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Today is All Hallow's Eve, the anniversary of one of the truly significant events in the history of Christ's Church. On this date four hundred eighty-seven years ago, in 1517, Martin Luther challenged the Roman Catholic Church to consider ninety-five points of doctrine and discipline. Luther put these ninety-five theses on the table for discussion, asking the Church to reconsider its positions on a number of things in light of Scripture, because he believed that the Church of his day was teaching things contradictory to Holy Scripture and because he believed the Church was demanding an obedience in doctrine and religious practice which went beyond what should be required of Christians. For Luther, the Church had become a spiritual tyrant. Luther insisted that the Holy Scriptures, correctly interpreted, not the magisterium of the Church, was the ultimate authority for Christians in matters of doctrine and faith. And thus began the modern struggle in Western Christendom over what was essential to salvation and what was not. The Book of Common Prayer, following on the heels of Luther, similarly insists that "that blessed 'liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free'" means that in nonessentials we in the Church may differ from one another in many things, as long as the essentials of the faith are kept in tact. Of course, it is often difficult to agree on what is essential and what is not. And in the sixteenth century, because Luther and the Church in Rome could not agree on what was essential and what was not, because they could not agree on what was true doctrine and what was false, on what was appropriate discipline and what was not, Luther was put under the ban of the Empire and excommunicated. And with that began the great splintering of the Church of Christ in the West into the abominations we now whisper about with the "D" word. Luther, whose great hymn we sang earlier this morning, did not want to divide the Church in his day. He wanted to reform the Church, to call it back to basics, back to what he considered essential doctrine and discipline. So Luther did not bolt the Church. He had the grace to wait to be thrown out, and so put the burden of shattering Christ's Church upon the shoulders and consciences of others. What Luther did was not new in history. The matter of finding agreement on what is essential and what is not has been the great difficulty of the Church since the beginning. In some ways, the whole of the Bible and of Church history can be seen as one long dialogue about who is right and who it wrong, one long dialogue about who's "in" and who's "out," about who is orthodox and who is not, about who is righteous and who is not, about who is in relationship with God and who isn't, about who will be saved and who will not. Throughout the Gospels Jesus takes on the pharisees over these same questions, much the way Luther confronted the Church 1500 years later. The pharisees talk a good line, Jesus says, but role models they are not. Their discipline leaves something to be desired; they don't practice what they preach. They love obeying the rules and looking good on the outside, but inside they're rotten. They're scrupulous about tithing little non-essential things like dill and cumin, and they like doing all those things the prophet Isaiah just told us about, but when it comes to doing justice and mercy, those more important things that God really desires, they overlook those things altogether. So the pharisees kicked Jesus out of the Church, much the way the Vatican kicked Luther out later. They killed Jesus, largely because he didn't conform to their view of what was essential and what was not, of who was "in" and who was "out." The pharisees demanded a much greater conformity in the discipline of some matters that Jesus considered not so essential. They demanded that the outside of the cup and the dish be thoroughly washed, while Jesus didn't think washing up was even in the same league with a life of justice and mercy. The pharisees were the ancestors of those in our day who are always looking for the perfect church, at least outwardly, always looking for a church where one wears his phylacteries wide and his tassels long, and washes his hands just so, and believes all the right things and sings only the right hymns, and sings them in the right way, and associates only with the right people. That's why they were called pharisees. That's what the word means - "pharisees," the separated ones - those who separate themselves from the less than perfect, those who stand apart from the less than righteous, apart from folks like Zacchaeus, that tax collector in this morning's Gospel. The pharisees usually ripped into Jesus big time for associating with people like Zacchaeus. We heard them this morning grumbling their disapproval that Jesus would visit the home of such a sinner. Have you ever known people like that? I have. In my twenty-seven years as a priest, I've met lots of people who perpetually shop for the perfect church. They have been good people, but people on an impossible mission, people forever on the lookout for the parish where everyone is certain of what God wants, and where everyone believes the right things, and where everyone and everything is above reproach. And I'm reminded of the story one priest tells about just such a person. This person would never let her priest forget how much better the priest did this or that at St. Swithin's across town, or how much more spiritually they celebrated the liturgy at St. Jude's down the street, and always with a touch of a hint that she might be thinking of transferring her membership to one of the purer parishes. And one day, after just such an exchange, her priest said, "Mrs. Jackson, if you ever do find the perfect church, for heaven's sake, don't go near the place! You'd spoil it." Every age has its pharisees, good people who somehow feel the need to separate themselves from the less than perfect or the less than righteous. But I wonder if their search for the perfect church isn't really more a search for people who are just like themselves, while Jesus seems to be more interested in welcoming into his life whoever is seriously looking for God in the world, even if they are sinners and tax collectors like Zacchaeus. Jesus seems to put more stock in having a good meal with folks like Zacchaeus, so he can let them know that God loves them all. I'm reminded, too, of the story of Roger Williams of Rhode Island history, a story I've shared before. We think of Roger Williams as the champion of religious liberty. And that he was. But he didn't begin that way. Williams began as a pharisee. In his early days, Williams wasn't only a Puritan who just wanted to purify the Church in England and the Church in America the way Luther wanted to purify the Church in Rome. He was a separatist who believed that even the Puritans were weren't pure enough, and that he and the "real" Church had to separate even from the Puritans. Williams was very particular about who should be permitted within the fellowship of the Church. And with time Williams became more and more discriminating about who he believed was righteous enough for him to have communion with, until finally it reached the point that he believed that only his wife was righteous enough for that privilege. But, he said, he was a little suspicious of her. And it was, finally, the absurdity of that conclusion that led Williams to decide that one simply can't tell, in this world, who is righteous and who is not, and it was only with this revelation that Williams belatedly began to place the premium on religious liberty that we've come to know and honor him for. But, as I said, the pharisaical gene reaches all the way back to those good people who were grumbling about Jesus this morning. And in one place in the Bible (Mt. 22:34f) we find them at one of their familiar gambits of trying to catch Jesus up on a religious point, so they can show him the error of his ways. "What does it all boil down to, Jesus?" they ask. "What is church essentially all about? Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" And Jesus says, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything else hangs on these two commandments. Everything else is commentary." It is the question of the Church in every age, and St. Augustine reminds us of it during a time of great turmoil in the Church in his own day. Augustine and a brother priest were having a discussion one day, and they disagreed on just about every major point of doctrine. Finally, his fellow priest suggested that they might just have to go their separate ways, because the two of them simply didn't understand God in the same way at all. But Augustine asked, "Well, friend, can you and I agree on at least one thing - that the most important thing required of both of us is to love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves?" And his adversary said, "Yes." "Then why don't we concentrate on that?" said Augustine. "In things essential, unity," Augustine added. "In things nonessential, liberty. In all things, charity." Do you suppose that the greatest commandment could supersede even the differences with have among ourselves in our day? I mean among those of us already in the same family, or in the same church? Do you suppose the greatest commandment, if practiced and followed, could be the basis for unity even among those who disagree on how Scripture is to be interpreted, or among those who disagree on who should be ordained priest or bishop, or among those who disagree on whether God blesses the relationships of same-gender couples? Can the most important commandment God ever gave us be the basis for a unity that can overcome differences even on matters like these? Well, of course, we'll never know - unless we try actually obeying it. Try this, says Joan Chittister in her book In a High Spiritual Season: "[For the next thirty days], try saying, to everyone and everything you see, 'I wish you [blessings] now, and whatever will bring you [blessings] in the future.' Try saying that to everyone and everything you see for thirty days, and see what happens to your own soul. If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop [pumping smoke into the sky]. If we said it when we see the ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers. If we said it to small children, we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training. If we said it to other people, [to our neighbors], we would have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us. Beauty and human warmth would take root in us.... We would change." Perhaps that's the place to start. Not with complex doctrines or creeds. Not with those things and people most distant from us. Not with Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists. Not even with the Lutherans or Roman Catholics, but with those we live with every day. Perhaps even with each other in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, or even in this parish church. Perhaps with those sitting next to us with whom we disagree, or with those we don't particularly like. Perhaps even with the person you work with every day who is the most difficult person you have ever known. Why not try bringing that particular person to mind and heart and offering up this prayer to God for him or her: "I wish you blessings now, and whatever will bring you blessings in the future." Do you suppose that if we really sought that for each other, that if we really practiced the greatest commandment, well, then, God could change even us? The most bitter thing about the pharisee, the most bitter thing about "the separated one" in every day, including our own, is not that he or she washes the outside of the cup and dish more or less thoroughly than we do. The most bitter thing about the pharisee is not that he understands God differently, or that he recites a different creed, or that he understands our own creed in a different way than we do, or that he practices his religion in a different way, or that his interpretation of Scripture leads him to live differently from us. The most bitter thing about the pharisee, the thing that leads Jesus to call him a snake, is that he takes comfort in his separateness. The most bitter thing about the pharisee is that he is certain that his separateness, scrupulously observed, makes him righteous and gives him or her a place in God's heart that is more special than the place God offers to others. The most bitter thing about the pharisee is that the separateness he insists on offers no way to fellowship with those whose consciences or circumstances lead them to understand God differently. Disagreements and differences are not the problem. Separateness is. Unity is not optional in God's Church. Our baptism into Christ has made us brothers and sisters in God whether we recognize it or not, and even whether we like it or not. Fellowship with each other in God is what God created us for, and it's what Christ himself prayed for us and the reason Christ died for us. That's why "the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God, and each other, in Christ." (BCP, p. 855) That is basic to who we are, essential. Our disunity is never anything to take comfort in, never anything that we can take pride in. Separateness is never something that can provide us the assurance of a special place in God's heart. So given the fact that we disagree, given the fact that some of us are Episcopalians while others of us are Lutherans or Roman Catholics or Baptists or Jews or Muslims or nonbelievers, given the fact that some of us Episcopalians interpret Scripture more conservatively or liberally than our brothers and sisters, differences of interpretation which lead us to live differently - given that fact, what would the perfect church look like, if we were of a mind to look for one? It would, I think, look like this: it would be a place where each of us spoke only well of each other at all times, regardless of circumstance or difference. "I wish for you only happiness and joy, both now and in the future. God bless you, both now and in the future," we would say. The perfect church would be Zacchaeus's house, the place where Jesus is this morning, a place in which we would sit at Jesus' table with each other, not because we agree or disagree, but because of the Cross, because of Christ's love for our brother or sister, and despite our differences. It would be a place where we would sit at Jesus' table with each other because we belong to each other, because that companionship in God is what God made us for, and because that companionship in God is what Jesus died for on the Cross. And in that unity and fellowship we would rejoice. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |