In this world, there will always be those who we disagree with. It can be simple and non-threatening things, like smooth vs. crunchy peanut butter, or Cavaliers vs. Hokies — though such things as college rivalries have divided families and cancelled weddings, I know first hand.
But we all know that our disagreements can be stronger than that: Places where we tend to draw a line. There’s the old saying that there are two things one should never talk about in public: politics and religion. At the same time, these are important, even central ways we talk about what is meaningful, even life changing for us. One of the odd blessings that come from what we’ve been going through together with the coronavirus is that in many ways we have set aside our differences for the sake of the common good. The type of question we ask of our neighbor are, for example, of whether the senior citizen down the street who is more vulnerable to COVID-19 needs help with groceries, not whether s/he is of a certain political affiliation, or goes to a certain church, or doesn’t go to church. With the pressure to end restrictions and to remove essential and non-essential labels from businesses, and pressures even from churches to end restrictions to in-person worship, we find that there are disagreements. I was in the grocery store earlier this week. I had on a mask, and was in line to check out on a busy day. I was masked and honoring the six foot suggested rule, staying in the square on the floor designated for me to wait on, until I was next. As I was getting in line, someone else was also joining the line ahead of me, and he recognized the family in front of him. None of the family ahead of him, nor the man himself, had masks on. They chatted casually a couple of feet apart. They shook hands as they said goodbye. As I drove home from the store, I pulled up next to a truck with a lot of bumper stickers on it. There was the cross of Jesus front and center on the tailgate of the pickup. To the left was a bumper sticker that declared the sanctity of human life. Above the cross was a bumper sticker that trumpeted: “Trump 2020 — Make the Liberals Cry Again.” To the right of the political sticker was a second amendment rights sticker which spelled “Co-Exist” out of various types of assault rifles. Nearby at the same stop light was a Toyota Prius with the “Co-exist” sticker made out of religious symbols of the world’s major religions, a Pro-Choice sticker, and a “Bernie” sticker from 2016. You may be familiar with the Zoom conference meeting app that allows people during this time of social distancing to meet together. Churches, businesses, even families are using it to stay in touch, to see one another to maintain connections in this time of social distancing. If you’ve ever used it, you see the faces of each person in a box. Everyone is in boxes, separate from each other. All of us disagree, sometimes find ourselves in opposite camps. The “boxes” of what are important to us, are different. Religion, politics, the other places we “wave our flags.” 500 years ago, a contemporary of Martin Luther named Erasmus wrote about the differences of his time as a follower of Christ: “Above all else let peace be sincerely desired. The populace is now incited…by insinuations and propaganda, by claims that the Englishman is the natural enemy of the Frenchman and the like. Why should an Englishman as an Englishman bear ill will to a Frenchman and not rather good will as a Christian to a Christian? How can anything as frivolous as a name outweigh the ties of nature and the bonds of Christianity?... If nothing else will move your majesties, not the sense of nature, not respect for religion, no such frightful calamity [such as the coronavirus], let the power of the Christian name bring you to concord.” The name of Jesus. Grace Lutheran has been helping with the Disciples Kitchen meals for the homeless and those in need (served at Second Presbyterian and Basic United Methodist churches), and I was helping to serve one day with another congregation in the county. There were all kinds of differences between us: ours a downtown church, the other a county church. Our theologies are different; I daresay our approach to social issues is likely different from the other church. But as we served together, the differences didn’t matter; the fact that Jesus asks us to serve our neighbor together in unity was what mattered. And that was the focus of the conversation I shared with one of the pastors. For followers of Jesus, we can see even in Scripture, there was “no small debate” about many things in the Church (cf. Acts 15:1-2). And yet what we also witness is Jesus’ own prayer to the Father — “let them be one as the Father and I are one,” for the sake of our witness to God’s love and grace (John 17:22-23) to those around us. Regardless of the boxes that make up your identity, one thing we’ve learned from the last few weeks is that we are in this together. For Christians, we add that Jesus is our primary identity box that trumps all others, for the sake of our witness to the world. Whether it’s the coronavirus, upcoming elections, or anything else that we care about, that’s the box worth checking.
0 Comments
|
AuthorPastor Paul came to Grace to serve as our Pastor in October 2012. After a first career in product and graphic design, he was ordained in 1993, and has served as a parish pastor in Virginia and South Carolina. He is married to Jill and they have two daughters, one at Roanoke College and one at James Madison University. Archives
December 2021
|