Let Go of the Old
Ways
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 8/09/2015
Based on Ephesians
4:25-5:2
One
of the requirements that I needed to take prior to graduating from seminary was
a unit of CPE. Officially known as
Clinical Pastoral Education, this course was designed to help the pastor
provide counseling care in a way as not to inject their own personal issues
into the situation. Part of this course
included morning gatherings of all CPE students to do check-in and then a once
a week one-on-one session with the director of the program.
Between
the clients at the institution and the personal work this class required, it
was a very demanding twelve week course.
During that time, I and the other three CPE students had become very
well acquainted with each other. Because
of the distance I had between home and the city that I was doing my CPE in, I
shared a space with one of the students, and once a week we would all gather
for a shared meal at the home of another fellow student whose wife would
prepare for us. In other words, we as
CPE students had become a community, a community come together through Christ
with the specific goal to learn how to best minister in loving support to one
another and others.
As
we neared the end of the course, the director suggested that there be communion
included in the closing gathering. It
was in this suggestion that I experienced how divisive denominational doctrine
can be in a group of gathered followers of Christ. In this community of four, there was
represented, American Baptist, Evangelical Covenant, Roman Catholic, and Missouri
Synod Lutheran. The director was aware
that the Roman Catholic seminarian might have difficulty of a joint communion
service that was not being administered by a priest.
The Roman Catholic
seminarian was committed to the inclusion of communion to the point that he had
some in-depth discussions with his priest to gain permission to join in this
invitation to Christ’s table. There was
not a theological dilemma with either the Evangelical Covenant student or with
me with my American Baptist heritage.
The one person who was without questioning the “do I or don’t I”
participate came from the Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, the only one of us
four who was actually ordained and serving a congregation. He was not going to participate, no questions
asked, no discussion needed. I was
deeply hurt in his decision to not join us and it was through that experience
that I realized just how deeply important I saw coming to the table of Christ
was in my heart.
When I asked him
what his reason was, the response was, “We don’t allow communion or participate
with people who are outside of our immediate church membership.” I continued to press on this discussion with
questions about excluding others who professed to having an active relationship
with Christ and their church? He
basically said, “He could not in good conscience give communion to anyone
outside of his congregation because he might be giving it to a person who may not
be a true member of Christ’s family; meaning that there is only one true church
and it wasn’t the Roman Catholic or any other Protestant denomination .” Ultimately, his stance was, if he saw others
in heaven who had not been Missouri Synod Lutherans then he would consider
having communion at that time.
This morning’s
text, although is directly addressing “new” Christians coming into a community
faith, my experience at the close of my CPE course shows that those of us who
have been in the fold for years have need to be reminded about how we conduct
ourselves both in the faith community and outside the faith community.
According to Paul’s
way of thinking, truth is the most
essential element in the survival of community.
For without truth at the core, the community will collapse into disunity
and eventually perish. On the surface,
it sounds like Paul is telling us that when speaking to others we need to be
speaking the truth to that person. I
like that, as it puts things out there, beyond me. I can speak all day (possibly) sharing with
other folks all the wrong things that they are doing and be speaking “in
truth.” But Paul starts his sentence off
with, “putting away falsehood…”, this is actually a statement directed
toward “self.” Before we can actually
speak “truth” to others, we ourselves have to be truthful with ourselves.
As Christians, we
so often talk about the need to live in God’s truth, but I really question how
honest we really are in that statement.
In my CPE story, the Roman Catholic seminarian in his discussions with
his priest, revealed a questioning of “truth” in Eucharistic doctrine that the
Roman Catholic holds. The Missouri Synod
pastor already saw the answer of how God looks at Christ’s table and had no
need to question what he had grown up to believe and understand through scripture. When I speak to people who say that much of
the evil and pain of our world most often comes from religious people, I cannot
deny that truth. In reality, religion is
designed to help us examine ourselves and help us to move beyond ourselves, but
the reality is, most of us do not really want to take on the challenge of
self-examination and discover “our” true self (the past hurts that we hold on
to, the biases we clench onto) and through discovery, work on discarding those
things within our heart that are false and destructive to ourselves and to community
life.
One of the things
that I was taught as a child was it was bad to become angry, because when you
are angry, you are capable of doing bad things, and truly nice people don’t get
angry! So, for years I felt guilty when
I would become angry about something that happened in my life. Paul acknowledges that “anger” is a natural
part of being human. It is a piece of
our “image” of God. What is unhealthy is
not dealing with that anger and most of us are guilty of holding onto anger.
Dr Dianne Bergant,
professor of Old Testament Studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago,
says this about Paul’s list of sins:”Bitterness
is that disposition that cherishes resentment…Fury is anger expressed in violent
outbursts of temper. Anger is the
eruption of impulsive passion…Reviling denotes slanderous words spoken behind
another’s back. Malice is less a vice
than a quality of evil.” All these are harmful to the Christian community, and
they grieve the Holy Spirit. The
truth is, within and beyond our own
walls, our own neighborhoods, so much of the world’s conflict is caused by
anger nurtured for years and generations.
There can be value in anger when it motivates us to action on behalf of
justice and healing, but how we express that anger is the key to either
healing or more hurt. Sermon
Seeds, UCC, Aug 9th, 2015 by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
Last Fridays
announcement of a hung jury on the death penalty portion of James Holmes
conviction of murder now allows him life in prison instead of receiving the
death penalty. This new development
brings many mixed reactions with regard to the carrying out of justice to the
victims, the families directly affected by his actions, and the community of
Aurora. There will be people who will
harbor deep anger toward that one juror who was not able to vote for the death
penalty and see once again “failure” of the judicial system. Anger is inevitable because it is a part of
being human, but when we hold onto it, then we are not examining the truth
within ourselves (the causes of why I see that I’m being violated) and
eventually it will come out in very harmful ways: in bitterness, wrath,
wrangling and slander, back biting, being two faced, toward others or physical
illness within ourselves.
Paul says, living
in truth, creating that supportive environment for community has to come by
letting the Holy Spirit work within our lives, being imitators of God, living
in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. These are not a list of do’s and don’ts but
rather behavioral changes that are necessary to live in the spirit of God. This is what happens through the baptism of
our heart, the letting go of the old ways and putting on the new. For we
as the body of Christ are the living expression of Jesus to a world that is broken
hearted and in need of true love and a peace that passes all
understanding. Amen
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