The Servant Church

Isaiah 65: 17-25

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 14^th November 2010

This past week in Philadelphia, Broad Street Ministry hosted a unique pastoral leadership gathering for pastors and church leaders.  Broad Street is a unique Presbyterian ministry in the heart of urban Philadelphia. [1] Our middle schoolers spent the night there two years ago and came back transformed and they’re going again.  Our Crossroads youth determined and Session approved that next year’s major mission trip will involve an entire week at Broad Street.  The gather this past week was not directly related to youth ministry, but about the church as a whole, building a greater sense of community and connectedness, imagining new forms of being church in a new day (and it’s a new day for ministry, friends, if we haven’t discovered that yet), requiring new forms of leadership.  I wish I could have been in Philly, but could not get away.  My friend, Jan Edmiston, a Presbyterian minister in Northern Virginia, was there.  She has a great blog with an intriguing name, “A Church for Starving Artists,” and Jan posted some of her reflections from the conference.  She shared that Peter Block spoke at the gathering.  Peter is a organizational consultant, he’s Jewish, and he spoke about the nature of community and community-building.  He named four things that “kill” community, four things that we should be aware:  first (and we’re not going to like this) is pews facing forward so that only the person in front is heard; second, answering questions instead of asking them; third, expecting people to perform for us – our children, our friends, our colleagues, our leaders, our pastors, worship leaders (like the choir); and fourth, being helpful.[2]

            It would be worth our time and effort to attend to each of these so-called “killers,” but the one that caught my eye as we consider Mission Sunday and host a Mission Fair is the last one: being helpful.  There’s probably considerable resistance to all of Block’s observations because he’s critical of the way many of us view the church, particularly this church.  But being helpful?  What’s wrong with being helpful?  How can being helpful hurt community?  How can providing assistance do harm?  Isn’t this what the church is supposed to be doing, to be precisely this – helpful, full of help to those in need?  Years ago, I learned that one way to view ministry is finding a need and then meeting it or filling it.   Not so, says Block. By helping, Block means rushing right away to being or becoming fixers.  We discover someone is hungry, we fix a meal and “fix” their hunger.  We learn that someone is without shelter, so we build a home and “fix” that problem.

            But what’s wrong with trying to fix things?  It’s been said that men are always in a rush to fix things.  If we discover something’s broken – a fence, a furnace, a tricycle, a relationship, a heart – then we rush to try to make it better, repair it.  It is said, that when women find themselves in a similar situation, they aren’t as quick to want to have the problem solved by their partners.  Not surprisingly, this is often a topic for conversation in marriage counseling. But these gender differences break down, because women are also just as quick to offer comfort and assistance in times of trouble, make the pain go away, make things better.   But what’s wrong with that?  Isn’t this what it means to be caring?  Serving the needs of our neighbors, isn’t this what it means to love one another?  Aren’t we in the fix-it business as a church?  Isn’t that what mission is all about – being helpful, fixing things, fixing people?

            Yes – and maybe that’s a problem, a problem with the way we’ve come to view mission.  The Anglican Bishop Creighton  (1843-1901), once observed “no people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.”  It’s a counter-intuitive statement, isn’t it?   We would think more people doing good would be good for everyone.  That is, unless, the people doing good are naïve as to how improvement happens, how systemic social transformations actually occur; unless the people doing good are too idealistic and too confident in their ability to realize the good for all; unless the people doing good toward others are doing what they deem is good and needed, instead of listening to the people in need, that is, those on their receiving end of all our goodness so that they might tell us what they need and don’t need from us.

            There’s a flip side to wanting to help and to fix too much:   it might produce more harm than good.  Yes, we are here this morning to celebrate our mission efforts, to hear from our partners and agencies, to hear the difference we are making in the world.  Catonsville Presbyterian Church has always had a strong tradition of supporting and doing mission, locally, nationally, and globally.  When you look at all that we do, when you look at all that we’ve accomplished for church our size, when you read the “thank-you” letters from people grateful for our support, it’s clear that we have a lot to celebrate and be grateful for.  At every level of the congregation we are inviting people to become engaged in mission, whether it’s our children collecting peanut-butter and jelly for the food pantry, buying medical boxes from IMA World Health for Haiti, putting together back packs for students through CEFM, gathering our nickels for Baltimore Presbytery’s Centsability program, building the Santi School in Nepal, volunteering at the Habitat work site in downtown Baltmore, baking casseroles for the Westside Shelter, or buying safe motherhood kits for mothers in Africa, and our long-standing work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  This is just a small sampling of what we do.

            But I think we also know that unless we also work for systemic change in communities, all of our efforts are like band-aids on the festering wounds of society.  Yes, we are educating and raising consciousness of the pressing issues faces us, but that’s not enough.  We’re only scratching the surface.  Sure, it’s better than nothing and we’re doing something instead of nothing.   But maybe the church’s (our church and the church as a whole) attempt to do so much helping and fixing prevents us from being attentive to the deeper structures of power and economic inequality that are really the root cause of so much pain and suffering in the world.  This is where all of our good does little to bring about real change and might in the end do more harm. 

In a poem entitled, “A Worker’s Speech To A Doctor,” the German poet and playwright, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) gets at the heart of the matter.  Listen to how he describes a visit to the doctor: 

When we come to you

Our rags are torn off us

And you listen all over our naked body.

As to the cause of our illness

One glance at our rags would

Tell you more. 

It is the same cause that wears out

Our bodies and our clothes.  

The pain in our shoulder comes

You say, from the damp; and this is also the reason

For the stain on the wall of our flat

 So tell us:  Where does the damp come from?[3]

 George Macleod (1895-1991), the founder of the Iona Community, told the story that when he was pastor in the slums of Glasgow that he got tired of praying for people with tuberculosis without praying for the entire society, the system, a community rotting to its core, caught in the grips of poverty, hunger, and unemployment.

            Yes, we know the needs of God’s people are enormous.  Yet, if we ran about trying to meet or alleviate every need, help every person in need, fix every problem, if this was our ministry we would be exhausted.  Some of us might be exhausted.  But, isn’t this what mission is?  Isn’t this what the church is called to do, isn’t this our mission?

            It depends.  It depends what we mean by mission.  There’s no doubt it’s important.  As my friend Tim Hart-Anderson says, “Mission is basic to what we do.  Get mission wrong and we get church wrong.  Drift away from mission and we drift away from church.  Stop mission and we stop church.”  So, if it’s so important, then what exactly is it?  What do we mean by it?  Being clear about the definition of it will have enormous implications for a parish.

            This gets us to the heart of the matter.  There’s something not quite right with the way the church has been using this word for the last two hundred years or so.  We tend to see mission as the work of the mission committee, of it being one part of the overall ministry of a church, along with evangelism, and Christian education, and fellowship, and so forth.  We tend to associate it with “charity,” mission aid and support beyond the walls of the church to those in need.  Through mission the church becomes a vendor of religious services and goods, doing good, fixing problems out there in the mission field, beyond the doors of the church, or some place other than where we live, some place we have to go to get there, like downtown Baltimore or on mission trips.  But as contemporary scholars and practical theologians are reminding us, this way of understanding mission worked in a culture that viewed it itself as primarily Christian.  Mission work was always viewed as being elsewhere, someplace else.   Our culture is far from having a Christian outlook.[4]  Therefore, the challenge will be for us to reclaim its original biblical meaning. 

Mission, from missio, means to be sent.  In scripture, Yahweh is revealed as a sending-God who sends people, churches and even nations off on a journey with a purpose, the mission of God.  What is God’s mission?  To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim the redemptive love of God, to represent and embody the compassion, justice, and peace of the reign of God. We can even view the sending of Jesus as part of God’s larger mission.  This means that mission is not something that the church does.  And mission is not a trip.[5]  The essence of the church is missional, “for the calling and sending action of God forms its identity.  Mission is founded on the mission of God in the world, rather than the church’s efforts to extend itself.”[6]  This means that even the sending of Jesus can be view as part of God’s mission.  The practical theologian, Alan Hirsch (who once spoke here at CPC), defines this shift in thinking in this helpful way:  “we frequently say ‘the church has a mission,’” but a more theologically correct statement would be “God’s mission has a church.”[7]  We exist to serve God’s mission

            What if we started moving away from thinking of mission as an instrument of the church and, instead, began to view it as the identity and essence of the total church? This means what we now view as mission would still be part of serving God’s mission, but also viewing Christian education as serving God’s mission, and evangelism as serving God’s mission, how we care for one another is serving God’s mission, the work of the deacons and elders is viewed as serving God’s mission, the work of the trustees as service to God’s mission, the stewardship of our dollars as serving God’s mission. Not serving the church as an end in itself, but serving the mission of God through the church.  It would mean getting out of the way of our agendas and perspectives and even our comfort zones in order to place our lives and our lives together into service to a higher call, to God’s mission in the world.

            This brings me – finally – to Isaiah 65.  What is God’s mission?  It’s pretty clear throughout the Bible.  We know what matters most to God – justice, righteousness, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, hope, people living in harmony with their neighbor, with themselves, and with God.   It’s beautifully summarized in Isaiah 65.  He envisions a New Jerusalem built up out of ruins of its destruction.  It will be a place where there is no weeping, no cry of distress.  It’s a place where infant mortality rates are very low and the elderly live out their lives for more than three score and ten.  People will build homes and live in them – their own homes, not someone else’s home.  People will plant vineyards and eat from it – their own, not someone else’s.  People will work not because they have to, but because they want to.   There will be meaningful labor, work that blesses and doesn’t curse, work that contributes to the wellbeing of the community, not work that struggles to keep up with the rising cost of living, trying to satisfy the burden of our consumer needs and our accustomed standards of living.  Offspring will be blessed – not for one generation but for many.  And peace, peace all the way down between people right down to peace between wolves and lambs.  It’s a place where people are free to dwell without the threat of destruction or annihilation.  This is God’s mission.

            Now before you get all ginned up and eager to work for this vision or before you become overwhelmed with despair given the enormous burden of this vision – before we run out bringing God’s goodness and fixin’ up the universe,  meeting every need, we have to stop.  Stop.  Stop and remember this:  it’s not about us.  “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says Yahweh, “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice – why? – be glad and rejoice and be glad in what I am about to create …for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people where as a delight.”

            It’s God who does all of this work – it’s God’s mission, to create and recreate.  The Hebrew here for create – bara – is the same beautiful Hebrew word used to describe God’s original act of creation.  It is God who builds and rebuilds – with us and through us, to be sure – but it’s really God’s work, God’s power to create.  And the good news is that it’s not about us, which means we can relax and be less anxious about trying to help everyone and fix everything.   This doesn’t mean there isn’t work for us to do.  But it’s all about God’s mission and the good news, by God’s grace, is that we as the church get to experience God’s joy and delight because have been called to serve it – not the church, but God’s mission – the mission of God.

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[1] For more information about the dynamic and exciting work at Broad Street Ministry see http://www.broadstreetministry.org/.

[2] I'm grateful for Jan's blog entry and the comments posted there which became the spark for this sermon.  Jan Edmiston, A Church for Staving Artists, http://www.achurchforstarvingartists.com/2010/11/dont-be-helpful.html

[3] http://journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Bertolt_Brecht_A_Workers_Speech.shtml

[4] See Darrell L. Guder, ed. Mission Church:  A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), 77ff.

[5]On mission trips, see Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian:  What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2010), 154-159, 170ff

[6] Guder, 93ff.

[7] See Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways:  Reactivating the Missional Church.  Foreword by Leonard Sweet (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006); and Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come:  Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Peabody, MA:  Hendrickson, 2003).

