Persons Alongside (and how it happens)

1 Corinthians 12:12-13:13 (or this excellent paraphrase: 12:12-31 and 13:1-13)

This week my mom asked me to stop talking to her about politics.  

To be honest, she’s been asking me to stop for a while, and I’ve just kept doing it, sending her articles, forwarding her things. I wanted to connect with her, to bring her to a place where we’d see things the same way (my way) and agree, and we’d commiserate, and laugh, and it would feel easy and peaceful. 

We didn’t come to that place.

Instead she wrote me a three page letter describing why she believes what she does, and respectfully asking me to back off and please respect her.  

It was humbling to receive.  

Because we are not going to agree. Maybe ever. And there will always be points in her beliefs or her reasoning that I will want to say,’ But wait…” But that’s not quite true…!” But have you considered…?” but in the midst of this argument, I got arrogant, and proud, and irritable and maybe a little bit rude.  

And I stopped seeing her as a person, quite apart from me and her role in my life, a separate person with fears and hopes and experiences that have shaped her beliefs and made her see the world and live her life in her own particular way, just like my fears and hopes and experiences have shaped my beliefs and the way I see and live in the world.  

She gets to be herself – with all her gifts and perspectives and impact in the world, and I get to be myself with all of mine - and nevertheless we are connected – both as mother and daughter, and in the Body of Christ.  

And while in many ways I don’t understand her, and she doesn’t understand me, I am grateful she had the courage to both confront me, and to share her story with me. 

And I love her. Not always well, but I do.

What is love? How do we do it? Especially when things feel complicated and confusing?

Paul tells us all sorts of things love is. And most of the time that we hear his list we either make it a mushy and weddingy ideal, or if we take it seriously, it makes us feel terribly guilty and inadequate and notice how poorly we love.

But take comfort, friends, remember, Paul isn’t writing this to perfect people. They are in trouble. In fact, they are currently all the things he says love isn’t – arrogant, proud, comparing themselves to each other, keeping a list of wrongdoing, envious, jealous, insisting on their own way, celebrating each other’s failures, name-calling, bragging, you name it, (and actually, Paul does).  And he says, love – which is everything, is none of these things.

And then, quite apart from our understanding of it as schmaltz or martyrdom, Paul describes love as something that exists outside of us. Love is something we receive, something that lives through us. Actually, love is a gift – like all these other gifts he just got finished talking about-  a gift from the God of Love who Loved so much as to join us fully in life and death.  Love belongs to God, and comes from God, and returns to God, and God shares it with us. 

This means that it isn’t about our ability to continue feeling all loving towards each other. Or even our ability to have pure motives all of the time, to keep arrogance out of the picture, or stay clear of irritability and resentment.   It isn’t about being people without a single self-righteous thought in our head or petty frustrations in our interactions.  And it isn’t about quietly striving to bear all things and forgive all things and endure all things until we are all used up and dried out and nothing at all.  We can’t conjure love, or achieve love or work hard enough to produce it.

But how do we do it, then?  Love is something we receive, but it’s also a verb. 

What does it mean to love?

We usually take 1 Corinthians 13 on its own, it’s even referred to as “the love chapter”, but it is Paul’s direct explanation for how people so diverse and varied, with so many different backgrounds and perspectives and experiences and gifts and abilities – live together as One.  Love is how the Body of Christ works.

So first, he says two important things that about what it means to be the Body of Christ. The first one is: we are connected. 

We are One Body.  This is God’s body, and you and I are a part of it because God had put this body together as God sees fit.

God has chosen to connect us to each other and we are connected, period. Even when we don’t act like it, even if we pretend we aren’t, even if we disown one another, we cannot truly detach parts of the body and decide they don’t belong or contribute, or that they don’t impact us and that we are not in some way dependent upon each other.  We are.

Whether we like it or not we are inseparably attached. Even when we feel desperately isolated, or treat others that way, we are not alone.  We are part of the same body, connected as tissue and blood, suffering when others suffer, carrying the shame of dehumanizing words or actions done to or by another, bearing each other’s sadness and grief, celebrating when there is joy in each other’s lives.  Because we are part of the One Body we belong to each other. We are connected.

