Better Together: a Missional Value of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Psalm 133; John 17:20-23

 

Ø Better together, we seek to cross barriers, celebrate diversity, and practice unity (Psalm 133; John 17:20-23).

In Psalm 133, full harmony, the love of family, seem so challenging, so elusive, that the Psalmist turns to poetic similes in order to describe them. However, despite this challenge, both similes emphasize the surprising, gracious abundance that fuels and fills this vision of togetherness. First, unity is like oil, we’re told. It is not just any oil, but precious and holy oil. The Hebrew word for “precious” is the same word translated as “good” in verse one and the same word for “good” used repeatedly in Genesis 1, hearkening to the purposes of God in creation. The oil also referenced the work of the priests on behalf of the people – connecting them to God, praying for them, offering forgiveness to them.

We are not talking here about the little dab of oil on the finger of a pastor making the sign of the cross on the forehead of someone sick or someone being baptized. No, this anointing is extravagant and poured out on all of us. There is so much oil used that it runs down over the beard, down to the hem of Aaron’s robe (the word “collar” can also mean “hem”). That is a lot of oil. It’s extravagant. Messy? Probably. Unity between divided people always is! Generosity always is!

But oil is not the only thing running down. The second simile heightens and expands it by likening unity to the seemingly miniscule dew that runs down from Mt. Hermon in order to quench the thirsty land. Extravagantly, once again, the dew runs down from Mt. Hermon, the highest peak, all the way to Jerusalem. That’s approximately 200 miles (8 days walking with rest). The poetic linking of dew from Mt. Hermon reaching Mt. Zion means that for Israel, no distance is too far, no little spritz of water too insignificant.

The abundant and extravagant movement outward, is not to be missed. Unity is on the move in two ways. First, this is a song of ascent depicting people on the move going up to the temple to praise God. Second, while the people go up, God’s gifts pour down. The words describing the path of oil and water highlight descending movement. “Running down” in verse 2 and “falling down” in verse 3 are from the same participle (yored). Yored appears three times in this short Psalm signaling the actions of God who brings “life forevermore.”

Harris, I now want to stop and apologize to you for a theological mistake. I know it’s a bit odd to do this in front of everyone but I owe it to you to set the record straight, own my mistake, and correct it. When we met this week Harris asked me a great question, “What’s the difference between “called to solidarity” and “better together”? And with a flippancy that many a pastor is famous for I quickly said, “Called to solidarity is a passive value while “better together” is active requiring us to practice what Jesus prayed for.” It sounded good, it’s not terribly wrong, but the tone was off and both passages have reminded me that this value, like all our values, come a gifts down to us. Sometimes theology functions like a tonal language in which the subtlety of pitch makes a world of difference. Mandarin, for example, is a tonal language with four main tones and a neutral tone. In Mandarin the word "ma" can mean "mother" with one tone, "horse" with another tone, "scold" with a different tone, and "question" with yet another tone. The wrong tone at any time can spell disaster for your relationship with your mother (or your horse)! Tonally, do we all have things we need to do, to practice, to participate in, in order to be unified – yes. But the tone of this value like all our values, reminds us that the critical action is not done by us – first. This value, like all our values, is first and foremost not a command, instruction, sermon, teaching, or exhortation to rally the troops. This value, like all our values, is poetry and prayer. Our two passages, without any hesitation proclaim that full harmony is possible because the source flows from God and is poured out in prayer by God to God.

“Better together” is not “you must unite or else!” Instead, it’s an invitation to recognize that God is endlessly, extravagantly, prayerfully, passionately, pouring out unity on us like gushing oil, water, and prayer. This is God’s mission. There has been some disagreement over who is being poured upon and prayed about, which feels like a “Who’s my neighbor?-sort-of-dodge.” Is it literally (and only) blood siblings? Extended family? Southern and Northern Kingdoms? Is it only those who profess belief in God? Ultimately, the psalm suggests there are no boundaries to kinship. Water and oil have no bias. They go wherever they want and spread beyond their points of origin and find every little crack. God is the gravity and source that pulls such gifts down upon us and no one is beyond them, not even those who haven’t been born yet or “the world,” Jesus says (John 17:20-21).

