A Fourth Church Sermon by Victoria G. Curtiss

July 26, 2009 | 4:00 p.m.

Broken and Beloved

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 139:1–18
Ephesians 3:14–4:6

Caring for one another is a hallmark of the church. So it surprised me when I read comments from Peter Rollins, a prominent figure in the emergent church movement in Ireland. Peter leads a gathering of people called Ikon. He said,

Paradoxically, I say, “Ikon doesn’t care about you. Ikon doesn’t give a crap if you are going through a divorce. The only person who cares is the person sitting beside you, and if that person doesn’t care, you’re stuffed.” People will say, “I left the church because they didn’t phone me when my dad died, and that was really hurtful.” But the problem is not that the church didn’t phone but that it promised to phone. I say, “Ikon ain’t ever gonna phone ya.” Pete Rollins might. But if he does, it will be as Pete Rollins and not as a representative of Ikon. Ikon will never notice if you don’t come. But if you’ve made a connection with the person sitting next to you, that person might. Ikon is like the people who run a pub. It’s not their responsibility to help the patrons become friends. But they create a space in which people can actually encounter each other.
(Christian Century, 2 June 2009)

This thought is troubling in some ways. After all, churches as organizations of Christians are called to care. And churches as big as Fourth Church need to set up systems for caring—such as care teams and bridge teams and caring connection groups, because the person sitting next to you is not likely to know who you are.

On the other hand, what Peter Rollins is underscoring is that caring is done by the people who make up the church. As Peter says, “To us, a priest is one who refuses to be a priest, who pushes back and creates a priesthood of all believers.”

If you and I don’t personally reach out to care for others in our congregation, it won’t happen, no matter what systems are in place. You make the difference in whether others feel as though they belong here, are fully accepted and supported, and will be strengthened in their faith journey. We need to be in close relationship with at least a few others to experience true church.

When Paul sent a letter to a church at a certain location, such as the one we just heard to the church in Ephesus, he was addressing a body of disciples who gathered in private homes throughout the city. His letter would be read in one house church, then copied or passed along to other house gatherings.

Pastor Gregory Boyd wrote,

Many New Testament teachings about how Christians are to relate to one another make sense only when we understand them in the context of a small house church. For example, the scriptures command us to submit to one another, confess our sins to one another, encourage one another, serve one another, and hold one another accountable. How can we authentically do this unless we’re in close relationships with one another? These aren’t the kind of things you can carry out by meeting in a large building once a week with people you hardly know. (Christian Century, 19 May 2009)

Christ’s followers are to live and minister in community with others. We cannot embody the kingdom of God if we are doing life solo. We all need people we are committed to loving and serving and who are committed to loving and serving us. We all need people who are close enough to us to notice when we’re discouraged and care enough to encourage us. We all need people who can spot areas of weakness in our lives and care enough to confront us in love. We all need people who notice when we’re going astray and care enough to hold onto us. To live the radical alternative Christ calls us into, we need the support and accountability of other Christians who come to know us well.

As Gregory Boyd says, “Close-knit, loving, mutually submitted and mutually accountable relationships—these constitute the primary context in which God transforms us and uses us to transform the world.”

Fourth Church has a few small groups in which such caring and support more likely happen. Our discipleship and caring would be deeper if more of us were in such groups. We need to organize ourselves differently to develop such relationships. But even beyond that, we need to live into the challenge of loving itself.

Paul encouraged the Ephesians to live “with all humility and patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This may not sound that difficult in the abstract. But when you begin to think of individuals with whom you interact directly—that one work colleague, those certain committee members, particular relatives, our overly dramatic friends—then the challenge becomes very real. As cartoonist Charles Schultz said through the mouth of Linus, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”

Gordon Cosby is the longtime pastor of Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., a church whose members are required to be part of a small group. The small groups are organized not around similar ages or lifestyles but around a particular mission to which one feels called. Gordon says that inevitably God will call someone into your mission group that really rubs you the wrong way. And God does that for your own good—so you will grow in love.

If left to our own efforts, we likely will not fully accept and care for others. Loving requires that we submit ourselves to one another, that we make space for people who are different from us, whose perspectives we not only don’t hold but may find in our way. Humility demands that we remember our own limitations and our dependency on God to grow in goodness. We can’t be mutually vulnerable to one another, showing our brokenness, sharing our fears and concerns, unless we rely on the love God has for us.

It’s noteworthy that before Paul urges us to bear with one another in love, he first tells us his prayer that we have the power to comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ so we may be filled with all the fullness of God. We are fully and unconditionally loved by God. We love because God first loved us. We are God’s beloved. If we don’t know this in the depths of our hearts, we will turn to others seeking this unconditional love. And we will often be hurt because none of us offers that kind of love to one another in an ongoing way. If we do remember we are God’s beloved, then we are freer to both receive and give to one another.

Henri Nouwen wrote,

Every human being has a great, yet often unknown, gift to care, to be compassionate, to become present to the other, to listen, to hear and to receive. If that gift would be set free and made available, miracles could take place. Those who really can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with [others] not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken. (Out of Solitude, pp. 40–41)

Let us make connections, my friends. Let us be church for one another.