Text: I Corinthians 9:19-23
Date: September 20, 2009
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
©Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher

“I have become all things to all…”

Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all … so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (I Corinthians 9:19-23, NIV)

I’ve always been fascinated by the Civil War. I don’t romanticize it, at least I hope I don’t. But it was such a defining moment in our nation’s history, that I find it hard to look away when a documentary or film comes my way, reminding me of that troubled period in our nation’s history. My Great great great grandfather Jim Blackstone fought with the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, or so the family legend goes, and my grandfather said that he could still remember Grandpa Jim’s sword hanging over the family fireplace when he was a child. That tale and others made my first trip to Little Round Top at Gettysburg a moving, emotional experience. How many of Grandpa Jim’s friends and neighbors had died on that very spot? Had he ever gone back there to remember, or was it too painful to recall? I’ll never know.

I was reminded of that experience by watching the 2003 film Gods and Generals last week. It’s not the most amazing film you’ve ever seen, a bit dry in places, but there is Joshua Chamberlain striding across one battlefield after another, and for people who live in this city in this state, well, it’s just something you ought to see. When I’m teaching on the Portland campus of the seminary, I teach in the Joshua Chamberlain Room, and there his picture is, staring down at me for three hours every week. It is an intimidating experience. I always imagine him thinking as I walk out of the classroom, “For this I saved the Union?”

Civil War. It is probably the most horrendous kind of war, because it turns family members, fellow citizens, and those who share a common heritage, into blood enemies. One of the most memorable scenes in Gods and Generals, the film I mentioned, involves the battle at Fredericksburg. At one point in the battle a regiment of Union soldiers made up of recent Irish immigrants finds they are attacking a similar regiment from Georgia in a large open field. Brother against brother, fighting for a country that is not yet even their own. Later that night as the wounded and dead are tended to, one of the town’s Irish American residents recalls how Fredericksburg 20 years before had sent corn grown in that very field to relieve an Irish famine. “I can’t help but wonder,” she remarks, “did we save the lives of boys on both sides, just so that they could come here to kill one another?”

It was against the backdrop of watching Gods and Generals that I later that night turned on the news. And the clashing words of partisan opponents that I heard troubled me, troubled me because these were my fellow citizens, filled with such anger for their fellow citizens, and I began to understand how the Civil War could have come to be.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should start stocking up on canned goods and cannon balls, but I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 will object if I say this is one of the most painful periods of national disagreement in my memory. Perhaps, then, it is a fair question to ask of the Gospel this morning, what is the role of the church when the forces of social and political strife bring such emotions to the very door of our church, our sanctuary, our holy place? Indeed, what does God ask of us when such issues sit the pews between us, hovering spoken or unspoken as we sing our hymns, pass the peace, confess our sins, listen to God’s word, hear the sermon, make our offerings to God, gather at the table, pray for our neighbors, and receive God’s benediction?

Has the Gospel traveled such ground before, we might ask. And the answer of course, is “absolutely.” Perhaps the greatest benefit of Bible Study is to discover that there is very little that we experience in life that earlier generations haven’t already weathered by the grace of God. Notable exceptions include trying to get children’s toys out of their packages, foods that explode in the microwave, and telephone menu options. Those particular plagues are unique to this day and time. Most everything else has already happened to somebody.

The big questions in today’s world are really not all that perplexing compared to struggles that the early church experienced in its earliest days. The role of women and slaves, the divine and human nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the importance of the Old Testament. These don’t sound like agenda breakers at the next church council meeting, but in fact the blood of Christians has been shed by fellow Christians over every single one of them. But perhaps the single most divisive controversy in the NT is the struggle between Christians of Jewish heritage and Christians of Gentile heritage. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but in case you’re not, put yourself back in Jerusalem on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit falls on people of many languages, and persons of diverse cultures begin to speak in languages that are understood by all. And suddenly Jewish disciples of a Jewish Jesus begin to realize that God’s plans for this new religious community are immense. And it is not long before Christians who speak Greek and Latin, who are not circumcised, who eat pork roast on Sunday, and who dress in togas start showing up at the fellowship suppers. And you guessed it, pretty soon there are romances in the youth group, and Miriams start making eyes at boys named Tiberius and Julius and before you know it there is a full blown clash of cultures going on. It’s why Paul is such a controversial figure in the New Testament. He is a good Jewish-Christian preaching, very successfully I might add, to Gentiles. And out there among the great unclean, Paul is taking offerings and sending them to the mother church in Jerusalem, where the traditionalists have to decide whether or not to cash the check.

