WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Scripture
I’ve only thrown one punch in my life.
When I was in fifth grade, Bob Keaton became my enemy. Bob was also in fifth grade, and he and I
just didn’t get along. Maybe it’s
because Bob was an inherently angry kid.
Or maybe it’s because I teased him all the time until he became so
frustrated that he’d want to kill me.
And then I’d go running to my best friend, Norbert Kirk, who happened to
be the only one of us who hit puberty in fourth grade and so was about a head
taller than any of us. As soon as he
caught sight of big Norbert, Bob Keaton would back down and go slinking away as
I laughed at him. I was not a very nice
guy in fifth grade.
Anyway, we were playing kickball, I was teasing Bob about something, and
my mistake was that I was doing this without first checking to see if Norbert
was close at hand. He wasn’t. And without the threat of Norbert’s
retaliation, Bob hauled off and slugged me in the nose. Instantly, my nose started to bleed. And that’s when I threw the one and only
punch in my life. In the parlance of
fifth grade boys, I hit Bob Keaton like a girl.
I did this (open-fisted push/slap) rather than this (a tough-guy movie punch). In spite of that, or, rather, because of it,
Bob’s nose also started to bleed. The
playground monitor hauled us both off to the boys’ lavatory where we each got a
wad of those brown paper towels, and,
after dipping them in cold water, held them up to our noses as we leaned back
and looked up at the ceiling. With cold,
wet noses and the coppery taste of blood in our throats, we stole a few glances
at each other. We did that two or three
times, until we both burst into laughter.
Bob Keaton and I weren’t enemies anymore. Somehow we had reconciled.
That’s how reconciliation happens sometimes. Suddenly the enmity just gives out, the dam
of old complaints crumbles, the hostility over long-forgotten wrongs evaporates
and we are reconciled.
Maybe that’s how it’s happened for you.
One day at the grocery store you ran into that old girlfriend who dumped
you back in high school and the hurt just wasn’t there anymore. One night you picked up the phone and talked
to that brother you hadn’t talked to in twenty years and it was easy, just
great to hear his voice. One morning you
heard that your neighbor was in the hospital, the neighbor who wouldn’t even
tell you face-to-face to trim the branches on your tree but got the city to
send you an official notice and you hated
the guy. But somehow your conscience led
you to that hospital room and your hatred was so stupid, so completely petty,
that it just ran away in shame as you visited your neighbor.
That’s how reconciliation can be – like a miracle, a one-time, once for
all miracle: a sudden healing that cures
completely; a flash of insight that banishes the bad feelings to darkness
forever. That’s how it can be sometimes.
Mostly, though, it takes time, doesn’t it? Time and a lot of hard work to make a
reconciliation.
My sister-in-law Joan and her husband Bob would describe themselves as evangelical
Christians, but I’d be tempted to describe them as fundamentalists. They belong to the biggest mega-church in
Anyway, Dee and I got engaged right at the same time I was called to go
to seminary. And pretty much for the
four years I was in seminary and the first years of my ministry, Bob and Joan
never asked me a single question about my schooling, my future, or my faith as
their way to make clear they didn’t approve of me, didn’t consider me a “real”
Christian. As you can imagine, it made
for some pretty chilly times between us.
Couple that with some very deep political differences and that means our
conversations were pretty much confined to the weather and… well, just the
weather, really.
One day, however, we got to talking about the past and I found out that
Bob had been a Conscientious Objector during the Korean War. For two years he had put his career on hold
and worked in a state mental hospital doing very hard work among the most
desperately needy folks. He did this
because of his faith. That conversation
became a turning point in my relationship with Bob and with Joan. You see, I had discovered that their faith
was real, was deep, was something they would make sacrifices for. Isn’t it interesting that I thought the
problem in our relationship was that they wouldn’t give me their respect
but our reconciliation began when I gave them my respect.
Our reconciliation began with one conversation but it took time. It took probably ten or eleven years before
we really started feeling close to one another.
Now we are very close. I’m sure
you’ll have plenty of chances to meet them.
They always come to church with us when they visit.
“All this is from God, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of
reconciliation.” That’s how Paul
describes the nature of our ministry as a Christian church, as Christian people
in the world. We are to be
reconcilers. As Peterson’s translation
puts it, God has “called us to settle our
relationships with each other.”
I don’t think we doubt this, the possibility of reconciliation between
us and other individuals. We’ve experienced
those “one-time-for-all” moments that feel miraculous, and we’ve also been a
part of those longer, more difficult reconciliations that require time and
diligent work.
No, the source of our doubt when it comes to reconciliation comes from elsewhere.
One of my
No – it wasn’t, “Does he hit like
a girl?” His question was this: “What’s
this guy’s politics?”
Now, I don’t blame him. I’ve
certainly been present at more than a few religious services where the preacher
was more interested in doing some political pontificating, spouting opinions
left and right as if they were from God’s lips to our ears. In fact, my ears burned as I listened,
feeling helpless, even abused. Here’s the
mark of a really bad sermon – not only is it long and boring, but it feels like
a hostage situation. You want to get out
but you can’t.