Tearing Down the Walls: IV. Seeing Visions and Dreaming Dreams

Acts 2:17 & Ephesians 4: 1-6

Reformation/ All Saints Sunday/ 31^st October 2010

“There is one body [of Christ], there is one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4: 4-6).  These two verses are remnants of creedal statements from the early church.  Paul uses them here to remind the Ephesians as they struggle with divisions, that one-ness abounds.  The struggle, the division as we’ve seen these last three weeks in this series is the Jewish-Gentile question.  Do Gentiles have to become Jewish before they can worship Jesus?  Do Jews have to follow every sentence of the Law when they follow Jesus?  As we have seen, Paul knows that the wall of hostility between these two groups is no longer justified in the church, indeed, the love of Christ has torn down the walls of separation, leaving in a new humanity, a new community of people “rooted and grounded in love,” the church of Jesus Christ.  Christ is forming a people, building a “spiritual house,” a safe space for the dwelling place of all God’s children, a space where God’s saints are being equipped with every gift, every resource, everything needed to enable us to serve Christ in the world.

            Paul wants unity in the church – Paul wants “oneness.”  But we must never forget that for Paul oneness does not mean sameness and unity does not mean uniformity.  Actually, the oneness of God confessed by the church is oneness that includes diversity (think of the Trinity).  Because the God who is one is above all and through all and in all and since we exist in God’s oneness, that means God’s oneness permits diversity in unity and maintains unity in diversity.  Because the oneness of God comprehends both Jew and Gentile, the church now has the capacity to comprehend many people, many ministries, many gifts, many perspectives in its service to Christ.  Doesn’t Paul say in 1 Corinthians 12, “there are a variety of gifts but the same Spirit who gives them”?  In his commentary on Ephesians, Markus Barth makes clear, that, “The church cannot be one except when it attests to its God-given oneness by proving unity in diversity, and when it ventures to respect diversity in unity.”[1] Uniformity is, of course, a possibility, but the New Testament never calls us to uniformity.   However, Barth writes, uniformity would be “a form of death which is recommended neither by 1 Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4, nor by any other of the ecclesiastical passages of the New Testament.”[2]   

            The one who pulls the plurality, the multiplicity of people together is God, the comprehensive love of God known in Jesus Christ.  This speaks to the miracle that is the church that such a divergent group of people can come together around Jesus Christ and learn to love each other.  “A multiplicity of persons as persons could never truly share in God’s oneness, be committed by it, confess it – if God had not proven to be the One even in [God’s] Plurality, the unity that permits diversity, the power that holds together, brings together, and guarantees community. Without being bound by the Father, Son, and Spirit, the church could never proclaim that God’s own unity is the basis, the source, the energy, …of her own unity and that of her many members and ministries.”[3]

            As we have seen, the unity of the church is a heavy concern for Paul.   However, it’s not his ultimate concern.  The church doesn’t exist just to exist; its unity is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.  The church exists to serve a larger purpose, to serve a larger story, a larger message, a larger mission – and it’s most effective in telling the story and being committed to the mission when it’s grounded in its unity.  The church matters a lot to Paul. Don’t get me wrong.  He wouldn’t have wandered all over Turkey and Greece setting up churches, getting persecuted, beaten, mocked, and ridiculed if he didn’t value the church.  However, the church matters because the church was formed to extend the mission of God that was revealed in a new way in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The mission of God is the kingdom of God, God’s good news of salvation, forgiveness, and hope, God’s justice for a world oppressed and enslaved to the forces of death and destruction that hinder the welfare of God’s children.    This is God’s concern for the world, who is above all and through all and in all.  Indeed, these verses affirm that God’s love, power, and mission transcend the confines of the church and calls the church forward beyond its own horizons.  Indeed, Markus Barth believes, “this epistle looks beyond the church and does not suffocate in ecclesiology; it proclaims that God’s kingdom is greater than the church.”[4]

