Brunswick Baptist Church
Sermon – 9 August 2009
Bible readings: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33;
Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35:41-51
I had an uncomfortable experience this week. Now that I am a member of the pastoral team at BBC, like every other member of the pastoral team I have to have a Professional Development Plan and a Personal Development Plan. I have to demonstrate that I continue to be involved in spiritual development, in continuing education, in self-care and care of my family. I have to have a support and accountability person with whom I meet several times each year to make sure I don’t forget about my goals and commitments. I have to sign up to abide by the Code of Ethics of the BUV. Every three years I have to start the process again by attending a PDP seminar, and it was at the end of the seminar on Thursday night that I had my uncomfortable experience.
One of the other pastoral leaders came up to me at the conclusion of the meeting and asked me what I thought about the last BUV Gathering. I immediately knew that he was talking about the reappointment of Keith Dyer as Professor of New Testament. Questions were asked in the Gathering about Keith’s support of the right of homosexual people to live in committed gay relationships. The conversation on Thursday night degenerated within a few seconds to ‘Is homosexuality a sin or isn’t it?’ and this was aimed at me as well as Keith. It was aggressive, polarised with only a yes or no answer possible, judgemental, and from my perspective ugly. I said last time I preached here that I am capable of angry and violent words – I was sorely tested on Thursday night.
The first image that came into my mind after I had cooled down was John chapter 8 – the woman caught in adultery. The religious people, the Scribes and the Pharisees, were really not interested in the moral issue of adultery and its appropriate punishment. They just wanted to get Jesus. This pastoral leader, for whose theological understanding I confess I have very little respect, was not interested in a rational conversation about the interpretation of biblical passages relating to homosexuality. He wanted to get Keith, and I suspect he wanted to get Whitley.
All through John’s Gospel Jesus copped this stuff, and it was ugly. A man is cured at the pool of Bethzatha, and they accuse him of healing on the Sabbath; he teaches about bread from heaven and the water of life, and they want to kill him; he heals a blind man and they persecute that man and his parents. There is something quite unrelenting about religious opposition to the Gospel of Jesus, the Gospel of life, the Gospel of forgiveness, the Gospel of inclusion rather than exclusion. It led to the death of Jesus on a cross, and it is alive today in the Christian world, in the Islamic world, in the Jewish world, in the Hindu world. Whenever religious institutions of any kind set dogma above humanity, whenever they demonise individuals or groups because of who they are or how they live, they stand against the God revealed in Jesus the Crucified one.
It would be as arrogant of us to set ourselves up as the ones who are right and the others wrong – we are all a strange mixture of saint and sinner, good and bad, right and wrong. But we must learn to know what we believe to be true about Jesus, and we must be unafraid to speak and act in a way that we believe to be true to the Gospel, even if it brings us into conflict with others who also claim to follow him.
The letter to the Ephesian church is all about staying true to what they have already learned about the grace of God, and not being swayed by the latest fashion in doctrine or theology or even music. It’s about having a vigorous life together where, within the community, we grapple with what it means to relate to each other, and to the world, as God’s own people. Let’s listen to the advice given to the church:
- Put away falsehood; leave your masks and pretences (pseudos) at the door. It is about avoiding deceit and pretence in our dealings with each other. This is about being true, and this, says the writer who may or may not have been the Apostle Paul, is the foundation on which the church is built. Honesty about who we are and who we are not.
- Let each one speak their truth to those near them, to their neighbours. Why? Because we are members of one body, we belong together. Paul’s favourite metaphor for the church was ‘the body of Christ’. When we pass the communion bread we do so with the words ‘the body of Christ’ – and that is not the piece of bread we are talking about, it is us. We belong together, not in the sense of a cult cut off from the rest of society, but in the sense of a group of people who have been touched by God and are called to live together in faith and in love. We need to be near to each other, and we need to speak truly to each other. An early Baptist confession of faith (17th Century) read:
the members of everie Church or Congregation ought to knowe one another, so that they may perform all the duties of love one towards another both to soule and bodie .... And therefore a church ought not to consist of such a multitude as cannot have particular knowledge one off another.
Speaking the truth to each other is not the same thing as telling each other what to do. Small, tight knit family size congregations can easily become narrow and judgemental. When you read on in Ephesians 4 you read ‘Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear’. Our speaking truth to those who are near is not to control them or intimidate them, it is to grace their lives and remind them of the goodness of God.
I was relieved to read again that it’s ok to be angry, because I was very angry the other night. My anger wasn’t kindled till around 9pm so at least I had till 5.30pm the next afternoon to avoid the sun going down on my anger, by which time I had cooled down. I was just left deeply saddened by the knowledge that some of my ministry colleagues were engaging in what I consider slander towards my friend Keith. It is ok to be angry and to speak honestly about what it is that makes us angry, but it is not ok to allow our anger to lead us into slandering brothers and sisters in Christ.
We had a lovely example of speaking the truth to each other last week when we had an after-church meeting to talk about the garden space and kitchen in the property redevelopment plans. There was real passion in that meeting – We need a bigger kitchen, we need to keep the garden, we need lots of storage, we need good spaces for our children. But it was all done in a spirit of love for each other and a willingness to listen to the ideas of others. We were speaking truth to our neighbours, to those who are near, and it was wonderful – exhausting but wonderful. A meeting like that actually builds us up and draws us together; we understand each other better; the masks come off and we stop being ‘nice’ to each other so that those who are near to us will not see what we are really like.
- The last bit of advice that the letter gives to the church is to ‘be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven you’. When we speak our truth to each other inevitably someone gets hurt. And so we need to be aware of the hurt that we cause, and we need to be honest about the hurt that has been done to us. And we need to take whatever action is necessary to repair the relationship. This is not just to make us feel better, this is to keep whole the body of Christ in good health and good heart.
I started with a bad news story about one of my ministerial colleagues. I want to end with a good news story. Geoff Leslie, our BUV President and pastor of the Koondrook Barham church, featured on Encounter this morning. The program was about what churches are doing to help rural communities through the drought and Geoff spoke about the $300,000 relief program that the Barham church is running. What struck me most was his reflection on what the church is called to do. Geoff grew up in conservative churches that saw their mission as getting people into the church so that they could go to heaven, and the rest of the world could ‘go to hell in a handbasket’. Now Geoff understands that the calling of the church is ‘to bless the community’. And that is what the letter to the church at Ephesus is about; not that we all behave well towards each other so that we can feel better about ourselves. Rather that we be a healthy community so that we can ‘bless the world around us.