God's Purpose for the Church - January 31, 2016

So for the last year, this congregation has been working at discerning what God’s plan is for St. John. We’ve been trying to figure out, what is God’s purpose for us? And I’ve been talking with Council, and talking with the shut-ins, and hearing your stories about St. John and listening to your memories of times when the congregation was thriving––full to capacity, overflowing, even––and stories about this pastor and that pastor, and I’ve even been hearing stories from people in other congregations in Calgary, who started at St. John and then moved to those congregations to help them get going. And it’s become clear to me that God’s purpose for St John in the past was to be a nurturing community that sent individuals out to strengthen Calgary’s other Lutheran churches. At St. John, this was done through Sunday school programs, and church services, and Luther League events, and a lot of social community-building. And this is the story for many big-city congregations that are as old as St. John.

But when it comes to figuring out what God’s purpose for a church is, sometimes we end up confusing the means for fulfilling God’s purpose for us with the end, or the actual purpose. And by ‘we’ I mean Christians in general. Congregations get confused into thinking that our programs and our filled pews and our overflowing bank accounts are the purpose of the church. Congregations spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on church programs, and church consultants, and growth initiatives that are meant to bring people in the door. The purpose of the church becomes one of self-growth and of sustaining the congregation. And then, over time, we start thinking that God’s purpose for our life as a congregation is to continue to exist for a hundred years or even more. And then, as resources dwindle, we start thinking that God’s purpose for congregations––for Christian communities––is that we simply exist. That merely surviving is fulfilling God’s purpose for us. That managing to meet the budget every year is fulfilling. That simply gathering to worship on Sundays is fulfilling God’s purpose for us.

But programs and budgets and Sunday School and youth groups and even buildings are all meant to be tools to help the church to fulfill its actual purpose. And that purpose is clearly laid out for us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that we heard this morning. The purpose of the Christian community is to love. As Paul says, “If I do not have love, I am nothing.” If we do not have love, we are nothing. We may have flashy programs and filled pews, and balanced budgets, and we maybe be able to carry on for the next fifty years, but if we do not have love, we have nothing.

Now “love” is a pretty loaded word. It’s a shame that in English we only have one word for love, because there are lots of different kinds of love. The love you have for your spouse is different than the love you have for your children, which is different than the love you have for your country, or the love you have for chocolate, and definitely different than the love you have for God. So which kind of love is Paul talking about in this passage? Which kind of love is it that fulfills us and gives purpose to our lives?

Well, we’re lucky that Greek has different words for love. There’s philos, which means a brotherly or sisterly kind of love––the love you have between equals––your siblings or cousins or very close friends. There’s eros, which is a love where you want the person you love, you want them so much that you want to consume them. We often use that word to describe erotic love, but we can also use it to describe the kind of love that borders on covetousness. When you love someone or something so much it consumes your life and you, in turn, try to consume it. Like, if you’ve ever seen a tiny baby and said, “Oh, I just want to eat you up!”, that’s an example of eros love. Eros is more than what we describe as erotic love––it’s any love that is possessive––where we want to grab the object of our love and just hold it tight. If you love chocolate so much that you can’t stop eating it if it’s in front of you, that’s eros. When you fall in love, that starts as eros. It’s not a bad kind of love––the Song of Solomon is full of this love, toddlers and small children have this kind of love for their parents when they demand, “Hug me, kiss me, play with me!”––It’s not bad, but it can certainly become very unhealthy, destructive even, because, in the end, it is love for the sake of the one who is loving, and not for the sake of the one who is loved.

Then, of course, there’s agape love. Agape is a love that is entirely centered on the one that we love. It is, in a way, the opposite of eros. While eros is a love where the lover wants to consume the object of love, agape is a love where the lover gives her- or himself up completely for the sake of the loved. In agape, we give up everything––our selves, our time, and our possessions, we might say––for the betterment of the one we love. Agape is the love parents have for their children, when they encourage them to leave so they can grow and mature and have their own lives, even if it breaks our own hearts. Agape is the love that says, “I’m going to walk to the store instead of driving because it’s better for the environment.” Agape is the love that says, “I will let the other person take credit for that job because they need it more.” Agape, as Paul says in our reading, “does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Agape is patient; agape is kind; Agape is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” That is actually what it says. The “love” in 1 Corinthians is agape love, not eros love. It is a love that puts aside all thought of what I or we want, in order to make room for the other, as hard as that is. It is a completely selfless love, and it is the most difficult and painful love of all, because it runs completely contrary to our evolutionary self-preservation instincts.