            The reformers knew this.  That’s what I think it was like for the reformers of the sixteenth century.  On this Reformation Sunday, the very day Martin Luther (1483-1536)  nailed his 95-reasons why the church’s sale of indulgences was a really loopy idea, we are reminded of our heritage as Protestants and as heirs of John Calvin (1509-1564) and John Knox 1510-1572).  While it’s true the intent of these truly courageous and brilliant reformers was the reform of the church, we must never forget it was the reform of the church so that church could be about the work of God.  When I read the history of the reformers I am struck and stunned by their level of commitment.  Walk through the streets of St. Andrews, Scotland, and you’ll see in the cobbles the initials of the reformers burned at the stake for their convictions; walk through Calvin’s church, St. Pierre’s, in Geneva or sit in a pew at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and think of their commitment, not to the church, per se, but their commitment and trust in the faithfulness of God.  What Luther (re)discovered in his reading of Romans thus igniting the Reformation was that God is faithful.  Because God is faithful the sale of indulgences is unnecessary.  That’s what Calvin knew too.  God is faithful.  It was their love for Christ that fired their imaginations, fed their determination to follow the Holy Spirit who is forever reforming the world with justice and hope.  While their battle cry was “back to the sources,” back to the Bible, that movement back, as it were, propelled them forward into a new future, into forming a new church, with a new vision for the church and the world. Although they were calling the church back to the way they thought it once was, the result was not the same-old church, but a dynamic, forward-looking church that reflected the dynamic, forward-looking movement of God’s Spirit!  This was a movement that required enormous allegiance and commitment, devotion, dedication—yes, to the church, but more importantly, devotion for Christ, dedication to God, commitment to the vision – not unlike the vision Peter received on Pentecost:  your old ones shall see visions and your young ones will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). 

            Of course, you can hear in my words the language of our pledge campaign for this year: …seeing visions, dreaming dreams.  The Stewardship Committee was very intentional this year in tying our pledge campaign to the vision statement and as we have heard in the very moving testimonies over the last couple of weeks, not moments for stewardship, but moments for commitment.  We heard how our financial gifts allow us to live into the vision God has given us.  We’re hoping this year that we view our pledge card next week as less about money to the church and more about pledging our commitment to God, to what God is dreaming about doing through us; that our financial pledge might be seen as part of our pledge to God’s work among us.  God has a vision for this church that is infinitely larger than we can wrap our heads around.  God is dreaming dreams about Catonsville Presbyterian, because God knows what can be accomplished when people are devoted, dedicated, committed – not to the church, but to God and the calling of Jesus Christ.  When we place our pledge in the offering plate next week, I’m hoping that we can view it as a renewed commitment to God and that our financial pledge might honor the value of that commitment.  If you cannot make a financial pledge – or in addition to your pledge – we invite you to consider other ways you can offer a commitment of self to God’s mission among us.  If you haven’t seen the “Seeing Visions,” bulletin board in fellowship, put up by Barbara Rice, be sure to take a look.  It beautiful captures the spirit of this campaign.

            God has a vision for our lives; God has a vision for this church and calls us forward toward it.  God is dreaming dreams through us, imagining what can be accomplished and realized through this church.  The potential, the reach, the possibilities of this church and every church are expansive and God has every confidence in us – more confidence than we might feel at times.  There is more power and potential and possibility within each of us and all of us together than we often care to confess.  But it’s there.  This is not pop-psychology, but taking seriously the claim that the Spirit and power of the Risen Christ is among us and within us.    Sure, it’s so easy to get down on ourselves in the church, feel like we don’t have enough, don’t have the resources, the energy, the whatever.  It’s why on a day like Reformation Sunday we can look back with thanks, and yet also know that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), the saints above, who cheer us on every step of the way.  Every Sunday when we gather here for worship, we can remember that we are surrounded by all the saints who cheer us on.  We don’t do this work alone.  We’re not alone.  When we gather at the Lord’s Table in a few minutes, we will celebrate the Lord’s presence with us and in us, the unity of all God’s people:  saints above whose perfect sight sees the visions fulfilled, who with the saints below dream dreams through us, forever encouraging us on in the great high calling of Jesus Christ, urging us on with ever greater commitment to him.

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[1] Markus Barth, Ephesians: Translation and Commentary on Chapters 4-6: Anchor Bible 34A (New York: Doubleday, 1986), 466.