By the way, how do you feel when someone prays out loud for you? Maybe one of the reasons it is so easy to turn unity into a “to do” list for ourselves is that such a list is easier to manage than an experience as intimate as being prayed for. We are so obviously not in control as we listen to people talk to God about us. They, not we, are the ones in control with our vulnerabilities, our frailty, our fragility. If Jesus were exhorting his disciples, and by extension us, we could strive to meet his expectations then. If he were exhorting us, we would have a mission and try not to disappoint him. Instead, we overhear a prayer and are humbled in that moment that the Father and the Son spend their time praying for the likes of us. When we come to understand that all of these values are gifts of poetry and prayer, by God, from God, we actually learn that we can’t disappoint him and that "better together" is God’s destiny for us and not our design for ourselves.

And that's because at the center of the prayer is the relationship of love that God has within God’s self and the divine mission of love that the Father sent the son to draw everyone into that relationship.  Jesus intercedes not only for his own but also for the world. He asks for unity and love between those given to him and the Father, “so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). Nothing less than the reconciliation of all things is in view. The telos–the goal–of the prayer is that even those who had been hostile to the coming of the Son (a.k.a. “the world”) may believe that the Father sent him and have life in his name (cf. John 20:31).

So, Harris, I’d like to amend my statement. The actions we make are not so much actions that have us shouldering the battering rams of togetherness in order to tear down ramparts of separation and estrangement. The actions we practice are to cross over with God's poetry and prayer, to celebrate our diversity with dinners and care, to practice unity by recognizing that it is falling down, down, down, to us from God through Jesus like dew that gushes down into a 200 mile raging river, like oil that pours down over our heads and down to our feet, like a prayer made by God himself. I struggled so much with how to end this sermon because I’ve not told you really anything to do, not given you a task, not offered you a job. So here goes – in the spirit of Psalm 133 and Jesus’ prayer. Listen, it’s so gorgeous and good to be together with others. It’s like waiting in an airport with family members, holding signs of welcome for someone about to come through the doors. Better together is like hearing our favorite song at a wedding and asking our partner to dance. Better together is like receiving a surprise gift when it isn’t our birthday and ripping into the wrapping. Better together is recognizing that God has prayed for us and the wall is already gone, love and togetherness are pouring down. Better together defines your work like that.

Called to Solidarity: A Missional Value of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Galatians 6:2; Micah 6:8

 

Ø Called to solidarity, we seek to stand with each other, our neighbors, and the most vulnerable, in order to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2; Micah 6:8)

In the wee hours of the morning on January 9, 2018, a tsunami of mud, boulders, and trees, sometimes up to 15 feet high, moving at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour hit my community. At some distance from the epicenter, I unknowingly carried on with my normal day, awakening early and heading over to the hospital right next to my house to see a parishioner before she went into surgery. While there, I received a frantic call from you youth pastor who relayed the horrifying reality telling me that she believed that the first victim brought was someone from our youth group. A 12-year-old girl named Lauren. I quickly rushed down to the ER and was immediately ushered into a room where Lauren was. Words struggle to convey what I saw. Lauren was literally frozen, encased in 100 pounds of mud, not terribly different from Hans Solo being sealed in carbonite. All I could do was clutch Lauren’s cold hand, struggling to find words even to pray, sitting with her as she pleaded to know whether mom, dad, and brother, were still alive. This is the story I’ve been thinking about as we approach solidarity in all its messiness and pain. I’m not super keen to talk about this value because in my old age I’m coming to finally understand it. 

 

Solidarity is not first and foremost some cool way to fix a problem or create group identity. Solidarity is the deep, unwavering, always painful, God-illustrated, God-infused, God-practiced, act of love that no one should ever stand alone.

Justice is relational – who do you stand with? To stand with God you must stand with others – the hurting, the broken, the marginal, those who sin have pushed to the margins. How wide are your margins?

Our passage from Micah helps us better understand solidarity and its role in matters of justice. Micah 6 is a courtroom drama between God and Israel in which God laments the fact that they have forgotten God’s saving work in their lives. In response, the Israelites ask, “What is it, O God, that you want from us? What do you require? What can we do to fix this? Just tell us your favorite offering, and we will surely sacrifice it — even if it is a rather extreme request.” Verse 8 of this passage — the one most familiar to us — is God’s answer and turns their questions away from a focus on types of offerings and solutions toward a focus on a type of person. It may not be the answer the people expect. It is not the answer they seek. They have focused on offerings — small and large.

God, it turns out, does not want a specific type of offering. God wants to form a specific type of person. A person who is just, merciful, and humble. They have emphasized sacrificial worship to the exclusion of justice and kindness. They want something measurable, transactional and clear. God wants the messy vagaries of a faithful relationship with narrow margins.

