Behind Christian fences is often a belief that if we as Christians don’t get it right, our salvation is at stake. Our immortal souls are at risk. People who believe this apparently didn’t notice the bible verses we just read. Jesus says: Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. The reward he’s talking about is heaven. A cup of water: that’s a low bar.
Jesus doesn’t want to exclude anyone, he’s trying to include everyone. It’s Jesus’ job to bring us to God. Isn’t he any good at his job? He’s not trying to make it hard. What’s hard about Christianity is living into the Kingdom of God now; acting like the rules of heaven apply to us here and now. We won’t get that part right, none of us do. Sin means missing the mark. And we all do. But according to the most orthodox theology, Jesus is the remedy to sin. We will be forgiven for missing the mark. We will be reconciled with God; all we have to do is be willing. Christians have come up with some pretty elaborate explanations of how this works. Let’s not make those explanations into more fences. Let’s just remember that Jesus lights our Way forward, and our job is to move in the right general direction. Our belonging is not in question. Can we trust that? We all belong to God. Always have. Always will. The question is: will we act like we belong to God? Let’s follow that beacon, and give it a try.
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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ
September 30, 2018
Belonging: Fences and Beacons
Mark 9:38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
The beginning of this month I talked about fences and beacons as a way to think about Christian ethics. We finish the month with fences and beacons again, this time to talk about belonging and identity. Belonging is a core human need. In our desire to belong, we build fences between “us” and “them”. These days we feel that separation very acutely in politics. But it happens in matters of faith as well. Who belongs and who doesn’t, who’s Christian, our kind of Christian at least, and who isn’t? I hope we can minimize the fences, the divisions, and instead lift up a beacon, our best understanding of the Kingdom of God right now, of following Jesus, of Creative Transformation: however you describe that beacon. If you are seeking that beacon with us, whether you are near or far, you belong. Fences separate. Beacons invite us to come together.
Let me give you a non-church example of how belonging works. I belong to the California Native Plant Society. I pay dues, and I am a card-carrying member. That membership card is a formality, but it raises some money for them, and it gets me a discount at Tree of Life Nursery. When I can, I go to monthly meetings of the Orange County chapter. I feel at home at those meetings. I don’t know many of the people there, but they are my people. Science nerds. People who know the Latin names of plants. People who spend unreasonable amounts of time fussing over native gardens or hunting down rare plants on the sides of cliffs.
I belong to the California Native Plant Society. There is no fence keeping me in. My membership is a formality. It is my passion for the plants and my kinship with other people who have that same passion that make me belong. The plants, I guess, are the beacon. I belong because I seek out that beacon and I want to spend time with people who value what I value. My passion has been noticed. They asked me to help organize the native garden tour next year. Go with fellow native gardeners all over Orange County to look at everyone’s native gardens. How could I refuse?
There’s another local native plant organization called Back to Natives. I don’t belong to Back to Natives. They really care about habitat restoration; that’s their passion. They care so much that they want you to only plant native plants that grow wild locally, within a 25-mile radius of your garden. That’s a kind of fence, and some of them can get pretty passionate about it. My garden has California Bay Laurel, from the beloved Santa Cruz Hills of my childhood, and Baja Fairy Duster, and Blackfoot Daisies from the Mojave Desert. I fail their purity test of local plants only.
I’m sure the people who belong to Back to Natives have the best intentions. I know they do good work. But that 25-mile limit looks like a fence to me, and I’m sitting on the far side of it. Their passion hits me as judging me and my beloved plants wrong. I’m sure most of them would still have me and I wish them the best, but I don’t want to belong. Strange how that works.
I’m pondering our Christian identity here at Brea Congregational UCC, how we belong to church, to Jesus, to God. There is no real fence here that separates members from nonmembers: what you must do or not do. And that’s OK, though it does make membership record keeping kind of confusing. There are a core group of people who do the work and play of the Church. Most of them, most of you, are formal members. Some are not. Thank God for you, for your passions and your service, or this place wouldn’t exist. And there are concentric circles of people who we don’t see too often, who nevertheless claim this is their church. Some of them work on Sundays, or have health issues. At the outer reaches of the circles are a couple of people I’ve seen at church once or twice, and in at least one case, never seen here on Sunday morning. But this is their church, they’ve told me so. It feels good to have a home, somewhere you belong, even if you never actually go there. Oddly, I get that.
Clearly we are not a fenced-in kind of church. We are a beacon kind of church. And I’m glad. That beacon has different facets. Check out our mission statement on the back of the bulletin[i]to pick your favorite facet. Some of you are passionate about connecting to the sacred through worship. Some of you are passionate about a certain understanding of how God works in the world (process theology), or about the sacred call to environmental justice, about welcoming sexual and gender diverse people, or sheltering the homeless, and more. Without those passions, we would be just a social club with no real reason for being. You can do most of these things other places than in church. But here we remember that they are sacred. I am so glad our beacon can shine, bringing comfort to people who belong here, whatever that means to them. Behind all those passions is our passion for following Jesus, for the upside-down Kingdom of God, for being a part of God’s love in action. That’s the real beacon.
