Change, Conflict and Love

            In the late seventies, when I had been the rector of St. Philip’s in Moon Township for only a short time, the prayer book was changed.  When I got to the parish, they had never tried any of the various revisions that had been provided; the green book, the zebra book, so I took them through the whole process in a year’s time.  Finally, after the new book was accepted and we had purchased our copies, one Saturday, we took the old 1928 prayer books out of the pews and distributed the new books.

            The next day was Sunday and we used the new prayer books for the first time.  After the service, one woman came to me at the door of the church as she was leaving, pounded my chest with her clenched fists and said to me: “you have ruined this church!: I could have argued with her and given her all of the reasons why the prayer book needed to be changed, but somehow, with God’s grace, I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I reached out my arms and I held her for a few moments while she cried.  I certainly understood her feelings.  She thought that she had been betrayed by her church.  She was blaming me because I was the only visible person with authority that she could see.  She continued to come to church.  We didn’t lose her.  I was glad that I was able to show her some compassion in her time of trouble.

            When Jesus went to Nazareth, it was after he had healed people in Capernaum, the people in his hometown expected that he would do the same things there.  He read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, told them that in their hearing the prophecies had been fulfilled.  He then went on to tell them that he knew that they expected him to do the same things that he had done in Capernaum.  He then said that a prophet has no standing is his home town.  The people then tried to throw Jesus over a cliff and that failed.  Jesus simply walked away.  That is a simple story with a great truth.  We don’t honor our local prophets in quite the same way that we honor those who come from afar.  But it was worse than that for Jesus.  The people of Nazareth saw him only as the son of a carpenter, one of the lowly folk.  Here was the Son of God among his own people and not treated in quite the way that he imagined that he ought to be accepted.

            We have also had a strange incidence of this in the past couple of weeks.  The Primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting in Canterbury, England have decided that the Episcopal Church ought to be excluded from denominational decision making for a period of three years because our General Convention has approved allowing its clergy to officiate at same sex weddings.  This has been a boiling issue for a long time.  In 1976, when the church approved the ordination of women, the Anglican Communion also went bananas and some threatened to throw us out of the denomination.  When Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the church nine years ago, we were again under fire for permitting such a thing.  Unfortunately, it is mostly the African bishops who are heading up the protests against what we are doing in this country. 

            There is certainly nothing new here.  Change always produces conflict.  We saw that in the Reformation when Luther posted his 96 theses on the church in Wittenburg; we have seen it countless times in our own communion when differences of opinion have brought us to great argument.  We certainly saw it in Pittsburgh when Mr. Duncan took a number of our churches with him when he left the Episcopal Church over what he termed our lack of a conservative position on the many issues that confront us. 

            Paul also faced conflict when he preached to the churches that he founded.  I think that his most eloquent statement is what we heard this morning in the reading from First Corinthians, chapter 13.  This is Paul’s statement about the meaning of love and what it means to us to show love in every instance.  He says that even if he has faith enough to move mountains, gives away all of his possessions and even gives away his body, if he doesn’t have love, it means nothing.  That is the word that we need to hear in the middle of all of the conflicts that we experience, particularly in this election time.  We fail miserably if we fail to love in the middle of our disagreements.  When we can keep this in mind, we will make the right choices and do the right things.  Our God is with us in the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus.