Every time I went to seminary chapel services, there it was. A large oil painting of a boat out on churning waters, the men inside the boat with their arms outstretched to the figure approaching across the sea.   Every time, I walked in to chapel, I would see that painting and think to myself, “What an ugly painting!”   (And included in my list of ugly religious paintings, I note this one right after “Praying Hands” on crushed velvet.)  

The painting was a product of the 1970s, and even though I myself am a product of the 1970s, I must say that this painting was a victim of its time: lurid colors that looked out of place even hanging on an off-white wall of an otherwise austere sanctuary.

I suspicion that it was kept around because it represented a story good for pastors in training to see often. To the future leaders of the Church, the story reminded that in the midst of the tumult, Jesus comes to us, and yes, even calms the chaotic waters. And, we pastors need to keep that in mind. You go from seminary out into the open sea of ministry.   When faced with a congregation in conflict, when offering a comforting word to a grieving family, or when leading in a time of sudden crisis, that painting might come to mind, this story of the miracle that turbulent waters can be calmed down and indeed God is with us.  

By contrast, I have never seen a painting of the Canaanite woman talking, well, better said, verbally sparring with Jesus. In fact, it was not until seminary that I heard anything of her story.   Odd to think that I grew up in church, hardly missing a Sunday since elementary school, and still, this story that appears just down the narrative road from the tale of the bold, yet wet behind the ears Simon Peter, never was heard from the pulpit or in a Sunday school lesson. Why was this story of the Canaanite woman somehow missed in my religious upbringing?   Why did Simon get the 1970s oil painting and the Canaanite woman get forgotten in the text, passed over in the shuffle of sermon planning and Sunday school quarterlies?

On one hand, it could be that some stories just don’t get their day in the sun. They’re good stories, but somehow, another story gets picked up, being oft-told, considered grand, and enshrined in memory. Moreover, that other story, that poor little story, just sits there, wondering when its turn shall come.

Another perspective would be the relative inattentiveness of the Church to the stories of women in the Bible. Very little has been said historically about the women of the faith, and the centuries of patriarchal (male dominated) perspectives have shaped the Church in ways that we are still trying to bring to light and cast aside.   Thus, we frankly name these omissions and work towards a more attentive engagement with the biblical text.   Lifting up the Canaanite woman’s story is part of attuning the Church to a vision of humanity consistent with the New Testament, “There is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ”   (Galatians 3:28).

Let’s be honest. If we read the second story, I imagine the story of the Canaanite woman rattles our cages a bit. Here, we find Jesus’ interactions with the woman to be quite contentious. Just as the arguments play out with the Pharisees and other religious leaders, the encounter between the Canaanite woman and Jesus is back and forth, each side bantering back and forth, almost as if a tennis match. Unlike the other arguments, here the Canaanite woman bests Jesus; the only time that Jesus loses an argument in the Gospels.

Jesus’ inattention to the Canaanite would be well grounded in the “ways things are” type logic of first century Judaism. Jesus understood his mission to be primarily among the house of Israel, not among the Gentile outsiders. The Canaanite woman was everything that Jesus should not be dealing with: a Gentile from the wrong side of the tracks. There were social, religious, ethnic, and gender barriers put there by tradition and custom, and yet, here comes the woman asking for Jesus’ help, and Jesus largely unmoved by her request.   That is, until she makes a point that Jesus must concede.   The analogy chafes, comparing a person to a dog begging for table scraps, but Jesus acknowledges her faithfulness and her fortitude.   The excluded are to be included as part of Jesus’ mission.

  You might wonder why these two stories go together, seemingly different images of a disciple trying to walk on water and a woman who takes on Jesus in a flurry of words. In reading Matthew, I cannot read one story without reading the other. The two stories may be different, but they have some common issues. Both Peter and the unnamed woman deal with crises: a boat out in stormy waters and a child whose life is at risk. Both call out to Jesus as “Lord”. Both persons encounter Jesus and receive a word from Jesus about their faith. The two stories are complimentary to one another, as one story illustrates a failure of nerve and the other an abundance of belief.   And I suspicion Matthew is making a more subtle point than we might care to admit: the outsider is the one who gets it, not the person that you’d expect.

Simon Peter, the rock, the most prominent disciple in the Gospels, the one who is promised the very keys to the kingdom, falls into the water and is told he has “little faith”.   The Canaanite woman, so marginal to what the disciples believe is the message of Jesus’ gospel, so obscured from any consideration of status or “sacred worth” by so many religious laws and labels, is commended by Jesus for her “great” faith. She receives answers to prayer, while Simon Peter is all wet.

What I really wish would have been hanging up in the chapel was a picture of what happened after Jesus was sighted out at sea (or literally, out “on” the sea!). The image of Jesus patiently fishing the bold yet doubting disciple Simon Peter out of the water would be a good and prudent word for impressionable young seminarians (or seminarians in sore need of being impressionable).   Church leaders, especially the ones in training, can be too smug and certain for their own good.   It would have been a humble sight to walk in each time for chapel and see a reminder that our faith is “little”, which one scholar says is Matthew’s way of talking about a faith that is “neither perfect nor absent”, just little, a measure that still needs more to be full.   As I put it, a “little” faith is “there”, but more faith is needed!  

When we read these two stories, it is a cautionary tale for the Church. We can sometimes be skeptical (or outright indignant) about the idea of some folks being able to be part of the Church. Some churches, even denominations, operate with a velvet rope approach to God: only the ones who fit the pre-determined, ironclad criteria can get in.  

Would the Canaanite woman have a fighting chance of being heard in such a crowd?   She’s always there in the form of a person who believes in Jesus as their Lord. She’s there as the one who takes the Gospel to heart yet finds the modern day “inner circle” too skeptical, too ready to hasten Jesus onwards.   I’ve spotted her on the edges of worship services and denominational meetings, hoping to be recognized, hoping to be heard.   I find myself ashamed and angry that when spotted by the majority, she’s scorned and cast aside.   Pass a policy, keep her at arm’s length, don’t bother Jesus with her.    To be honest, if this is the way the Church works, I’d rather not be in the middle of the entourage, which is where preachers find themselves by vocation and church politics alike.   I’d rather be with her, off over to the side, asking questions, hoping to be heard.

