With Open Hands and Open Eyes - October 1, 2006

Mark 8:38-50

About a year ago this week I was back in Northern California at a conference of younger pastors—yes, I sort of snuck into such a gathering, since I’m a few years older than the demographic the planners of the event were reaching out to. But on the last day I was spending my last morning in California with a friend, who had generously agreed to drive me to the airport—the mark of true friendship, you know. One thing I really admire about this friend is that he is incredibly well-connected, by which I mean to say that he knows many, many people, and is known by many people. He’s also so well respected that lots of people who came through our seminary keep in touch with him, even after graduation.

We were driving towards the airport, and as we were I was talking about various classmates I had seen at this conference. I was talking about people that both of us know. There are a few of my seminary colleagues whose relative success…well…its gets my goat. I admit it. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m glad whenever the church of Jesus Christ flourishes. Really, I am. Sometimes I’m especially glad when the church flourishes under the leadership of people who I think really deserve to be the bearers of the Good News. You know, people I like and admire.

So after listening politely to me ramble on about that person and this person, I began to notice that he was being awfully quiet. And without looking at me, concentrating on his driving, he finally said, “Have you ever heard of the word schadenfreude?” And with a word—that one word that means happiness at someone else’s failure—he both got me to close my mouth, and open my eyes to a pretty destructive thing I was saying.

It stung a little—this realization that I had said what I’d said to him and that he’d heard it loud and clear, but I was grateful that he’d called me on it. That’s the other mark of a true friend, besides a trip to the airport, I mean.

Sometimes it’s so easy to lose focus. There are a million different ways for us to be distracted from what is important, what really matters in the Christian life. The disciples are concentrating on getting it right. They’re trying, really they are. They find someone who they think is not on their approved list of people who should be performing miracles; they, in essence, act with all the dignity of third graders on a playground tattling to the teacher, and with a word Jesus brings them back into focus. They want to stop this nameless, faceless miracle worker, and Jesus says to them: “Knock it off!” You can almost hear the implied question, “Schadenfreude much?”

There’s this thing that leaders in mainline churches do when we get in to group and begin talking about the future of Christianity. We sometimes marvel at what our sisters and brothers in more evangelical/fundamentalist/conservative traditions are able to accomplish. We ask each other, “Have you seen that new Megachurch out on the highway? What are they up to now, four services a week? Did you hear they have three new associate pastors? Man, how do they do it? How do they pack all those seats every week?”

It’s humbling when we see somebody else’s work making a difference, even if we strongly suspect that never in a million years would we be called to be a church like that. Even if we know down deep in our hearts that there are things about how that group operates, believes, spends its money, or worships that would just get our collective goat.

Jesus’ admonition to maim ourselves rather than to be a stumbling block to somebody else’s success is a brilliant use of hyperbole. Its his way of saying, “You know, church of mine, if you don’t knock it off and cooperate with one another, each one of you is about as helpful as a handless, footless, blind person. To damage apart of me is to damage the whole of my church.”

And so, it is helpful to have a friend willing to point out to us when we’re being destructive, or petty, or small. Someone who will give it to us straight, pull no punches, not hide behind anonymity, but who will demonstrate grace to us in the honesty of plain talk. Someone who will challenge us out of love, out of desire to see us succeed.

We have that friend, beloved. Christ’s words are not of warning so much as they are his deepest desire for us, that we remain whole and able to labor towards God’s plan, with open eyes that can see neighbors clearly and hands that are able to reach out in peace to one another.

I thought a long time after my conversation with my friend. I thought that whole plane ride home about why it was that I was so vocal about someone else’s ministry, in a negative way. It’s the darker side of human nature, I suppose. But as my friend pointed out to me, and our friend Jesus points out to us, the Christian life is not about staying in the darker side of human nature, it is about a higher ideal. For those who claim Christ as savior, liberator, redeemer, and friend, well…there are expectations for how we relate to one another.

On Wednesday night I was at my friend Martha’s church. I’d gone with her to Bible study with members of her United Church of Christ congregation. I was incredibly welcomed by this group, even though I was a stranger in their midst. I did have to answer the question, “It gets cold up there, doesn’t it?” which I found a little strange coming from people who practically live in Canada! But after the introductions were over, and we began discussing this passage, and the epistle lesson in James, the geographical and theological and polity differences between us sort of…melted away. I was reminded once again that Christians are just people—that there is much more to unite us than to divide us.

This did not lead to us a warm-fuzzy, Kum Bay Ya, “anything goes” sort of inclusiveness, but rather to a place and I time where the stranger was welcomed as friend and where the sort of challenges that we bring to one another could come from a place of genuine compassion. I felt, in that place, as if I could have said just about anything true, anything authentic, posed any real questions in regards to the Scriptures, and it would have been okay.

Today we mark World Communion Sunday, a day in which Christians from all sorts of traditions all over this planet have historically come together, not to become a mishmash, hybrid, one-size-fits all kind of religion, but to celebrate the one thing that does unite us and should, ideally, never divide us: Jesus Christ. Christ says, “Those who are for us, can never be against us.”

That kind of unity is challenging in the context of our culture. The words of Jesus do not reflect the attitudes of our world leaders, whose overwhelming messages are that those who are not for us are against us.

Our table is laden today with symbols of bread from many cultures. All over the world today, they will come from Sault Ste. Marie, and from San Paulo, from Beijing, and Brisbane, from Wales and Warsaw and sit at table, in demonstrate to the world that the One who is for us, can never be against us, and that God deeply desires for us all the wholeness that grace provides for us at this table.

Thanks be to God.