2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

 

Scripture Readings: Exodus 12:1-14, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

This morning, I thought I would share a personal experience where I learned the value of direct communication. In my first job as pastor there were a few people in church playing an anxiety game with me. We had a bilingual service in English and Spanish. Sometimes I used a translator and sometimes I preached in both languages myself. My Spanish was not good enough to translate on the spot, so if I was going to preach in Spanish, I wrote the words out before hand. One week I showed up on Sunday morning expecting to have a translator and my translator didn’t show up. Nobody else felt comfortable translating so I translated off the top of my head. Well, two big families, the families to which my absent translators belonged were very critical of my Spanish. I became extra self-conscious and felt anxious and horrible. So the next week I definitely planned on using a translator.

          So, guess what happened? That’s right. The translators didn’t show up again. So I asked the people who had criticized me to help me translate. They said no.

          Now I have to take timeout for a footnote that will become relevant later. While I was anxiously running around the church searching for a translator, John and Jane, primary patriarch and matriarch of the church came in with their long lost grand nephew Eddie and his new wife Melissa who had run away together and come back married. When I heard about the new marriage I acted all excited. In the joys and concerns in worship, I brought up the new marriage as something to celebrate. John and Jane were not happy with the marriage. They didn’t like Melissa and so they didn’t like that I brought up this shameful subject in church.

          Anyway, back to my search for a translator. Panicky and running out of time, I asked Pete to translate. Pete was bilingual and homeless. Though he was an alcoholic, he had quit drinking and had been visiting our church for several months. I thought, what a great way to help Pete feel like he had something to contribute.

          One of the several problems before us was that Pete was homeless, and his clothes looked like it; and at a recent Session meeting a big deal was made about the dress of our liturgists. I thought I could solve this problem by putting Pete in one of my liturgical robes. I thought for a moment about the appropriateness of such an act, and recalled the story of the prodigal son, who, after wasting his inheritance, came home filthy and hungry, and was met by his father with a beautiful robe. I had no idea how powerful the visual image of Pete before the church in a robe would be. Pete froze with stage fright and could not speak. I was quickly learning that being bilingual doesn’t make you a translator. I struggled through the service, including the strange moment when I brought up the marriage, and John and Jane, Eddie and his new wife Melissa all kept their heads down. Then during coffee hour, you know what happened. People began to gossip. Jane, one of the primary matriarchs of the church, was apparently so upset by this act of apostasy, of placing an unholy man in a holy robe, that she felt physically ill. All the key families were up in arms, and I was told Session would be taking action.

          Thankfully, though I had not been in the ministry long, I had learned that when I find that my buttons are pushed, when I find myself feeling super anxious, hurt or defensive, it is a good idea to try to hold my tongue, pray, and otherwise not respond for 48 hours.

          That is a good rule no matter what the context: family, work, church, whatever the relationship. As the term implies, when someone pushes our buttons, we have an automatic reaction. We are not thinking clearly; we react out of anxiety. Our rational faculties are shut down and our animal survival instincts kick into high gear. Acting out of anxiety will almost always make things worse, not better. We wind up feeding the very cycle, which has ensnared us.

Both Jesus and Paul are speaking about our approach in conflict. When we feel hurt by someone, rather than acting like we are a contestant on the TV show Survivor, trying to develop coalitions through gossip to eliminate our competition, Jesus says, go talk to them directly first. Then, if necessary, take witnesses. The only time this principle would not apply is if you were the victim of abuse talking to the abuser. In such a case you need to be sure you are protected with witnesses right away.

          But Paul gets to the meat of the matter; quoting Jesus in saying the law is summed up with love. That is, in church and in life in general, as Christians, we are to relate to others from love. The church in its ideal, at its healthiest, will have members and ministers who are motivated by love.

          It is often thought that love is weak, that love serves the other and drains us. But true loves serves and strengthens all. Love of the other is love of self. True love of self includes love of other. Self-love and selfishness are not the same thing.

          When our buttons are pushed we tend to go automatically into self-preservation mode, whether that mode will actually be self-preserving or not. There is a sense of grasping, a feeling of need to take control or flee, (either literally or internally) a situation or relationship. We feel attacked and our response is to run, hide, and submit to their oppression or to attack back, to rally the troops, to bring alliances into our side, to build our case.

          But love seeks not the elimination of our pain, not the preservation of our peace and sense of righteousness at the expense of the other, but the movement toward peace and redemption for all. That is why when we do finally stop running, grasping for control or fighting and act out of love, even though we may have to suffer and give up our sense of self righteousness, we actually feel stronger and more free.

          Now back to my 48 hours. I went home from church about as anxious as I have been, and started to mount my defense in the case of robed, homeless man. Defendant Reverend Max would be representing himself against John, Jane and the reactionaries on Session. Sunday night I got out my Bible and Book of Order to write out my case. I would pull out all those passages where Jesus lifted up the humble and put down the self righteous: the parable of the prodigal son, the sinner in the back pew who prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and the self righteous Pharisee in the front who prayed, “Thank God I am not like that guy.” The beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” My list was long and I was certain. I had a tough time sleeping because I was still working on my case. I thought of whom I might talk to to get on my side, to help me fight my battle. But I also prayed, “God, show me the way. Give me peace.”

          I woke up Monday morning and was quickly met by my anxiety. I was consumed with it. But as the day wore on I also continued to pray, and eventually my prayer turned from the weakness of defense back to my role as leader and pastor. It is amazing how often a show of aggression and self-righteous defense is actually a sign of low self-esteem. My prayer switched from “Dear God, help me defend myself” to “Dear God, what is the loving thing to do.” I actually think God changed the words of my prayer. But that was only a start in the direction of the right answer. My own anxiety was still in the way. My answer, the loving thing to do is to welcome the outsider, to be inclusive, to be the prophet who shakes up the comfortable conservatives. By Monday night, I still had the sense that the parable of the prodigal held the key to my case, and so I opened it back up to read it again. And in the middle of reading it, I remembered Eddie, the prodigal nephew, had just come back into town with an unacceptable wife, and John and Jane were not yet ready with a robe.

And that is the point at which I heard God’s answer to my prayers: Jane’s anxiety really wasn’t about Pete and me and the robe. And it certainly had nothing to do with my Spanish. I was so worried about defending myself against Jane that I forgot to recognize her pain. She loved Eddie with all her heart. He was a great nephew but she loved and cared for him like a grandmother. Her problem was not her conservatism, but her deep desire for the health and prosperity of her great nephew.

          I remembered this morning’s passage: If you have a conflict with someone, speak to them directly. But God had told me already that the conflict was not with me but in her heart. Jane’s anxiety about Eddie was triangulated onto me and the robe issue. Tuesday morning, 48 hours after the worship service, I went to meet with Jane and John and asked them about Eddie, about how they felt, about their desire for the best for him, about their inability to turn back time or to make decisions for him, about God’s grace. We barely talked about Pete and the robe though we did read the parable of the prodigal son together.

          When the reactionaries on Session brought up Pete and the robe, I had no anxiety and neither did John, who was an elder, so the issue just dissipated. I started preaching in Spanish every week, preparing my own text so I didn’t rely on the responsibility of others for my own sense of authority.

          Soon John stood up during the joys and concerns and asked for prayers for Eddie and Melissa’s new marriage and he asked for God’s help that he and Jane would be a loving support for them, and we had a late wedding reception for Eddie and Melissa after church as part of coffee hour.

          Pete eventually found housing and a job at a Pentecostal church nearby, and continued to struggle off and on with alcohol. He would still drop in from time to time for a little work or food or worship and we would do our best to be supportive and pray for him. I still pray for Pete. I pray he and all of us would know that amazing and empowering love of God that welcomes the prodigal home. And I still think this is perhaps the most powerful image of Christian ministry. We are all spiritually wanderers, scuffed up people and it is by God’s amazing grace that we are welcome here and charged to tell others the good news.

Each congregation has its own personality, some are more healthy than others, but each is made up of fallible human beings. When we join the church, we join together with other broken and less than perfect people. Our ministry is imperfect. Not all prayers are answered in the way we would like. Sometimes our triangles and anxiety and mistakes have consequences that get in the way. But it is in the church that we hear and meet the Good News and perfect grace of Jesus Christ and perfect, eternal love of that Great Grandmother in heaven, the Creator of all life. And we commit ourselves to trust, seek and live by this perfect love, this love that empowers and frees and unites and brings peace. And love happens.