I want to read the first verse of our scripture from First Corinthians again, just to make sure we all keep it in mind. Paul writes, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” This is an important aspect of what the church is: the church is united.
At least, it’s supposed to be. Sadly, there are too many times when the church is not united. I say “sadly” because there’s a lot of truth in the old cliché: united, we stand; divided, we fall. When the Christian church is not united, it’s harder for us to make disciples for Jesus. It’s harder for us to do our part to bring about God’s kingdom on earth.
There’s nothing new about this, of course. It was happening in Paul’s time, too. That’s why Paul wrote about it. In fact, it actually was happening before Jesus came. The Jewish people had already split off into various groups. The biggest ones, the ones that are mentioned a lot in the Bible, are the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but there were other, smaller groups, too.
As long as Jesus was alive, the Christian church was more or less united, because they had Jesus as the ultimate authority figure to look to. As soon as Jesus died, though, things changed. A lot of people wanted someone else to look to, someone else to follow. So, as Paul writes, people started saying, “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos” or “I belong to Peter” or whatever. The church in Corinth, along with a lot of other churches, was getting split in a lot of different directions.
Paul knew a church like that was never going to work. A church that’s fighting with itself is not one people will want to be part of. A church that’s fighting with itself is not one that can do God’s will. A church that’s fighting with itself cannot truly be the church because, as we said a couple of weeks ago, the Christian church is built on love. So, as we look at the question “what is the church”, one of the things we can say is that the church is united.
We live in a society that’s not united. All you need to do to see that is turn on the news. It seems like the whole world is divided. There are terror threats all over. There are wars and threats of wars in almost every area. There are economic crises all over. There are protest marches. There are changes in how society operates and in what’s considered normal in society. All these things are dividing people all over the world.
It’s true in this country, too, of course. There are all kinds of hot political issues right now, ranging from unemployment to tax policy to government spending to military policy to capital punishment to almost everything else you can think of. There are the beginnings of riots in major cities, with the threat that those riots will spread and grow.
Almost everyone, including most Christians, has an opinion about all this stuff. That’s fine. We should have opinions. We should keep ourselves informed, so we have a solid basis for our opinions. We should take the time to study these issues and think carefully about them. Once we’ve done that, though, it’s only natural that we should have an opinion. We could hardly help it.
The thing is, though, that as Christians, we need to remember to keep our priorities in order. We need to keep our eye on the ball. I’m not saying we need to stay silent on all these issues, but we need to think about what it is we’re trying to accomplish. As Christians, we have a bigger concern than political issues. As Christians, we’re about making disciples of Jesus Christ. Getting drawn into political arguments can get in our way and keep us from doing that if we allow it to.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. I have to fight it all the time. After all, I have opinions, too. I have lots of opinions—just ask Wanda. I read and hear political things I disagree with all the time. Some of them are even said by United Methodist pastors. When I hear those things, I’m very tempted to respond. Once in a while, I give in to that temptation, but I’m always glad when I resist it.
I think Jesus showed us the way to do that in our reading from Matthew. When the Pharisees asked Jesus about whether Jewish people should pay taxes to Rome, they were asking him about a major political issue of the day. They were trying to set up a situation where Jesus had to make a choice, and either choice Jesus made would align him with one political faction against the other. They were trying to make Jesus into a political figure, rather than a religious figure.
What did Jesus do? He refused to take the bait. Not only did Jesus not take sides, he completely changed the equation. He told people to give God the things that belong to God. He refocused the question, and in doing so refocused people’s minds. He turned people’s minds away from politics and toward God. That’s where our minds need to be, too.
It’s not just political matters that can divide us, though. There are issues within the church that can divide us. You may have heard that the Presbyterian church in the United States recently ordained its first openly homosexual pastor. The Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ, and some segments of the Lutheran church have done this, too. In each of those denominations, this issue has caused deep divisions within the church. The United Methodist Church does not currently allow for ordination of homosexual clergy, but the issue has come up at general conference several times, and it will again at the next general conference next year.