I know all of this sounds like a silly dispute to us, but for first-century Christians it was a full-blown crisis. Page after page of the New Testament is dedicated to resolving it, resolving it in a way that heals community, and allows brothers and sisters to experience the unity of Christ. In Rome, it was easier since the Jewish and Gentile Christians could form separate congregations, but in small towns and villages it was heartbreaking. Every time a church supper came up, separate tables would be available for kosher and non-kosher families. Every baptism raised the question of whether the convert should first be circumcised as the law requires. (those of you considering membership at Green Street by the way will be relieved to know we have resolved that particular issue!). There were questions of intermarriage between the two groups, and the status of their children, and the nagging problem of “what do we do when the relatives come to visit?” These were not happy days; these were not easy days to be a Christian.

Then along came Paul, this hot-tempered, disagreeable, brilliant man who could argue from sunrise to sunset for a radical rejection of Jewish purity codes among the new Gentile Christian communities. This argument shaped everything that he was. He was passionate that the new converts were free to eat whatever they wanted without criticism from the hardliners, and he made that argument from one end of Asia Minor to the very heart of Rome.

But then, in today’s passage, a strange thing happens. The Spirit of God gets hold of Paul by the heartstrings and reminds him that being right isn’t the only thing, that to be incorporated in the Body of Christ is to be in a relationship of service to others, and some of those others were people whose dress, habits, language, surnames, food, or politics totally disgust, confuse, or enrage him. Paul thinks long and hard about that insight, and the result is this passage in First Corinthians, in which Paul unbelievably says that he is willing to set aside being right, for the sake of being loving; that he will eat a kosher meal, against all of his principles of dietary freedom, if it means he has the chance to tell his dinner partner about the incredible love of God. It doesn’t mean he’s given anything up; he can still go grab a BLT on the way home and not feel ashamed, and if someone asks his opinion, he’ll surely give it to them. He’s really good at that. But when it comes down to it, Paul—as he writes in I Corinthians—will do whatever he can, whatever he has to do, to share the Gospel. He will attach the greatest value to being in fellowship with a brother or sister, even if he or she disagrees with his most passionate views on the controversies of the day.

Now I want you to understand that this is not necessarily an easy sermon for me to preach. Like Paul and maybe like some of you, I often have strong opinions and a desire to share them, and I do. But we are asked by this scripture to remember that the brother or sister who disagrees with us on some issue or another is equally a beloved child of God, as well as a person trying to please God according to what he or she thinks God wants him or her to do. And the takeaway from this scripture passage is that we need to figure out how to live and minister in harmony with those who disagree with us, because the reality is that there are always going to be areas of disagreement in every community, and club, and church that we’re ever going to be a part of, unless of course we go start our own churches, slap our names on the door, and hope nobody comes.

I go through all this, this morning, because the secular world isn’t ever going to teach us this lesson, and because you are a congregation that is articulate, smart, passionate, and diverse. I don’t say those things to butter you up, but as a pastoral diagnosis. That is in fact who you are. And in this season of secular and political debate some of those passions are going to come into church and sit among us, particularly for the next seven weeks or so. That doesn’t trouble me. Christians are supposed to be passionate about justice and righteousness, just as God is. But on November 4, which I’m pretty sure is the day after election day, on that day when inevitably there will be winners and losers, on all kinds of issues, the nation is going to look around and ask itself, ‘How can we live like this? How can we be one nation under God and yet be so divided?”

On a day like that, it would feel so good to have the citizens of Kennebec County, Maine look around and say, “Hey, look at Green Street Church over there. I’ve never seen such a diverse collection of folks in my life, but through all this they kept feeding the poor, and giving thanks to God, and praying for the sick, and gathering around that communion table, where no one has power over anyone else, and every one of them is there as a guest of God. And when they go home at night, some of them watch Fox News, and some MSNBC, and some Public television, and some the Home shopping network. But when they are together as a church, there’s something about them that is more important than any of that. I wonder what it is.” And one will turn to another and say, with a sound of urgency in her voice, “Let’s / go / find / out.”