I say to you this morning, as one who knows that he does not walk on water (and for the record, cannot swim either!), that I want to be careful in being part of the Church, because quite frankly, I take the Gospel at its word. The Church can get sometimes too certain that it forgets to honor the reality that we falter.   Look at the scope of church history, and you see the opposite of Matthew at work: the insiders can silence the outsiders quite easily, quite handily, and quite readily.   As I prayerfully read Matthew and the other gospels, I would be remiss if I did not point out that a gospel value is found along the way. The outsider is welcome, not as the sum of all the labels stamped upon them by the majority, but as the beloved of Jesus.   The Canaanite woman is worthy of Jesus’ love and affirmation, just as surely as Jesus loves that inner circle of disciples out on the stormy seas.   AMEN.

We kept wondering why the dog was more than her usual basket case. It was a heavy storm, but we also heard that a hail cannon had been blasting away at the night. Then came the headlines the day after that about the noise ordinance issues and the complaints to the town office (and my dog wrote a letter to the editor—she was fair but ruff…).

In the midst of the hail cannon saga, some folks might have missed completely the bigger story afoot: the fear.

It was not the fear of decibels, town ordinances, or sleep deprived hounds. The story of the hail cannon is really one of fear: the fear of crop failure. The orchard owners are concerned about losing a crop of apples to a hailstorm, so they went to the extraordinary length of buying a $30,000 piece of equipment.

Farmers and other food growers worry a lot about crop failure. They might not look it, standing there with a cup of coffee in their overhauls, but when the weather forecast comes on the early morning news, the house grows silent as they listen for any bad weather predicted. Hail, too much rain, too little rain, heavy winds, early frosts, deer treating your fields like a buffet, bugs, you name it. In the mind of any farmer I have known, there is a fear deep down of crop failure.

So you buy the best seed you can afford, you hope to have a good season of the right mix of rain and sun, you hope for a decent price when it’s time to sell to the grain elevator. You go to extraordinary lengths trying out the latest techniques (or locally, the latest cannon). But deep down, even the most religiously indifferent farmer will say muttered prayers, “Please, O Lord, no hail. No floods. No drought. No market crash. That’s all I ask.”

The parable of the seed scattered is not a good one to tell. It gets worse before it even thinks about getting better. New Testament scholar Warren Carter points out that of all the seed scattered, three-quarters of that seed “will come to naught.” This is not a story I pick up the phone and call my retired farmer dad to say, “Have you heard this one?” The seeds that “come to naught”, besieged by birds, thorns, stony ground, none of that really makes for delightful conversation with dad. Instead, the parable reminds a farmer about those times when you glumly survey the dashed dreams of a bumper crop just disappearing before your very eyes.

It makes that one quarter of seed, the seed that produces considerable crops, that much more important. Go down to the grain elevator and listen to the old timers, retired from running combines, but not from running their mouths, holding court over greasy glazed doughnuts and stout coffee in mugs marked “John Deere”. Then you will hear of the “little seed that could”: “Oh yeah? Well, I put in that seed in the worst land I had, Roy, and I came away with the best yield ever.” “Earl, you got eighty bushels an acre? Try ninety two!”

The parable goes from bad (birds, thorns, rocks) to overwhelming (100 fold, 60 fold, 30 fold). The parable adds an unexpected plot twist to end the story of harsh reality (the likelihood of crop damage, low yield, and crop failure) on a much different note. The seed that could have failed just as easily as all the rest, but it did not. Instead, the retired farmers drop their doughnuts on the floor as the young whippersnapper shows up with a truck overloaded with seed. “How many fields did you cut to get all that?” one asks. “About half of the first one. I’ve got three more fields just like it.” With that, the John Deere coffee mugs clink together like champagne glasses on Wall Street.

The parable of the seed reminds me of the concept of “euchastrophe”. You have heard of “catastrophe”, where everything that can go wrong goes wrong. The British writer JRR Tolkein, author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, suggested that there are stories that end on unexpected but abundantly good notes. The parable plays out the story of a sower who scatters the seed, the unfortunate reality that not all seed takes root or really has a chance of growing, let alone being harvested. Then there is the seed that literally hits pay dirt. An abundant harvest is the last thing that you are prepared to hear when everything else is a tale of woe. Then “euchastrophe” strikes, and you couldn’t be happier!

In the words of parables scholar Bernard Brandon Scott, the parables of Jesus offer the listener a chance to “reimagine the world”. You know the world of crop failure all too well, but this notion of an abundant crop, even with the odds against you, well, that seems to require a bit more engagement on our part. We have to take what we know as “how the world works” and see God in the middle of that world, pretty much disrupting it. Abundance in times when there ought to be not much at all is not the stuff of reality. This parable presumes that with God in the fray, things will go according to an altogether different plan!

Hence, we have the conversation after the parable. The parable itself could have been just there to hear and interpret, but Jesus offers a bit more insight about this parable. He tells the crowds who gather that you might think you have listened to the parable, but many of you have not heard it. If you have to ask, you might not get it at all. Then, he whisks away to talk with his inner circle, leaving the crowds to mull what he has said.

The parable of “a sower goes out” appears in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, however, each one of them puts their own spin on the parable. Here, Matthew adds quite a bit of interpretation about this seed and the mostly bad, save one, places where it was sown. Jesus tells the disciples to pay attention to where the seed never took root. The seed is “the word of the kingdom”, in other words, Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of Heaven, this vision of what Jesus’ ministry was bringing into the world. Those who take it deep into their hearts, the results are amazing. Jesus says, “ But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

Have you met someone who lives out this parable? We can name the saints, great and small, who have contributed greatly to the cause of the Gospel and the mission of the Church. Scattered with astonishing liberality, the seed works in mysterious ways. You see it germinating as that person who has “no time” makes time to ladle soup at a homeless shelter. The seed takes root when a retiree finds that it’s kind of fun to read to kids down at the library. The seed buds when that youth on a mission trip becomes less of a vacation and more a summons to a vocation.

Just like scattered seeds, the Word does not flourish everywhere it is given. Whether it is sin, apathy, or temptation, some folks simply will not hear the Word and take it to heart. We can also name some folks that we know who have not lived out this parable, who, for a variety of reasons, have very little interest in the faith, keeping it, living it out, or confessing it. For every baptism, every confirmation class, every parish record book known to be on file throughout the Church universal, it might seem that this parable’s mulling over crop failure seems a bit apropos.