Now, I’m not going to tell you what you should think about that. I’m not even going to tell you what I think about it, at least not now. That’s not the point of this message. The point of this message is that we need to remember that the Christian church is built on love.
That does not mean we always have to agree on everything. Even the apostles did not always agree on everything. What it does mean is that, when we disagree, we need to be able to disagree in a loving way. We need to be able to find ways to work together to make disciples of Jesus Christ, even when we disagree on things, and even when we consider the things we disagree on to be very important.
The thing is that sincere, honest, intelligent people, including sincere, honest, intelligent Christians, can look at the same set of facts, read the same scriptures, and understand them differently. Our ideas, our opinions, the way we look at the world is shaped by a lot of things. It’s shaped by our upbringing, it’s shaped by our experiences, it’s shaped by our friends, it’s shaped by our surroundings, it’s shaped by lots of other factors.
The way I see the world has been greatly influenced by the way my parents brought me up, by the fact that I grew up in a rural area, by the fact that I was very shy as a kid. It’s been greatly influenced by my years as a lawyer, by the community theater group I joined, by the woman I married. It’s been greatly influenced by the town in which I spent seventeen of my adult years. If I’d been born to different parents, if I’d been born in a big city, if I’d had a different career or married a different woman, I’d probably look at life a lot differently. Each of you can probably think of a set of factors like that that’s influenced your life, too.
See, people can disagree on issues, even important issues, and still be good people. They can even be good Christians. Disagreement is not only acceptable, sometimes it’s necessary. There’s an old saying that if everybody’s thinking alike, somebody’s not thinking.
We can learn things from people with whom we disagree. They can learn things from us. Every time I’m asked to pray before a church meeting, a part of my prayer is that we all feel free to express our opinions, and that we feel free to disagree with each other. We’ll only make the best decisions for the church when we do that.
There’s an important issue that this church is addressing right now. As you know, we’ve received an offer to buy the education building. Monday night, the board of trustees voted to pursue the sale of that building.
Now, the sale is not a done deal yet. This was just the first step. We’re going to have a church council meeting, and everyone is going to get a chance to voice their opinions, either at the meeting or to council members before the meeting. Whether you’re for this sale or against it, we want everyone to voice their opinions. Whatever decision is made, we want everyone to feel they got a chance to have their say.
The fact that everyone gets a chance to have their say, though, does not mean that everyone gets to have their way. That’s not possible. After we hear all the opinions, a decision has to be made. We cannot compromise, because we cannot kind of sell the building. We either have to sell it or not sell it. That means that some people are going to get what they wanted, and some are not. That’s just the way it is.
As we discuss this, though, and as we disagree sometimes, what we need to remember that the Christian church is based in love. Certainly, there are times when the loving thing to do is to disagree. There are times when the loving thing to do is to try to help someone who’s going down the wrong path, even if they don’t see that’s what they’re doing.
Even so, we need to remember who we serve and what we’re trying to accomplish. Disagreements where we get mad at each other are not loving disagreements. Disagreements where we call each other names do not bring us together in love. Disagreements where we judge someone else’s faith do not make disciples of Jesus Christ. Disagreements where we threaten to leave the church do not bring us closer to the kingdom of God.
This sermon series is about what it means to be the church. As the church starts to reach out beyond its doors, as it tries to be in ministry to this community, as it finds ways to truly be the people of God for this town, it’s inevitable that we’ll disagree about what the best way is for us to do that. That’s okay. In fact, it can be a good thing. If nobody disagreed, it might mean that nobody cared. Disagreement at least shows that people care.
When we disagree, though, we need to disagree in love. We need to say what we think, but we need to listen respectfully to what others think, too. Then, once a decision is made, we need to do whatever we can to make that decision the right one, even if it’s not what we wanted at the time.
If we can do that, then the church will stay united. Our strength will be in that unity. In that unity, we will be the people of God, and will do what God wants us to do.
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