How do we deal with the issues that divide us?

     Political rhetoric has been heating up in this country in advance of the 2012 Presidential election.  Charges are flying fast from one camp to another, people trying to genuflect to one issue or another.  Certainly the right wing has had a field day blaming the president for every ill that the country is suffering.  I am surprised that he hasn't been blamed for the earthquake and for hurricane Irene.

     We certainly pull out the stops when we want to make a point, and often we don't seem to care whom we hurt in the process.   I know that politics is a messy business and that politicians have been saying rude and hurtful things about each other for generations, and also that it isn't necessary to take seriously everything that they say.  But I want for a moment to look at our Christian roots in all of this and to say something about how we ought to treat each other in the middle of our disagreements.

     Many of the candidates emphasize their Christian roots.  Sometimes simply to make points about gay rights or abortion, or the influx of Islamic religion into our country.  But if Christianity is the basis for their politics, I think it ought more so to be the basis of their morality.

     In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus discusses a method of dealing with conflict that might be helpful, not only to politicians, but to all of us as we deal with the minefield of issues on our doorstep.  It is a rather simple formula that tries to put feelings above the conflict.  Jesus is talking about church members, but his formula is certainly applicable to a much larger community than that.

     He says to his disciples:  "If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fact of that to him when the two of you are alone."  He is being careful here to keep the conversation at the lowest possible level.   He goes on to advise, "But if you are not listened to, take two or three others with you, so that the evidence can be confirmed by several witnesses."  Again, he is here being careful to keep the conversation at the lowest possible level.  It is only when the conversation fails at this time that he advises his disciples to "tell it to the church."  In other words, to involve the larger community.  If the offender refuses even to listen to the church, we are advised then to treat the offender "like a Gentile or a tax collector."


     What is somewhat amusing here is that Jesus treated Gentiles, like the woman near Tyre with the afflicted daughter, or the tax-collector Matthew who is the author of this Gospel with great care and compassion.  But such as that is, let's look at what this formula means for all of us as we deal with the myriad of issues that seem to be driving us at the moment.  Wouldn't we be much better served if we could keep our conversations about these things that divide us at the lowest possible level?  Wouldn't it be better if we could somehow stifle the name calling and assume the best rather than the worst about each other?  Again, this is not only true for politicians, but for all of us.

     We certainly have opinions and disagreements about a lot of things these days, but it is our certainty that drives our passion and our anger about it all.  There is a more useful middle ground that we can inhabit that can lessen our anger and increase our compassion for each other.  That is the real basis for compromise, and compromise is the essence of democracy.  Compromise is the only thing that will get us out of the dilemmas that are confronting us: the deficit, the economy, the dearth of jobs and also all of those things that divide us culturally.  How can we care best for those who are marginalized, the poor, the outcast and the deprived.  Certainly not by name calling and blame.  Keeping everyone in the game is essential.  Respecting everyone's stands on issues is very important to our mutual life.  It is how we come to understand the solutions to the problems that lie at the root of our common life.

     Speaking softly is essential.  Our "Christian" politicians need to continually reflect on their religious center and keep their Christianity before them.  If they did, we would be much richer for their input and for the good sense and compromise that would naturally result.

The Problem with Certainty

     The horrible massacre in Norway by a strangely religious man really got our attention.  Certainly the killing of anyone is a tragedy, but these multiple killings were unique in that they came from a mind that was poisoned by religion.  Like Timothy McVeigh and his bombing in Oklahoma City, the reason for all of this came from an irrational mind; a mind focused on eliminating people who believed in a system that was unequivocally rejected by the killer.

     Those kids on the island in Norway were seen by their killer as foreigners, non-believers who threatened his way of life.  He set out to kill the younger generation of people who were outside of his narrow belief in Christianity.  He styled himself as a "modern crusader", in the image of the Knights Templar, who stood up for the truth that is at the core of Christian doctrine.

     He is not alone.  We have always had crazy people in the ranks of Christianity.  The Templars fought Muslims on Malta with horrible bloodshed on both sides.  The Inquisition killed thousands for their beliefs.  There was Father Coughlin and his rejection of the Jews back in the forties.  Religion has been responsible for millions of deaths over the centuries.  People are still dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and many other places, all for the sake of religion.

     There is a long list of religious fanatics who have graced our television sets and our radios, trying to convince us of one doctrinal thing or another.  Most of them are satisfactorily ignorable.  

     All of our religious denominations stand for moments in time when we had profound disagreements.  The split with Rome produced first the Orthodox church, then the Protestant Reformation, which itself split into numerous factions.  Calvin and the radicals in Geneva gave us the Presbyterians, John Knox in Scotland opposed the Anglicans.  Some of it was peaceful, such as the Wesley brothers creating Methodism out of their Anglican roots and the Anabaptists who gave us the Quakers among others.

     But others were not so peaceful.  The oppression of the Huguenots in France is an example of violence in the name of religion, and the killing of dissenters in England during the time of the Tudor kings and queens.  Even Islam has its splits and dissension.  The Sunni and Shiite division continues to affect our world.  Religion is a subject that does not generally submit to easy solutions and compromise.

     The problem is certainty.   When a group of people become certain that their way is right and everyone else is wrong, then trouble starts.  Certainly the dust up that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has had with the "Anglican" churches leaving the diocese is another.  We need to be able to receive one another with more love than this.  Our religious disagreements are certainly not ultimate, even though there are those who claim that they are; that if we don't all believe in a certain way, we are headed for Hell, or whatever it is that God has in mind for non-believers.

      "Who do people say that I am?"  Jesus asked of his disciples in Matthew's Gospel.  The disciples offer several possibilities; Elijah returning, John the Baptist, one of the prophets.  He then asks them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Peter unhesitatingly answers him, "You are the Messiah, the Christ"  Jesus tells Peter that he can't possibly know that of his own accord, but that it has been revealed to him by God.  Then Jesus says to him, "You are Peter the Rock, and on this rock I will build my church".  The "rock" that Jesus is referring to is the unwavering faith of Peter.

     Peter was certainly less than perfect.  This "Rock" denied Jesus three times after the crucifixion, and after the resurrection,  Jesus forgave him three times on the shore of the sea of Galilee.  Peter became the center of the Christian movement, and was eventually crucified in Rome for his beliefs.  The Christians were seen as a threat to both the Jews and the Romans; the Jews, because they were seen as heretics, and the Romans because they were a political problem.

     Jesus never advocated violence.  His ministry was one of persuasion by living out what he believed and then sending those who were converted to do the same.  That, I think, is the essence of our religion and our mission.

     After Jesus' resurrection, the church grew through the efforts of the apostles.  They gathered people in homes, worshiped and preached.  They took care of the poor and the outcast, which was Jesus' model for the church.  The book of Acts tells us a bit about this, but only hints.  Paul's letters describe the struggles of the early church; the arguments in Corinth, the problems of the Ephesians, the acts of the stupid Galatians.  These were ordinary people who were trying as best they could to come to terms with the risen Jesus, and to incorporate his life into theirs.  That hasn't changed much over the centuries.  We are still trying to do that.  All of the theological books that inhabit my library are attempts to come to terms with God's gift of life, forgiveness and resurrection.

     "Who do we say that he is?"  That is a question that still haunts us.  If he is indeed the Christ, as Peter tells us, then our mission is clear:  to take care of those on the margins and to love all of humankind to the best of our ability, doing all of this in the name of the God who loves us all so very much.  That is what we are here to do.

     The rest of our religious bickering is nonsense.

Guilt and Forgiveness

     Church can be a remarkable producer of guilt.  When we have a rummage sale, or a yard sale, or any other thing that involves the whole place, I usually have a number of people who come to me and apologize for something.  Maybe they were late, or missed a day, or any of a number of other things.  I always tell them that it is all right, after all the clergy are the chief absolvers in the parish  

     Perhaps my favorite time in our liturgy is that moment after we have confessed our sins when I stand in front of the congregation and pronounce absolution.  You don't really believe me, but your sins are forgiven. The forgiveness is not coming from me waving my hands, but from our gracious God who loves and forgives us all; and uses that moment in our worship to remind us of his Love. That's why the peace follows the absolution.  All of us cleansed and greeting one another.

