August 6 2006
Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love
Ephesians 4:1-6 & 14-16
As you know I have been at Pilgrim Park Camp for the past week with our five confirmation youth and 39 other seventh and eighth graders from throughout the Illinois conference. It was a wonderful, exciting, challenging, exhausting experience as we came together, studied together, played together, learned together and grew into a community -a microcosm of the whole body of Christ.
As part of the camp experience the youth have classes in Bible, Church History, Worship and Christian Living. In many and various ways in each of those classes they explored the way in which people of faith are called to celebrate their own uniqueness and be willing to take a stand for what they believe. We talked a lot about our individual uniqueness and the gifts we each bring to the table as the body of Christ both in the church and in the world. A line in the closing song we sang each night captures this: "Don't be afraid to know who you are and don't be afraid to show it." Now, those of you who hear me preach on a regular basis know that these are concepts that I absolutely believe and about which I talk a great deal.
Each evening as we gathered in our church groups to process the day, I asked our girls to share one or two things they learned that day. One night one of the girls talked about an exercise they did in their Christian Living class called "Here I Stand." In this experience the leader read various statements and then invited the youth to place themselves someplace on a continuum anywhere based on whether they strongly agreed, strongly disagreed or something in between. They were then asked to say why they were standing where they were standing. They were not to try to convince others to change their minds; they were simply to state why they were standing where they were. People were, however, given the chance to move if they choose to do so after hearing with honesty and humility what others had to say. These were not simple easy questions the youth were given to discuss, but questions that pushed the youth to think about some moral and ethical dilemmas we face on a regular basis. It was a powerful time. Then she said, "I was upset when learned that I'm about the only Republican in my tribe. Everybody else seems to be a Democrat." Then she turned directly to me and said, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?"
Caught completely off guard and having been completely indoctrinated with a taboo against talking about politics in church, I said, "That's not a question I usually answer."
To which she responded, "O, you must be a democrat then."
We went on to talk about the right and responsibility for everyone to be who they are and form their ideas and identities according to their best understanding of the gospel message and the spirit's leading. But, I never did answer her question!
As I thought about it later, I thought, isn't it interesting that I plan to preach about the absolute necessity of being willing to disagree in love, if we are to become the whole people of God we are created to be and I can't even honestly respond to the question, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?"
As I thought about my response, I it occurred to me that throughout the years at least some parts of the church have heard words such as those in today's reading from Ephesians which say, "make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," and have concluded that the best way to do that is to simply avoid talking about the places where
C:\Documents and Settings\ROBERT TAYLOR\CHURCH\Sermons\08-06-06 eph 4-1-7-11-17.docLast printed 9/10/2006 8:24:00
AM - 2 -
we might disagree. It doesn't, of course mean that we agree, we just avoid being honest about what we think or feel or believe because we don't want to offend someone else. We don't want them to get mad and leave the church. We don't want to break our relationship with them, if we happen to have strong feelings that are different than theirs. And if disagreement or conflict do emerge, we somehow think we have failed and we try to fix it but getting everyone to agree or sweep it back under the carpet as quickly as possible so that we can "maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
But unity is not uniformity. Let me say that again: unity is not uniformity! Just as we need eyes and ears and mouths and hands and feet and hearts and lungs and all the other DIFFERENT parts of the body to make one healthy body, so too there must be many different points of view, ideas, and ways to do things if we are to have a healthy body of Christ. A hand is connected to the head just as much as an eye. But they function differently. So it is possible for us to all still be very much connected to Christ, open to the Spirit, and faithful to God's vision for our lives and have radically different points of view on any given topic.
As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered a powerful book written by M. Scott Peck, titled Different Drum: Peacemaking and Community. In it he talks about what he has identified as four stages that are part of becoming a true and authentic community. He names these:
Pseudocommunity
Chaos
Emptiness
Community
Talking about Pseudocommunity, Peck writes:
[Pseudocommunity] is an unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict.
Now it's not too surprising that groups of people who want to be a community seek to stay at this stage of conflict avoidance, because, according to Peck,
"Once individual differences are not only allowed but encouraged to surface in some way, the group almost always moves into the second stage.... Chaos. ... [here] individual differences are ... right out in the open. Only now instead of trying to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them."
