Sermon 2-15-09

February 15, 2009 Des Moines

Third in a series on the Missional Church

2 Corinthians 5:17-19

Building a Reconciling Ministry Partnership

I can’t say that I ever became too familiar with other songs he wrote and sang, but some years ago a guy named Dave Mason had a hit song whose chorus periodically recirculates in my head:

So let’s leave it alone ‘cause we can’t see eye to eye

There ain’t no good guy; there ain’t no bad guy

There’s only you and me and we just disagree.[1]

There is an attitude in those lyrics that really appeals to me – the sensibility that we don’t have to divide everything up into columns labeled “good” and “bad.” Some things simply “are,” even though in one or many ways or another they might be quite different.

· Is a robin, for example, “bad” simply because it isn’t a cardinal?

· Is a tulip really “evil” simply because it isn’t a rose?

· Is a cactus malicious because it prefers dry ground, or is a hibiscus because its preference is more tropical?

Could it be that in some cases there really “ain’t no good guy,” there really “ain’t no bad guy,” there are just the varieties of God’s creation that are blessedly, beautifully different?

Wouldn’t it be something if we, as a human race, could simply get that far along the path toward true community: the recognition that we don’t all have to agree in order to co-exist? Unfortunately, the world’s experience with American slavery up through the 19^th century, German ethnic cleansing during World War 2; with the conflict between the Bosnians and Serbians and between the Hutus and the Tutsi’s in the ‘90’s, and with the bitterness between the Sunni’s and Shiites more recently demonstrates the ghastly tendency of people to deem “different” to be “despicable”, and to do whatever we can to blot the offensive out. The sad truth is that it has gotten about as bad between democrats and republicans.

The mesmerizing, rhapsodic vision of Isaiah and Micah of an earth on which lions and lambs and children and serpents live not merely in benign co-existence but affectionately and interactively is, truly, an inspirational portrait of the community that God intends, but sounds either like a Disney cartoon or a science fiction fantasy. How did we come to be that skeptical?

The witness of our faith invites a different kind of engagement, and somewhere along the way, we glimpsed it. The mission statement that rides the top of our worship bulletin each week asserts, among other things, our determination to “reach out to neighbors near and far in a reconciling ministry partnership.” The truth is, that last phrase has caused more than one good soul to cock her eye and asked what in the world that might mean. “Just what,” they want to know, “is a ‘reconciling ministry partnership’, and what would such a thing look like?”

I suppose the honest answer to that legitimate question is that we are still trying to get clear on that, ourselves. Grammatically we can note that it is an active phrase conveying our sense that reconciliation is no passive posture. Whatever else a “reconciling ministry partnership” might be, in other words, we live under the conviction that it is something that must occupy our wills as well as our imagination. It is effort about which we must be intentional, and energetic. Just as God reached out to us, so we must reach out to others.

And “partnership” certainly suggests that we can’t do this alone. We need and must seek out allies in this work. That, plus the rather confessional recognition that this is actually God’s work that we are sharing; that we are ultimately partnering with God in the execution of God’s own passion and ingenuity.

Beyond that, we are largely clearing a fresh way. We have the images and teachings of scripture as our inspiration and raw material, but how “a reconciling ministry partnership” actually translates into 21^st century life we don’t, unfortunately, have very many models or even examples. But there are a few, albeit in surprising places. Lori recently sent me a link to a YouTube video that shows the view from what looks like a home video camera set up somewhere in the woods that captures a fawn making playful friends with a kitten under the watchful eye of a rabbit; the two ultimately curling up in each other’s company for a nap while in the background Louis Armstrong sings “what a wonderful world.”

And then a few weeks ago, CBS News reported the story of Tarra, the 8,700 pound Asian elephant living in an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, and Bella, the dog that has become Tarra’s best friend. They both eat together. They drink together. They sleep together. They play together, and, when Bella suffered a spinal cord injury and lay recovering in the sanctuary office for three weeks, they pined for one another steadfastly. With 2700 acres in which to roam free, Tarra the elephant instead stood vigil beside the gate, just outside that office.