The second thing Paul wants them to understand about the Body of Christ is: we are all different. 

And we are meant to be! We bring different gifts and perspectives, different interests and passions, different pain and loss, growth and new life. We need each other; we need people radically different than we are.  

We can’t and shouldn’t all be alike, like a pile of identical disembodied parts –that is no-body instead of a one-body. We only make sense if we are not the same.

That means that we each need to be who we are. 

We need to be completely ourselves, to own our own stories and shortcomings, longings and quirks. The way we play our role in this big picture is by bravely living who each one of us is distinctly called to be. Parker Palmer has said, “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding, ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’ True vocation joins self and service in the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.”

Jesus meets us as we are, and takes all these different people and makes us One.  

We are broken, like the rest of the world, we are selfish and self-righteous and broken. 

But Christ enters our brokenness: the places where we are torn apart, paralyzed by fear or failure, divided from each other and our own selves. Christ enters our brokenness, and becomes the body broken for us, so that we may be whole, joined together in love.  

All connected, completely ourselves.

And Paul is saying that the potential exists – and one day will be fully realized – for our differences to strengthen the body, for the image of God to be lived in fullness, fully embodied, and for the body to function at its peak: alive, healthy, vital, each part singing its own contribution, in the harmony of the Spirit of God. 

We are to bravely live out this all connected and completely ourselves reality.  And the only way we do that is through love.  Without that, nothing works. Nothing else we try to do or say matters or lasts.

So often we see each other as stereotypes or functions, role models or rivals, two dimensional figures to like or dislike, fear or forget.  

But these people around us, beside, us, in front of us every day, are broken and beautiful, both just like me and mystifyingly different than me. 

They each have unique gifts and voices and whole worlds of pain and hope and lived experiences behind their beliefs and actions, just like we do.

Love invites us to be people, alongside other people; that’s where Jesus is.

There is this guy, Benjamin Mathis, who goes around setting up a “free listening” table, and he sits and listens to people. Just listens.  When he finds himself across from someone he disagrees with, he tries to see the person behind the belief – to hear “the biography rather than the ideology,” by asking,

 “Will you tell me your story?  I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”

He tells this story:

She was just staring at me. 

She had something to say, and I could tell she was curious about the Free Listening sign, but she didn’t seem to have to courage to speak to me.

Yet.

So, I waited. Nowhere to be, and all day to get there.

…

Finally, she walked up, and like a young warrior preparing for battle, she said:

 “I don’t usually do this, and I know this isn’t a hot button topic anymore… But, I think abortion is wrong. It’s not a form of birth control, and people who have them should be arrested for murder." 

He continues: “… I wanted to stop her, and tell her my story. 

I’ve sat with two loved ones as they suffered through the difficult decision and consequences of ending a pregnancy. It was a brutal human experience, and gave me an insight to something I never expected to witness. 

In moments like that, “choice” doesn’t seem to be the right word.

So, when she told me they should be arrested for terminating a pregnancy, the familiar burn of disagreement started to fire in me.

There were so many things I wanted to say. I wanted to change her mind, to argue, to disagree. It’s a natural response.   

But, if my story brought me to my beliefs, then I needed to know how her story brought her to her beliefs.

  

So, I asked:

“Thank you for sharing that. Tell me your story? I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”

She seemed surprised by my interest.

“Why? It doesn’t matter. Your sign said Free Listening, so I gave you something to listen to.”

“Give me more to listen to.”

“They should be locked up! It’s wrong. It’s not right to go out and sleep with whoever, then just vacuum away the result like it never happened.”

She paused…then inhaled the entire world.

“And it’s not fair. All I’ve ever wanted to be is a mom. My whole life, I knew I was meant to have children. Then, when I was 18—18!—the doctor told me I’d never have children. My ovaries were damaged, or missing...it doesn’t matter which. I kept it a secret, and when my husband found out, he left me. I’m alone, my body doesn’t work, I’m old…who will ever love me…”

I wondered if she could hear my heart breaking.