And yet it is the love that God calls us to, and the love God has made us for. As Paul says so clearly, if we do not have agape, we are nothing. It’s so strange––agape is a love that calls us to give up everything we are, and yet if we do not love that way, if we hold on to everything we are, then we are nothing. God, in this funny, paradoxical twist, has made us so that we are most fulfilled, we most have life, when we live contrary to our biological imperative for self-preservation. God has made humans so that our supreme purpose in life, our moment of ultimate fulfillment comes not from securing our own life, or ensuring our own survival, but from denying it. God has made us so that our purpose in life is fulfilled when we give that life away for the sake of others. Our greatest purpose in life, our greatest meaning, comes from love––from  agape.

So what does this mean for St. John? Well, it means the same thing that it means for every congregation, actually. Paul’s words, you see, are to the church in Corinth––to the Corinthian congregation. They weren’t written to an individual. While it might certainly be read that way, the original audience of Paul’s words about agape were to a church community. And so his words are meant first for church communities––for congregations. And so Paul is saying that if the community does not have agape, it is nothing. If the community or congregation designs programs meant to bring others into itself, and focuses on budgets that support only itself, and uses resources like buildings and pastors only for itself, then the love the congregation has for the world is an eros love. A love that wants to bring others in and consume them for its own sake. The congregation does not have agape. The congregation is nothing. No matter how great the programs, how full the pews, how beautiful the building, how packed the Sunday School rooms are, if it is all for itself, it is nothing. It may be a great place to be, and lively, and a wonderful social support, but it is not fulfilling its purpose as the body of Christ––it is not church. It’s not bad, it’s just not church.

Church is different because church is agape. If we were to describe an agape congregation from with a Lutheran framework, where the community is constantly living and dying for the sake of the other, we might say that the Lutheran congregation lives in agape love for the wider conference, or city, the conference lives in agape love for the Synod, the Synod lives in agape for the National Church––in our case, the ELCIC, the ELCIC lives in agape for the global Lutheran church, or the Lutheran World Federation, the Lutheran World Federation lives in agape for the worldwide body of Christians of all denominations, and the worldwide body of all Christians lives in agape for the world. And so I have to ask––do we do this? Does this congregation or the conference or the Synod or the ELCIC or the LWF or the global church of Christians do this? Do we live in agape love? What would it look like if we did? What would it look like if every congregation and every denomination and the entire Christian body actually lived in this agape existence? What would it be like? What would it feel like to live in agape instead of in eros?

Well, if we believe the words of Paul, it would feel like we are finally and unquestioningly living out God’s purpose for us. It would feel fulfilling, and life-giving, and it would feel Christ-like. We would not wonder what God’s purpose is for us, because we would be living it, and we would feel it. We would not feel anxiety, or fear, or worry––these feelings are signs that we are living an eros existence––how will we survive? How will we make it? How will we continue to live? But if we’re living an agape existence, we don’t ask these questions or feel these feelings. Instead, we feel joy and fulfillment and freedom and peace, asking instead, how can we die for others? What do we have that we can give to the larger church? How can we give away all our possessions and hand over our body, as Paul says, for the sake of the other? How can we be Christ for the other?

Because agape is embodied most fully in Christ. We find our purpose and our fulfillment in agape, God made us to be this way, because this is how God loves us. God does not love us with an eros love, hoping to consume us. God loves us with an agape love, giving up God’s honour and power and glory in order to take on a human body and then, giving that body up for death. God brought creation into being, made humans in the image of God, capable of loving and yearning to be loved and to love in return, because God wants us to be fulfilled. God didn’t create us for God’s own enjoyment––look how much pain and sadness we have caused God throughout the centuries, killing one another, being greedy, being selfish. If God wanted to be happy, God wouldn’t have made us at all. But God did. God emptied God’s self for us, God gave us everything, God gave us God’s own self in Jesus Christ for our sake. That is agape. Living for the sake of the loved. Dying for the sake of the loved. Not so that we can now live lives of eros, but so that we in turn might know the blessing and fulfillment of living in agape. So that we, too, might have the joy and satisfaction of giving ourselves, in turn, for others.

