July 13, 2008 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m

Factions or Focus

Elizabeth A. Andrews
Parish Associate, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 103:1–14
Romans 14:1–12

“Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another?”

Romans 14:4 (NRSV)

When other [persons’] sins come to mind, the soul that would remain at rest should flee from the thought, . . . seeking a remedy for, and help against it, from God. For the contemplation of the sins of others creates, as it were, thick mist before the eyes of the soul, and we cannot, during that time, see the fairness of God.

Julian of Norwich
The Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings

That last golden morning at leisure in Michigan,
the day before the hard work of closing the house
and loading up to drive back to take up
September routines…
Soft stirring of wind in the woods
and waves on the shore;
the sweetly inquiring notes of the goldfinch’s call.
The quiet harmony,
this taste of the “peaceable kingdom,” though,
was invaded by the quarrelsome scolding
of an aggressive little red squirrel staking a claim
to the birdseed I’d scattered earlier,
warning off the easy-going gray squirrels
and chipmunks
and the strident antiphons of blue jays
calling to one another as they took up positions
in the pines nearby.
I wondered whimsically whether the creatures might have
“caught” contentiousness
from something in the atmosphere,
toxic waves from my satellite TV receiver, maybe,
before I simply unplugged the system—and my focus—
from the endless churning of political coverage and commentary.
Into the mix that morning came the mellow voice of Garrison Keillor,
as I tuned into the local public radio station
to listen to The Writer’s Almanac.
The poem for the day was not one I would revisit to savor,
but rather for the few phrases that caught my attention
as I had already begun reflecting on our scripture text for today.

“Bless or blame?” mused the poet,
     “these layers, these divisions, the meanings or the lack thereof,
     these fissures and abysses beside which I stumble . . .
          bless or blame?” (C. K. Williams, “The Clause”).

A climate of contentiousness prevails these days, of divisive discourse,
some of it cynical, sophisticated manipulation
of the debate;
some of it seemingly straight out of
the childhood classic by Dr. Seuss, where
“the Star-bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars
[while] the Plain-bellied Sneetches had none upon thars”
and the exploitation of these differences—
by one who calls himself “the fix-it-up-chappie”—
results in great commotion,
frenzied cycles of reactivity and confusion,
until the Sneetches wise up,
recognizing and celebrating their common Sneetch-hood, as it were.
So now we have fingerpointing, fragmentation, factions
the rush to rant, to snipe, to spin,
and on so many levels, in so many forms of media.
“Bless or blame” indeed.

A bit of the same must have been going on in the early church,
as Paul in this segment of his letter to the Romans
alludes to differences and divisions over observance of the Lord’s day
that were apparently leading some to focus on being “right”
and their judgment of others as “wrong”
and losing sight of what their life together in the household of God was about.

That’s always a danger, isn’t it?
What may begin as strongly held convictions and
honest differences about efforts to be faithful
can turn into debates that absolutize, polarize, demonize;
can turn into distractions that take the focus away
from the greater goodness to which we all belong,
to whose service we are all called,
to whose purposes we are accountable.
Is our life to be about factions or focus,
blaming or blessing?

Timeless traps, from Paul’s time to our own day:
the divisions and distractions that happen when we
point at persons
instead of attending to the ground of our life together.
Timeless choices about how to live together in
communities and relationships.

It was somewhere around the middle of the sixth century
that St. Benedict, setting down some guidelines or a “rule”
for life together, drew for his community a distinction
between “good zeal” and “bitter zeal.”
And in her wonderful commentary on that rule,
the contemporary Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister notes:
“Bitter zeal wraps us up in ourselves
     and makes us feel holy about it.
Bitter zeal renders us blind to others,
     deaf to those around us,
     struck dumb in the face of the demands of dailiness. . . .
Good zeal . . . commits us
     to the happiness of human community and immerses us in Christ and surrenders us to God,
     minute by minute, person by person, day after day.
     Good zeal provides the foundation for the spirituality of the long haul” (pp. 177–78).
A guideline then—and not just for monastics—
as we seek to focus our attention and energies:
attentiveness to the needs and claims of others
which flows from and is informed by
an attentiveness above all to our Lord.

Another wise voice is that of Julian of Norwich,
this bit from her memoir reflecting on
“The Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings,”
given to her on Sunday, May 8, 1373,
“When other men’s sins come to mind
          the soul that would remain at rest
           should flee from the thought . . .
       seeking a remedy for, and help against it, from God.
     For the contemplation of other men’s sins creates, as it were,
          a thick mist before the eyes of the soul,
     and we cannot, during that time, see the fairness [that is, the goodness] of God.
     This is true unless we contemplate [those sins or perceived flaws] with contrition with the sinner,
          with compassion on him, and with the holy desire for God on his behalf.
     Without these, such contemplation annoys, troubles, tempts, and hinders the soul
          that engages in it.”
Interesting, again, that the caution against judging others,
as with Paul, as with Benedict,
is grounded in concern that the one doing the judging
is losing sight of, losing focus on the greater good,
the greater picture.

