Scripture: Matthew 21:33-46
Today is World Communion Sunday, and as I think about World Communion, I am humbled.
World Communion began back in the 1930’s when the Presbyterians set aside a day when they encouraged all their churches to express their underlying unity by observing communion on a certain Sunday, symbolically coming to the communion table together regardless of differences. It then spread to other denominations and then to the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, and has been for fifty years and more a symbolic way of expressing Christian unity, or at least the desire, or the hope, or the prayer for Christian unity.
There are some problems with this. For one thing World Communion is an imperfect vehicle to express Christian unity. It is not inclusive. Christians disagree not only on what you should call it—communion, Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, mass—not only on how often you should do it (every Sunday, once a month, once a year)—but whether there should be such a thing. At least two Christian groups I can think of do not celebrate communion: Quakers and the Salvation Army. Furthermore, some Christian groups do not participate in World Communion, refuse to participate, because it is associated with the World Council of Churches, thus underlining how divided Christians are and how hard it is for Christians to agree on even a small gesture of unity. There are, to say the least some ironies about the observance of world communion.
Then there is the question of whether the idea of Christian unity is even relevant to our world. While in the real world Christian unity is about as distant a dream as world peace, at least world peace is a dream worth having. Christian unity on the other hand is something that has a bit of the flavor of trying to drag Christians kicking and screaming into the 19th century. It may be an idea which if it ever had a time, that time has passed. The world is not waiting with baited breath, nor does the world need, for Methodists and Baptists to resolve their differences, or even for Protestants and Catholics to resolve theirs. The world does not need Christian unity in that sense. What the world does need, desperately so, is for there to be unity between Christians and people of other faiths, large or small, local or global. To strive at this point merely for Christian unity seems strangely and eerily and dangerously beside the point.
So yes, I have some problems with world communion, but if I feel myself getting cynical about it, or in any way hostile or critical, I have to check myself because I know that is not really what I feel. What I feel more deeply, more honestly, both because of the inherent ironies and failings of world communion and because of the good parts of it—what I feel more honestly is, as I say, humbled.
At the simplest level, world communion makes me think of the world-wide community of Christians, and I am humbled by how little I know of Christian communities in other parts of the world, this in spite of the fact that I hardly ever read churchy books by dead, white, straight (or at least not “out”), European or North American male theologians any more, and have done a modest amount of travel that has involved contact with Christian communities in other parts of the world. It’s one of those things where the more you try to learn, the more you become aware of what you don’t know. So I am humbled by my ignorance of sister and brother Christians and humbled by how small a part of the big picture Sojourners is, even though it is a huge part of my life. I find it easy to be appreciative of Sojourners. I find I am less appreciative of the Christian church in other places, and I know I need to be more so.
In connection with that I am humbled by the everyday courage and commitment and faithfulness of Christians in other places, humbled not only by my lack of knowledge but by my relative comfort in being a Christian. It is not hard for me to go about being a Christian in the way I am choosing to do it. It is certainly not dangerous. I am able to do what I do well within the bounds of what is safe. For many that is not so. For many it is not safe even to be a Christian. For many more doing what God has called them to do or what their faith or love requires puts them in jeopardy. I am pretty willing to see and to speak about ways in Christianity has failed, ways it has been unloving to people within the church, unjust to people outside the church. I am more than willing to talk about ways in which the Christian church and the Christian faith have been harmful and destructive. We can only begin to change by naming what needs to be changed. But there are also people all over the world inspired by the Christian faith and part of the Christian church who are doing brave and good deeds every day, doing them selflessly and at great risk or sacrifice. They will never be elevated to sainthood. They will never have books written about them or receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Only a few people know their names and fewer still will remember them. I have met a few such people, enough to know that there are many more whose faith humbles me.
Notice I do not say it makes me feel guilty. That’s something else again. It just humbles me. It reminds me of all those who live their faith at greater risk and at greater cost to their comfort and safety than I do. And the other side of that is that I know I am part of that Christian church that I am sometimes critical of. I remember years ago reading a speech that the French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus gave to a group of Christians. Camus was not a Christian. He was quite outspoken about his non-Christianity. But when asked what he as a non-Christian would say to Christians, he said that he would continue to respect people who believed what he could not believe, but that he dared to expect from Christians that they would raise their voice on behalf of suffering human beings and that if the Christian church could raise a unified voice on behalf of human beings, the world would instantly be a better place.