[2] Barth, 466.

[3] Barth, 467.

[4] Barth, 472.

Tearing Downt the Walls: III. Creating a Safe Space

Ephesians 4: 1-6[1]

30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 24^th October 2010

 Always pay attention when the word “therefore” is used in scripture.    “Therefore” often signals a decisive shift in the argument or introduces a conclusion of considerable import.   It means, pay attention because this is really important.  It’s easy to miss in the English text; but this is a strong “therefore,” followed by, “I beg you,” or, “I beseech you,” which has a sense of urgency about it in Greek, yet also very warm and personal.  These four words, “Therefore,…I beg you…,”  tell us that this is the turning point in Ephesians. 

Up to this point, chapters 1-3, Paul has made the claim that God in Christ is forming a new humanity, a new people, formed together into a new community.  This community, this church, is marked by its diversity and inclusiveness.  Why? Because both Jews and Gentiles are now worshipping Jesus together under one roof as anew people. The enmity between Jew and Gentile is now healed in Christ.  “For Christ is our peace; and he has broken down the wall of hostility between us, declaring peace to those who are far off and those who are near.”  The church is a people known for reconciliation and welcome, not because they’re nice, not because they’re kind, not because it was the politically-correct thing to do (which it wasn’t in the Roman world), but because through Christ women and men came to see that reconciliation, welcome, and acceptance lie at the core of God’s being.  If they experienced God’s grace and love through Christ, then how can they withhold that grace and love and acceptance of their neighbor?    The love that rules among them is the result of God’s care for them; because God cares for them, they find themselves caring for each other, for their neighbor, even for the alien and the stranger who walks into their community.

            What we find here is a simple and profound rationale for the church.  Because of Christ the walls that separated humanity from God are now gone, this same power, known as love, has the ability to break down walls that divide and alienate individuals from others.  Because of the reconciliation in the vertical relationship (between humanity and God) there can now be reconciliation at the horizontal level, between person and person.  And the individuals who have experienced this kind of love and grace are now pulled together into a new community, a new family, a new race, a new people – into church.  Paul is trying to get the Ephesians to see is that God is at work in them and among them, we are like a beautiful piece of art, as Paul says earlier in Ephesians, created in Christ (Ephesians 2: 10), being formed and reformed into something beautiful and new, into a unity; and he’s trying to get them to see themselves as a people already united by the Holy Spirit, and therefore calls them to work hard to maintain this unity.

            We’re only looking at six verses here in Ephesians and yet they contain a whole new world, a different way of being, a still more excellent way.  It’s a way marked by mutual forbearance, of “bearing one another in love.”  The meaning of this Greek phrase suggests, to bear, to bear up, to hold oneself up, responding with patience to the other until a sense of provocation is past.  That’s what love does, it bears all thing, it endures (1 Corinthians 13).  To love is to bear, to bear is to love.  They are tied together; they interpret each other mutually.  “If to love includes bearing one’s neighbor, then love is not just an emotion, [or feeling,] or ideal of the individual soul.”  It isn’t love except in relation to neighbors.  The Christians doesn’t love in general, we love in particular; it’s always specific, it’s often costly and often, then, miraculous.[2]

            Then Paul says, “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  “The unity of the Spirit is maintained, [not attained] as the members of the body function together harmoniously for the well-being of the whole.”  “Make every effort,” means “take pain, haste,” with passion, work to fulfill this responsibility.  The Greek here means to use your will, your senses your reason, your physical strength, your total attitude, to give it your all.   It means don’t be passive about this, there’s nothing quiet about this, there’s no space for “let’s wait and see” attitude.  You have the initiative.  Do it now.  I mean it.  You do it.  I mean you![3]

            And what do we have to do?  “Maintain…the bond of peace.”  The Spirit is forming a bond.  This doesn’t mean the Spirit is some kind of super-glue.  The metaphor is more dynamic than that.  The Greek word Paul uses is from the world of construction, carpentry; it refers to that which holds a house together – the wooden beams, the fastenings, the ligaments.[4]  With these bonds in place we have a structure, a structure that houses the people of God.   We are being built into the household of God, Paul says, built upon the foundations of apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone.  “In him,” we heard last week, “the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple…, a dwelling for God.”  The church, then, is a place where God’s people live and breathe and move and grow.  It’s the space, the sacred space where God’s children are invited to live in freedom.  This is Paul’s image of the church.  The church is a people, yes, a community, but we become the people, know we are children of God from living in a particular space.  The church carves out a space in the world for us to embody the gospel, a sacred space for this new way of living and loving and bearing one’s burdens. 

