As We are One (Easter 7C)

 

As We Are One (Easter 7C)

Homily delivered at the Episcopal Mission Church of the Holy Spirit (Sutherlin, Oregon)

Sunday May 29, 2022 10:00 a.m. Said Mass

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John 17:20-26; Psalm 97

 

Lord Jesus, give us hearts courageous enough to love,

Make us one as you and the Father are one.  Amen.

 

When I first moved to China, I took a year of language courses and cultural studies.  We learned that Chinese culture values the group rather than the individual, as we do here in the West.  That Chinese culture is all about harmony and order, not pursuit of personal interest.  But when I arrived in China, the first time I saw the traffic patterns, I was appalled:  chaos, every man for himself, and an apparent total disregard for even their own rules of the road.  And line behavior!  Or rather crowd scrumming behavior before a ticket booth:  there were no lines to speak of.  I wondered, “Where is the harmony?  Where is the valuing of group over self?  I realized quickly that, for good or for ill, there were certain patterns of behavior behind such unfair and prejudicial stereotypes in the West as “a Chinese fire drill.” 

 

The next time I was in a class where “Chinese culture” was discussed, I mentioned the contrast to my teacher, who also was stressing the relatively heavier weight Chinese philosophers and moral teachers put on community, group, and harmony than their Western counterparts.   The teacher was wise.  He resolved my conflict for me.   “You must remember,” he said, “that a culture often desires most what its people lack the most.   We Chinese value and talk about harmony and community so much because at heart we are such radical individualists, selfish for ourselves or our little group (family, village, schoolmates).  You Americans talk about community values too—in some ways, Americans and Chinese are very much alike, despite the differences in history, language, and political systems.  That’s why, I think it is so easy for Americans and Chinese to become friends.” 

 

Think about it:  we Americans talk and talk about family values, but have such a high divorce rate, rates of infidelity, and adult children warehousing their elderly parents.  We talk and talk about individual freedoms and liberty in a setting where abroad we regularly use foreign policy and military power to force our ways on others, and domestically tend to be creatures of predictable herd behavior. Those who support gun rights the most, even when such horror as this week occurs, tend to be people who feel the most fear and insecurity in their own lives.  Those who are most worked up about imposing their codes of sexual morality on others sometimes seem to be the ones most conflicted about their own sexual drives.  If only we Americans could live our better values and bring our political leadership to do so! 

 

Now we Christians talk a lot about unity.  About being one.  About charity and love in community.  But from the beginning, we have been a fractious lot, damning and denying communion to each other (yeah—that happened too this week in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco!) because we disagree on all sorts of things, whether esoteric points of abstract doctrine or practical points of trying to do what’s right.  We read plenty of passages in the New Testament, like today’s Gospel, about being one, about being unified and loving.  But even in the New Testament are dozens of examples of serious division, infighting, schism, and mutual exclusion within the larger Christian community. 

 

We tend to value and talk about the things we feel the most need for.  But talking about unity and love doesn’t create it.  Often, appealing to the need for Christian love ends up being a none-too-veiled effort to force someone into submission.  You know the line “we need to love each other, to be one: so give up on your wayward ways or wrong opinions, your heresy, and join us in one big happy loving Christian family.”  Such appeals to unity, while common, are to my mind, nothing more than weaponizing Jesus, turning the Gospel of Peace into a club with which to beat others into submission to us. 

 

So how do we avoid the trap of talking peace while actually waging war? 

 

I think part of it here is found in being honest about what behaviors and attitudes build unity and mutual love and which mimic unity and love while actually undermining their achievement. 

 

First, is a commitment to each other.  In the words of the great adventure novel, The Three Musketeers, we must be all for one and one for all.   We together must take to heart the needs and aspirations of each and every one of us.  But each of us must be willing to sacrifice our own comfort and priorities for the common good. 

 

Second, we need to invest in the relationship.  That means taking time to join in common work, service, and ministry.  It means putting such time commitments on a relatively high priority.  It means sacrificing our wealth and resources for the joint ministries and the ministries of those with whom we are in relationship.  Remember that Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

 

Third, we need to remember the importance of honesty, tempered with compassion, in all relationships.  We need to learn to “fight fair.”  If someone offends us, whether personally or on a matter of principle, we need to show that person the dignity and respect of telling them.  Not labeling them, shaming them, or excommunicating them.  But telling them, and that, not in accusatory, passion-enflaming words.  We need instead to learn to use “I” statements:  “I feel (give emotion) when you (state the behavior, not some kind of attribute or way of being) because (explain why the behavior provokes the feeling you have, again, in non accusatory language).”   We need to be honest and talk to each other, and take responsibility for our own feelings and opinions.  No manipulation through third parties or anonymous “some people are saying.”  The key here is not letting things get bottled up, piling deeper and deeper until they explode in a horrible scene of mutual accusation and rejection.

 

Fourth, remember that we are all in this together.  It never should be about me versus you or us versus them.  This is the idea that lies behind the practice of compassion that prevents honesty from becoming brutal manipulation. 

 

Fifth, listen to the other person’s viewpoint and experience.  Don’t reject them out of hand.  Embrace diversity, even diversity on important things, as valuable.  Don’t let your own experience and struggles with something blind you to the person in front of you.    When Jesus says that way to salvation is narrow and the gate to it hard to pass through, he is not restricting salvation to the very few elite.  He is saying we cannot move forward and make progress in the Spirit without getting rid of the baggage that burdens us down and makes it hard to get through the door. 

 

I think that in community life, in any relationship, it is important to keep saying “I’m not giving up on you yet!”  And “I hope you’re not giving up on me yet!”  An open heart and mind is the way forward, not a heart and mind that says “I know what’s what, and that settles it!” 

 

Again, the habits of being united in charity and love are 1) commit to each other, 2) invest time and money to build the relationship 3) be honest in differences and learn to “fight fair,”  4) talk and think in terms of us not you and me, and 5) embrace diversity and listen to each other.  

 

One for all, and all for one.  Let’s listen to and heed what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”  Rather than just talking a good game, let’s act and actually follow Jesus.  In the face of all the rotten and scary things we are seeing, I pray that each of us can do something—even if it’s small—to help bring the Reign of God closer.  Let us remember that to be one as the Father and the Son are one, we need to remember the rules of the road for basic relationship and community. 

In the name of God, Amen