The Risk of Confession

If there is one constant in the church, one thread tying 2000 years of history together, the one constant is division over words. I wish it was charity, compassion, peacemaking, welcoming of the outcast. We've done that too, but the real constant of the church what runs through every time and place is debate, the taking of sides, the taking of one's ball and going home because we don't like what someone said.

The subject of what is debated changes, true, there is always something new that causes strife, leads to judgment and derision; the subject changes as do the stakes. Sometimes the stakes of confession the risks are higher than other times. Yet, no matter what the topic making us shout and wring our hands, no matter if the risk of confession is a loss of esteem or the loss of life, we fight over words.

              From the first church, from the very beginning there was arguments over words.  One could suggest this began even before the church at Pentecost.  Jesus was on the cross and the Pharisees complained about the words written above him.  The sign read Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.  The Pharisees complained and said the sign should read, "He said he was the king of the Jews."

              It could be this is not religion or theology, morality or ethics, it could be this is just people being people.  Maybe the church is ever amid strife because the church is people. We don't have to be in a sanctuary to fight over words, what they mean or don't mean.  There is some truth to this.  We don't need God to take sides; we can all trust Jesus but hate people.  This is cynical, but true, wouldn't you say?  Yet, at least in our teaching today, there is a unique element or, something different in what happens when we try to gather and speak words about God.

              Jesus could have said, watch out for the kings and the princes, the governors and generals; beware of the powerful and the wealthy and bloodthirsty.  But he doesn't. Jesus says the one to fear is the one who has religious power.  Fear the one who can harm the body and the soul.  The political authorities didn't try to persecute Jesus, the religious leaders did.  Pontius Pilate will say, I don't find anything wrong with him.  But fearing strife if the religious leaders were not appeased, he condemned Jesus.   

              Like we just saw with the woes, the people Jesus calls out are religious leaders, not political ones. And so much of what he calls out is the corruption, what happens when your words are beyond question, when your definitions must be accepted by all.  Pharisees were ruined because they could no longer be wrong, no one could argue with them.

              There is cynicism in our reading today. Especially in the last teaching.  The idea of being brought before hostile religious leaders is more of a certainty than a remote possibility.  Most scholars read our passage as a description of what was happening to the church after 70 AD.  Luke put these five teachings together (the claim of fear, the value of sparrows, the demand of confession, the risk of confession and the Holy Spirit, and the words God gives to us in times of persecution), Luke puts these five together as a reflection of persecution happening as he was writing his gospel. As he was writing people were dying because of words. What you said about Jesus or didn't say could mean life or death.

              When you look back over the history of the church, it is hard not to be cynical about religion, when you look at how we fall apart over words you might wonder what is wrong with us?  The most famous moment of division over words must be the filioque, the word, the single word that divided the Western Church, the Latin church of Rome, from the eastern Church of Constantinople.  In 1054 the two main bodies of Christianity split over one word.  Filioque means and of the son.  The west wanted this word in the Nicene confession, the east did not.  It's hard not to be a little cynical about the church if this is what divided them and for all intents and purposes still divides them 1000 years later. 

              Yet the most depressing is how we fought over the words of Institution.  On the night of his arrest our Lord took the bread, he blessed and broke it and said take eat, all of you, this is my body broken for you.  The last line, this is my body this line filled the church with strife.  I don't want to go too far into this, but suffice it to say, Christians in the sixteenth century fought wars for decades, did incredible acts of violence over whose understanding of these words was right.  This is my body somehow, ironically became fighting words.

              I would not be surprised if people looked at our history and the divisions and the violence over words, if people looked at the bitterness we offer because you say words one way and I say it differently, I wouldn't be surprised if someone said, I don't want to be part of that.  What a shame.  And I wish I could say such strife and division was the stuff of archaic practice, but we are just as divided because of words today as we were 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago. 

              Believe it or not there is good news in the passage and the sermon today.  It's not obvious or easy to find, but it's there. The first glimmer of hope or possibility of something more than cynicism is in the honesty Jesus offers here.  There is no point in this set of teachings where life is anything less than profoundly honest and in this transparency is our first lifeline.  It is as if Jesus is saying, this is not going to be easy, this is going to test you, push you to the limits.  There is great risk in following me.  What is more, there is no guarantee of success, no pledge for paradise. 

