“The Pain and Joy of Love”

Church. If you say that word church, what do people imagine? Do they think of a group of especially holy, always pleasant people gathered for worship that runs like a well-oiled machine? Is that what they envisage? Do they picture an ever-smiling folk, ever-ready to forgive? Is that what comes to mind? 

Writer Annie Dillard says, “The new Episcopalian and Catholic liturgies include a segment called ‘passing the peace.’ Many things can go wrong here. I know of one congregation in New York which fired its priest because he insisted on their passing the peace–which involves nothing more than shaking hands with your neighbors in the pew. The men and women of this small congregation had limits to their endurance; passing the peace was beyond their limits. They could not endure shaking hands with people to whom they bore lifelong grudges. They fired the priest and found a new one sympathetic to their needs.

“[Dillard continues]. The rubric for passing the peace requires that one shake hands with whoever is handy and say, ‘Peace be with you.’ The other responds, ‘Peace be with you.  Every rare once in a while, someone responds simply ‘Peace.’ Today I was sitting beside two teen-aged lugs with small mustaches. When it came time to pass the peace I shook hands with one of the lugs and said, ‘Peace be with you,’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, 35.)

Church.

Professor and former Episcopalian priest Barbara Brown Taylor talks about Grace-Calvary, the rural Georgia church she served before leaving to become a professor. She writes, “. . . In a county with only one Episcopal church they learned to live together–the Yellow Dog Democrats, the National Rifle Association boosters, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the League of Women Voters. Once, when I asked a newcomer what had brought him to Grace-Calvary, he shook his head. ‘I know people who come to this church,’ he said, ‘and I finally had to come see for myself how they got through a Sunday morning without assaulting each other.’” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, 66.)

Church. In John chapter 15 Jesus gives a long speech to the church. His words are challenging and beautiful, but also a bit difficult to follow. This is not exactly straight-line, U.S. Army linear thinking, “Listen up recruit! Do this and then do that. You got it, son?” Instead, Jesus weaves thoughts and themes in and out like the construction of a dazzling tapestry of many colors. Which patterns capture our attention? How do these words shape our souls?

And as we view the weavings of John chapter 15, it makes a difference what light we see it in, what situation illuminates how we read. As one scholar asks, “. . . what happens if we read it in the context of the community of John, as it encounters increasing conflict and persecution at the end of the first century CE? The words seem no longer to refer only to Christ and his death, but to the sacrifice of members of the community . . .  imagine how the following words might have sounded to disciples about to experience the arrest and torture of their beloved leader: ‘I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.’” (Thomas H. Troeger, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2, 497 and 499.)

We know the early Christian faith communities faced conflict and persecution. What does the 21^st century church face? In many countries, Christians experience persecution similar to what the early church encountered. Being Christian can keep you from getting or keeping a job. Being Christian can cause you to be forced from your home. Being Christian can get you assaulted, imprisoned, tortured, murdered.  It kind of puts our own sacrifices into perspective, doesn’t it?

But what do we 21^st century U.S. Christians face? In many ways, being Christian seems easy. Our faith doesn’t cause us to lose a job. We aren’t being hounded, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered because we confess faith in Jesus Christ. Yeah, the media sometimes pokes fun at Christians and often seems to paint us all as simple-minded. But plenty of newspapers, including “The Daily Record,” still carry a religion section that includes what’s happening in local churches. It seems so easy to be a U.S. Christian these days.

Frankly, it’s deceptively easy to be a U.S. Christian in the 21^st century. The U.S. churches actually face challenge on multiple fronts. While fundamentalist and conservative churches are growing like wildfire, the mainline churches are shrinking and growing older. For example, in its heyday, First Presbyterian Church of Wooster probably had more than 1200 members. At the end of 2008, we had 434 members and 215 of them were 65 or older, 82 of them were 80 or older. And what’s happened at First Presbyterian is typical of what’s happened to mainline churches across the country. Our children have been confirmed in the church and soon afterward they’ve left the church. A recent study says this, “The nation has grown less religious in the last two decades . . . with a 10 percent drop in the number of people who call themselves Christians and increases in all 50 states among those who are not aligned with any faith. Between 1990 and 2008, the percentage of Americans who identified themselves as Christian dropped from 86 percent to 76 percent . . .” (Beliefnet, March 9, 2009.) Meanwhile, as columnist Leonard Pitts points out, “There are now 926 hate groups in this country . . .  an increase of 50 percent since 2000 . . . actual Klan cells, Neo-Nazi sects, gay-bashing ‘churches,’ cliques of black separatists, white nationalists, nativists, racist skinheads, and other merchants of venom . . . The number is a record.”

As Presbyterians, I believe the challenge we face is less with fundamentalism and much more with secularism. The U.S. church is being buffeted less by internal conflict and external persecution, and much more by lack of commitment to the church and to Christ. And too often when folks experience a void of uplifting, community-building faith, they’ll try to find meaning in narcissism, consumerism, or even in the “community” of a hate group or gang. But in John chapter 15, Jesus tells us how to respond, what it will cost, and what we will gain.

He says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” We are in the church not because we simply decided it would be a good idea. The youth being confirmed today did not just figure, “What the heck. Might as well join.” No. We’ve been called into the community of the church, chosen to serve Christ as part of the church. We’re not merely volunteers. We’re called and chosen to be a part of a community of faith, as disciples of Christ, the church.

And what we’re chosen and called to do is love, as Jesus says, to abide in love, to remain and continue in Christ’s love. And what does that mean? As Jesus says, we are to love each other as he has loved us. We are to lay down our lives for each other. Notice there is nothing said about always being happy with each other, or always liking each other. There is nothing said about this being romantic or easy. If we love as Jesus loves, we know it’s going to be hard and painful. And though caring for people outside the church is the very mission of the church, here Jesus is specifically calling for the church to love itself as a participation in the Triune God. Maybe as we love each other in the church, then we’ve practiced enough to love the world too.

So we put up with those irritating quirks of our neighbor in the pew. And she puts up with ours. We forgive and forgive and forgive. We pray and pray and pray. We wash dishes and cook meals and do chores. We listen until our ears are tired. We speak the truth to each other as directly and gently as we can. We love. And it’s painful. It’s painful sometimes.

But it’s also something else. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” It’s painful, but it’s joyful.

Do you know what we mean by joy? We mean a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of rightness in practicing love that transcends merely being happy. That’s what we mean by joy. Joy is the deep gladness of loving words and prayers and service. Love is joyful.

Author Kathleen Norris says I once “. . . attended [a funeral] for a monk I’d never met, but after the eulogies felt I knew, a man from a tiny Montana town who’d become a scholar of medieval literature and had been baptized at the age of thirty-six, entering the monastery six years later. After retiring from a career as an English professor at a Benedictine college, he’d founded an AIDS hospice. . . .After one Holy Week, the monk had written to the abbot, ‘My sense of renewal this Easter was highly emotional. . . . As I prepare to enter my seventh decade I am unreasonably happy. . . . Please convey to Fathers Alexander and Hilary my experience of gloriously humiliating joy! They will both know I have done absolutely nothing to deserve it.” (Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk, 374-375.) 

May God grant you and me the same unreasonable happiness, the same gloriously humiliating joy, the joy that comes as we love each other through Christ our Lord. Amen.