            The last two weeks in this series I’ve been talking about tearing down the walls of separation and division, the “walls of hostility,” erected in fear between people, particularly fellow-Christians.  There is no place for these in the church.  Christ came to tear down walls that divide in order to establish in their place a new space in which to live.  The church can or should be that safe space where God’s children are allowed to live in freedom.  In order to say this space is different, set apart, requires boundaries, walls of a different kind, something that defines the dimensions of this space.  The church is called out to be different, that’s what ekklesia means, to be called out and set apart.  Our walls can be high or low, but they’re broad and wide, and permeable, and within them there is safety – or should be.

            What makes a space safe?  What makes space sacred?  Perhaps they share a common answer.  Theologian Pamela Cooper-White suggests that sacred spaces, whether it’s a sanctuary or a religious community, have a maternal quality to them.  Think of “mother Church.”   It’s the place where we are held and loved, where we feel the embrace of God, and feel the embrace of God in the way we are held by others in the community.  It’s the space where we know we are being held by someone larger than ourselves.   A sacred space is a kind of “maternal holding environment.”[5]  In this matrix we know ourselves reconciled to God and to our neighbor, we know ourselves loved unconditionally, we find ourselves welcomed and accepted.  A sacred space is a holding space, a space where we know ourselves to be safe.

            Of course we know this is not always the case.  Some have experienced the church as anything but safe.  Assuming it to be so, this sacred trust has been violated by religious leaders – Roman Catholic, Orthodox,  Protestant, Jew, and Muslim alike – who have abused their power and violated the rights of God’s children.  People come to church for healing from domestic violence, only to discover the dysfunction of churches.  On Thursday this week I attended the presbytery’s  all-day Healthy Boundaries workshop (Dorothy took the same class several months ago).  It’s a requirement for all clergy.  We shared stories of people who one time trusted of all places the church could be safe, only to discover the place and the people were toxic.  Once this trust is lost, it’s very difficult (not impossible), for it to be regained.  When the church segregates and discriminates it has stopped being a place of safety.

            And, of course, bullying has been in the news a lot this past month.  There was probably never a time without it.  The word was first coined in 1693.  It’s become more lethal in this world due to online social networking.  My guess is we’ve all been victims of bullying and maybe, dare I say, we at one time might have been the bully.  Webster’s dictionary from 1828 defines a bully as, “a noisy, blustering overbearing fellow, more distinguished for insolence and empty menaces, than for courage, and disposed to provoke quarrels.”  Most bullies I’ve met are full of fear.  And they project that unacknowledged fear on to others who remind them what they’re afraid of, but can’t admit.  Though they may be cowards, the damage done, as we know, can be costly.  Four teenagers last month took their lives because of the bullying they received, primarily because they were either gay or perceived to be so.  Seth Walsh and Asher Brown were 13, Billy Lucas was 15, and Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University, jumped from the George Washington Bridge, was 18.  These are tragic. This is a wake-up call for the culture and the church.