I’ve always remembered that challenge that Camus threw out to a gathered group of clergy somewhere—not the exact words, but the gist of them. It is, for me, a serious indictment of the Christian church that it seems to fall so often into arguing about, let’s say, who gets to go to heaven and what you have to do to get there, or what words best describe Christian belief, or what the right form of baptism is, or what the right form of church governance is, and the voices that are raised on behalf of suffering human beings—and there are those voices—get lost somehow, or at least diluted. The Christian church does not come close to offering a unified voice on behalf of suffering humanity. But when I say that I’m not talking about the Christian church “out there”. The Christian church I say that about includes me. I can bemoan the fact that the Christian church is not and never will be unified in the way I would like to see it, but the real issue is not what others are saying or not saying, doing or not doing, what others seem to be concerned about or not concerned about. The real issue is what I am saying or doing and what occupies my thoughts and my dreams. And I am reminded again not of all the failings of the Christian church, but of the ways in which my voice and my actions need to be clearer and stronger.
Once again, this is not a matter of feeling guilty. It’s not a matter of beating myself up and saying to myself what a lackluster Christian I am. It’s a matter of recognizing that I do not stand in a place where I can assume that the challenges of an Albert Camus are directed at other Christians. It’s a matter of trying to recognize honestly who we are and where we stand and not making too many claims on behalf of our faith or our particular version of faith or our particular self.
The scripture reading from Matthew actually has something do with these thoughts that I’ve been having in relation to world communion. You heard that it was a parable Jesus told about a vineyard that had been leased to certain tenants and they didn’t tend it very well so that when the owner sent back emissaries to check on things, they didn’t have a lot to show, and in fact when the owner sent his own son, they killed him. And so, it is said, the owner will punish these people and put others in charge.
Now this not-very-nice parable has most often been interpreted as referring to the Jewish people, how they were given a chance to be the chosen people but they failed and even killed God’s son, and therefore the role of being God’s chosen will be taken over by Christians. I am sorry to say that has been the interpretation of the parable. Some people say this is a story that was produced by an early Christian community that wanted to distinguish itself from and show itself to be superior to Judaism. And some Christians have picked up that message and preached it, that Christianity is in some way superior to Judaism. It is a passage unfortunately that lends itself to anti-Jewish interpretations.
And so often when I deal with this passage and others like it, I feel the need to say first off that that meaning of this passage needs to be rejected, even if that’s what the early Christian community wanted us to get from it. And I do believe that that’s important for us to do: when there is a passage that can be and has been used for anti-Semitic purposes, or in any way to put down other religions and proclaim the “bestness” of Christianity, that we confront that reality and dissociate ourselves from that message. It’s important to be clear about that, that we do not come together here to proclaim our faith to be the best or the truest.
But it’s also important not to stop with a reading we find objectionable and be content with denouncing a message we find objectionable, all of which has its own flavor of being self-justifying. It’s good to be clear what we are not going to claim. It’s good for me to be clear that the Christian church needs to be cleansed of anti-Semitism in any form. It’s good for me to be clear that Christianity is not about claiming itself to be superior to other religions. It’s also good for me to hear the scripture addressed to me in more ways than just those. What if the vineyard is the whole earth, and what if the earth belongs to God, and what if it is God’s dream that the earth be transformed into some unimaginably beautiful and sacred and peaceful place, and what if God has left me as one of 6 billion tenants in charge of nurturing this world along toward what God dreams for it? Am I happy with my role in that? Guilty about it? Humbled by the task and what I have done and what I am able to do? A brief, possibly objectionable passage from scripture, can, if I stick with it, lead me to a complete re-examination of my inner and my outer life.
Which brings me to the question of what all this has to do with Christian education, which you may have noticed the title of the sermon suggested I was going to talk about. And one answer to what this all has to do with Christian education is: “a lot less than I thought when I came up with the title of the sermon”. But actually there is some connection to everything I have been saying.