This happens as people try to heal, convert or change one another. But to quote another of Paul's letters "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?" [I Corinthians 12:17]
If it is to become a true authentic community -one that reflects the love and healing power of God in all we do and say- then each one must stop trying to heal, convert, change and transform others into their own way of being, thinking, believing, and acting. Each one must speak their own truth "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love" [Ephesians 4:2] But equally as important, each one must listen to others with the same humility and gentleness, the same patience and the same intention to carry one another in love. This is what Peck calls the stage of Emptiness, because in order to enter this stage each person must empty themselves of those things that make honest communication impossible; things like our expectations and preconceptions as well as our prejudices, ideologies, theologies and solutions to the problem. We must also let go of the need to heal, convert, and fix other people as well as the need to be in control. In other words we must be able to honestly and reverently accept one another in all our amazing differences, sometimes living with ambiguity and tension, but always bearing each other in love. It is only when such emptiness exists that
C:\Documents and Settings\ROBERT TAYLOR\CHURCH\Sermons\08-06-06 eph 4-1-7-11-17.docLast printed 9/10/2006 8:24:00
AM - 3 -
people come to know and express their true and authentic selves with both their beauty and their brokenness.
Then and only then will we live our way into true life-giving, life-enhancing, life-affirming community. It will be a safe place, because we know that whether we happen to agree or disagree, we will be treated with genuine love and respect. It will be a safe place because we know that each part of the body is committed to hang in there through thick and thin, learning together and growing together and discovering truth beyond our individual points of view as each listens deeply to others and to the Spirit. It is no wonder that such community is such a rare and precious gift.
Each week as we close our worship celebration we affirm our belief that Christ calls us to be a community "where all are welcome to join together to grow in faith and love." So whether it is a conversation about politics or what color to paint the fellowship hall, it is my prayer that we will live into that call by speaking, with love, what is true for us and then listening with an equal measure of love to honestly hear the ideas and concerns of the other parts of this body. Then perhaps instead of dodging the question, I will dare to say, "Yes, I'm a democrat," and then proceed to explain why I make that choice, even as I proceed to say, "So, tell me why you choose to be a republican."
May we each dare to agree and disagree in love and take one more step toward becoming the true community Christ calls us to become. Amen.
Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love
Ephesians 4:1-6 & 14-16
As you know I have been at Pilgrim Park Camp for the past week with our five confirmation youth and 39 other seventh and eighth graders from throughout the Illinois conference. It was a wonderful, exciting, challenging, exhausting experience as we came together, studied together, played together, learned together and grew into a community -a microcosm of the whole body of Christ.
As part of the camp experience the youth have classes in Bible, Church History, Worship and Christian Living. In many and various ways in each of those classes they explored the way in which people of faith are called to celebrate their own uniqueness and be willing to take a stand for what they believe. We talked a lot about our individual uniqueness and the gifts we each bring to the table as the body of Christ both in the church and in the world. A line in the closing song we sang each night captures this: "Don't be afraid to know who you are and don't be afraid to show it." Now, those of you who hear me preach on a regular basis know that these are concepts that I absolutely believe and about which I talk a great deal.
Each evening as we gathered in our church groups to process the day, I asked our girls to share one or two things they learned that day. One night one of the girls talked about an exercise they did in their Christian Living class called "Here I Stand." In this experience the leader read various statements and then invited the youth to place themselves someplace on a continuum anywhere based on whether they strongly agreed, strongly disagreed or something in between. They were then asked to say why they were standing where they were standing. They were not to try to convince others to change their minds; they were simply to state why they were standing where they were. People were, however, given the chance to move if they choose to do so after hearing with honesty and humility what others had to say. These were not simple easy questions the youth were given to discuss, but questions that pushed the youth to think about some moral and ethical dilemmas we face on a regular basis. It was a powerful time. Then she said, "I was upset when learned that I'm about the only Republican in my tribe. Everybody else seems to be a Democrat." Then she turned directly to me and said, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?"
Caught completely off guard and having been completely indoctrinated with a taboo against talking about politics in church, I said, "That's not a question I usually answer."
To which she responded, "O, you must be a democrat then."
We went on to talk about the right and responsibility for everyone to be who they are and form their ideas and identities according to their best understanding of the gospel message and the spirit's leading. But, I never did answer her question!