Then I recollected a sermon I heard years ago given by Fred Craddock. [1] Craddock turned this parable into a very careful reminder that we should not get too caught up in labeling folks as to whether or not they were likely to be crop failure. He reminds us that it is God doing the work, not us, so we would best leave things alone. What looks like crop failure instead might turn out differently, might be the seed that caught on and created a good yield by the time that the harvest rolls around.

Fred Craddock observes, “No farmer puts a seed in the soil and then screams at it, ‘Now, come on, get up!’” Instead, we take a step back and let the growing process happen. It is not for us to question whether the crop will fail or show a big yield. We could try to shout at the seed and the soil to perform, but again, it’s that curious mystery where we cannot predict the yield, only to take Jesus at his word that with attentiveness to God, great things become possible. Some folks might want to prejudge the crop even before the seed is scattered. Others might think that the soil will never be good enough, or there is always too many birds and rocks and thorns to contend with. Instead, let the sower do her work.

[1] I heard Craddock’s sermon on this parable originally as an audio recording, collected by the CD collection available from Bell Tower Records. The sermon “At Random” was subsequently transcribed and published as part of The Cherry Log Sermons, published by Westminster/John Knox Press in 2001.

Yet, there is still that music playing away, the song drifting across the dunes of rust and refuse. The little robot itself turns out to be the source of the music, playing the song on a tape deck augmented onto its body. The robot gathers curious trinkets of a human race in absentia, collecting light bulbs, garden gnomes, Rubik’s cubes, old videotapes that the robot retrofits to play on an I-pod screen. The little robot, known as “WALL-E” (Waste Allocation Load Lifter—Earth class) but sounds more like “Wally”, has created a homey little life for itself, doing his work and then returning to a storage bunker at night to entertain itself (and its little cockroach friend) with whatever “treasures” it has found that day.

The apocalyptic scene is not due to war or atomic devastation. Instead, the earth has fallen victim to humanity’s consumerism and thoughtless treatment of the world’s resources. Oh yeah, humanity still exists, off in the stars, living a plump and vacuous existence on a colony ship, and so with some irony, it is implied that WALL-E is the most “human” character of the film, finding beauty and meaning even in the middle of the abandoned public square.

Jesus said,

But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’

Jesus is under duress, insulted by his detractors among the religious establishment. Fiery old John the Baptist is tossed in prison, and all indications are evident that Jesus is somewhere near the top of the list to go there next. Called all sorts of names, dismissed by the recognized religious “powers that be”, Jesus is being disregarded and considered an irrelevant nuisance. Even John has started to wonder himself, struggling with the jailhouse blues.

Jesus sends word back to depressed John. “Go and tell John what you hear and see,” he tells John’s disciples, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Jesus is frustrated with the inattentiveness of those around him. The religious leaders think him an unclean, unorthodox lout who mixes too casually with the folks from the wrong side of the tracks. The people around him (even his own disciples) keep thinking that Jesus ought to be something “more”, trying to pigeonhole him into the most expected understandings of “messiah”. He has shown his message through his teachings, healings, and other acts of ministry, yet the people around him seem complacent with their own expectations and disinclined to see something else being possible as the sign that God’s kingdom was being brought about. God is hearing the mournful pain of the world in Jesus’ ministry. The tune of messianic hope sounds out in Jesus’ words and deeds, yet few wish to rise up and join the dance.

A little later in the film, WALL-E finds itself blasted off into space, and soon on the colony ship where he encounters the descendants of the human race. Floating around in lounge chairs, busily chatting away to a computer screen hovering in front of their faces (sometimes to the person right beside them!), these humans are big, doughy grownup babies, uncertain what to do if the screen shuts off or they fall out of their floating chairs. They are so caught up in their comfort that several hundred of them can be around the ship’s hospitality area and never realize once that it was created for them to exercise, play games, or even wade in the area’s huge swimming pool.

The captain of the ship, likewise obese and oblivious, is charged with preparing the ship for a return to earth once any evidence comes back that life has returned to earth. When a probe returns with a plant sample, the captain is dumbfounded at the thought that seven centuries later, they could return. More perplexing, however, is the captain’s lack of knowledge about what life on earth looks like. Not just the sea, the soil, and the vegetation, but the culture of a people who work, play, and live out the day-to-day life that was once the common experience of human existence. The captain becomes enraptured as the ship computer continues to answer his questions patiently, explaining simple things like how plants grow and “how to dance”.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples are seen as outsiders. Jesus freely moves among those otherwise written off by Temple and Empire alike. The claim that the blind, the lame, the deaf, the dead, and the poor are evidence of Jesus’ ministry would be an encouraging word to John and a befuddling riddle to the establishment. John came preaching a message of repentance, and Jesus came preaching of a Kingdom of heaven. The parables, the miracles, the healings, the other times of teaching, all of this works together to be signs of God at work in the world. Yet, only a few were stirred enough in their encounters with Jesus to learn the Gospel-shaped life that Christ offers. As Jesus would say, “Those with ears to hear, listen!”

Jesus says,

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

A healthy religion asks hard questions of us. While Jesus is offering an open-handed invitation to discipleship, he also speaks of us taking up his yoke. Yokes were used to hitch up animals like oxen to plows and till the ground. Jesus emphasizes the lightness of this labor, yet one might shy away from the idea of being tethered. To be a disciple of Jesus means to reorient one’s way of thinking and living. You take seriously a worldview that finds the poor and the dispossessed to be the blessed ones among us. You read the Sermon on the Mount not as wishful thinking but as an invitation to live more freely. You start finding yourself yearning for things to be “as on earth as it is in heaven”.

I find that there is a certain danger to religion becoming a list of duties, responsibilities, and a vague sense of guilt to go along with it. Later in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 23, Jesus offers a criticism of the Pharisees and scribes, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them”. Garrison Keillor once described his religious upbringing in a very conservative pietistic Christianity as the type of religion where “you never felt like you were forgiven, just on parole”. The saying of Jesus here is a note of grace to those who take his words to heart. Words of grace, not guilt, are the signposts along which the Christian disciple follows the path set before them.

