teaching and tradition that sexual intimacy is rightly expressed only within the covenant of a marriage between a man and woman. We have good people in this room, doing the best they can, loving God and following Jesus -- and coming to opposite conclusions about things that matter deeply. And we know -- these decisions matter. Many of them can’t be mollified with a satisfying win/win compromise or a brilliant synthesis of conflicting theses. Many of our conflicts will be brought to a point of decision. Not deciding is still a decision. Some of us will win and some of us will lose those decisions. And even if, by some grace, we might make some decisions that are actually in accordance with God’s will, nevertheless, the body is injured. The community is hurt. Father forgive us, for we know not what we do.
The Rabbi’s have passed down an important story. Following the Israelites’ great deliverance at the Red Sea, the angels in heaven broke out in a song of jubilation -- the slaves were free and their oppressors swept away by the sea. Then one of the angels noticed that God was not there. The angel searched far and wide and finally found God in a distant corner of heaven, crying. The angel said, "The chosen people are safe, the Egyptian army has been destroyed, why are you not celebrating with us?" And God replied, "How can I celebrate when my children the Egyptians are drowning?"
You and I live in a world where we will be in disagreement and conflict with our neighbors and our friends and our family members. Every one of us will be hurt by the decisions or opinions of our neighbors and every one of us will make have opinions or decisions that will hurt someone else. It was no different for Jesus. Today we listened to Mark’s version of Jesus’ return home to teach in his hometown synagogue. And they took offense at him. It wasn’t just what he said, either. It was personal. -- Who does he think he is? We know this guy and his family. He’s nothing, they said of him. -- "And he was amazed at their unbelief." So, what did Jesus do? He kept on teaching and healing. He kept on trusting God that things will work out in the end. ...Until his apparent defeat on the cross. Then he kept on trusting God beyond into something unpredictable, something utterly new, a possibility only God could create -- resurrection.
This parish is named for one who was familiar with conflict, St. Paul of Tarsus. Our translators clean up some of the fierce language in his letters so we can read them out loud in church. During recent Sundays, we have been reading from his second epistle to the Corinthians, a passionate letter forged in the midst of bitter conflict. He’s about to visit the church for a third time because of profound difficulties that have not been settled either by letter or by personal appeal.
Paul does his best to make his case with strength and confidence. But all through his powerful writing, you can see that his real hope is not centered on the strength of his rhetoric or even the truth of his cause. His real hope is not focused on the outcome of the struggle he is waging either. His real hope is in God. He gives us a clue in today’s reading when he speaks of a mystical experience remembered from fourteen years ago, an event which has sustaining power for him for a lifetime’s struggle. "I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows."
Paul experienced a transcendent reality where opposites are reconciled and even the corporeal existence of one’s separate self is no longer significant. Where God is all and all is God. Everything melts into relative contingency in the presence of the non-contingent. When you’ve been touched by that mystery, you are invited to live without anxiety in the midst of the lesser mysteries of our human conflicts and divisions. Because of the absolute power of his momentary touching the dazzling darkness of God, Paul is able to endure gracefully even a tormenting "thorn in the flesh" that might otherwise have been his undoing. "Therefore," he says, "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities." That is a contentment much to be desired.
You also have had hints and experiences of transcendence. I believe every person who has ever lived has been "caught up to the third heaven" at some time or other in your life. Sometimes it takes a bit of encouragement to remember and claim such experiences, for they are not valued in our culture or politics. But when you have been touched by something greater than yourself, something greater than the conflicts that seek to divide whatever you hold dear, you have access to a perspective that gives you courage to face life’s confusion and conflict with profound hope.
That’s what worship intends to do -- to connect us to the broken life of the crucified One who is raised from death into new life. To take the one bread, one body, break and give it so that it feeds the whole world. To tell the story of the wounded healer and remind us that we are one with God and ultimately reconciled to the whole creation. To remember that the love of God is the most powerful reality in the universe. Nothing can separate us from that. Not "hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. ...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Therefore, you can accept, even embrace, the conflicts and divisions that come your way. You can be self-defining and bold, while still remaining profoundly connected to those with whom you differ. And you can be unafraid, non-anxious. For nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.