Power lines

Luke 18: 9-14
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 23, 2016

           

         Nadia Bolz-Weber, pastor of the Lutheran church House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, CO, tells the story of when the so-called bad element started showing up at her church. She titled the chapter in her book, “The Wrong Kind of Different”. The mission church was still in its modest beginnings, with 45 being the highest number in attendance on any given Sunday evening. But growth in numbers was sluggish. Then she preached at Red Rocks amphitheater and the Denver Post did a cover story. Nadia thought, great—this will really get the word out about us.

            The church doubled in size the week after the news article.  Nadia knew some folks would show up just out of curiosity to see what this church was all about.  What she didn’t expect was these curious people would not only stick around, but they also wouldn’t look like everyone else at church.

            You see, this church was started for the disenfranchised, for those who had been hurt by church, edgy folks, tattooed, gay, transgendered, artsy, quirky, people on the margins who really didn’t fit in anywhere but at this church.  The folks who came to worship the Sunday after the news article were people who read an actual newspaper rather than on the internet or listen to NPR.  They looked like so much middle class and lived in the suburbs and wore slacks and loafers.  It was like they were church tourists coming to check out the hip church because they couldn’t be cool and real in their own space.  Ugh!  Who were these people and why were they at our church, Nadia groused.  She resolved to set up a meeting with the church to talk about the “sudden demographic changes”.  She thought if they could just communicate to these new people what the church was really all about, they would go away on their own—wake up to the reality that this wasn’t the church for them.  

            Of course, the Holy Spirit being who She is, wasn’t content to just leave it that way.  A few days before the meeting, Nadia called a colleague who pastors a church in St. Paul, with a similar background and beginnings, but with about a 10 year head start on the House for All Sinners and Saints.  Nadia asked her friend if they had ever felt co-opted, homogenized, and described in detail the bloodless coup of soccer moms and bankers.

            Her colleague came right back at her:  “Yeah, that sucks.  You guys are really good at ‘welcoming the stranger’ when it’s a young transgender person.  But sometimes ‘the stranger’ looks like your mom and dad.”

            And so at that church meeting, one by one, these middle class church tourists spoke up about how they felt like they could be themselves at this church, even when they felt broken; that something real happened in the liturgy, in the prayers, in the Eucharist.  Then came the transcendent moment that we church types live for:  the young transgendered kid who had been welcomed with open arms said that they were glad there were now people at church that looked like their mom and dad, because they can have a relationship with these folks that they can’t have with their own mom and dad.

            “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

            How many of us have been hurt by church?  Many of us have.  But what about when church has the same lines of division that have hurt us outside the church?  The church is called to be the place where the lines dissolve and disappear.  Not the healthy boundaries, not the ways of self-care, but the lines that divide us, separate us from one another, that say “I am not like you; if you would only be like me”, the lines that hurt and wound.

            “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

            Let’s do an exercise together.  Take the skin that is between your thumb and forefinger, that web of flesh.  Squeeze it between the fingernails of your thumb and forefinger of your other hand, and pinch it hard for three seconds.  One, two, three.  Now release.  Is the pain still there?  Count how long it takes for the pain to ebb away.

            Let’s do the same exercise again, but this time I want you to gently massage the sore spot as soon as you release.  One, two, three.  Now release and caress that sore spot.  How quickly did the pain ease?  Almost instantly for some of us.

            To the brain and the body and the soul, pain is pain, whether it is physical or emotional or spiritual.  When we experience pain in the church, when we feel separate from others, when lines are drawn between us and others, when those lines are like trip wires, many of us probably left that church that caused us pain.  Yet we can still carry that pain, that trauma with us even as we find, even as we form a new church, one that will not be painful but healing; not conflicted but joy-filled community.

            In truth, we’ve all experienced trauma of one sort or another.  We all know the pain of feeling separate from others, sometimes from our own actions, sometimes from the actions and behavior of others or most likely a combination of both.  The pain we carry inside us finds its way into our decisions, our behavior, how we interact with others, how we feel about ourselves.  On any given day there are those among us who can convince ourselves that no one would love us if they knew the truth about us.  How many of us feel like it’s a skimmed-down version of us that’s loved and not the whole package?  How many of us feel that way at church?

            “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

            And yet the church is supposed to be the place, the people where we can be our whole selves—our flaws, our uniqueness, our quirks, our need for control, our propensity to procrastinate, our beauty and our pain, who we were, who we are now, who we might become.  The things we’ve done wrong, the things we’ve done well, the things we haven’t even attempted.  Our fears and our hopes, our desires and our needs, and those of everyone else, and Jesus calls us to somehow make community out of that.  How?  With that gentle caress called kindness, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, healing, love.

            The Church can be fond of saying that we need to see Jesus in the eyes of everyone we meet, which isn’t easy most days.  You know what’s harder?  Seeing ourselves in someone else’s eyes.  It’s not hard when we’re falling in love or making a new friend.  But what about that poor sinner over there or that person who’s really getting under our skin or that relative or friend who’s voting for someone we would never vote for or the actual candidate or the street alcoholic or drug addict or the one who’s disappointed us one too many times?  Henri Nouwen said that community is that place where the person you least want to be with always is, but did we ever consider that someone else could be thinking that saying refers to us?  Give me Jesus any day.

            “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

            The only lines we really need to be concerned about are the ones that connect us to each other, like heartstrings, lifelines, a web, a safety net.  Not just lines of communication but lines of care, lines of forgiveness, lines elastic enough to make room for others, lines powerful enough to not only heal ourselves but those around us. 

            You know how we get better?  It’s not by choosing or deciding to be better or by being told we need to get better.  Not really.  We get better when we know we are surrounded by unconditional love, by that web of kindness, by knowing we can trust our community, that we can face ourselves, confess who we are, and receive forgiveness.  We get better when we are needed and challenged to do the same for others, to be their soft place to land.  We get better when we know we’re all in the same boat, this New Ark.

            “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Amen.