We are sharply divided by political opinion and affiliation in this
country and in the larger church. We
might be able to reconcile with our brother and our neighbor and maybe even the
stranger who cut us off in traffic. But
there’s real doubt right now if we’ll ever be able to reconcile with our
political opponents.
It’s almost a tribal thing, isn’t it?
Instead of Sunni and Shiite, we call it Democrat and Republican. Thank God we don’t exchange gunfire but we do
exchange overblown rhetoric, icy looks, and hostile silences. And we engage in the kind of politic
posturing that stops progress dead in its tracks. Heck, we can’t even pass a budget in this
state. No wonder why that member wanted
to know my politics. He wanted to know
whose side I was on.
One side or the other. Right or
wrong. Good or bad. Isn’t that how the thinking goes right
now? The divisions are so deep, the
tribes so narrowly defined… how can we seriously hope to be reconciled to one
another?
There’s a story from Hassidic Judaism that tells of a great controversy
in the community. The people found
themselves sharply divided over one particular issue. And the two opposing sides formed just about
evenly behind the two great rabbis of the community: Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Gamaliel. Hillel and Gamaliel would argue back and
forth, back and forth without any resolution.
Like them, the community was bitterly divided.
Finally, they decided to pray and ask God to resolve their
dispute. God would tell them who was
right and who was wrong. And so the
whole community prayed. They prayed for
three days and three nights until the voice of God spoke. And this is what God said: “Rabbi
Hillel is correct. But Rabbi Gamaliel
also speaks a word of the Lord.”
I love this story. It challenges
our assumption. Just because we think
there are two sides to every issue, right and wrong, doesn’t mean God looks at
it that way. Maybe God is speaking
through both sides. Maybe God is working
through all people, even people of diametrically opposing points of view.
Consider this: here is a person who
has been called by God to be an advocate for women who have been victims of
sexual violence. Make no mistake, God
calls people to do that every day. And
here is a person who has been called by God to be an advocate of young children
at risk. God calls people to do that
too. Now, should it really be a surprise
to us that these two people might have different political opinions about
abortion? And explain to my why we as
Christians can’t affirm and support the ministry of both? How is it Eugene Peterson translates that
verse? – “God
uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into
God’s work of making things right between them.”
It’s God’s work we’re about, not furthering our own opinions. Our salvation won’t arrive because we’re all
thinking the same. It will arrive when
God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m
not above political discourse nor should any of us pretend to be. There are important issues facing us as
individuals, as a region and municipality, as a nation and world. I don’t think we have ENOUGH honest political
talk in our world. But I’m more
interested in hearing about your call than I am in hearing about your
opinion. I’m more interested in your
work for what’s right than in your words about who’s wrong.
“From now on, therefore,”
Paul tells us, “we regard no one from a
human point of view.” And isn’t this
what he’s talking about? Looking not so
much for human differences, which side we’re on, but looking more for divine
calling and purpose, the work we can and must do together?
The American Legion Hall in
Does that mean their political and social differences had been fully
overcome? Of course not. But because they had recognized a common
calling, they were walking together on the road to reconciliation.
Are our divisions really so serious that we cannot work together, that
we cannot find common purpose, that we cannot avoid taking sides? Can we follow Paul’s advice and no longer “regard any one from a human point of view,”
and instead try to see one another through God’s eyes, eyes that look upon us
with love, forgiveness, respect, and high hopes.
As you know, our missionary team just arrived back from
When
But our mission partners weren’t just thinking of themselves. Our partners are drawn mostly from the Marakwet
tribe. Six years ago, they had suffered
at the hands of members of the Pokot tribe located north of them who had raided
their villages and killed quite a few people.
Two of the pastors Deb met with had to flee up the hill from the
Pokots. Why did these Marakwet
Christians locate their new water purification system so far north? So that folks from the Pokot tribe could
drink from it as well. They believed
this shared water might work peace between the tribes. The coppery taste of blood and tribal
violence might be washed away in the living water of reconciliation.
What a witness our Kenyan partners have provided for us. Love your enemies, Jesus tells us. You are called to the ministry of
reconciliation, Paul instructs us. Our
partners have provided us a living witness of what this means.
And why can’t that be us, too?
Why can’t we overcome our divisions and hostility and become united in
common need, common concern, common witness.
Why can’t the stain of our division be washed cleaned in Christ, the
living water? Why can’t we walk
side-by-side, people of different opinions but unified in faithful
purpose? Why can’t we listen for the
word of God even in the words of those with whom we disagree?
Christ can make it so in us. Christ can bind us together so that we are one body with one Spirit, following one hope, proclaiming one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is above all and through all and in all. Christ can make it so in us so that we discover that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, there is no longer Republican and Democrat, gay or straight, Marakwet or Pokot, there is no longer fear and division, mistrust and suspicion, but we are one in Christ. Amen.
Sermon preached by Reverend Stephen P. Savides at First Congregational
United Church of Christ,