MUMC Sermon-10/01/06

October 1, 2006

The Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost

Be At Peace With One Another

Mark 9:38-50

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

As I explained to the children earlier in our worship, today is World Communion Sunday. That being the case, it is appropriate, is it not, that the gospel for the day ends with an admonition to harmony in diversity. One phrase: “…be at peace with one another.” That is a call to unity that the church often ignores. We rarely live “at peace with one another.” In fact, there are times when I wonder whether we even aspire to live that way. Headlines from the last few days bring me nearly to despair of the possibility of our living in peace, whether in our own land or across the globe.

Recent headlines note, in contrast, our propensity for demonizing one another. The political season is heating up, and last Wednesday’s Times carried the front-page headline: “New Campaign Ads Have a Theme: Don’t Be Nice.” We need not even read the article; we know its content from previous election experience. While each of us will deride negative campaigning, we all are swayed by it. So, sooner or later, most candidates let their message degenerate into the muck of lowest common name-calling. Political contenders define themselves not by saying “I am the best because….” Rather, the message becomes, “My opponent is bad because…. And you should fear giving my opponent the power of this job.”

Such demonizing manifests itself in the election process precisely because our proclivity for demonizing runs so deeply through our humanity. Politicians campaign the way we all converse, saying, “I’m a good person because I’m not like this other, who is bad.” Consider some headlines from the past few days: Jerry Falwell said in a comment he later called “humorous,” that a presidential run by Hillary Clinton would be more upsetting to his own supporters than if Satan should run; Bill Clinton chided those in what he labeled a conservative “conspiracy” who had blamed his administration for its purported reticence in dealing with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda; the president of Venezuela, speaking at the United Nations – a place where delegates gather for the express purpose of dialogue rather than war – called the president of our country “the devil,” and then he went so far as to say that the smell of sulfur from the netherworld lingered at the podium because Bush had spoken there the day before. Nor is our president an innocent, for he, himself, utilized demonic language in calling other countries “an axis of evil.”

Such verbal exchanges are not so much debates as exchanges of word-grenades. And my point is not to blame one side or the other, for the hands of us all bear the stains of our participation in such language of hostility and exclusion. All too often we define ourselves, whether as individuals, as leaders, or as cultures, not by saying who we are, and what we stand for, but by identifying enemies and then saying who they are, and that they stand for evil.

The process is not merely ubiquitous. Such demonizing is systemic and it is timeless. Though it dates me to remember this, I recall Kris Kristofferson’s song of thirty years ago, “Jesus Was a Capricorn,” in which he crooned (or croaked, depending on your taste),

“everybody’s got to have somebody to look down on,

who they can feel better than at anytime they please,

someone doin’ somethin’ dirty, decent folks can frown on….

Eggheads cussin’ red necks cussing hippies for their hair,

others laugh at straights who laugh at freaks who laugh at squares.

Some folks hate the whites who hate the blacks who hate the klan.

Most of us hate anything that we don’t understand.”

Kristofferson, described for a generation the lack of community, decency, or charity that was so obvious in that time torn with strife.

But the strife is not new; nor is the language used to perpetuate human conflict. Today’s gospel lesson shows us that the tendency to define ourselves by excluding others is at least 2000 years old. Did you hear it at the beginning of the lesson, when Eric read, “John said to [Jesus], ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’” In other words, his faith is suspect, even though he gets results, because while he’s using the right words, he’s not “following us.” He’s not one of our community. He’s different, and therefore unacceptable. Written in the first century, the words continue to describe successive decades and millennia.

We Christians should be ashamed, when we recall that in successive centuries, wars would be fought over the correct use of the words of Jesus, or to define just who was, and was not, a true follower of the Lord. Religious wars repeatedly found the East fighting the West, the Catholics killing the protestants, and vice versa. Communities who called themselves faithful to the prince of peace still righteously handed out death to men and women to whom they were bound by their kinship to Jesus to call each other “brother” and “sister.” Nor have we come to the end of such hostility, for the world-wide ecumenical impulse of a few is effectively thwarted by the doctrinal suspicions between Christians around the world. In fact, we remain willing to fight over less than doctrine. I’ve seen Christians quite nearly come to blows over what kind of music they would allow, or not, at their worship.

Issues of both church doctrine and church music are important, of course. I have my own deeply held commitments to the words of the faith, even words carried in our hearts by passionately held melodies. I care about such things. We all do. All around the world we care. My point is not to minimize or trivialize such differences.

And yet, this morning we hear Jesus advise his first followers: “Whoever is not against us is for us,” and we listen as our master goes on to say that “whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” (9:40-41) That saying of Jesus, like any other sacred text, is open to a number of interpretations. What I hear in that advice is at once both simple and difficult. Mark sums it up quite nicely in the concluding phrase that I highlighted at the beginning: “…be at peace with one another.” (9:50) It’s a simple verse, I say, because it is clearly understood: “be at peace.” The words and the injunction are clear. And, yet, at the same time, it is difficult because such peace takes a lifetime of personal discipline to implement in lives so often ruled by the kind of name-calling that is so rampant in human interaction.

How appropriate, therefore, that today Christians around the world approach a common table. Whether we call this sacrament “Holy Communion,” “The Lord’s Supper,” or “The Eucharist,” it is a meal common to our experience of the Risen Christ in our midst. And whether we think it is a sacrament, “an outward, visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace,” as Methodists theologians might say, or whether we think of it only as a memory-producing meal, doesn’t matter, as far as our common faith is concerned. Nor do we have to fight wars of words (or swords or bullets, either) about whether Christ is mysteriously present in the elements themselves, or merely present in the spirit of our gathering as a community, or present only because we invite him into our hearts in the silences of this beautiful space. The truth is that Christ is present. Period. Christ is present around the world in the myriad manifestations of word and deed, in music and prayer, or in silence and sermon. The truth is that Christ is present And he is present today, all around a diverse world, at a common table.

That same Christ of the common table calls us to a common faith. He calls us to discipleship, to daring the deeds that need doing in our world. He calls us to lay aside the petty differences that divide us, and celebrate the diversity in the unity to which he alone invites us. He calls us to be “salt,” thereby to season the world as we follow the example he gives us. That journey leads finally to the cross, where he gives himself for us. Then, having taught us by example, he expects that we will follow his lead, not the lead of politicians and other name-callers. We are to give – to give ourselves for the whole world, excluding no one, excluding no philosophy, excluding no political party and no country. He calls us, as the salt of the world, to live among the world as he lives among us, loving us faithfully, generously, even – dare I say it – loving us liberally, as God loves us all. While we are sinners, Christ dies for us. Christ does no less; and Christ calls us to doing no less for others.

That is a not a local message, but a world-loving message. This day – especially this World Communion Sunday – nothing else suits the gospel, the generous good news of Christ our Crucified Lord who comes to break bread with us. He blesses us, and expects us to bless each other, and the whole wide world as well.

Amen.