There are few things that shake a person like a fight.
Some people I know don't even like to watch them on tv.
As soon as Katie Couric starts into one of those-split screen interviews -- you know, with the ACLU lawyer on one side . . . some of us click right on over to Diane Sawyer.
Of course, there are people who seem to have an appetite for a fight. As the writer Pete Hamill said a few years ago, "We live in a country that has never made a movie about Leonardo Da Vinci and has produced three about Joey Buttafuco."
Despite that, I'm going to stand by my statement: at some level, everybody is shaken by a fight. Maybe some people just enjoy the shaking more than others.
The writer and receivers of the letter we just read -- are on the side of those of us who regularly click over to Good Morning America. They hate conflict, interpersonal strife, divorce, separation, clashing, struggling, disharmony, dissension, discord and church splits. They hate fights. They hate fights for a good reason -- because they are in one. Worse than that, they've all but lost.
The other side left months ago, taking their good self-opinion and their ability to look themselves in the mirror with them. They left -- fingers pointing and tongues wagging. They left with their property and their pride and their principles. They left telling anybody who'd listen what shmoes the people who stayed with John's community were.
Oh, you know what they said -- They accused John's community of getting its Christology wrong. They accused John's community of getting its priorities wrong. And, perhaps most interestingly, they accused John's community of getting love wrong.
You can hear them -- "They have such sentimental ideas about Christians loving each other. What about loving God?"
It's not, of course, that the folks who walked out on John's community didn't believe in love. You couldn't come within ten miles or three generations of the Beloved Disciple and not reeeeaaallly believe in love. The folks who split off from John's community had put a lot of eggs in the basket of love -- of loving God. They thought of themselves, in that famously-parodied expression, as SPECIAL. Because they were God's children in a SPECIAL way, they were able to love God in a SPECIAL way, they reasoned. Loving God became their focus -- which is fine -- except it's as if they turned all their energy laser-beam-like in the vertical direction and had little or none left for the horizontal.
So, the faithful folks who stayed behind to receive the letter that we just read from were...shaken. Criticized for putting too much emphasis on loving human beings, they were (what could be more ironic?) deserted by the very ones they loved. Tearful good-byes to Brother Park and Sister Foley, to Pastor Mike and Uncle Jack left them . . . shaken.
Shaken. It's a feeling we understand.
A number of years ago, I was mugged while waiting in line at the local McDonald's drive-through. My window was down, I may have been dangling my money out of it. But then I didn't know there was somebody lingering in the building's shadows with a pair of orange-handled scissors in his hand. When he pressed them against my neck and asked for the money, I gave it, of course, as I did when he demanded the rest of the cash from my wallet. "Thank you!" I remember he said as he sprinted off.
It all seemed so silly. Marin County. Orange-handled scissors. A few bucks. And certainly it was silly compared to the violence that is an every-day feature of many lives. But... I couldn't stop shaking. I shook for two or three days. I shook until I ran into Pastor Mary Gillespie and, standing in the mail room at First Pres San Anselmo, I told her the whole silly story and she hugged me.
There is nothing that shakes a person like a fight . . . or the threat of one.
One good thing about living on a seminary campus is that there is no shortage of people to help explain your experience to you. So it was that when I remarked upon this shaking business to a friend of mine who knows a great deal about psychology, I learned something. One interpretation of the thing, my friend explained, is that we shake because at a deep level, our body is torn between going and staying -- between fighting and flighting -- between aggression and escape.
Our body is torn. Shaken. And nobody here this morning needs a preacher to tell them why.
* Our body is torn. When the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) enters the room these days most people follow the age-old tradition of standing -- but others turn their backs.
* Our body is divided. Church law prohibits discrimination against gay and lesbian prospective seminarians and mandates it against gay and lesbian candidates for ministry.
* Our body is conflicted. Those who are threatening to leave have chosen the name "the Confessing Church," a label that aligns them with the heroic resisters of the Third Reich and leaves the rest of us wondering who they think we are.
Our body is divided. Like John's community, we have been accused of getting love wrong. Some of the very ones we have loved are threatening to leave. And we are shaking -- are we not, my fellow Presbyterians -- we are shaking. From shore to shore and synod to synod -- we jerk from one foot to another . . . dissipating our energy in the side-to-side movement. Fight or flight? Go or stay?
Our body is divided. Like the early Christians, some of us shore ourselves up by telling everybody who will listen about our SPECIAL relationship to God.
Like the early Christians, some of us shore ourselves up by fervently grabbing the hand of the person next to us.
And according to the witness of John's community . . . Both of us are so wrong. Both of us are so right. Both of us are so Christian.
SO like every church that has gone down this road before us. SO like every generation who has prayed for healing
prayed for healing
prayed for healing muttering to themselves all the while, "It doth not yet appear."
Yes. It doth not yet appear.
Still. The surprising thing about the Body of Christ is not its brokenness -- it's sad, it's sickening, it's not what God wills for us; but it's not surprising.
The surprising thing about the children of God is not their fractiousness -- it's innervating and invidious and it's not what God wants for us; but it's not surprising.
The surprising thing about God's daughters and sons is not their rivalry -- it's a travesty and a tragedy and it's not what God wants for us; but it's not surprising.
The surprising thing is not our getting love wrong The surprising thing is not even God's getting it right. The surprising thing is God's ability to keep it going.
The first phrase of I John 3 describes an awesome love -- a love amazing in quantity and in generative power. The most surprising thing in all the world, the writer seems to say, is the creative power of God's love. God's love, God's love. The mighty river of God's love. In a moment where you might say the writer is preaching over his own head, he points to the vastness of God's love poured out on us all. A creative love -- a love that by its very nature moves forward and against all that would destroy.
The love that created us, I John says, the love that created us and made us children of God is the love that is healing us, is healing us, is healing us... and pulling us into the future.
Like leaven working the dough,
Like osteoblast cells reknitting the bone,
Like the unseen forces that turn the golden hills green,
It moves surely across our crevices.
The same love that made us will make us what we shall be. That's the witness and promise of John.
Oh, we say, you mean there's nothing we should do? Just lean back on the everlasting arms and rock?
Well, no, John says. Uh, no. Put one foot in front of the other and lean forward.
Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but...