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Proper 18

Romans 13

8Pay all your debts, except the debt of love for others. You can never finish paying that! If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill all the requirements of God’s law. 9For the commandments against adultery and murder and stealing and coveting—and any other commandment—are all summed up in this one commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself."£ 10Love does no wrong to anyone, so love satisfies all of God’s requirements.

Matthew 18

15"If another believer£ sins against you, go privately and point out the fault. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17If that person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. If the church decides you are right, but the other person won’t accept it, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.



I want you to imagine with me that we have left worship, we've headed home, and we are about to settle in for a sumptuous meal. The wine has been poured and we raise our glasses. What do you say?

Here are a few: Prosit (Latin, be well), Zum Wohl (German, to your well being), Op je gezondheid (Dutch, to your health), A votre sante (French, to your health), Alla tua salute (Italian, to your health), Sto lat (Polish, a hundred years), Na zdorvia (to your health), L'chaim (Hebrew, to life) (from Henri Nouwen)

When you travel the globe it seems that the least interesting of the toasts is the traditional English: "Cheers!" It is really hard to know what it means. Is it a stated hope for the mood of the gathering? Is it an invitation to cheer up? Why would the English need cheering up? Perhaps the best clue comes from one of the earliest English weather reports: "The sky here is overcast" the Roman Tacitus reported in the AD94, "with continual rain and cloud." Suddenly "cheers" makes sense.

Many of the others fall into the category of "group blessing" or a wish to strengthen the well-being of those gathered. "Be well" or "to your health" or "a hundred years" (you need to be very well to make it) all point to a fullness that can be best summarised in the Hebrew "to life!" Maybe this is where "cheers" fits in, with a wish for a happy life, surrounded by friends, in the best possible health.

***

8Pay all your debts, except the debt of love for others. You can never finish paying that! If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill all the requirements of God’s law. 9For the commandments against adultery and murder and stealing and coveting—and any other commandment—are all summed up in this one commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself."£ 10Love does no wrong to anyone, so love satisfies all of God’s requirements.

After a good toast, comes the challenge of living together in community. Gathered at table, we bring all of ourselves: the things that enhance the community we inhabit, and the things that cause community to break down. We each play a role. It was common in the Ancient Near East to imagine the dinner table as society in miniature form, reflecting in part that the same struggles that exist between communities and neighbours exist around the table of fellowship.

It follows that in creating a community of faith centered on the "fellowship of the table" there would need to be a good deal of thought given to the area of group building and conflict resolution. The church emerged in an era with plenty of associations and groups of common purpose, and so there was lots of experience to draw on. Most endeavors were shared, being a time when things "private" and "individual" were largely unheard of. In this sense, there was a body of wisdom concerning the most effective way to live together, and so the church had much to draw from.

Here we see the development of the keystone of our faith. St. Paul, speaking to the church at Rome, quotes Jesus and his summary of the law and prophets: "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus before him, speaking to a gathering of religious leaders, responds to the question "which is the greatest commandment?" He begins with the most familiar religious phrase in Hebrew (called the Shema) and ends with a quote from Leviticus:

"The most important commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these."

Love your neighbour as yourself, then, can best be described as "received tradition." It represents a continuity of belief that has been passed down from generation to generation, continually affirmed as the best means to form and maintain community. It is multi-faceted jewel, with a richness visible from a variety of angles. It begs the obvious question that Jesus himself loved to prompt ("Who is my neighbour?") and it opens doors to an every expanding understanding of human connectedness.

***

The sayings and stories of the Desert Fathers, Christian monks of the fourth and fifth century, describe another tradition that, while foreign to us in many ways, still point to the inevitable challenges of living in community. This is a story of Abba (Father) Sisoes:

A brother whom another brother had wronged came to see Abba Sisoes and said to him, 'My brother has hurt me and I want to avenge myself.' The old man pleaded with him saying, 'No, my child, leave vengeance to God.' He said to him, 'I shall not rest until I have avenged myself.' The old man said, 'Brother, let us pray.' Then the old man stood up and said. 'God, we no longer need you to care for us, since we now do justice for ourselves down here.' Hearing these words, the brother fell at the old man's feet, saying, 'I will no longer seek justice from my brother, forgive me, abba.'

As we imagine loving our neighbours we are confronted by another layer of tradition, that is forgiveness. Like peeling away layers as we search for the core, the command to love is wholly dependant on our capacity to forgive. We need to understand the concept, accept it, and be willing to live it out.

Like the brother before Abba Sisoes, we rehearse the commands of our faith and live comfortably knowing that they guide us until we find ourselves estranged: from ourselves, from brother, from neighbour. It is at this moment that we return to the scriptures to find a way forward, a way to apply the command "love your neighbour" in a practical way. Matthew 18:

15"If another believer£ sins against you, go privately and point out the fault. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17If that person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. If the church decides you are right, but the other person won’t accept it, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.

This is applied neighbour loving 101. It is the central format of conflict resolution for the church, and was set down for us when Jesus still spent part of each day acting as referee between squabbling disciples. Day by day they argues about greatness, belovedness, personal power, a seat beside Jesus, and on and on. And Jesus, even without the fore-knowledge that comes from being the son of the Most High, knew that the squabbling disciples would become the squabbling leaders and the squabbling members down to today. If you've never had a disagreement in church you probably weren't listening and you certainly weren't speaking.

The scandal of forgiveness is that it's been privatized. Somehow we removed it from the context of community and placed in the realm of believer and Maker alone. We need to be reminded that this was never the plan. From William Countryman:

So I can't be the only forgiven one. God has forgiven everyone else in the same way and at the same moment as me. That's a fundamental reality I have to live with. God's forgiveness isn't available to me as a separate, private arrangement. It's available to me only as part of this big package. This reality has consequences. If I want to withhold forgiveness from my neighbour, I'm effectively withholding it from myself, too. If I am willing for God to forgive my neighbour, I'm allowing God to forgive me too. It's all or nothing, everybody or nobody. (p. 42)

***

Many of you may be thinking 'this is all well and good, but we've in the zone, we've nailed congregational life, we've found the way to live together effectively and following the biblical models, so why is going over this again?'

Good question. The truth is that this is the beginning of a long journey, a journey that now involves two groups of believers unaccustomed to living together. Cliffcrest and Washington have unique histories, unique ways to deal with each other, and a unique understanding of the fabric of your congregation. Words have common meaning, priorities are shared and often unspoken, and the simplest task is done a 'certain way' that has become comfortable for you.

This Sunday marks another beginning. Regular monthly worship, more joint meetings, congregational consultations: the next phase of amalgamation has arrived. This is the moment when as never before you will need to rehearse the common values of community building, conflict resolution and forgiveness. There will be tension, disagreements, misunderstanding, miscommunication, sins by commission and omission and every other word or phrase you can come up with the describe human failure in a group setting. Except in this case you are making two groups one, and the issues are compounded.

Having met many of you, and having an close relationship with many, I can depart knowing that the love I have witnessed and known will be the abiding theme of the coming years. I depart knowing that Washington and Cliffcrest are made up of neighbours and friends that are ever intent at welcoming others to the table, forgiving and being forgiven, willing to walk together in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ. May it ever be so.

I want to give the last word to the late Henri Nouwen:

Nothing is sweet or easy about community. Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to each other in [gestures] of hope. In community we say: "Life is full of gains and losses, joys and sorrows, ups and downs--but we do not have to live it alone. We want to drink our cup together and thus celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care." (p. 57)

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:41 AM