“Camaraderie or
Community?”
Romans
12:1-21
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
October 19,
2008
Stewardship
Sunday
There
are so many times that my eyes well with tears, literally, as I watch and
witness the evidence of maturing Christian community among us.
How moving it was in our worship this summer to hear
Cyndi Lorenc nearly every week sing “The
Blessing” with those exquisite benedictory words – “I
bless you, and you bless me, too” – even though she was compromised
health-wise, and it cost her something to do it.
How poignant it was to be led in worship by Harry Glatz this past
Wednesday evening at our harvest reflections service that he entitled “Even in the Funny Papers” – a service of humor that was rife
with gospel and joie de vivre through and through – knowing that the sudden,
debilitating, and irreversible illness that has afflicted his and Dodie’s son,
Bruce, could have made him bitter and we would have understood if that was the
path he had chosen. How exciting it
was to see a regular cadre of our members cooking hotdogs and serving up
hospitality to our neighbors on our piazza on Thursday nights this summer,
daring to stretch themselves in the name of love and friendship.
Then there is my lovely memory of Norma Willard, bent and hobbled, but
with walking stick in hand, bounding up the middle of a stream with our Sunday
School classes on a nature afternoon demonstrating to our children that awe and
wonder can last a lifetime. There is
never a week that goes by, and hardly even a day, when I am not touched by some
act of care or kindness or compassion, many times hidden from public view and
unsung, by a member of this church for another, or for one or some of our
neighbors.
The
participants in the “aging and saging” group that gathers here at noontime
on Thursdays has been for three years now sharing the accumulated wisdom and
experiences of their lives as prompted by the Tao Te Ching, ancient Chinese scripture that bears, in many ways,
remarkable congruence with the wisdom of the Bible.
Each year we have used a different translation of the Tao
Te Ching and the one we used last year, a paraphrase for pastors by William
Martin, contained this verse:
The pastor refuses to impose her
mind.
Instead
she honors the minds of her people.
She treats all within the parish
as lovable and trustworthy…
This makes her difficult to understand.
People wait for her to lead.
Instead she waits for them to know
the voice within their own soul
which will lead them perfectly. (1)
What
I have been noticing in our church in recent years is that more and more of you
are finding and coming to know the voice within your own soul which, when you
listen long enough and deep enough, is the voice of what the Chinese scripture
calls the Tao – the Eternal Way, the
Eternal Path – and that in our tradition we call the Christ or the Spirit
or God.
In
Martin’s commentary on his paraphrase of this verse of the Tao Te Ching that I just read to you, he writes:
Perhaps
the greatest spiritual temptation facing a pastor is the
pressure to provide “leadership.”
People love to see buildings built
and pews packed. The dynamic
and forceful leader can accomplish these things - and more.
Every-
one is pleased. Denominational
leaders are pleased, parishioners
are proud of their “leader,” and the pastor has the world by the
tail.
And hundreds of souls wither for lack of exercise. (2)
What
I see when I look at this congregation is a hundred well-exercised souls, two
hundred souls, doing all kinds of jumping jacks, push ups, and deep knee bends
in the service of compassion, justice, and love for and toward each other but
increasingly, also, for and toward the wider world around us.
What I see is
For as in one body we have many
members, and not all the
members have the same function, so we, who are many, are
one body in Christ, and individually we are members one
of another. (Romans
12:4-5)
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, pastor, and preacher who was executed by the
Nazis for his role in the German Resistance Movement during World War II.
To this day, Bonhoeffer’s thinking and writing about Christian
community is unsurpassed. Whenever I
think about congregations like ours, I am reminded of this little paragraph from
his book called Spiritual Care:
There are no immediate
relationships in the Christian community…
There can be no immediacy of relationships within the church, for
the church is the body of Christ, and thus Christ, as its head,
governs all those relationships within the church…We meet in
and only in Christ, which makes the emphasis on the equality
of (status) essential to the practice of spiritual care.
The church
is not an assembly of like-minded individuals, nor is it an
agency organized around previously agreed-upon principles, (like
a social agency or labor union). The
church is entered through
baptism, and it is baptism that gives us our relationship within
the church. We are tied
together in the body of Christ even if
don’t like each other. Community
is not the same as camaraderie. (3)
Fortunately,
most of us in this congregation like each other, at least to some extent!