So. What is God’s purpose for St. John? It is the same purpose given to every congregation, from the beginning of the Christian church under Paul until the very last day. To love. Not to survive, not even to thrive, but to love. Surviving is nothing. Thriving is nothing. All that there is is love. “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” For the agape God has given to us, and in which we find our true purpose, we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Strong Unity Comes from Diversity - January 17, 2016

So, I had a sermon all ready to go on Thursday, about how God blesses us with joy, and that enjoyment and laughter are part of the Christian life, and we should never think that being sacred and holy means being serious and somber all the time. And I was going to talk about Jesus at the wedding, and how about how he made wine, which is specifically a sign of God’s kingdom and also very specifically something that you drink at a party when you want to be joyful, and so we can see the connection between God’s kingdom and God blessing us with joyfulness. It was a good sermon.

But then on Friday, some news came out of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is the worldwide body of Anglican and Episcopalian churches, similar to the Lutheran World Federation for us Lutherans. This week, the Primates of the Anglican Communion, the 38 bishops or archbishops of each of the national churches all got together, as they regularly do, to talk about various issues concerning the relationships of one Anglican church, or province, to another. This gathering does not determine policies or doctrine in the world-wide Anglican church, but it does help the various Anglican bishops come to a consensus on a wide range of issues.

At this year’s meeting, the Primates made news because during the meeting, the bishops voted that the Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican body in the United States, will no longer be permitted to represent the Anglican Communion on any ecumenical or interfaith bodies, or be allowed to vote on any issues related to doctrine or polity for a period of three years. In other words, the Episcopal Church - the American Anglicans -  are no longer considered Anglican enough to fully take part in worldwide Anglican events for the next three years.

 Now it’s hard for us at the Lutheran congregational level to understand the pain that this resolution is causing right now. But imagine you are at some family occasion, a big family reunion, for instance, and all of the oldest generation in the family gets together and decides that one particular member of the family - you, for example - and all of your children and grandchildren, no longer get to use the family’s last name in public for the next three years or help decide any of the important family matters. How would you feel about that? Most of us are pretty proud of our last name and of our family, it defines who we are, and what we value, and what the world thinks of us. Suspending us from using our last name takes away our identity, and it tells us that we’re no longer worthy to be a real part of that family. No longer allowing us to take part in family decisions relegates us to the position of children. I think you can imagine the pain that our Anglican brothers and sisters in the United States are going through right now. Imagine if someone said to us, “You don’t get to represent the Lutherans at church events anymore. You can go to the National Convention but you don’t actually get to vote.”

Now this is upsetting for two reasons. The first is that this coming week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Starting tomorrow, the day of the feast of St Peter, and until next Sunday when we celebrate St Paul, all Christians around the world have agreed to pray for the unity of the Christian church. We have agreed to recognize that we all belong to the same family - Christ’s family. So there’s some irony that the Anglican Communion, which has the most number of Christians in the world after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, wants to suspend someone from their part of the family right at the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

But it’s also upsetting in light of our New Testament reading for this week. In our reading from 1 Corinthians, we have Paul very directly telling the first Christians that God gives different gifts and assigns different activities to everyone in the church, for the common good. And he immediately follows that up with the passage for next week: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  ... Indeed the body does not consist of one member but of many. ... The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Paul argues that God very deliberately gives us different gifts, and make us different parts of the body, in order for the body as a whole to be strengthened. God gives difference for the common good, and we cannot say that we have no need of any other part.

We are constantly setting up these barriers in Christ’s body, though, and we have for centuries. The fact that there are exclusions between and within denominations is evidence that somewhere along the way we have come to believe that the unity and oneness of the body of Christ is synonymous with sameness. We somehow got this idea that if we want to live as one body, we all have to be exactly the same. We have to act the same, think the same, be the same. Somehow we ended up believing that we all need to be feet - for instance - and those who don’t want to be feet, or don’t think feet are good, or just like hands better, should not be part of the body.