John O’Donohue
carries us further along with the theme,
as in a segment of his book, Anam Cara,
he contrasts what he calls “styles of vision”:
“To the judgmental eye, everything is closed in definitive frames.
When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of lines and squares.
It is always excluding and separating, and therefore it never sees
     in a compassionate or celebratory way.
To see is to judge.”
And he adds:
“An externalist, image-driven culture is the corollary of such an
     ideology of facile judgment.
[In contrast,]
. . . to the loving eye, everything is real. . . .
The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda
          of power, seduction, opposition or complicity. . . .
     If we could look at the world [and others] in a loving way
then the world would rise up before us full
          of invitation, possibility, and depth. . . .
     The loving eye can even coax pain, hurt, and violence
         toward transfiguration and renewal” (pp. 62–65).

An invitation and natural “bridge” for us
in life together in the church to keep looking
at how we are called daily, concretely, to be part of the
healing, transformation and renewal
of God’s good creation,
watching and working for the kingdom already
and not yet in our midst.

And for us this includes watching and working for healing, transformation, renewal
in the circles and systems of family and work, community and country
in which we daily move.

Before long—less than two months—the long, contentious campaigning will be done,
though the media’s analysis will likely churn on,
like the hurricane season, reluctant to wind down.
Commentators will point to winners and losers,
digging for sound bites of controversy and fault-finding,
who said—or did not say—what about whom.
And yet how deeply, how urgently
we will be needing to move on,
to shift tone and focus,
to move beyond divisions and blame, to bind up and rebuild and bless.
Again turning from saying no to one another,
to saying yes to a greater good,
a nation and a world drawn closer to address
so many crying needs and injustices.

So also in our own lives, and our life together
in the household of God, might we move
not with the judgmental eye that notes differences
as divisions, distractions, skewing perspective,
but with the loving eye,
seeking and seeing not flaws, but God’s purposes
and possibilities of what could be in life together.
The focus on how most authentically
to say yes to God with our lives,
in all seasons and circumstances,
supporting others’ efforts to live faithfully as well.
One who said yes to God with his life—and death—
with great courage and at great cost
was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
His little book Life Together lays out the vision for life shared
in the community of a clandestine seminary for the training of young pastors
during the Nazi regime in Germany in late 1930s.
Just as Paul, writing to the Romans, reminds all members
of the young church that it is their common
belonging and accountability to God in Christ
that is the ground and focus of their life together,
so also Bonhoeffer
(writing before the era of inclusive language)
firmly defines that foundation.
“My brother is . . . that other person
     who has been redeemed by Christ,
delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life.
Not what a man is in himself as a Christian,
     his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of
     our community. What determines our brotherhood
     is what that man is by reason of Christ.
Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.”
In other words, the basis for community is
not the good intentions or wishes or undergirding
of even the best of human constructs,
not a human, but a divine reality.
“Christian brotherhood,” insisted Bonhoeffer,
is not an ideal which we must realize;
it is rather a reality created by God in Christ
     in which we may participate.”

Perhaps even there, there were some differences of
opinion as to what constituted faithful living,
always with the potential for self-righteousness
and judgment and divisions,
and Bonhoeffer observed:
“The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized
     by God, by others, and by himself.
He enters the community of Christians with his demands,
     sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly.
He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, . . .
as if his dream binds men together. . . . When his ideal picture is destroyed,
    he becomes first an accuser of his brethren,
    then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing
          accuser of himself.”
Again, the painful fallout from self-righteousness and the pointing of fingers.
But, Bonhoeffer concludes,
“because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship,
because God has bound us together in one body
     with other Christians in Jesus Christ,
     long before we entered into common life with them,
     we enter into that common life not as demanders
but as thankful recipients.”
So, then too, in our life together in this time and place,
we will soon be coming as thankful recipients
to this table, where God welcomes all, praying for the good of our country, our world
in these difficult days.
mindful especially of those struggling just now in so many kinds of hardship and loss,
mindful that we belong to one another as well as to that great and gracious Other.

Perhaps as we come, we may look towards one another with a loving eye,
noticing not how this or that one may be different,
but appreciating the distinctive image of God that another might bear
and marveling anew at the grace and goodness and love
that have made us one. Amen.