I probably should say just a few words about why there is a sermon called “What About Christian Education?” Just quickly, there was a discussion in the worship committee about how we might envision worship for the fall, and there was a general consensus that after the This Far By Faith celebration, it would be natural and important for us to turn to the future and ask ourselves, together, what next? We agreed that there were certain areas of our church life that deserved our prayerful attention, and that it would be appropriate to bring all this to the worship context, because it is not just business but involves our values and commitments as a community. Obviously Christian education—for all ages—is one of those areas that it might important to be prayerful about, and I agreed, as a starter, to preach about that this morning—without, of course, knowing what kind of a sermon that would produce.
As it happened, my thoughts were directed more by world communion, but what I was trying to say as I tried to put those thoughts into words actually does have something to do with Christian education, I think.
This is not the kind of thought that has to do with whether to have one large class for the kids or two or what we might get an adult study group going around. It is the kind of thought that makes me even question the term Christian education.
This is not an original thought. There are many people these days who prefer to talk not so much of Christian education but of Christian formation. They do that because education implies, too often, an activity in which people sit in classrooms, engage in left brain activity, gather information, learn things, forget most of it, think up topics to study or discuss, try to sustain interest in some subject matter, eventually fail, go on to something else.
As I started into this sermon, I realized I wasn’t interested in talking about Christian education, because what concerns me about we do in our life here at Sojourners, and what concerns me about myself, is not the question of Christian education, but of Christian formation. If formation refers to the shaping of our person, it not something we can choose to do or not do. It is happening regardless. We can choose to be careless about it and unaware. We can choose to be shaped by others. Or we can at least ask the question of what it would mean to be shaped by God, or to shape ourselves somehow into being a Christian.
As I was all involved in being humbled by world communion, for instance by the gaps in my global knowledge and our common failure to bridge the gaps between religions cultures, I realized that it’s not just that I still have so much to learn about the world around me, but that there is so much to explore in my own faith formation. I have a task to continue to extend my horizons and my awareness of the world around me. I also have a task to go deeper into my own faith, which for worse and for better, is Christian. My own Christian formation has a long ways yet to go. I am hoping it is what we can be about as a community. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 6, 2002
Language is more than the sound of words. It is the experience of the people that brings words into being. The versions of the Lord’s Prayer we are about to hear are all in English, but in a very real sense they are in different languages.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Eternal Spirit: Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
source of all that is and all that shall be,
Mother and Father to us all,
creation resonates with celebration of your nameless name.
Let justice and mercy flood the earth;
let all creation harmonize in your imagination;
and let us recognize
that every thought and thing belongs to you.
With the bread we need for today, feed us;
in the hurts we absorb from each other, heal us;
in times of test and temptation, stand with us;
from the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you create our universe, and keep all that is in it, now and forever. Amen.
(Maori, New Zealand)
O Great Spirit, You are our Shepherd Chief in the most high place,
Whose home is everywhere, even beyond the stars and the moon.
Whatever you want done, let it be done everywhere.
Give us Your gift of bread day by day.
Forgive us our wrongs, as we forgive those who wrong us.
Take us away from wrong doings.
Free us from all evil.
For everything belongs to You.
Let Your power and glory shine forever. Amen.
(Native American, Nez Perce, U.S.A.)
Holy God, who is in this land, may your name be blessed
In our incessant search for justice and peace.
May your kingdom come for those who have for centuries awaited life with dignity.
May your will be done on earth and in heaven, and in the church of Central America where the poor are honored.
Give us today the bread we need to build a new society.
Forgive us our trespasses; do not let us fall into the temptation of believing ourselves to be already new men and women.
And deliver us from the evil of war, and from the evil of forgetting that our lives and the life of our country and the life of this world are in your hands. Amen.
(Nicaragua)
Our Father who is in heaven, between gulls and warplanes,
We want you to return before you forget how to get to this earth,
So you can dance in a ring and not play hide and seek.
Our Mother, who is in the fields, help us when we are carrying water and cannot go on.
Mother of so many orphans, of beggars for food and shelter…
Who is in the cold night, hear our prayers that are mixed with crying.
May your kingdom come,
Your kingdom where I dream freely and receive love and have friends,
The kingdom you said was for the little ones.
May your kingdom simply come. Amen.
(Ecuador)