But this is very clearly the opposite of what Scripture actually tells us. Paul says that God makes us different members. In the letter to the Colossians and in this same letter to the Corinthians, Paul talks about the unity of the Church as being “a perfect harmony.” Now those of you who are musicians will know that you can’t have harmony unless you have different parts. Five people singing exactly the same notes are not singing in harmony. You need different notes at the same time in order to have beautiful, perfect, harmonious music. And that’s what Paul says about unity in Christ. That it is a *harmony.* So in order for us to be a harmonious body, we have to have difference. God does not tell us to be the same, God actually blesses us with difference. It’s just that somehow, we end up thinking that *our* difference is the most important, and that everybody should be different the way we are, which means everybody really should be the same.

And this is what’s going on in the Anglican Communion right now. And it is incredibly sad to see, not the least because we are in full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada, who is a member of the Anglican Communion. They are our brothers and sisters, and it is sad when another branch of the family is acting dysfunctionally.

Now you might be wondering what it is that the Episcopal Church in the States did that was so bad that they were sidelined by the Anglican Communion. And I’ve hesitated to bring it up so far because it’s about an issue that has caused a lot of pain and division in our own Lutheran denomination in Canada, and in this congregation in particular. In 2003, the Episcopal Church - both lay people and clergy - voted to approve the ordination of Gene Robinson to the position of bishop. And Bishop Robinson happens to be gay, and was indeed married to his husband Mark at the time of his ordination. So the issue of difference around the opinion on gay marriage is at the heart of the fracture in the Anglican Communion. And I am very sensitive to the painful discussion that occurred around this same issue here in Canada not so long ago. I know that this congregation voted not to call any pastors in homosexual relationships, and not to allow same-sex marriages to take place in this sanctuary. And I think at this point that you all have guessed that I have the very opposite view. My point in bringing this up is not to open the issue back up for debate or to convince you to change your mind, but to point to how the unity of Christ continues to be possible even in the midst of this difference. Last week I mentioned that Pastor Ted Becker baptized me, and that you never know how the baptized person is going to turn out. I said that because Pastor Becker and I are on completely opposite sides of the issue of same-sex marriage, and we both know that. And yet I continue to visit him and offer him Holy Communion, and he continues to welcome it from me. The fact that we are completely different when it comes this issue does not prevent either one of us from coming together in the unity of Christ to take Holy Communion together. He has a different interpretation of the Bible than I do, as do many other Christians I know, including my grandparents whom I continue to love dearly and who love me. And, contrary to what we fear, these differences have not weakened the body of Christ. We all come to Holy Communion together, and the altar has yet to shatter into a million pieces. It is a sin of pride, actually, to think that the holy and God-given body of Christ can be weakened by something like human difference. *We,* mere humans created and redeemed and sanctified by *God,* do not have the capacity to weaken the body of Christ simply because we don’t agree.

When our Scriptures call us to unity, they are not calling us to homogeneity - to sameness. They are not calling us to be identical in thought, word, or deed. The call to unity is, instead, the call to be with one another in our differences, honouring that God has made us each individuals, and being together in the love of Christ. The call to unity is to be one body with different parts, held together because the Spirit of Christ moves us to love one another. As Paul say, “clothes yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” It’s no big feat to love people who are the same as you. The challenge comes in loving those who are different, and that’s why it is such a witness to the power of Christ and to God’s love for us that we, too, embrace difference within our midst. *That’s* why we are called to be united in the body of Christ and in the Spirit. Because we *are* different, and we are *created* different, and this love-in-difference is how Christians show the world how wonderful and glorious our God is. I do not love the Catholic members of my extended family any less because they believe differently about the ordination of women. I do not love the community of Calvary Grace any less because they do not allow women to be pastors in their church. It’s not easy for me to love them, but God calls us to live in the unity of Christ, and gives us the Holy Spirit so that we might love those who disagree with us, and claim them as part of the same family, and so I do.

The news coming from the Primates’ meeting in the Anglican Communion is important for us, in part because they are our brothers and sisters, but also because it cautions us against our own tendencies to think that differences harm the body of Christ, and because it causes us to go back to Scripture to see what God really says about difference and unity. And what we find is that God blesses us with difference and yet calls us together - to unity - in love. As we heard from Paul today, and as we celebrate in this coming week of Christian Unity, “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” For God’s incomparable graciousness and love of us in this regard, we say thanks be to God. Amen.