“…so, I guess I get upset when I see people who can get pregnant, who can have kids, who’s bodies work…who can be moms…and they just choose not to…”

Sometimes, there’s nothing to “disagree” with.

I didn’t need to be right.  

I just needed to be there.

She wiped away a few tears, gave me a hug, and thanked me for listening.

She exhaled, and walked [away].

Maybe one day, she’ll hear my story.  But today, it was my turn to hear hers.

I hope she felt loved.

When we love, we break through the divisive, defensive veneer and we touch the real; we taste the Kingdom of God, where we belong to God and we belong to each other.  We bear witness that God is constantly moving things from death to life, from despair to hope, from isolation to connection.

But it isn’t about trying to love, making yourself love, or feeling badly for how badly you love – that just makes you into a two-dimensional role, a success or a failure. 

Loving is about being fully a person: loved, and made to share love. It is joining in what God is already doing.

So because love is forgiving I can forgive.

Bcause love is kind I can risk kindness. 

Because love is patient I can stop, and see you, and take a breath, and be patient with myself. 

 And when I keep a record of wrongs, when I am arrogant or filled with envy – that very fact drives me back towards love, which tells me, promises me, that these things fade away and love remains.  

Our imperfect love doesn’t mean love isn’t real – instead it shows how real love is. 

So dimly we see, so faintly we taste! – but it is enough to tell us there is so much more!

The faith is that love endures, the hope is that love remains.

So we can can say I love, forgive me my selfishness, I love, free me from my envy and my arrogance, I love, heal me of my hatred and my jealousy. I love, I love, I love! 

These things have no place in love, and yet love has a place in me, claims me, clings to me, and I love, even with these things staring me in the face, I love.  I can love because I am loved- I can love, can dip my toe in and dive in with all my unlove because there is love, because it doesn’t depend on me or come from me; it holds me and fills me and draws me in deeper and braver.

This is how God made it to work, made us to work.  Underneath all the fear and distrust, below the noise and the competition, behind all the various gifts and contributions and identities, within all the different experiences and beliefs and stories, are unique persons, all connected, each completely ourselves.

The Body of Christ is the alternative community that embodies this reality.  

And what makes it possible, what fills it, and heals it, and fuels it, and spreads it, is love - our origin and destiny; everlasting and unbreakable, fearless, selfless, believes all, hopes all, endures all, LOVE.

So let’s live it.

Amen.

The Meal in the House of the Honest

"The Best Supper" from Jan Richardson's beautiful book, In Wisdom's Path, See more of Jan's work.

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

From middle school to the Middle East, most of us, most of the time, like to know who is more important, and how we can be that. We guess and compare and rank, and pretend we’re not doing it. But in Corinth, there was no guessing, everybody knew. There was no vagueness about people’s ranking and value – it was very clearly delineated, and everyone knew their place. They lived these distinctions and divisions right out loud, as though they were unequivocally true. Some people simply mattered more than others. Nobody disputed that.

Until this Jesus Christ message came to town.  And then, in the shadow of overwhelming and intentional inequality, this little congregation forms. And in defiance of all accepted wisdom and practice, this little community weirdly welcomes in all-  rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, Gentile and Jew, it says -  the Spirit works in and through each person and all contribute to the whole – we need each other, and everyone here is a valuable part of the Body of Christ.

And when each one comes in, they are baptized – brought through death into new life, symbolically dying with Christ and rising into his reality of intimate connection to God and everyone else, so that it washes the grip of the old life right off of them and gives them this concrete moment to look back on and say THAT. That happened. That brought me into the real, and all these people saw it. And I don’t have to live like what’s true out there really IS true, I can live the truer truth. I am God’s beloved child. And so are they. That is who we really are.

But when the time comes to gather for worship, and host the meal – whose house do they go to?

Well, it’s only practical that they would go to the home of the wealthier member, the one with enough space for everyone, the one with the staff to make sure things are prepared and the table is set and everything is done right.

And once it’s all ready, who arrives first?

Well, naturally, those with more flexible schedules, more free time, the bosses and upper class folks with servants to tend to them, in other words, those who are not busy laboring in service to others.  