The yoke given by Christ is not one that diminishes or wears us down. Jesus does not burden us, even if his followers inadvertently told you something to the contrary along the way. Indeed, if you take Matthew’s word, taking this yoke offered to you allows a person to start a different sort of pace to life. We go about living the life of the gospel, tending this broken world, hearing a graceful little tune that causes us to find a bit of beauty in life. We move along to the rhythms of the Gospel, helping till the indifferent soil of the human heart so that the kingdom of heaven might take root.

As I read this week’s Gospel lesson and reviewed the relevant commentaries that help me “hear” the text with better understanding, I noticed that I was mistaken in my first read-through the text. Jesus speaks of “little ones”, and I imagined Jesus surrounded by children who are at his feet, listening to his words. That scene was in my imagination, until I read the commentaries that offered a different understanding of “little ones”. [1] In Matthew’s gospel, the phrase “little ones” is used not exclusively to speak of children. Rather, it is Matthew’s term for the early Christians themselves, a term that recognized that first century Christianity was vulnerable and in need. [2] The “little ones” were the followers of Jesus, called to go forth and hopefully received with good grace. Even the mere gesture of kindness (a cup of cold water) by someone encountered along the way was a sign that you were welcomed and Jesus was welcomed as well.

With our 21^st century ears, we forget that religions can be vulnerable, as we worship freely in a house of worship in a religious tradition long established and well rooted in this country. We are adherents of Christianity, part of the 78 percent of Americans who at least tell the recently completed Pew Forum study on American religious preferences [3] that they identify as “Christian” even if our pews nationwide seem emptier than we would prefer. Certainly, we are not vulnerable in the same way as the first century Christians, the original recipients of Matthew’s gospel. Yet here is this reminder to share the faith, be mindful that there is danger, and pray that you will be received well by others along the way, so what do we make of it as U.S. Christians and as Baptists, one of the many variants who nonetheless are counted together as the largest Protestant movement in this country? [4]

Once while in Montpelier, Vermont, I was walking back to the little back street where I parked, and I ran into two young fellows who asked me for directions to the capital area. They wore identical clothing: white shirts, black slacks, and black ties. A little name badge noted their names and their organization: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a.k.a. “Mormons”. They walked up and down the streets knocking on doors. Then, they were a bit embarrassed to note that they were turned around. I gave them directions and introduced myself as a Baptist minister. We talked for a few minutes, and as we parted ways, the Mormons noted (with gratitude) that I was surprisingly civil toward them. Apparently, some other folks who identified themselves as Christians when answering the door gave them few words of welcome. Then to run into a pastor (a Baptist even!) and get a word of hello meant something after a difficult afternoon on a cold winter’s day.

This contemporary story helps us get into the Matthean teaching before us. In the time of the New Testament, it was difficult for followers of Jesus to move about and proclaim their faith with freedom or acceptance. And it was a tough calling to be the apostles, those sent out in Jesus’ name. While the Mormon missionaries might have gotten an off-putting word or a slammed door in their faces in today’s America, [5] the early Christian movements of the first century Roman world dealt with frightening persecutions from religious and imperial powers alike.

In this country, we affirm the right of Mormons, Baptists, and all other religions to speak of their faith freely. We are a country that affirms freedom “for” religion without legally or constitutionally making one religion “the” religion of the state. For first century Christians, the official religion was the one endorsed by the state, and it most certainly was not Judaism or this new movement called Christianity. To go out in Jesus’ name was to endure rejection, persecution, and was a subversive act.

In the early stories of Christianity as told by the New Testament and other first century sources, we learn of the challenge of a faith facing hostility. Jesus speaks of the welcome that one should expect: to be received well and as if Jesus himself is being received. This courtesy is expected of others for Christians, so it informed my own interaction with the two Mormon missionaries. While I may not agree with the Mormons or their teachings, one religion extending respect and hospitality to another religion seems quite consistent with the Bible. It is also a helpful and corrective word when reviewing the history of Christianity, which is filled with stories of Christians persecuted and Christians as persecutors. We should remember that we may have our faith that we deem well, true, and of great meaning and hope for the world, but we should not share or spread our faith by dominating or belittling others.

As I think about this latter point, let me share some childhood memories back in rural Kansas. It was common for folks to react negatively to other religions. The Protestants tended not to associate with the Catholics. The “steeple church” Christians looked a bit askance at the Pentecostals downtown in their storefront church. And, at a county wide ecumenical hymn sing (well, just the Protestants for the most part), I remember a preacher talking about how to greet Jehovah’s Witnesses when they came to your door. He reached under the pulpit and pulled out a rifle.

While you gasped a bit, the audience laughed a bit. His point in bringing the rifle was in his opinion “humor”, not meaning to say that this was “the way” to greet “J.W’s”, as they were called. Nonetheless, the image still haunts me a bit as I read of the real world violence of Christians being persecuted by others, and yes, Christians persecuting others. We have to be careful in our actions as well as our attitudes and speech about other religions, so that even in what we might feel is jest, there is not another message being sent.

Over the past few months, the Bennington Interfaith Council has been in a process of reexamining its identity and mission. One of the results of this work has been a subcommittee’s work in crafting a mission statement that reads as follows:

The mission of the Greater Bennington Area Interfaith Council is to give witness to the unity our faith communities share, based in justice, peace, and compassion; and to celebrate the diversity of our traditions. Together we seek to maximize and coordinate the ways we care for and minister to one another, our congregations, and the greater Bennington community.

While we do not agree on all matters, we believe and practice different paths of faith, something good happened in Bennington in the last generation. A group of religious communities opted to work on meeting common ground needs. Together, we provide aid to those in need through the Food & Fuel Fund to tune to $50,000+ per year. And, again, even though we have different takes on divine matters, we create some wonderful opportunities for building a stronger community and providing a word of hope to the neighbor, the stranger, and the vulnerable in need. Further, I would trust, it sends a message to one another about the authenticity of the faiths that make up our religious landscape around here. I would much rather be known as a Baptist who cooperates! (We seem to be a rare breed!)

In August 2008, First Baptist will host a public event, featuring a rabbi and a Muslim who are stand-up comics. [6] Locals will know Rabbi Bob Alper from his long-time residency in Bennington County, and you will be delighted to meet Azhar Usman, a young Muslim comic, who is likewise a gifted performer. Both of them will be here in the sanctuary performing their touring show “Laugh in Peace”. I think it is a good opportunity to help our community see not only interfaith cooperation but also a spirit of mutual respect while also poking a bit of fun at some of the fears, stereotypes, and lamentable attitudes that our society harbors.

