“The Other Side of Christian”
Matthew 7:1-5
Rev. Tom Harris
November 22, 2009
Over the past six weeks I have suggested how an ideal Christian might give. A Christian, I have said, gives with copious amount of faith in order to love all people. A Christian gives first to the church because she trusts the church community to use that money wisely be it for the Pastor's salary, supporting the homeless or solid gold chalice and pitcher set for Communion. A Christian gives to the church a generous percentage of his income; at least 10 percent. A Christian gives time and talent to the church while honoring time with family and caring for self. A Christian gives the Good News of God's love to all people through the way she lives and things she says. A Christian gives love and devotion whether he is mowing the lawn, driving in rush hour or writing that generous check to the church.
It would be reasonable after hearing those six weeks of sermon to think "I can’t do all that so I guess I can't be a Christian." Even though I did try to be clear that this was an idealized image of a Christian, an ideal we should strive for, but most of us would not attain, it would be very possible to feel discouraged about our less than perfect walk. So today I want describe Christians in another way; the other side of Christians.
So, in addition to all those virtuous qualities a Christian is also a person filled with fear and doubt about God and the church and its ministry. A Christian also gives stingily out of guilt and obligation. A Christian gives a tiny percentage of her income to the church, the smallest of the bills that happen to be in her wallet. He only comes to church on Sunday morning and expects in return amazing music, inspiring sermons, well kept building and grounds and everyone to love him and praise him for simply being present. A Christian is over committed, spread too thin among volunteer work, bitter and angry because his commitments cause him to neglect self and family. A Christian communicates to the world through words and actions that God is spiteful, vengeful and small minded. A Christian gives venom and meanness whether she is mowing the lawn, driving in rush hour traffic or writing a check to the church.
And while we are at it, a Church ideally is supposed to be a loving, caring, grace filled, inclusive community of faith that challenges its members to live holy lives while gently nurturing them every step of the way. And sometimes churches are. But, churches in general are also places the have political intrigue, gossip, pettiness, meanness, prejudice, discrimination, generous helpings of passive aggression and lots of dysfunction. Because in fact, a Christian looks a lot like everyone else in the world and sometimes looks even worse, that’s why they are in church and a church looks a lot like any other organization and sometimes worse because its filled with Christians.
There is a parable that is one my favorites for expressing the challenge of being a Christian and being a church. It is written by a man named Theodore Wedel and I don't know anything about him. It goes like this:
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and their money and their effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
Now some of the members of the lifesaving station became unhappy, in time, however, because the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable, suitable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. And so they replaced the emergency cots with beds, and they put better furniture in the now enlarged building, so that now the lifesaving station actually became a popular gathering place for its members. They took great care in decorating it beautifully and furnishing it exquisitely, for they found new uses for it in the context of a sort of club. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, and so they hired lifesaving crews to do this work on their behalf, and in their stead. Now, don’t misunderstand, the lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decoration and symbols — there was a liturgical lifeboat (symbolic rather than fully functional) in the room where the club initiations were held, for example — so the changes did not necessarily mean that the original purposes were totally lost.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold and wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty people and they were sick people, some of them had different colored skin. The beautiful new club, as you might imagine, was thrown into chaos, so that the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where these recent victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside the main clubhouse.
At the very next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities for being so unpleasant, as well as for being a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose, pointing out that, indeed, they were still called a lifesaving station. But these few were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. And so, they did just that.
Now as the years passed, the new station down the coast came to experience the very same changes that had occurred in the older, initial station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station had to be founded to restore the original purpose.
Well, history continued to repeat itself, so that if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a great number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!”
This story is often interpreted in terms of saving people spiritually through evangelism, but I think it is just as easy to think about the life saving activities of sheltering the homeless or feeding the hungry or serving the mentally ill. And, it is easy to hear that this parable is condemning the way many churches and christians operate. But, personally, having served in many Presbyterian churches that are to varying degrees social clubs I am more sympathetic. I am sympathetic to the people who come and want to be a part of the good work but might not be ready to get their hands dirty; to go out in the life boat in dangerous seas. I'm sympathetic to the people who want to support the work monetarily and be with other people socially who support same the cause. It was not in the story, but I am sympathetic to people who just want their children to learn life saving activities and that is why they come. And having been on Presbytery Sessions for over ten years I'm sympathetic to the debate about whether life saving activities interfere with the normal function of the church.
If I could rewrite the story I would also add a worship component to the original life saving station. I think those initial life savers must have needed a spiritual inspiration and daily community worship in order to risk their lives going out each day to save others. I think that their worship services that were so grounded in real life saving activity were probably very attractive to people who just wanted some inspiration in their lives from week to week but like those who wanted a social club, the spiritual people also did not want to risk their lives in the life boats. The whole process described in this parable seems understandable and natural and reasonable.
We are as Christian and as a church a mess. We are so far from perfect that we can't even really judge how far we have to go. We don’t live up to our ideals. But, we are still Christians and we are still a church because at the center of our individual and common lives is Christ. We come together and lift up that within us that is good and even perfect. We come together and lift up that within us that is a light to others and so much greater than the sum of our shortcomings. We must acknowledge that we are the broken vessels. We are dirty, cracked brittle vessels that hold the light of Christ. The artist Leonard Cohen offers these lyrics from the song “Anthem” : “You can add up the parts but won’t have the sum, You can strike up the march, there is no drum, every heart, every heart to love will come, but like a refugee. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything thing. That’s how the light gets through.” So if we can acknowledge both the light and the cracks then we can make progress together. If we can acknowledge the greatness of Christ's Perfect love and the weakness of our church and our individual members then we have the potential for progress. The twelve step tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous says “we claim spiritual progress not spiritual perfection.”
We should make the same claim in the church. We have a long way to go, but together we have within us and among us the reality of perfect love and brilliant light. And if we keep moving forward together as a community of broken people learning from our mistakes, we can still save a lot of lives including our own. Amen.
