Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Sermon at the 130th Diocesan Convention
Be Eager to Help People Work Things Out
St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral
October 20, 2001
The Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall, BishopIsaiah 35:1-10
Ephesians 4:1-6
St. John 17:6a, 15-23I spoke yesterday of international terrorism and the steps our country is taking to end it. I also said that you don't negotiate with terrorists, including terrorists in the family and in the parish. Did that make sense to you?
Terrorism is creating fear and instability by random or sudden acts or maintaining instability and fear by the constant threat of violence. Terrorism makes people afraid to do what they normally would do and diverts them from their goals. Terrorism is control. It is hostile. It is the act of one who cannot persuade, but still wants things their way.
It is simply despicable. And we've all done it. At one time or another.
In the family it goes like this: "If you do such and such I'll never speak to you again." In the Church it goes, "If this vestry does this or that, I want you to know that I'll never give another dime to this church and I'll stick around to remind you of it."
Terrorists, even in the form of beloved family members or pious church supporters, keep control by spreading the threat. That means that, in addition to what they say publicly, they love to work indirectly. You don't tell Aunt Rose that you are going to quit coming to the family reunion unless she apologizes for serving rhubarb pie when she knows or should know that you were allergic to it when you lived together for a summer in 1971. No, you tell one of the designated family worriers, who will tell everybody else, and the whole family is agitated over what you might do. Somebody gets the great idea: let's cancel the family reunion this year so things can cool down. So Great Grandma dies without the last chance to be with her loved ones.
The problem is I'm not making this up.
In the church it works the same way. People will sit quietly at vestry or parish meetings where a decision was taken, and then go tell someone, "The rector might want to know that if she goes ahead with this, I'm leaving this church." Or, the public version is, when an entire meeting has decided one way, and you can't convince them, you say, "If you guys (notice how you've changed it to us and them) do this, you won't get another cent from me and I know twelve families who will leave this church."
If you can't confront Aunt Rose, you destabilize the family. If you can't convince the vestry, you destabilize the group with threats. Terrorism is the act of morally weak people with a little too much confidence in their entitlement to have things go their way.
We've all done it at one time or another. And we always claim we are standing for a principle. But the fact is that people who stand for a principle act and speak directly. They don't want to bully or pressure. They want to persuade.
We heard words from St. Paul. He was certainly a man who knew how to put his foot down. But we hear a different side this morning. He says, "I beg you" - one half the apostolic A-team of Peter and Paul is saying this, remember - "I beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling."
Paul then defines exactly what he is begging us to do; he wants us to live "with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
That's a good test for anything we say or write, whether at a convention, a church meeting, or the family Thanksgiving celebration coming up.
"Lowly and meek." This is not about being a doormat or a whiner. It means being realistic about the fact that our voice is just one of many, that everyone is valuable. It means not assuming that anybody else has motives worse than your own. It is very difficult to be lowly and meek when you know you are right - ah, but then it is especially important to be lowly and meek when you know you are right. This is true in part because there are other people in the room who know that they are right, too.
The Apostle goes on and urges us to act "with patience." One of the things the four Gospels show us is that the disciples didn't get it all at once. Thomas didn't get it until after the resurrection. Some of them had still been arguing about who of them was the most important on the very last trip to Jerusalem. Jesus' patience was and is his gift to us.
You and I know that we wouldn't want our reputation today to be established on the basis of who we were ten, twenty, forty years ago. God has been patient with each of us, staying faithful to us as we get it, or get bits of it. Yesterday I noticed a number of small groups with exhibits or tables in the parish hall. They make their witness year after year, faithfully waiting for the Church to get it. If you still don't believe that people have been patient with you, ask your loved ones. It may be surprising.
The perspective of knowing that individuals don't get it all at once is information any parent or Sunday School teacher has: well, that perspective applies to groups, too. Truth is truth, and there is only one truth or it wouldn't be true, but the ability to perceive and process it varies among individuals. The ability to detect the truth from what is an application of the truth is not always easy. The jump from the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address was enormous, but Lincoln was looking within the application of the truth that justified the revolution for the core truth for which he would himself have to die.
"Forbearing one another in love." St. Paul wants us to forbear one another in love." That is the religious way of saying we don't crush each other because we value each other. It means putting up with each other when people are wrong, irritable, arrogant, whiny, timid, or just not getting the picture. However, I guess that most of us don't want to think that people should ever have needed to put up with us, to tolerate us. This is called denial. We are here because God didn't crush Adam and Eve, because our parents didn't throw us out when we were being, well, unattractive. If you really doubt that anyone ever had to just put up with your wackiness, and did it because they loved you, ask around. Start with those who love you most.
Whether it is divine or human, the forbearance we have received we are to pass on. How to develop virtue here or at a family gathering or a church meeting? Focus on the noisiest, most headstrong person in the room (excepting yourself) and just love them. Love the frightened person inside them who feels that they must fight to survive, love the ignorant person inside them who doesn't know any better than to bully or terrorize, love the trapped person inside them who has formed such bad habits that they don't even know they are objectionable. And then love the parts of them that most remind you of what you fear in yourself. Forbearance then can grow.
Most of all, St. Paul wants us to be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace." Here the dear apostle is up against nature, and he knows it. The lowest part of our brain, what your doctor calls the reptilian brain, what we share with all vertebrates, has a simple method of sorting perceptions: "Ugh. Same - good. Different - kill or run away." That is the entire intellectual life of a crocodile.
The entire spiritual or moral history of our species could be written in terms of the struggle not to kill or run away from what is different, how we learn to treat those with whom we cannot identify. "Remember that you were strangers once," Moses reminds Israel. "For once you were no people," Peter quotes the Old Testament to the newly baptized to try to get them to think in bigger terms.
When you encounter someone, do you mostly look for ways they are the same as you, or do you mostly look for ways they are different? How much have you transcended the reptilian brain in personal relations? In our inner reptile (right there with the inner child and inner adult) lies the root of racism, sexism, classism, snobbery, and sectarianism. Have you ever noticed that the story about sin entering the world is about a snake?
My theological roots are in Anglo-Catholicism. This is not about what I wear or the fact that I may invoke a saint or two when I pray to God (Dymphna remains my favorite). The Anglo-Catholic movement was and is primarily about the truth that the Church is not a voluntary society. The Church is a divine institution, a divine society into which I am called by Christ, and that I tear it or destabilize it at great peril to my soul. Every existing division in the body of believers in the world is the result of human sin. Period.
Paul want us "eager," not reluctantly obedient, but "eager" to maintain the bond of peace. The reptile in us doesn't want to do it. That is the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is one of the reasons Jesus told his disciples to share his body and blood: you can't easily eat with people you reject. That is the spiritual gift that can work with our wonderfully complex brains and inspire creative ways to love, to overcome dissension. An even bigger gift of the Spirit is to love Christ enough to come to difficult discussions EAGER to help people work things out, to find a way. It is just this eagerness that is Anglicanism at its best.
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