As we consider taking up the call to be Jesus’ followers, his apostles who go forth sharing his good news, we have much to celebrate as well as much to remember. We celebrate the faith that we are committed to sharing with the world while being mindful that it is a challenge to share the faith when religious toleration is low as well as when we ourselves are in majority or minority situations.

[1] For this sermon, I consulted the following commentaries: M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew”, New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1995); Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000); Daniel J. Harrington, Matthew, Sacra Pagina series (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991); and Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007).

[2] Matthew 10’s instructions to the apostles, a.k.a. the disciples sent forth, reflect the tension of the early Christians as a new movement as well as the thought that the original audience of Matthew’s gospel being followers of Jesus experiencing tension with the Jewish leaders and synagogues. A sensitive interpretation of these sort of texts requires that we do not confuse first century inter (intra?) religious strife with giving warrant to continued tension between modern day Christianity and Judaism. Carter’s commentary is quite helpful as is the work of Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews: A Lectionary Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2004).

[3] “The U.S. Religious Landscape”, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life”, 2008. Accessible online via: http://religions.pewforum.org. For insightful commentary, see the essay “Crunching the Numbers” written by James P. Wind, President of the Alban Institute, accessible online via: http://alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5818.

[4] In a May 2008 essay, J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, reflects on the concerns that Baptists in the United States have (or ought to have!) for domestic and global challenges to religious freedom. He shares some of the questions encountered in a recent dialogue with Argentinean Baptists, who are less than one percent of their nation’s populace, a different context than the U.S. where Walker notes Baptists are in “the overwhelming majority and dominate the culture”. See his “Religious Liberty is an International Issue” via the BJC website, accessible online: http://www.bjconline.org/news/news/052108%20_Reflections.htm.

[5] By coincidence, as this sermon was being readied for preaching, the local newspaper’s weekend featured an article about Mormon missionaries making the rounds in Bennington, Vermont. See Mark E. Rondeau’s “Men on a Mission: Far from Utah, Men Bring Their Faith Home to Vermont” (published on Saturday, June 28, 2008). Accessible online: http://www.benningtonbanner.com/local/ci_9727294.

[6] Rabbi Alper and Mr. Azhar Usman are receiving great reviews. See the stream video online the CBC Sunday website: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2007/09/091607_4.html. Quite recently, the New York Times reviewed the show in their May 31, 2008, edition. See the article by Marek Fuchs, “Jesters of Different Faiths Use Laughs to Bridge the Divide” online via http://www.nytimes.com.

I really think he felt bitter each holiday when there would be a time in the worship service where guests would be welcomed. A grandmother who stood up with an entire long pew filled with children and grandchildren and go through the litany of the assembled kids, grandkids, and itty-bitty great-grandchildren must have wore down on him.

He had a son who was married, but no grandchildren. They came to visit, but then so did everyone else’s families with all those grandchildren in tow.

Then one year, as it came time in the service, there was a wail from his pew, not from a frustrated old man, but from his newborn grandchild making a fuss.

He stood up at the time when guests would be recognized and welcomed, took the grandchild in his arms, and did not settle for just saying a word from the pew. He walked up to the front of the sanctuary, and asked the minister to step aside. In addition, standing in the pulpit, he held that small child up and said, “This is the world’s greatest grandchild. And he’s mine.”

Now, we might smile a bit at the story and enjoy the warmth of how the story ended. But did you catch onto the part of the story about the struggle, the frustration, the sense of bitterness? We enjoy a story with a good ending, but we sometimes rush right past the reality that not everything in life ties up in a neat or tidy manner. Some of us laugh a bit with the joy of a grandfather finally holding that grandchild, but not everyone feels the joy. Instead, some of us quietly grieve, hearing in the midst of a story about a long-awaited grandchild not a “happy ending” but the loose ends and unraveled threads of life that may not have a thing to do with grandfathers and grandchildren but nonetheless connect with “our story” in ways that we’d much rather not talk about.

I approach this morning’s two readings from Genesis with the same awareness that on one hand, there are some good things that come from the story of Hagar and her son Ishmael alongside some very painful twists and turns to their part in the larger Abrahamic narratives of Genesis. We have tended to focus our telling of the story of Abraham in broad brushstrokes: his call to follow God’s call to a far-off land, the promise of the many, many generations, the delight of Isaac’s birth to his elderly parents. Faithfulness, covenant, and God’s promises are all the stuff of what we tended to learn in Sunday school (if we grew up in the church), or what we would hear if we read the lectionary’s selections for the past few Sundays. Unfortunately, the edited “highlights” of the stories of Abraham are not the “rest of the story” that is there in Genesis. Indeed, the narratives are quite complex, as we discover from hearing the story of Hagar, an Egyptian-born slave.

The first eleven chapters tells us stories of origins: how the world came to be, how the first humans began in the beauty of Eden and the hubris that happened soon thereafter, the stories of a great flood, the story of Babel. But then, as the story of Abraham is about to commence, and you think that we’re going to see Genesis really start moving along on a merry trip through the stories of patriarchs and the matriarchs who loved them, we read a rather sobering note. From the time of Babel to Abraham, the begats and the begots trace the generations down to Abraham, but then Genesis 11:30 reads: But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Genesis comes to a bit of a halt there. And even though we get to the promises of God that Abraham will become a great nation, father of many generations, the narrative of Genesis also admits that there is some difficulty on this road ahead. And even as the household moves far afield in pursuit of the call, in faithfulness to the covenant to be made with God, there is a great deal of pain at work here as well. Sarah is unable to conceive, and so she suggests a different route, offering her slave Hagar as a surrogate.

Hagar is caught up in the web of divine promise and human desperation, bearing Abraham’s true firstborn Ishmael. She is driven out twice by the jealousy and anger of an embittered Sarah and left with little support by an Abraham who tends to be a bit like a mixture of a henpecked husband and a politician making decisions after the latest opinion poll results are in. Hagar is less “the other woman” causing a marital rift and more the pawn in a household split apart by the promise of destiny and human failings. Her presence in the story of Abraham reframes the story of patriarchs in quest of their glorious destiny into what really is the gist of Genesis: a cast of characters who are just as prone to life crashing down on their heads as they are as likely to find some sense of symmetry or plot. The distinctiveness of Genesis comes, however, in the radical way illumined by Hagar’s story of woe and plight. God is not only with Abraham. God is not only with Sarah. God is not only with Isaac. God is with Hagar and Ishmael, too!