When the dog’s care-giver finally brought Bella out so the two friends could at least see each other, Bella, still hardly able to move, began to wag her tail. According to the report, “They visited like that every day until Bella could walk. Today, their love -- and trust -- is stronger than ever. Bella even lets Tarra pet her tummy - with the bottom of her enormous foot. They harbor no fears, no secrets, no prejudices. Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences.”

And then the reporter ended his story with this exhortation: “Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?” [2]

As I mentioned before, scripture certainly leads us in this direction, articulated perhaps most succinctly with the admonition in the letter to the Hebrews to “not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” [3]

Perhaps that could be the first plank in the definition of a “reconciling ministry partnership.” Hospitality. Now, if hospitality doesn’t sound all that much like “reconciliation,” witness what kind of circumstances result from its absence: closed doors, silent passing, eyes averted, defenses raised. It hardly sounds like the Kingdom of God to me. And even if there is no active animosity charging the air, the dynamic of the interactions looks virtually indistinguishable from estrangement. Hospitality is almost certainly not enough to reach for, but opening, welcoming and receiving one another in love is surely a beginning.

I like to think that’s the spirit behind our agreement to house two other worshipping congregations in our building on Sunday morning, the English language program that Sondra reminded us about last week on weekday mornings, a chapter of the Boys and Girls Club on our 4^th floor, and our sponsorship of the Drake Neighborhood Farmer’s Market in our parking lot throughout the summer: the sense that people have a place here – all kinds of people, not just “our kind of people,” whatever we might define that to be.

As I say, our hospitality is hardly enough – we can’t begin to say that we really “know” these people in any meaningful sense of the word; we know very little of their story, their circumstances, their aches and aspirations, and all the myriad attributes that make them special and unique. But we have welcomed them into our midst – offered to them something of a home – and that, at least, is something. Many, they have told us, refused to give them even that. So while there is still considerable space between us, we have at least removed from that space its sting.

No “good guy,” no “bad guy.

There’s only you and me, and we just disagree.”

But you and I both know that’s not always all there is. The still harder work of reconciliation emerges from the recognition that more than mere difference and disagreement, quite often there is real hurt and even harm to contend with and somehow to overcome. Sometimes there are wounds – of the spirit as well as the flesh – that we dare not trivialize or ignore. We bruise and have been bruised – sometimes maliciously, sometimes only clumsily – but a bruise is, nonetheless, a bruise. Little wonder, then, that scripture spends so much time on the issue of forgiveness. How, scripture constantly wonders, will we be able to go on with one another after we have failed to live up to our best intentions and determined aspirations?

The answer, biblically speaking, is that we will to forgive. We quite consciously, with a full accounting of the price we are paying, build a bridge across the chasm that has come to divide us that we can cross and once more find a home in each other’s keeping.

To be sure, there is plenty we still don’t understand about the practice of forgiveness – how to, when to, and whether or not it is ever appropriate not to. I am embarrassed to admit that I am not an expert on the subject. I have participated in a few successes, but I have been a feckless party to many more failures. I have too often carried grudges, wished ill, and wielded righteous principles like murder weapons. I still have much to learn and very much more to practice about the fine art of forgiveness.

But I know that forgiveness is our calling precisely because forgiveness has been our blessing. “While we were still sinners,” the Apostle Paul reminds us, “Christ died for us.” “We love,” recalls the 1 letter of John, not because we are generous or noble or saintly or pure, but “because Christ first loved us.” We have been reconciled, and now this ministry of reconciliation – this holy vocation of bringing into wholeness that which has fallen apart and away – has been given to us. It is no singular challenge assigned to the few, but a ministry partnership entrusted to the many:

A reconciling ministry partnership.

Instruments of God’s own peace.

Healing, holding, welcoming peace.

Or, to say it another way, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

May it be so. Amen.

[2] “On Elephant Sanctuary, Unlikely Friends,” by Steve Hartman, CBS Evening News, January 2, 2009 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/02/assignment_america/main4696340.shtml)