October 3, 2010 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. | World Communion Sunday

“See! Here Is Your Family”

Ted A. Smith
Vanderbilt Divinity School

Psalm 37:1–9
John 19:25–30

Christian community is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Life Together

I want to thank the pastors and the Session for the invitation to be with you today. I have great respect for the witness of this congregation through the generations, as I have great respect for the women and men who have preached from this pulpit. Even more than this, I am grateful for the role this congregation has played in the life of my sister Allison Youngblood, who is an elder here. On many levels, then, it is a pleasure and an honor to be with you.

I must note, though, the tension between the two things I was asked to do. On the one hand, I was asked to offer a mainline Protestant ethics of sex. I’ll try to do that tonight. On the other hand, I was asked to preach on World Communion Sunday. I’m trying to do that right now. Here’s the tension: nothing divides the worldwide communion of Christians these days quite like the ethics of sex.

Perhaps you’ve read about conflicts over sexual ethics between American and Nigerian bishops in the Anglican Communion. Or perhaps you’ve read about the Ugandan church that is pushing—with U.S. backers and U.S. opponents—for legislation that would punish gay and lesbian people, with penalties ranging all the way up to life imprisonment and death. Or maybe you heard about the Archpriest from Belarus who spoke so thoughtfully and sharply against church recognition of same-sex marriages at our denomination’s last General Assembly. Maybe you heard him yourself. But you already know: nothing divides the worldwide communion of Christians these days quite like the ethics of sex.

These conflicts should not be depicted in caricature. Like Christians in the U.S., Christians in every country of the world hold many opinions. There are significant church leaders from the global south—such as Desmond Tutu—who affirm the goodness of love between people of the same gender. And there are significant leaders in the U.S. who deny that goodness. And yet the tension between my two tasks remains. This morning we celebrate communion that is strained by the topics of this evening. Thanks for the invitations.

Tensions like these can seem threatening to us because we often imagine the church as our own creation. We tell histories of the church like this: a group of like-minded individuals came together to start an institution to further their common beliefs and purposes. We imagine what sociologists might call a voluntary society—something like the Rotary Club, or a political action committee, or a bowling league, but for God. We imagine that we assemble ourselves together, that we are held together by our common beliefs and purposes. And so the thought that we might disagree is threatening. For if it is a mission statement that brings the church together, what happens when we feel called to different missions? (My thinking on the church as a potentially unlimited kinship network rather than a voluntary society has been shaped especially by Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 737–743, and Ivan Illich, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich as Told to David Cayley.)

If the church were created by a mission statement, we’d have good reason to worry. But that’s not gospel.

John 18 and 19 tell a long story in which Jesus loses everything. His disciple Judas betrays him. His friend Peter denies him. The soldiers nail him to a cross—his life is already lost. And then they take his clothes. He has nothing left except a few close friends and family members at the foot of the cross. He has nothing left to give them, and so he gives them one another. (On the testamentary quality of Jesus’ speech from the cross, see Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, vol. 2, p. 1021.)

He says to his mother, “Woman, see! Here is your son!” And he says to the disciple whom he loved: “See! Here is your mother.” And from that hour, out of the depths of that hour, from that time forward—from the cross—the disciple took her as his own. (On the layers of meaning in “from this hour,” see Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., The Gospel of John, p. 508.)

We should remember that Jesus’ mother and the disciple whom Jesus loved did not necessarily want to be given to one another. Indeed, we have reasons to imagine tensions between them. We haven’t seen Mary since Cana, way back in chapter two. And the only time we saw other members of Jesus’ birth family—his brothers—they were giving him bad advice. Matthew and Mark’s Gospels also point to tensions between Jesus’ family of origin and his disciples. (Brown, p. 1025.) And still Jesus gives them to one another. In their differences and disagreements, Jesus gives them to one another. In the asymmetry of mother and son, Jesus gives them—gives us—to one another.

And Jesus bowed his head and, John says, “gave up his spirit.” The Greek phrase here is no euphemism for death, like “giving up the ghost.” It is rather language of handing over, giving over. In dying, Jesus hands over his spirit (Moloney, p. 505). He gives his mother and the beloved disciple to one another, and then he pours out his spirit on them. And they become church.

The church does not come into being because Mary and the Beloved Disciple have this amazing experience at the cross and say to one another, “Wow. We’ve got to form a little organization that can keep Jesus’ memory alive and encourage people in doing what he taught us to do.” No. Mary and the Beloved Disciple place themselves at the foot of the cross. And then Jesus gives them to one another. “‘See! Here is your mother.’ ‘See! Here is your son.” He gives them to one another, and then he gives them his spirit. And they are church.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, transl. John W. Doberstein, p. 18.). It’s worth holding on to those words and rolling them around. Christian brotherhood, sisterhood—Christian family, church—is not an ideal that we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in which we may participate.

Seeing this makes all the difference. It means, Bonhoeffer says, that “we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients” (Bonhoeffer, p. 16). It means that even the faults of our sisters and brothers become occasions for grace, for they remind us that no one is a member of this church by anything but grace. It means that we need not agonize over the ongoing existence of the church, for its sustenance is not up to us.

Now I know you are a smart congregation. A tough congregation. A Chicago congregation. And so I can imagine a few of you might be thinking, “This is some very lovely lyrical talk from Nashville. But look at the real world: our congregations really are more like voluntary societies. We come together because we have something in common. We like the music, or the preaching, or the youth group. We tolerate the guest preachers, so long as they do not stay too long and do not return too often. We pick our congregation. And then we bind ourselves to other people in it—people we have chosen.” That’s all true.

But then the great, graceful irony is that we find ourselves thrown together with people we would not have chosen. We try to create voluntary societies. And from them God wrings church.

Consider the denominations in the United States. The denominations started as voluntary societies, groups of people who joined themselves together because of what they held in common. Over the last two hundred years, the fault lines have shifted. But the denominations have not completely readjusted to them. Now the deepest divisions in American Protestantism are within denominations, not between them. Call it liberal/conservative, fundamentalist/modernist, evangelical/mainline, whatever you like. All the major denominations have people from most every side of every major conflict. And so, in the wiliness of God, we—all of us—find ourselves called to work with people we think are deeply wrong about the most important questions of our day. And not just to work together—that’s hard enough—but to love one another, and to be loved in turn, which may be the hardest thing of all. We offer God a voluntary society, and God calls us into church.

If this is true for denominations in the U.S., it is all the more true for the global church. Jesus gives us people we would not choose, even as he gives us to people we would not know how to choose. Which is to say, he makes us his family.

This meal both celebrates and seals that new family in Christ. In this meal, we receive Christ given for us. And in receiving him, we find ourselves receiving others in love, even as we find ourselves given to others in love. We find ourselves made members of Christ’s family. It is a family that extends in space, as we remember this week, and in time, as we remember on All Saints’ Day. It extends to Uganda, Belarus, the North Shore, the South Side, and more. It extends to angels and archangels and all the faithful in every time and place who forever declare the glory of God’s name. See! Here, gathered around this great welcome table—here is our family. Not one we made, not one we chose, but the one Jesus has given us in love.