Still there is something in all of us that wants to build fences sometimes. We tend to trust those we belong to and give them a pass when their behavior is questionable. We tend to distrust those on the other side of the fence, and we may assume they’re guilty unless proven innocent. That’s playing out in politics these days, and it does not serve us.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ disciples were putting up fences. Missing the point again. They do that a lot. They had their beacon. Jesus was right there. Or maybe this is really a story about Mark’s community some forty years later. In any case, the disciple John is telling some amazing exorcist to stop healing, just because he didn’t belong to John’s group of disciples, didn’t have the right membership card.
A word about exorcism. It may not be on your short list for church jobs but it sure is needed these days. Evil spirits are not how we think about what ails us. We call them different names now: depression, anxiety, PTSD, racism, greed, intolerance, violence, and so on. Our society can definitely use some exorcism.
The disciple John was putting up fences. This rogue healer “wasn’t following us,” but he clearly was doing God’s work. Kind of ironic since at the beginning of this chapter, those same disciples had failed at a healing. “Wasn’t following us.” What about following Jesus?
There is a place for fences. Fences can protect. Here’s a fence I built, with the church Council’s understanding. When an organization like another church asks to rent our facility longer term, I let them know that we welcome same-gender couples at our church, and we want our gay members to be treated with respect at all times. Are they OK with that? Perhaps not, because we haven’t gotten any follow-up inquiries recently.
I sometimes feel more belonging among people who are not Christian but who are active in social justice than among Christians who fence out my friends from their idea of who’s Christian. I went to the Brea Ministerial Association for the first time earlier this month. Last year I made a couple of attempts to get myself invited, but this was the first time they gave me an actual invitation. It was good that I went. City staff talked about their efforts to address homelessness. They have money! And I know from spending time with pastors more conservative than me that mostly we have the same work and similar challenges. But I can get defensive about how I am not like them in my politics or my theology. I can tell myself I don’t belong in the Brea Ministerial Association. Maybe I don’t. But maybe I can withhold judgment for a while and not assume I don’t belong.
The more desperate we are, the more we want to put up fences, with the best of intentions. Do you feel urgency about the state of the environment like I do? Would you like to make all kinds of rules and laws to drastically reduce carbon consumption immediately? That would probably backfire, because nobody likes to be told they’re doing it wrong. If we throw up fences without getting buy-in, we alienate people. All we may accomplish is putting them on the wrong side of the environmental purity fence. Then they don’t trust us and don’t want to cooperate with us. This fence business is frustrating!
Over the centuries Christians have put up countless fences, separating us from each other, though we all claim Jesus. It’s embarrassing. They put up fences of ritual: Should you baptize infants and let their parents promise to teach them the faith, or wait till they are old enough to speak for themselves? They put up fences of governance: pope or no pope? Bishop, or congregational? They put up fences of behavior: is divorce allowable or not? They put up fences of theology: Take the bible literally or not? Predestination or not? And so on.
So many fences. What about the beacon? What about following Jesus? I am happy to report that back in 1957, the a merger of churches formed the United Church of Christ, in order to break down some of those fences, and put the beacon front and center. One of my fellow UCCers in seminary was a fundamentalist. How could this fundamentalist be in the UCC with me? She believes a certain way, but she doesn’t think I have to. And she is African American. She likes belonging to a church that cares about social justice. We both belong, though we think very differently about some things. You could say we’re coming at the same beacon from very different directions. Thank God.
Behind Christian fences is often a belief that if we as Christians don’t get it right, our salvation is at stake. Our immortal souls are at risk. People who believe this apparently didn’t notice the bible verses we just read. Jesus says: Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. The reward he’s talking about is heaven. A cup of water: that’s a low bar.
Jesus doesn’t want to exclude anyone, he’s trying to include everyone. It’s Jesus’ job to bring us to God. Isn’t he any good at his job? He’s not trying to make it hard. What’s hard about Christianity is living into the Kingdom of God now; acting like the rules of heaven apply to us here and now. We won’t get that part right, none of us do. Sin means missing the mark. And we all do. But according to the most orthodox theology, Jesus is the remedy to sin. We will be forgiven for missing the mark. We will be reconciled with God; all we have to do is be willing. Christians have come up with some pretty elaborate explanations of how this works. Let’s not make those explanations into more fences. Let’s just remember that Jesus lights our Way forward, and our job is to move in the right general direction. Our belonging is not in question. Can we trust that? We all belong to God. Always have. Always will. The question is: will we act like we belong to God? Let’s follow that beacon, and give it a try. Amen.
[i]Brea Congregational United Church of Christ is an Open and Affirming hospitality-based community of faith. We welcome in worship and service all of God’s children of any race, origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or ability. We celebrate and trust the transforming power of God, which was manifested through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We work to provide an environment of peace, social justice, personal empowerment, and spiritual growth, and to dedicate ourselves to the care of God’s Creation. Our ethical guides are to honor Christian openness to share our beliefs, doubts, struggles, and growth within the context of mutual respect. Therefore, our purpose is to reach out, taking the risk of opening ourselves to the possibility of making the stranger a friend.
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