The founder of My Mother’s House in New York, was asked, “How do you work with the poor?” She answered, “You don’t. You share your life with the poor.” It is about “casting your lot before it ever becomes “changing their lot.” You can’t have a relationship with an issue. Looking to Jesus, solidarity assumes that what transforms people is the slow work of relationship. Solidarity is not about standing rightly on an issue – that’s what fundamentalist on either side of the aisle do (conservative or liberal). Issues are often inherently personless. Jesus always stands with people, talks to people, addresses particular people. You can hold a position and never actually talk to a human being. You can hold a position and never actually carry a burden.

Love is compassion – how do you stand with others? Are you willingn to suffer and be silent. It doesn’t say fix each other’s burdens. The greatest burden of all is to stand with those in pain or harm knowing that we cannot do much and yet refuse to stand anywhere else. We may not be able to lighten the load but we will refuse to let someone bear that load alone. When we shift from a fix it mentality to a faithful mentality we begin to see that the biggest enemies of compassion are success and time. The love of solidarity will demand of us perhaps our greatest challenge: slowing down to the important work of listening, being with, walking alongside, getting to know, even when we are unable to do anything else. And that kind of work puts you into the orbit of actual suffering. Often the most powerful and healing work is brought by the presence of someone who can, in the end, do nothing to change anything and yet refuses to believe that love can’t be given. The pediatrician Rachel Remen shares a story about a colleague who attended a conference on Jungian dream analysis where people wrote questions on cards that would be addressed by a panel of experts, one of whom was Carl Jung’s grandson. One of the cards told a story of a horrific recurring dream, in which the dreamer was stripped of all human dignity by Nazi soldiers. The colleague, she said, immediately began formulating a response to the dream which she considered a no-brainer. But when the reading of the dream was finished, Jung’s grandson looked out over the audience and asked, “Would you all please rise? We will stand together in a moment of silence in response to this dream.” The audience stood for  minute and then sat down with no further discussion given. The colleague, Dr. Remen says, didn’t understand this at all and a few days later mustered the courage to ask another, more seasoned psychologists who had been in attendance, about it. He said, “There is in life a suffering so unspeakable, a vulnerability so extreme, that it goes far beyond words, beyond explanations and even beyond healing. In the face of such suffering all we can do is bear witness so no one need suffer alone.” Sometimes the compassion of solidarity is the heartbreaking, soul-aching act of standing with another in suffering silence. Think about this – our very salvation – was wrought by the God of the Universe who we call, “the suffering servant.”

Faithfulness is no-matter-whatness - Carrying burdens is metaphorical and complicated. “There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.” ~ Mary Oliver We can’t follow everyone into every dark and scary corner of their lives. But we can always be present and vigilant if they choose to emerge a need a friend. We can’t change someone’s behavior and there are times when we must lovingly say “no” but we must never presume to signal to anyone that they are worthless, or beyond help, or outside of God’s love. We must acknowledge that there is a brand of faithfulness that can endanger solidarity when we overfunction and seek to do for people what they are unwilling to do. We must never override people’s own autonomy or even poor choices. We must reach out to them, and all day long but that doesn’t mean we openly accept abuse. Greg Boyle says that sometimes he has to fire gang members working at Homeboy Industries but he always tells them that “the day won’t ever come when I will withdraw my love and support from you. I am simply in your corner till the wheels fall off.” “My love,” he says, “is no-matter-what but we’re going to have to let you go.” Even when we don’t have to “fire” someone we must always respect their own way of dealing with pain and grief. I have a dear friend who suffers often from fierce bouts of depression and anxiety. I call him every week and he rarely, if ever, answers. In one brief phone call, he told me that he felt bad about this – terrible that he simply wasn’t able to pick up and actually talk to me.  I told him not to worry and that I would still call him every week and that even if he didn’t pick up he would see and know that someone was lovingly thinking of him and praying for him. This may sound silly but it’s important to recognize that the command to carry one another’s burdens is not literal – it’s metaphorical. What’s at issue is not someone who needs help moving a fridge but someone who needs help carrying the heaviness of life. It’s the heartache of a loved one suffering with dementia, a friend struggling with abuse and divorce, a church member who’s depressed, a family member who’s lonely. What you are being asked to carry, literally can’t be – not really – carried but it can be shared but only if he we refuse to stand anywhere else. Greg Boyle writes, “You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.” We stand together, silently, compassionately, and remember that solidarity looks like this. While we were yet sinners, God did this (Communion).