I would like us to be that church. The church that gets through times such as this, not by shushing the important conversations, as some churches no doubt will, but by ending every heart-to-heart sharing of convictions with the words, “I love you, brother; I love you, sister. You drive me nuts. But I love you.”
That’s important for us as we go about planning, and funding, and implementing the ministry of Jesus Christ in this place. But it is even more important to our neighbors, those who might well assume from the secular media that there is no future for America other than one long, constant, bitter, drawn out argument. As they go looking for better answers than that, I hope and pray and expect that we have a huge helping of God’s generous and inclusive spirit to share with them, not because we are of one mind about anything, but precisely because we are not: we who are so different from one another, and yet united in one ministry by our Savior, Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

The Formal Dance

In Augusta, it's called the Chizzle Wizzle Ball, a formal dance at Cony High School which occurs the week of the Chizzle Wizzle show, a student-run variety show which is claimed to be the "longest continuous student variety show in the United States". Year # 118 for them in case you're wanting to offer some competition! :-)

Hanging out at the formal wear shop in early March, one begins to understand that such events are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Even weddings are largely "smart casual" affairs these days, but tuxes, cummerbunds, and white shoes are few and far between. It's easier for the guys, of course. They know that if they basically all look alike, then they haven't messed up. The girls, however, live in dread that there across the dance floor will be someone else in an identical dress. When I lived in Aroostook County, where bridal shops are few and far between, such occurrences were commonplace. There are treasured photos of two, three, even four dance-goers in identical dresses lined up together, all displaying a "less than amused, but I'm a good sport about it" smile.

The end result of the fancy clothes and the dinner and the newly scrubbed and vacuumed "ride" is a sense of separateness. The effort to which one goes to get ready for the big dance sets that time aside as "special." We know going in that the pictures and memories of this night will last a lifetime, and so we prepare.

On Holy Thursday, our church will be remembering Jesus' final night with his disciples, how they shared a meal at Passover. At some point during the meal, the youngest participant is invited to ask, "Why is this night different from all others?" It is the question that opens the door to the telling of the holy history of the Hebrews' deliverance from their oppressor.

We are approaching a holy season. Let us not drown these days in ordinariness, diluting their power in a vat of the "every day." Let us cloth our hearts and spirits with prayer and fasting and repentance, coming to God's holy festival days with a sense of expectation.

Why are these nights (and days) different from all others?

How Much to Warm a Church?

I imagine staring at your energy bill for the last few months is not the most pleasant task of the day. It's even less pleasant in a church setting, trust me. Thousands of dollars spent for a black liquid of unknown origin, all of which has been burned and exhausted up and out the chimney. As Winter yields to Spring, what do we have to show for it? Were the community and congregation better off because these four walls we call "church" contained heat on cold days? I surely hope so, and in my gut I believe so. But it is terribly intangible as I stare at the numbers on the page. What is the monetary value of worship? Of a community supper? Of the person who sits in an office or a classroom and talks of God and his or her relationship to the Divine? Was heating the church building "worth it?" Did we get our money's worth? I suppose it's like a pot luck supper. "If you walk away hungry, it's your own fault," my high school pastor used to say, standing behind the steaming casserole dishes and bean pots. Creating and heating a space for God's abundance to be made known is our way of setting the table, I guess. I'm personally grateful for all the folks who came to the party this winter, some of them old friends; some of them new to the church. I can't imagine life without worship and church, and so we'll pay our fuel bill and try to smile while we do it. In truth there is no putting a price on community and worship, even if both sometimes come with a bill. Warmer days are here again; let us give thanks in the House of the Lord!

Anyone remember this song of praise from the 1970's?

A Church in a Parking Garage?