So who is it that gets the best dozen or so seats, reclining at the table, and then, once there, who just happens to get a head start on the food and drink, then?

As the rest arrive, gradually filling up the other spaces, sitting and then standing where they can, filling other rooms and the courtyard, eating what is left, one might look at them and conclude that perhaps the divisions and rankings that were true out there actually are true, because they sure look true in here too. 

Maybe some lives just do matter more than others. 

Maybe there is no disputing that.

Now, these dear people are not overtly trying to treat some better than others, but deep inside, in well-practiced and widely-accepted ways, they have all bought into these lies, and they can’t help operating out of destructive patterns.  So that by the time they get to part where they break the bread of life and share the cup of unity, this sacrament resembles the very lies and divisions that Jesus Christ sets us free from.

As serious as this is, and as MAD as Paul sounds, it makes me giggle just a little bit. Because Paul doesn’t hold back, (and I paraphrase):

Look at yourselves; do you want a prize?

I’m sorry, do YOU think you’ve been behaving as you should?

Do you know there are rumors going on about you? Guess what, at this point, I totally believe them.

Please tell me this isn’t true. 

Please tell me some of you are not showing up, gorging yourselves, and then like drunken idiots, marginalizing those who come later, who have nothing to eat because you’ve decimated the table before they even arrive? 

What?! Your own fridges are empty and you have to come fill up here?

Someone PLEASE tell me you are handling things better than this!

Are you kidding me right now?

Tell you what- I am going to walk you through this one more time, and then I am going to tell you that you had better sit yourself down and take a good hard look inside before you open your mouth and take that first bite. 

If you EVER eat this meal, without first looking to your left and right and seeing your sisters and brothers around you, part of you, to whom you are accountable, with whom you are set free, if you ever go plowing into this table again with selfish and self-centered intentions, you are answerable for the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. 

You might as well be ripping Jesus apart. 

You are making baby Jesus cry.

And then Paul takes a big, deep, parental breath, and his voice gets scary calm, and quiet, and he spells out super clearly and slowly, so there is no mistaking, what exactly happens at the Lord’s Supper.

“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread…”

When these exact words are spoken all over the world in all different denominations when people gather to celebrate the Eucharist - we don’t typically think of them being delivered by a fuming Paul to a people who have botched it so badly that they need it carefully spelled out for them.

Paul is asking the people to stop and reflect: Is God the host of this meal? Or are we taking over and changing the rules?

How do we import our prejudices and divisive practices to the very thing God gives us to remind us over and over again that God is the one who claims us and makes us one?

An ironic thing has happened in the church through the centuries since Paul wrote this scathing, sarcastic and frustrated non-commendation of the Corinthians’ appalling behavior at the table. He might as well write us a scathing letter too.

Because in wanting to follow his directive we too have taken over from God as hosts at the table of God’s grace, and turned it into a table of judgment, that reflects our own spoken and unspoken prejudices, divisions and anxieties.  

We have turned this sacred moment, when God promises to meet us, into something we withhold from others and ourselves, something we direct and legislate and hoard.

That means, in part, setting up rules about who can take it and who can’t – Kids? Non-members? People who haven’t gone to church in a while?  People from other denominations?  What about addicts? Divorced people? People who haven’t been to confession or haven’t been baptized? 

For me, growing up, examining yourself and making sure you’re worthy before you eat the bread and drink the cup meant to pray and confess everything I could think of, anything I was holding back from God, getting as pure inside as I could, before taking my individual thimble of juice and eating my precut square of bread. In fact, I worked really hard to block out all those sitting around me, to have a just me and God moment, and striving to become good enough, ready, to take it.

But Paul is saying something entirely different. (And again, I paraphrase):

Don’t even eat until you are all there. In fact, if you think you’ll get too hungry, have a snack before you come for crying out loud. 

And then examine yourself- Discern the body:

Are we all here? Side by side, together in this moment, where God will meet us? 

Are we seeing one another as sister and brother? 

Are we remembering, after all, whose we are? That our lives are intricately bound up with each other’s and nobody comes to this table in isolation?  