              These five teachings today all point to the reality of suffering.  And even more the audacity of wading into such challenges.  There is no guarantee of success.  In fact there is a sense of assured hardship.  But there is also a sense of what the challenge is and how we can be more than this.  We can confess, we can be right and wrong, we can receive courage and strength beyond us, we can find a voice greater than the sum of our fears.  The good news is then our faith is not denial of life, of the world, of what is real, our faith is a living in the humility and courage that sees what is broken and steps forward.  Will it be easy; will our brokenness prevail; will our gathering be ever prone to division?  Possibly.  But this is what Jesus lived.  We are being called to follow Jesus into the strife.

              The second place of hope is the hardest to see.  It's in the line about sparrows, God looks out for the sparrows.  At first this sounds and feels like God takes care of you, protects you, as psalm 23 says, God keeps us from evil. And I believe that, but this collection of teachings is not about being kept from harm, but how we divide and break and split and fracture over words.  This is about the power that can corrupt a church, how religious leaders and the risk of confession can lead to real danger and violence. 

              In some ways this teaching is an outlier in the set.  The reference to sparrows and number of hairs has no mention or words or religious power.  And that is the clue.  Jesus says, God looks out for, remembers, attends to the sparrow; God knows how many hairs you have on your head.  This attention, devotion, this knowing is the key.  For God looks with care and compassion, tenderness and mercy.  This is what we lose when we divide, when we demand loyalty and seek to define others by our words.  We stop loving, remembering and treating with care.  Part of the constant strife over words is when we define people as other, as less than, as someone unworthy of care and devotion.   

              The care for sparrows is not a confession or words spoken so much as they are a refusal to hate and discard even those we should fear.  The sparrows are the key.  It is one thing to risk being transparent even when such transparency may injure us, it is quite another when we see and understand how we must care, attend, keep others despite our brokenness.

              At the end of the movie Places in the Heart, this teaching of Jesus was portrayed in a beautiful way.  The movie is set in the south during the depression and Sally Fields plays a widow struggling to keep her farm from foreclosure after tragically losing her husband.  Surrounding this farm is our strife and brokenness.  The film explores racism and bitterness and hatred and broken marriages and poverty and sadness.  Time and again the story circles back to the church in this small farming community.  Here too were all the flaws and the strife and the hypocrisy. It's as if the title Places of the Heart would be better stated as the broken places of the heart.

              Then at the end of the movie there is a vision.  There is a communion service where all the broken people are there.  The ones who were injured and the violent; the faithful and the unfaithful; the blind and the lame, the living and the dead and on and on.  They are all there.  And then it begins, the elements are being past.  The words "the body of Christ" and "the blood of Christ" are spoken.  The strife was not denied, but the strife was not given the last word.  The ones who are hated are looked upon as God looks to the sparrow. 

              What is so powerful in this image of communion, this eucharistic vision is how close it comes to what we are striving for, the oneness, the communing of those gathered.  Words that can be used for evil are used for good, the real strife and divisions are not ignored or downplayed, but they are not allowed to be the final word, the only option.

              There is a new part to our confession today—our battle over words.  Through the centuries the church has struggled with words about God, about Jesus, about the institution of the church, about the bible.  We've struggle with definitions and divided over who gets to define the definitions.  Yet today our struggle over words is not about God.  I don't find many people arguing over the definition of Jesus or the mystery of the Trinity.  Even the strife over the bible seems to have passed.  What I find intriguing today is how we are struggling over words about being human. 

              We are dividing, fighting, splitting, causing violence over what it means to be a human, who counts who doesn't, who’s legitimate who is illegal, who defines what it means to have gender, to have love, to have freedom, to have dignity as a human. 

              Like all our fights, this is not easy, this may get worse before it gets better.  I do not know how we will find the right words without the violence which is always possible.  I don't know if we can, I only know what will make a difference.  We must speak the truth as we look to one another as God looks to the sparrow.  Those two.  Not one or the other.  Truth and kindness.  We must risk our confession; we must risk never losing compassion.  Amen.