But camaraderie, while enjoyable, pleasing, and wonderful in its own way,
ultimately falls short of community. Camaraderie
is about getting along with each other while community is about belonging
to each other. Community is
deeper, longer. It is about meeting
each other and holding on to each other without preconditions, but simply
because we are given to each other. I
always am moved by Kermit Hogenboom who comes to the funeral of every church
member, whether he knew the person personally or not, simply because the
deceased has been a member of our church community and we are given to each
other and it is his way of honoring those mystical ties that bind us to one
another in and for and through all the seasons of our lives.
Writer
Annie Lamott says that the most powerful sermon that can ever be preached about
Christian community are the two words, “Me,
too.”
When you are struggling,
When you are hurting,
Wounded, limping, doubting,
Questioning, barely hanging on,
And somebody can identify with you –
Someone knows the temptations that are at your door,
When somebody has felt the pain you are feeling,
When somebody can look you in the eyes and say, “Me, too,”
And they actually mean it –
It can save you.
So
many times across the years I have heard so many of you say to someone in a time
of trouble, and actually mean them, those very words.
And many of us have been saved by them.
There
is a true story that came out of south Florida a few years ago of a little boy
deciding to go for a swim in an old swimming hole behind his house.
He hurried to leap into the water, not realizing that as he swam toward
the middle of the pond, an alligator was swimming toward the shore.
His
mother was in the house looking out the window when she saw her son and the
alligator within feet of each other. In
utter terror, she raced toward the water, yelling to her little boy as loud as
she could. Hearing her voice but not
understanding what she was saying, the boy became alarmed, made a U-turn in the
water, and began swimming toward his mother.
It was too late. Just as he
reached her, the alligator reached him.
From
the dock, the mother grabbed her son by his arms just as the alligator snatched
his legs. A terrible tug of war
ensued between the two. The
alligator was much stronger than the mother, but the mother was far too
passionate and persistent to let go. A
neighbor happened to drive by, heard her screams, ran from his truck, and shot
the alligator.
Remarkably,
after weeks and weeks in the hospital, the little boy survived.
His legs were very scarred by the horrendous attack of the alligator and,
on his arms, here deep scratches where his mother’s fingernails dug into his
flesh in her effort to hang on to the son she loved.
The
newspaper reporter who interviewed the boy after the trauma had subsided asked
if he would show him his scars. The
boy lifted his pants legs. And then,
with obvious pride, he said to the reporter, “And look at my arms.
I have scars on my arms, too, because my mother would not let me go.”
You
and I can identify with that little boy, can we not?
We have scars, too. Not
alligator scars. But maybe the scars
of a painful past or perhaps some new scars that we have gotten more recently.
Some of the scars might occasion profound regret in us and others may
emanate from events or hurts beyond our control.
Some of them are caused by deep fear or deep failure.
But community, like this one that gathers here in Christ’s name, can
be, and should be, a place of healing and hope, of mirth and mercy, of
friendship and forgiveness, of peace and promise.
Why? Because camaraderie is
about getting along with each other while community is about belonging to each
other. And when we belong to one
another in Christ, we care without ceasing, loving each other toward and into
our full humanity. We do not do that
perfectly here, but we do it as well as any church I know.
Today
is Stewardship Sunday and I imagine that the members of the stewardship
committee are getting nervous that I have not mentioned money yet.
Their anxiety is well founded as I do not plan to say anything about it
this morning. You will get a letter
from me on Tuesday or Wednesday in which I say plenty about money and
unapologetically so, for Jesus said that our hearts will follow our treasure.
But our financial stewardship is only part of our greater stewardship of
the body of Christ and our part in it, this congregation called First
Presbyterian Church of Jamestown, New York.
It is to this greater stewardship of our community that I am calling you
again today, preserving and then expanding the circle of those who know that we
are loved by the God who will not let us go, and so are free to love without
end.
The
Stewardship Committee is saying it this way this year:
Vote for First Presbyterian Church.
By the continued sharing of your gifts for the common good, by your
acts of justice and compassion for each and all, by your making generous
financial pledges, by your presence and participation in worship, and in so many
other ways, the Stewardship Committee is urging us to vote to keep our First Presbyterian and Judson communities strong
and vital and relevant and active for the sake of the greater community around
us, for Christ’s sake, for our sake, for the world’s sake.
Vote for First Presbyterian Church.
And, as apparently they say in
Amen.
(1)
Martin, William C., The Art of Pastoring: Contemplative Reflections.
(2)
ibid.
(3)
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Spiritual Care.
©
Copyright 2008 First Presbyterian Church