Are we in any way disregarding or dismissing those Christ has bound us together with? Treating anyone as less than? Seeing our own selves as more or less deserving to be here than anyone else?

OK, then, now let’s eat. Let’s serve one another.

Let’s hold the bread and lift the cup and acknowledge that as broken as we are right now, and when we go back out that door into a broken world, we need a broken savior, who takes on all that brokenness, and by his death and resurrection, makes us whole. A savior who holds in front of us this promise, embodied right now in this imperfect and weak gathering of imperfect and weak people, and that one day we will all be one, with no division and no ranking, no separation and no selfishness.

This is not an exclusive club for the exempt and example. 

This is the very body of the blessed, broken and given.

Here, at this table, there is no distinction between better or worse, more or less valued, holier or highter. Here we all come sinners in need of forgiveness, and we all come as saints participating with God in the salvation of the world.

This is Jesus’ table – and he invites all to eat.

God, who can meet us anywhere, promises to meet us at this table, and in the act of baptism, what we call “sacraments,” – times when the community gathers to share these holy actions, an imperfect and messy group of us, claiming to be more than the sum of our parts, claiming in fact to be the very Body of Jesus Christ. 

And then we obey, we break that bread and drink that cup, we pour that water on each other and we witness this truth – that we belong to God, and we belong to each other.

It takes the community to do that. It takes all kinds, not just one. It takes children and old people, and people in their middle years, and it takes people who the world says are less than, and people who swallow the idea that they are better than, and it takes those who look to others like successes and those who look to others like failures, and it takes ones who are different than me to reflect my humanity back to me, and I to them, as we are the Body of Christ.

Today we get to participate in both the sacraments, because in addition to communion, we get to baptize little Robby. We will say over him that the most true thing about him is this identity and belonging: beloved child of God.

And even though he wont get what’s happening, really, here is some of what we witness.

Robby, – while we don’t know what will come in your life, we do know a few generalities:

you will suffer, you will have sorrow and pain,

you will have deep and beautiful friendships and feel love.

You will wonder who you are and be filled with doubt and darkness.

You will do things you regret and be filled with shame.

You will experience forgiveness and hope.

You will discover what makes you feel alive, make you feel like you are contributing.

You will dream and scheme.

You will let people down that you love very much.

YOU will be let down by those who love you very much.

You will do things that make you proud and satisfied.

You will see things that make you disillusioned and afraid.

And through it all – you will continue belonging to God.

And through it all – nothing will separate you from the love of God.

And through it all – you will be invited to live with a wide-open heart to others, beloved sisters and brothers.

And here, in this body of broken people, you are welcomed into the house of the honest who say:

Sin gets me too! I believe the lies and trust the fake promises. I perpetuate the divisions too, and I can be shockingly, shamefully, selfish and self-centered.

But when I come here, I have to see you. Next to me. Part of me. And that helps me remember that out there everyone else is next to me too and part of me too. And here I have to be accountable for my words and actions, and I can’t receive the body of Christ without receiving you, my sister, my bother, beloved child of God, claimed and blessed, forgiven and set free.

And so we welcome you, Robby, to this table today.

Where Jesus does soomething powerful and life-giving, when friends and strangers gather to say there is another reality and it’s the one that claims us.

We will allow ourselves to be defined and set apart by this practice of tearing up bread and eating it and passing it to each other and saying it connects us to God and fills us up for the work of God. Because it does.

From this table God sends us out into this world run not by fear but by love, bound not by apprehension and hesitation, but by trust and connection, sent with a purpose and held by something truer than the lies and division we soak in from the world around us. 

We are God’s people.

(That doesn’t mean the rest of the world isn’t God’s people- let’s not import division into this!).

Being God’s people means that our very identity and calling is to live out the truth that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other, so that we can embody this reality in, with, and for the rest of the world.

Beloved, broken, blessed and given.

That is what it is to be the Body of Christ.

Amen.

Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Word and Word Journal this quarter is about Sabbath, and filled with excellent articles - I recommend checking out the whole issue.  

But I especially wanted to share that I have an article included in this issue: Sabbath, the Gift of Rest.

I invite you to read it here.

Word & World journal Summer 2016 edition