As Hagar, pregnant, alone, and chased away by Sarah, God intervenes and tends to her fear and needs. Hagar is given what might sound a bit of strange advice: go back and submit to your mistress. This is a difficult word to hear, as we are still not so removed from the atrocity of slavery in this nation’s history and live in a time when human trafficking is alive and well around the world. In the context of the ancient Genesis story, this is the only way a lone pregnant woman might be able to make it, so she goes back.

Despite the culture of the day working against her, Hagar the outsider (the Egyptian slave woman) talks with God just as Abraham and Sarah do, yet she the excluded one names God as “God who sees”. It is the first time in the Bible that such an act happens, and it is not by someone “chosen” or “inside” the fold. The one cast into the margins is the one who is seen by God. While Hagar’s story is not the “bigger” story of Abraham and Sarah (indeed, Isaac will still be the “chosen” one to fulfill the covenant), Hagar will not be cast aside in the way that Sarah’s jealousy callously intends and Abraham’s reticence passively permits.

The narrative, however, just like life itself, will continue to twist and turn, and Hagar’s story is imperiled to unravel a bit when again Sarah enters into a time of jealousy after Isaac is born and the two boys grow up together. Again, Sarah begins the push to cast away Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham again is less likely to intervene, but God gives him a word that while Isaac is to be the chosen one of the covenant, Ishmael will not be forgotten.

Unfortunately, while this is promised, Hagar finds herself wandering with her child, with quickly depleting rations, and this time, she is certain that her circumstances are beyond hope. Again, God steps in and provides for her in a time of need. Hagar and her son will not be left to the whim of existence or the severity of the fate of those who wander in the wilderness without provisions. As you trace the rest of the biblical narratives out, there are occasional mentions of Ishmael (he joins Isaac in burying their father) and his descendants (shown to be in relative harmony with the Israelites, the children of Isaac). Indeed, Islam also reveres the Abrahamaic story alongside Judaism and Christianity, counting Ishmael as a spiritual forebear.

What we contemporary readers encounter in Hagar’s story is a good word first for ourselves. The stories of the Bible are not unacquainted with the challenges of this world. Indeed, many women who know hardship and difficulty in their lives have found great strength in the Hagar narrative. Being cast out or marginalized, being made to feel as if always the “other” and never the “included”. Striking out on one’s own, despite the odds against you. Calling up God for strength and consolation and knowing that you are indeed heard, all of these things are possible, because no one—not even a complete outsider like Hagar—is ignored by God. God sees, and we are not alone.

Recalling Hagar’s story, we are challenged to examine our ways and beliefs so that we do not commit the same jealous rejection of someone “other” to us or say nothing in hopes that we will not have to get involved in controversial matters. We live in a world already schooled in pitting Isaac against Ishmael, claiming divine blessing for one and occlusive rejection for the other. Genesis would say that it could indeed be otherwise.

To me, to all, thy mercies move—

Thy nature, and thy name is Love.

The line is reasonably poetic, though we would note the archaic language of “thy” as a word we would not use any longer. We would also be a bit nervous about singing the original version of the hymn, published in 1742 on two counts. First, the original hymn is fourteen verses long. Secondly, the hymn had to be changed in 1893. The language of 1742 had become quite embarrassing, for the line “To me, to all,…” was written:

To me, to all, my bowels move,

Thy nature, and thy name is love.

Hymnist Brian Wren quotes this hymn as a good example of how the church changes to keep up with the current day. Wren observes, “When a lyric from the past gets too archaic to be understood, or too out of sync with today’s hope, faith, and issues to speak for us, it will eventually cease to be sung, or amended to keep it singable.” (Praying Twice, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1999, p. 298). While we look at today’s church thinking of the various things that we need to change and modernize, the experience of embarrassed Methodists in 1893 is helpful to recall. How do we help words keep their intended power and meaning?

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, we have another embarrassing bowel issue. In the Greek text, as Matthew describes Jesus beholding crowds of needy persons, there is a word that requires some sensitivity in translating: splangchomai. The word is typically translated as “compassion”, but the earthiness of the Greek gets lost a bit in translation. The word is more closely tied to the Greek belief that pity or compassion came from the depths of the human being—literally from the bowels. Listening with today’s understandings, we become a bit like Victorian Methodists, wanting to get away from the language that offends (or amuses) unintentionally, while missing the challenge of the word altogether.

Jesus is in the midst of his ministry, and Matthew tells story after story as Jesus travels around, healing and tending those in need. In Matthew 9 alone, Jesus heals a paralytic, raises a woman from the dead; heals a woman of her chronic hemorrhaging, two blind men, and a demonically possessed person. Throughout the countryside, Jesus goes where he is needed, and his friends and even his detractors are amazed at the power he evidences in all this work.

But then Jesus gets around the corner and is confronted by a crowd of needy persons. What does he do now?

At the end of nearly every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a song plays as the camera switches between the various doctors of Seattle Grace Hospital, lingering for a moment over each one as they ponder the challenges and troubles on their minds. Each week, the doctors deal with complex cases, difficult patients (or the patients’ families), hospital rules, their personal lives, and more than a little hubris about their careers, love lives, and interactions with other characters. Sometimes, a character has an “aha!” moment and figures out how to treat the patient or repair a relationship. Other times, the viewer is left wondering if a doctor will get things sorted out, the camera fading away as the doctor looks bereft, puzzled, or in despair.

Jesus stands before the crowd of needy people, surely wore out from the many, many people that he has been healing and tending in his ministry. Sometimes, at the end of the day, we put our feet up, groan a bit, and then let Jon Stewart take away our fears and fatigue with a few laughs before heading to bed. You just do not want to see another person, deal with another situation, or put up with “one more thing”. Jesus stands there, facing the crowd, and he is deeply moved by the need before him. When you look at your own life, feeling bedraggled by the day’s events or the travail of life in general, yet you still have that bit of energy to volunteer or offer help to someone who need sit, or listen on the phone to that friend who you haven’t heard from in months who reached out to you for advice, it is that moment you experience splangchomai. And the fact that we humans can experience it means that Jesus knows what he was doing when he turned from his own moment of realizing the pain of the world before him and did not settle for just sending himself back out there to help. He sent his disciples as well, calling them to be his apostles.