As I thought about it later, I thought, isn't it interesting that I plan to preach about the absolute necessity of being willing to disagree in love, if we are to become the whole people of God we are created to be and I can't even honestly respond to the question, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?"
As I thought about my response, I it occurred to me that throughout the years at least some parts of the church have heard words such as those in today's reading from Ephesians which say, "make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," and have concluded that the best way to do that is to simply avoid talking about the places where
C:\Documents and Settings\ROBERT TAYLOR\CHURCH\Sermons\08-06-06 eph 4-1-7-11-17.docLast printed 9/10/2006 8:24:00
AM - 2 -
we might disagree. It doesn't, of course mean that we agree, we just avoid being honest about what we think or feel or believe because we don't want to offend someone else. We don't want them to get mad and leave the church. We don't want to break our relationship with them, if we happen to have strong feelings that are different than theirs. And if disagreement or conflict do emerge, we somehow think we have failed and we try to fix it but getting everyone to agree or sweep it back under the carpet as quickly as possible so that we can "maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
But unity is not uniformity. Let me say that again: unity is not uniformity! Just as we need eyes and ears and mouths and hands and feet and hearts and lungs and all the other DIFFERENT parts of the body to make one healthy body, so too there must be many different points of view, ideas, and ways to do things if we are to have a healthy body of Christ. A hand is connected to the head just as much as an eye. But they function differently. So it is possible for us to all still be very much connected to Christ, open to the Spirit, and faithful to God's vision for our lives and have radically different points of view on any given topic.
As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered a powerful book written by M. Scott Peck, titled Different Drum: Peacemaking and Community. In it he talks about what he has identified as four stages that are part of becoming a true and authentic community. He names these:
Pseudocommunity
Chaos
Emptiness
Community
Talking about Pseudocommunity, Peck writes:
[Pseudocommunity] is an unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict.
Now it's not too surprising that groups of people who want to be a community seek to stay at this stage of conflict avoidance, because, according to Peck,
"Once individual differences are not only allowed but encouraged to surface in some way, the group almost always moves into the second stage.... Chaos. ... [here] individual differences are ... right out in the open. Only now instead of trying to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them."
This happens as people try to heal, convert or change one another. But to quote another of Paul's letters "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?" [I Corinthians 12:17]
If it is to become a true authentic community -one that reflects the love and healing power of God in all we do and say- then each one must stop trying to heal, convert, change and transform others into their own way of being, thinking, believing, and acting. Each one must speak their own truth "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love" [Ephesians 4:2] But equally as important, each one must listen to others with the same humility and gentleness, the same patience and the same intention to carry one another in love. This is what Peck calls the stage of Emptiness, because in order to enter this stage each person must empty themselves of those things that make honest communication impossible; things like our expectations and preconceptions as well as our prejudices, ideologies, theologies and solutions to the problem. We must also let go of the need to heal, convert, and fix other people as well as the need to be in control. In other words we must be able to honestly and reverently accept one another in all our amazing differences, sometimes living with ambiguity and tension, but always bearing each other in love. It is only when such emptiness exists that
C:\Documents and Settings\ROBERT TAYLOR\CHURCH\Sermons\08-06-06 eph 4-1-7-11-17.docLast printed 9/10/2006 8:24:00
AM - 3 -
people come to know and express their true and authentic selves with both their beauty and their brokenness.
Then and only then will we live our way into true life-giving, life-enhancing, life-affirming community. It will be a safe place, because we know that whether we happen to agree or disagree, we will be treated with genuine love and respect. It will be a safe place because we know that each part of the body is committed to hang in there through thick and thin, learning together and growing together and discovering truth beyond our individual points of view as each listens deeply to others and to the Spirit. It is no wonder that such community is such a rare and precious gift.
Each week as we close our worship celebration we affirm our belief that Christ calls us to be a community "where all are welcome to join together to grow in faith and love." So whether it is a conversation about politics or what color to paint the fellowship hall, it is my prayer that we will live into that call by speaking, with love, what is true for us and then listening with an equal measure of love to honestly hear the ideas and concerns of the other parts of this body. Then perhaps instead of dodging the question, I will dare to say, "Yes, I'm a democrat," and then proceed to explain why I make that choice, even as I proceed to say, "So, tell me why you choose to be a republican."
May we each dare to agree and disagree in love and take one more step toward becoming the true community Christ calls us to become. Amen.