     I wonder sometimes where all of this guilt that we have comes from.  Religion has frequently been the origin of a lot of it.  Nuns rapping knuckles with rulers, beadles walking the aisles of cathedrals enforcing silence, or more often I think it is clergy preaching guilt from the pulpit.  Whatever the source, we seem to be sometimes overwhelmed by our guilt.

     There is a wonderful story in the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus coming in contact with a Canaanite woman who wouldn't take no for an answer.  She had a daughter who was tormented by a demon and she confronted Jesus with her daughter's deep need to be healed.  Jesus repeatedly told her "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel", but the woman wouldn't go away.  The disciples told Jesus to send her away because she was driving them crazy.  Eventually the woman knelt before Jesus and pleaded with him.  He said to her:  "It is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs",  but this didn't faze her.  She replied to him: "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."  That changed Jesus' mind.  "Woman, great is your faith.  Let it be done for you as you wish"  And the gospel says that her daughter was healed instantly.

     Jesus understood at that moment that his mission was larger than he had originally thought.  It included many more people than just the House of Israel.  His message was for the whole world, for all of us.  A message of healing and forgiveness that came from God to all of the people of this planet.

     I have had a lot of experience with healing and forgiveness.  Not only as a parish priest, but in other ways also.  For twenty-two years, I was a part-time chaplain at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh.  I met with a group of eight men every Thursday afternoon.  All of those men had killed someone and had life sentences.  In Pennsylvania, a life sentence is exactly that.  There is seldom any parole.

     A goal of our group was to provide a place of trust in that place where there is no trust; to enable those men to tell their stories to each other.  Mostly, it worked.  That is why the group was so long term.  It always took a lot of conversation before trust emerged.

     There was one man in our group who had come to prison at age 75.  He had been an old brown bag drunk in a small town.  Somehow he fell in love with a bag lady and spent a lot of time with her.  One day he found out that she had been spending her time with another woman and didn't care for him anymore.  It really blew his mind.  He went back to his little room, drank the whiskey that he had there and got the gun that he kept under his bed.  He went and killed both of those women.  He then somehow got on an airplane to California.  The deputies followed him and brought him back.  The crime was the talk of the town.  People laughed up their sleeves at the scandal of the whole story.

     He was tried for the killings, was sentenced to two life terms and he found his way to the prison and to my group.  He was almost destroyed by what he had done.  I often talked about forgiveness in my group.  Every time that I did that, he would come to me after the group, tug my sleeve and tell me that forgiveness didn't apply to him.  There were two people in the graveyard because of what he had done, and God was never going to forgive that.

     I'll never forget the day that it dawned on him that I was talking about his own forgiveness.  All of a sudden, there was a light in his eyes and he changed instantly.  He lived into his eighties, and in the last years of his life, he had his home in the prison hospital.  A couple of inmates would bring him across the prison yard in a wheelchair each Thursday for our group.  When he was in the yard, men would crowd around him because of the aura that certainly surrounded him.  It was clear that there was something very attractive about him.

     That kind of forgiveness is something that can belong to us all.  In our churches, we are a community of people who share our lives with one another.  One of the unstated goals of the events that we all have in our churches is to bring new people through our doors, to hopefully attract new people to our congregations.  The way that we can do that is by showing them who we are.  To let them see the joy that we all have in our lives because of the goodness of God.  That in the end is what forgiveness is all about.  It cleanses our guilt and gives us a new way of relating to each other.

     If the Kingdom of God can be seen in the prison by one man forgiven of his sins and attracting others to him, how about us?  Our forgiveness is no less complete.  We can show each other our joy and live our lives in the freedom that God's love provides us; and extend that love beyond the walls of our churches to the people in our community.  That is the real mission of the church.

     

Faith and Walking on the Water

     The story of Jesus walking on the water is another of those fantastic stories about him that always gives us pause.  You will remember that John the Baptist had been executed by Herod and that Jesus has taken some time for himself to be away to grieve for his cousin.  The crowds found him and he spent the day with them.  After the crowds left at the end of the day, Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him in the boat and went up on the mountain to have some time in prayer.

     By evening, the disciples were far from the land and the boat was being battered  by a headwind and the sea.  Early the next morning, Jesus came walking across the sea toward the boat.  The disciples, seeing this, cried out in great fear, but Jesus spoke to them saying, "take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."  Peter, always the most impetuous of the disciples, replied to him:  "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water".  Jesus told him to come, and Peter got out of the boat and started to walk across the water toward Jesus.  But quickly he noticed the strong wind, became frightened and began to sink.

     "Lord, save me," he cried out and Jesus immediately reached out his hand, caught him and held him up.  "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" Jesus asked Peter.  When Jesus got into the boat, the disciples worshiped him saying, "Truly, you are the Son of God."


     Now, what is this story all about?

     It certainly isn't about Jesus walking on the water, which is what everyone always points to.  Rather, I think it is a story about Peter's faith.  Jesus never really did tricks.  Whatever he did always had a point to it.  It is easy to focus on the strange, the miraculous, and miss the point of what is going on.  Faith isn't really very easy.  Trusting in what we don't know, or aren't sure of is really hard for most of us.  We like it much better when there is certainty.  We can trust that.

     After we retired, Rosie and I moved to Alpine Lake, a resort community in West Virginia.  Alpine Lake is in Preston County, high in the mountains with a wonderful golf course, and a tight community of people; but it is rather remote from just about everything else.  I remember driving a half hour to get to a grocery store.

     We were there for two years, and then I got a call to go and to become the interim rector of the church in Oak Hill, near Beckley in Southern West Virginia.  Slowly, we began to recognize that work was important to me, and when the Oak Hill interim was over, we took another assignment in Charleston.

     About that time, I began suffering from depression.  I had little emotion, it was hard for me to get angry, or to show love, or anything else that stemmed from emotion.  I also had some short term memory loss.  There was no pain in all of this, but it was obvious to me and to Rosie that something was wrong.  A doctor prescribed some anti-depressants, but none of them worked.  We were very frustrated, I needed my life back, but I had no idea of what to do.

     Finally, my doctor suggested that I get an MRI to see if there was something going on in my brain.  The test detected a large menengioma on the left frontal lobe of my brain.  It was like a natural lobotomy.  I had all of the symptoms.  A wonderful team of neurologists had a practice in Charleston and I went to them to see what they could do for me.  I was assigned to a new surgeon who was on their staff.  I was his first patient in Charleston.

     He told me that the surgery was not difficult and that he could do it easily.  I did all of the preparation and went to the hospital for the operation.  I spent quite a bit of time in prayer over this.  I had no control over it at all.

     I remember lying on the operating table before the anaesthetic was given to me thinking to myself, I have no idea how this is going to come out, but however it comes out, I know that I will be all right.  I felt calm and more or less collected as it all began.

     The surgery went well, the tumor was removed and I began the recovery process which went on for a year and a half.  My daughters were wonderful and my wife is an angel.  Without them I have no idea how I would have recovered.  What struck me after it was all over was the miracle of it.  I had had the tumor for years, it was very slow growing.  When we were in the Preston County mountains, I had no real access to excellent medical care.  Somehow, I was moved to Oak Hill, then to Charleston where I met up with a young surgeon who created an excellent outcome for my problem.

     Every time that I read the Gospel story of Peter trying to walk on the water toward Jesus, It think of my own dilemma.  "Lord, save me!", Peter cries.  That echoes the cry from my heart after I found out about my tumor.  "Where is your faith, why do you doubt?",  said Jesus to Peter.  That is what I heard also in the operating room.

     Faith is such an elusive, difficult thing to define.  Ir means putting your hope and your trust in something beyond yourself.  To believe that somehow, the God whom we worship and love will lift us out of the depths, because he loves us too.

     I have been with a lot of people when things didn't turn out very well in a crisis.  I know also that their prayers were heard by God.  I think back to my attitude on that operating table.  However this turns out, I thought, I know that I will be all right.  For me, that is the depth of faith.  My certainty is that whatever befalls us in this life, we are in the hands of the God who loves us all infinitely.

     Jesus loved Peter as he lifted him out of the depths of the water.  He will do that for all of us because of the profundity of his love.