“Apostle”—now there’s a word we have heard of but tend to steer clear. For many years, I thought the word “apostle” was reserved for the twelve disciples, thus keeping the image of an apostle as an old guy with a beard and a robe standing real close to Jesus in the Sunday school quarterly pictures. Instead, the term “apostle” designated one who was sent out. The great work of Jesus’ ministry was not reserved for Jesus alone. In fact, the whole reason for Jesus calling disciples was to empower many to do the work at hand. Matthew ties together chapter 9’s stories of Jesus healing and teaching with Jesus giving instructions throughout chapter 10 for his disciples to go and do likewise in his name. Out of deep compassion, Jesus sends forth not just himself, but a people to proclaim and tend in the name of the Kingdom/Reign. Like the Sermon on the Mount, this teaching about apostles is not for mere reflection. To be the apostles, the disciples must live out a way of life that says, “Go!”

In his recent commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas observes, “In a wonderful moment Jesus, confronted with such need, asks the disciples to pray that God will send helpers. The mission of the church has begun. The disciples’ prayer is answered, and the answer turns out to be them.” (Matthew, Brazos Press, 2006, p. 104)

It is a difficult word to hear when our definitions of church are more tied to institutional identity. We know the familiarity of pews and budgets and committees and potlucks, but we often settle for just these things as the sum of what our faith community does with itself. Words like “evangelism” and “mission” might be the work of a committee that meets from time to time or we decide that evangelism is the pastor’s job here and mission is the missionary’s job way off somewhere else in the world. So when we hear “the harvest is great, but the laborers are few”, many of us tend to let the words roll right by.

In the midst of a great time of ministry, Jesus tells his disciples, “I need you out there in the field.” And then he gives a set of instructions about getting out there in the field, what to wear, what to say, how to deal with difficulty, and even what to take along with you. It may seem like quite the list of instructions, but the idea is to strip away any thought of Jesus doing all the work and realize that there is work that Jesus gives us to take up ourselves. As St. Teresa of Avila put it, we are called to be “the hands and feet of Christ in the world”. Indeed, when you boil it down, the call to be apostles is part of the continuing message of Matthew’s gospel: trust in God to provide your needs and take up your cross and follow. Or, as American Baptists have put it about our denomination’s history in a recent promotional video (available on Youtube and the church’s website), we “do not travel the easy road, because ‘easy’ never changed the world.”

Jesus calls forth the many to do the work of ministry. This is a saving grace in itself to hear that not just one, or a few, are called to bring about the work of the Reign of Heaven. Even in times of conflict within the Church, when it seems that it is more like "the Harvest is great, but the laborers are feuding", the work of God continues.  A good apostle keeps moving on, just like Jesus, profoundly aware of the pain of the world embodied among those in need.  The Church is found among those who are an eclectic group of people, not likely to be assembled by choice by any other standards imaginable, other than the Gospel itself.  The Church is found among those who know all too well the wearying world and yet still traverse it, bringing the gospel to light, moving in the midst of those in need.

Back in the Midwest, I remember speaking to a fundamentalist Baptist minister about his life spent in congregational ministry. The minister worked with a congregation large enough that they ran their own camping program, including one camp that featured horse riding. He said that this camp was the most popular, but it also became one of the most controversial issues in his congregation. Now, listening to this story, I am wondering how controversial a horse riding camp could be. Were the kids betting on the horses? Did it turn in Vacation Bookie School? The minister explained that one day a camper showed up in a pair of trousers. It was controversial because the church held that women (including this female camper) could not wear trousers. Women could only wear skirts to church, including such ministry activities as horse riding.

Another story, a bit closer to home: Back in the 1960s, residents of a local town became apprehensive of this strange group of men that appeared one day. They had long beards and odd choice in clothing. Some folks thought that these men must be some sort of hippies, given the beards and how they dressed. It turned out that these men were actually monks, getting ready to establish a Russian Orthodox monastery that we now know as New Skete monastery.

How should you dress yourself? Around here, it does not seem to be a burning theological question. However, as you listen to the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, however, you overhear the conversation between Paul and this congregation about the suitability of women wearing head coverings, or veils, in worship. It was the practice of early Christians of the time to have the women wear headdress, and it seems that now some women are starting to remove their head garb.

Paul’s response to this issue might seem as odd to you as the modern day example of a church banning women from wearing jeans, slacks, and even coo lots. For Paul, however, this is a matter that he addresses at length, responding to the situation with a great deal of fervor. He complements the Corinthian church’s value of tradition, but then he starts down this line of argument, wanting to know why tradition was being broken?

The tradition of early Christians held that women should wear head coverings in church, so why should certain among the Corinthian women do otherwise? Women should wear these head coverings; otherwise, it was considered shameful. Women should be dressed this way, as it is reflective of the submission that they show before their husbands and before God. As far as Paul can see, this is to be so; it is the natural order of things.

If you look around you this morning, two millennia later, you do not see many, if any hats or head coverings out there in our predominately female congregation. Perhaps if it were Easter Sunday or another special day, but again, the hats would appear out of style or custom, but not on theological grounds. What happened over the centuries to hats for women in church?

Something changed in the traditions of the church! While we read and appreciate 1 Corinthians as part of the New Testament, we should remember that this epistle is a product of a particular era and cultural context that is different to our own. The issue of head coverings for women was part of a culture that highly valued honor and avoided acts that would be shameful. Yet, these texts are still with us two thousand years later, and we wonder how to puzzle out what traditions we hand down and which traditions we do not. Take for example the quandary of gender issues, how did first century Christians address the role of women and men? Paul’s writings reflect that struggle, with some of his writings presuming a hierarchy of Christ then man/husband then woman/wife then children then household/slaves). Other parts of his writings proclaiming that there are no distinctions between “Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free”. Which of these traditions do we hand down?