            Now, as Presbyterians, we generally don’t have a lot in common with Albert Mohler.  He’s the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.  Mohler is an extreme-right conservative Southern Baptist, he reads the Bible literally, he’s against legalizing same-sex marriage, and argues that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.  He wrote an article recently and found myself in agreement, “I am haunted by the one question that seems so obvious and clear in the account of Tyler Clementi’s tragic death.  In those days of crushing anguish, humiliation, and confusion, was there no one who could have stood between that boy and that bridge?”  Mohler asks his fellow-conservatives, “What if Tyler Clementi had been in your church?  …would he have heard irresponsible slander, sarcastic jabs, and moralistic self-congratulation?”[6]  Was there no safe space for Tyler Clementi or these others?  I don’t know if they were Christian or not.  It doesn’t matter.  Did they not know there are safe spaces?  Did they not know that the church could and should be such a place?  Regardless of belief, we are to provide sanctuary for the hurting and broken and scared. 

            It seems to me that creating safe space for people is what it means to work out our salvation.  Salvation does not mean my soul is safe and I’m going to heaven when I die.  Nor does it mean simply all my sins are forgiven.  It includes these, but, really salvation, from the Hebrew, yasha, means to be placed in a vast, broad, space where there is no cramping (Job 36:16).[7]  It means to have a wide, open space in which to live in freedom, to not be closed in.  It’s the opposite of being confined, restricted, or oppressed. Salvation is liberation from confinement, constrictions, and limitation.  It’s a place where one is free to grow and expand.  That’s the sacred space, I believe, that God gives us when we are in Christ and it’s what it means for the church to preach salvation and live it.  That’s what God desires for God’s children.

We can’t be responsible for the world.  We can’t take care of everyone.  But we can start with ourselves, take responsibility for ourselves. What is the nature of this church?  What does this sacred space look like and feel like for our members and everyone who enters here.  May it be said of us, more and more, that we care for one another, that people know here they are safe, young and old alike, that people can bring who they and all that they wrestle with here, we will cry with those who mourn and rejoice with those who are happy, that we share hopes and dreams.  That we see ourselves as a safe space, that we work to maintain this, and that we become even more passionate about it.  It would pain me infinitely (and I know Dorothy feels the same) if someone, particularly our youth, could not bring their fears to the church, their concerns, that some subject or issue was perceived to be off limits, that people would not feel safe to bring this to the church, particularly their pastors.  We can’t solve every problem, we won’t have answers to every question, we can’t extend healing (that’s God’s job), but we can bear and love and hold one another, and remind one another that God bears and loves and holds us too.

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[1]Ephesians 2, along with 1 Corinthians 10, were the two texts at the center of the assembly that wrote the Belhar Confession from the Reformed Church of South Africa, denouncing the sin of Apartheid (meaning separateness) and the sin of racism.  Belhar rejects “any doctrine which…sanctions in the name of the gospel or of the will of God the forced separation of people on the grounds of race and color [and by implication any other category] and thereby in advance obstructs and weakens the ministry and experience of reconciliation in Christ.”  Throughout the Belhar Confession there is an emphasis on the unity of God’s people who have “one calling, are of one soul and one mind, have one God and Father, and are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, … confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to the new humanity; together know and bear one another’s burdens,….”  You can hear here the language of Ephesians, especially 4: 1-6.

[2] Markus Barth, Ephesians:  Translation and Commentary on Chapter 4-6 (Garden City, NY:  Doubleday & Company, 1986), 427-428.

[3] Barth, 428.

[4] Barth, 428-429.

[5] Pamela Cooper-White, “Sacred Space and the Psyche:  Reflections on Potential Space and the Sacred Built Environment,” in Kathleen J. Greider, Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, and Felicity Brock Kelcourse, eds., Healing Wisdom:  Depth Psychology and the Pastoral Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2010), 78-80.

[6] Albert Mohler, http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/10/04/between-the-boy-and-the-bridge-a-haunting-question/

[7] This is also an experience of the Spirit: ‘Thou has set my feet in a broad place.’ (Psalm 31:8). ‘You also he allured out of distress into a broad place where there is no cramping.’ (Job 36:16). According to Kabbalistic Jewish tradition, one of God’s secret names is MAKOM, the wide space. If God’s Spirit is experienced as this broad, open space for living conferred on created beings, then it is easy to understand the spatial designations which declare that people live ‘in’ God’s spirit, and experience God spatially as ‘breadth.’” Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Fortress Press, 1993), 42-43.