While hurrying down a hallway in an anonymous parking garage in Portland yesterday, I was halted in my tracks by the symbol of my church on a sheet metal gray door. It gradually dawned on me that I was standing outside the worship and office space of our new experimental faith community in Portland: New Light Fellowship (www.newlightportland.org). Officially at 185 High Street, with plenty of parking which surrounds and towers over it, New Light is a community of United Methodists rethinking what it means to be a church (their entrance on High Street is actually a LOT more attractive than what I discovered is the back door). I got the grand tour from a long-time friend Allen Ewing Merrill who co-pastors the community along with his wife Sara. Also showing me around was Erica Tobey of Green Street UMC fame who had just discovered thousands of excess postal labels left by the previous tenants. (Lord only knows what she'll do with them; I suggested name tags, but that's probably a federal crime or something.)

It's been a fascinating journey for the New Light group. Rather than starting with a congregation and urging them to join small groups, New Light has begun as small groups meeting in homes who are just now starting to worship in a larger gathering on a weekly basis. Their space is cozy, flexible, and filled with possibilities. I don't know what new churches will look like in the 21st century, but my guess is that this is how they will start, with bonds of relationship and community in Christ. All that church stuff can come later (or not!).

Good luck, New Light Fellowship. I have a feeling you'll have a lot to teach us in the days ahead.

Wedding Season

One of the neatest things I get to do as a pastor is weddings. I know, horror stories about "Bridezillas" abound. But the 200 or so ceremonies I've presided over have by and large been wonderful times of mutual love and family support. Folks do get stressed, sometimes about inconsequential things, but at some point the power of the loving commitment they're making always breaks through. The couple are pledging mutual love "forever," and even in today's jaded world, that's a big deal, a REALLY big deal. It's probably the most foolishly hopeful thing we do as people of faith, and yes it doesn't always end "happily ever after." Nonetheless, it is a moment when we reach out beyond ourselves towards the One who created us, with a prayer that we mortal creatures be capable of making a life-long commitment. Despite the naysayers, faults, and failures along the way, marriages are capable of bringing amazing joy into our lives.

One of the debates going on in my state at the moment is whether gay couples should have the right to marry. Although United Methodists aren't allowed to celebrate same sex marriage ceremonies, it is an on-going debate in our denomination as well. The State of Maine law being considered doesn't require churches to change their practice or beliefs, but provides gay couples with a license that can be used by a civil officer, or by a clergy person who represents a church that is willing to offer marriage to such couples. To me that sounds like a matter of equality and justice, that all adults should have the option to marry the person whom they love the most. I've heard the arguments that providing gay couples with the right to marriage will somehow diminish or threaten my heterosexual marriage, and that the institution of marriage is irretreviably connected to physical procreation. The former argument just doesn't "ring true" for me, however. Why would I love my wife any less because a gay couple next door decides to commit to one another for life? Wouldn't that example strengthen my belief in the blessings of marriage and family? I've never gotten the "procreation" argument either. Though I'm very proud of my three kids, and they've brought a lot of joy into our lives, I don't think that my marriage is "over" or "less than" now that we're expecting not to have more children. God willing, we have decades of married life together yet to be, and we know many couples who are blessed by mutual love and partnership in the absence of children. We also, of course, know a number of gay couples who are raising children too. Don't those families deserve the same support from society that we offer to "straight" parents?

The debate for the churches centers on what the Bible says and means, of course, and it should. We are a people shaped by a God, a book, and a tradition, and modern trends shouldn't casually change that. At the same time, how many thousands and millions of faithful gay couples have to sit in our pews before we open our minds to taking another look at the Scriptures? I know that some churches don't have the option of rethinking the literal meaning of sacred texts, but mine does, and with that freedom comes responsibility: responsibility to free slaves, and ordain women, and maybe--just maybe--to bless God's gift of love to mature, responsible people, without getting hung up on ancient taboos, lifted out of law codes we've long since set aside for any other practical purposes.

Anyway, such things don't get settled in a blog, and feel free to make liberal use of the "comment" link. In the meantime, say a prayer for all the folks who take on the blessing and burden of loving another. They help bind us together and make a positive difference in our communities, even if laws and customs need some time to catch up.

A Prayer at the Beginning

I don't know how many diaries and journals have only the first page written upon. Most of mine do to be sure. But even if my blog has only one entry, let it be this prayer, a favorite from Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude, Part Two, Chapter II...

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
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