First Corinthians also reflects an interesting tension regarding the role of women in worship. Here in chapter 11, Paul spends much time debating the headdress of women, while he also assumes that it is normative for the women to be active participants in worship, here in the work of prophesying, suitably attired! In the larger history of Christianity, another text from 1 Corinthians overshadows this passage’s affirmation of women in religious leadership. In 1 Corinthians, you encounter a text oft quoted by opponents of women in ministry. In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, we read: “As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

You might wonder about the curious sermon title this morning: “The Grace of Conflict”. If there are two words that do not seem to go together, “grace” and “conflict” might win prizes at the Oxymoron Olympics. Oxymoronic phrases are those word pairings that puzzle us a bit: “civil war”, “clearly misunderstood”, “committee decision”, “new classic”, “authentic replica”, “operating instructions” (this is funny if you have ever tried to put together anything from a kit), and one that you churchgoers might find quite funny indeed: “brief sermon”.

So “graceful conflict” might win the silver, or even the gold for odd phrases that puzzle more than fit together. “Grace” is a word that means “the experience of things going well”. Conflict, on the other hand, is a word that you do not expect to see hanging out with “grace”. Conflict is a word that means “the experience of things going ka-blooey”.

Conflict in the church can be an interesting experience, especially if you are hearing about it after the fact. One church I encountered had a story in its decades of existence that had my jaw on the floor. The old timer showed me a historical timeline of the congregation and pointed to one minister’s photo from the mid-20^th century. “This minister got fired, but he refused to leave the church. The police had to come and drag him away from the pulpit.” Another church of my acquaintance was a place where you could not say the words “linoleum” or “carpet”. A church business meeting became overheated regarding the decision about new flooring for the fellowship hall. Another church story still haunts me a bit. I was newly appointed to serve a congregation in Kansas. When I traveled around for national denominational meetings, folks would ask, “Where are you at nowadays?” I would tell them, and the folks who knew that area of the country (or at least the various American Baptist congregations of the area) would think for a minute, and with little variance, say, “Oh yeah, that’s a tough church.”

In the case of this latter congregation, the one that ordained me to ministry, the church had a few years of conflict that had dissipated a bit before I wandered into the pages of their history. I had a good experience with the folks during my time there, but nonetheless, I still pondered a bit the experience of folks trying to summon their mental “rolodex” and saying with some consistency, “Oh yeah, that’s a tough church.” The “linoleum vs. carpet” congregation was the church that “raised me” in the faith, which helped me hear my call to ministry. (I admit great relief, however, that when the trustees here decided to replace the hallway tile a few months back, it went by without incident.) As for the church with the pastoral transition that needed a SWAT team, I was just guest preacher with his jaw on the floor.

Again, “grace” and “conflict” seem to have little to say to one another, yet there is Paul taking those words and drawing them together. The Corinthian church had many factions at work within its fellowship. Read the two epistles, and you encounter more than a few problems vexing these people. Yet, Paul keeps writing his words of encouragement and imparting his teachings, in hope that the fractures within the fellowship be mended, the broken made whole. Grace can make its way into the oddest of places, even when it seems that the only possible outcome is “ka-bloooey”.

How does Paul do this? It can be argued that he did not have lasting success. An early Christian writing First Clement, written a generation after Paul’s day (ca. 96 CE) reports that the Corinthian Christians were still well known for engaging in partisan strife (NIB, I Corinthians, 775). Yet, the Corinthian correspondence from Paul appears in the New Testament for a reason. What is that reason?

These past two weeks, you have received a letter from me, notifying you that there are some controversies going on within our American Baptist region. Last week and later this morning, opportunities are given for this congregation to review and discuss the issues at hand. Shall we ordain gay or lesbian persons to the ministry? How do we deal with the reality that this is not an easy question to answer in one congregation, let alone the many congregations that make up the American Baptist Churches of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Then this week, I received an epistle, well, technically, an email (so, perhaps we should call it an e-pistle) from Susan Kachmar, who will facilitate our discussion time this morning. We have been in contact throughout the week, discussing the work for today, and one of her email messages bore the subject line that piqued my attention. It read, “What’s the story about Sunday?” Now, Susan really meant something to the effect of “we need to talk about our planning”, but there was that line “What’s the story about Sunday?”

Paul addresses the Corinthians not as “us” versus “them”. He calls them adelphoi (“my brothers and my sisters”), summoning them to be “united in the same mind and the same purpose”. Then he tells them what the story is about for Sunday. As they gather for worship, perhaps even sitting intentionally across the room from those with whom they find disagreement, they hear Paul’s letter read aloud to them. They hear the story that is the reason for their gathering: Christ, the crucified, has summoned you together into fellowship, not a partisan word, but one given over to this strange language of what is foolish and what is wise. In sum, the arguments can eclipse the real story of why you are here together. Seek unity so that you may be together. There will be differences among you, and that is to be expected. Paul was not asking for uniformity, or for everyone to move in lockstep. Treat each other well, but realize that there will be variance and difference. What Paul seeks is to make sure that folks are grounded not in the issues but in the cross.

It can be a hard word to hear. We humans are prone to our partisanship. In the second century CE, a writer would speak of the city of Corinth itself as a place “without grace [or charm] and not the least convivial”. (NIB, “1 Corinthians”, 775). It reminds me of this country during an election year! Paul’s writing here also makes me mindful that there are choices that we make about dealing with difference of opinion or controversial matters or even how we interpret scripture and debate theological matters. We can fracture and grow distant, or we can embrace that mediating grace, that symbol of all the world’s brokenness being taken up by God, and keep the cross as our center point. Not the issues of the day, not the conflict of the moment, but the grace upon grace, Jesus Christ, whom Paul claims became for us “wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”. By keeping to Jesus, we draw closer to God, the source of life, and away from the temptations to cast away or worse, homogenize the diverse people called “Church”.

“The grace of conflict” still sounds a bit audacious. I hope, however, that we can live into the complexity of such a statement. Conflict is with us. “If you’re human, you deal with conflict”, I said to the press as we advertised a community-wide conflict transformation workshop a few months back. And as I think of the potential ways that things could play out: words said in haste, anger, dissension, grudge matches, and yes, the list can go on, I take greater stock in the word called “grace”. In the presence of grace, conflict will seem far more like words exchanged in dialogue, attentive listening, open hands, and the prospect of unity, a unity not kept out of uneasy truce, silent stalemate, or a politically convenient peace. No, just the grace of Christ crucified, the story that transforms a world wracked by conflict, a story that transforms a church prone to partisan bickering, and a story that transforms a heart tapped into the source of life, the God made known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. AMEN.