“How very good and pleasant
it is when kindred live together in unity!”
In the words of the Psalmist
we are reminded of the joy of living lives which are found to be at peace with
one another: the joy of sharing generously one another’s existence as we were
created to do. It is the joy and peace
which God longs for us in our relationships with one another; it is why Jesus
came and lived and died and rose again that we might have peace with one
another and with God. Life in all its
fullness is life with each other and God.
Is this not a great vision of whom we are mean to be as a human race –
people who live together in unity: in joy and peace with one another
But let us not deceive ourselves
as God’s people – this is not how we have lived and it is not who we have
been. 1 John 1 verse 8 confronts us with
being people who have honesty and integrity: “If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Those men and women who
struggled with the idea of bringing the Uniting Church
On a personal level my own
experience of being a member of the people of God is a story which involves a
continual confrontation with disputes and complaints and hurtful behaviours
which have destroyed that peace and unity given to us as a gift. It has been a journey of trying to understand
why the church has fragmented and has been beset by schisms through the
centuries.
On both a grand scale and in
the smallest of congregations division and dissension undermines the
unity. And where often we as the people
involved don’t see it and we think of ourselves as good people and welcoming
congregations often outsiders that we come into contact with tell a different
story.
“How very good and pleasant
it is when kindred live together in unity!”
But how very, very bad and
unpleasant it is when kindred live in tension with one another and despite this
tension and disunity try to pretend we are something that we are not. This self deception is what has left people
labelling Christians as hypocrites and I believe our disunity and disputes have
caused many to turn away from coming to church or wanting to have anything to
do with the church.
In the first letter of John
we read, “If say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in
us.”
You know recently a person
told me that they thought they did not like my preaching – they said I was too
negative and too challenging. I actually
took the challenging bit as a complement and as for being too negative I
believe to understand grace all of us need to be more honest with ourselves
about who we are as God sees us.
We do not live in the kind of
unity that God has made for us in and through Jesus and in this we sin. We fail to love each other as we ought as
communities of faith and as individuals within those communities.
The existence of different
denominations attests to our brokenness.
The vehement attack of evangelicals against progressives and vice versa
does little for the church and its unity as we champion our particular
doctrines. We are a shattered community.
Yes, it is true to say that often
within congregations there are deep and abiding and supportive relationships –
friendships that have lasted years and in which real care and concern is
exhibited. But just as this occurs in
every congregation there are always people who feel marginalised and excluded
and more often than not there are disputes that exist between the differing
groups of friends.
We are broken people and as
much as we might want to love one another more often than not we fail. Often instead of loving each other we talk
about tolerating one another and putting up with one another. But we need to be honest in this: the gospel
of Jesus Christ does not ask us to tolerate one another it asks us to love one
another as Jesus loved us, and this means everyone in the congregation not just
our friends.
You see whilst we should see
each other as friends in the congregation we should also remember that every
one of us is to be the friend of all those who are baptised. The difference of Christian friendship is we
do not get to choose who our friends are – we have all been made one with each
other.
Now I am not so naïve as to
suggest that we are going to ever do this perfectly and given all of the
problems of the church it would be very easy to walk away from the church: to
walk away from its disputes and complaints and disunity and abuses and congregational
bickering. Goodness knows many have
already! But does walking away mean we have given up on the good news or that
we expect that the world beyond the church is any less divisive?
The counterpoint to the
negative assessment of our human condition is this: the risen Jesus came and
stood among his disciples and said peace be with you. Jesus resurrection speaks to us of a new
beginning for the whole creation and all people, a beginning grounded in God’s
peace – or shalom as it was in the Hebrew.
The ‘shalom’ of God is more
than a sense of serenity, God’s peace is about the mercy shown to us in Jesus
Christ and the reconciliation that has been won. When Jesus declares “peace be with you” to
his disciples he is really saying you are forgiven and set free and even the
face of death you can find hope.
It is why sharing the peace
as a congregation is such a meaningful act.
We admit we need God’s peace and also acknowledges that far too often we
lack that peace!
The centring in on Jesus
wounds in John’s gospel emphasise two things.
First, that Jesus resurrection was exactly this: a bodily resurrection. Second, that in his resurrection whilst a
transformation has been wrought in Jesus he stills bears the scars as reminders
of what has been.
The idea of Jesus
resurrection inspired the early Christian communities. It was a radically new way of viewing life
and death and gave hope a new direction.
Jesus’ resurrection was an anomaly for the prevailing Hebrew thought and
Greek philosophy. God was doing
something new and different and this gave people hope.
It was these things that kept
people in that early church and inspired them to share the good news – God’s
peace had been declared and a new hope, a new future was promised in Jesus
Christ.
The witness of those early
Christians described in Acts captures something of how that witness occurred: “Now
the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no
one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was
held in common.”
So it was, that from that
small band of followers, great proclamation and deeds flowed generously and
graciously into the world; the church blossomed and grew from a handful of
followers to be the dominant faith in the world. Here is the echo of Psalm 133 coming to life:
oil lavishly running down onto the beard of Aaron or the dew from Mount Hermon filling the streams with life giving water
which flowed on to the surrounding plains.
Maybe we need to reconsider
how we do things in our day and age.
Years ago I read a great book about the idea of ‘Collaborative
Consumption’. It encourage shared
ownership of items in neighbourhoods – lawn mowers, tools, even cars! It made me think of the early Christian
communities but it was not coming from within the church but from people looking
to live more sustainably.
We are being given the
opportunity to begin again to rediscover together Christ’s call upon us, to be
honest about our shortfalls but to find hope in the resurrection and so share
the good news in word and deeds. Sometimes
even I worry about what we do not have – there are too few people, and many of
those we have are not committed enough, and we need to be more contemporary in
our transmission of the gospel and… and… and…
As you hear again the word of
hope that our future is not our own, that we belong to the Lord, that his grace
is more than sufficient how does that change how you and I live. We believe in a risen Lord who declares peace
– as his people let us again discover that peace and share it with one another.
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