150 Progressing Past Polarity

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Progressing Past Polarity”, originally shared on September 20, 2021. It was the 150^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    It is often said that our country is politically polarized, that opinions have taken on an either/or quality. This polarization finds its expression in every aspect of our society. It has even had an influence on the Church. What can we do about it? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I served a church in San Dimas that had a very good pre-school. I did chapel services for the children twice a week, so that the children not attending every day could get to the popular services at least once a week. That’s how the children got to know me, and that’s almost the only place they saw me. Plus, I was the only male the students usually saw all day.

   So, when I had to go to the pre-school office or to find the director on the playground I was, well, kind of a big deal. 😊  The first child who saw me would alert the others. “Pastor! Pastor!”

   It always reminded me of the advice given by one of my seminary professors: “If you ever get down on yourself, or you feel discouraged or that nobody likes you and you have a pre-school, go out on the playground. You’re always a hero out there.”

   One day, the school had brought in an amphibian show for the children. It was held in the parish hall so all the children could see it. I went over as well.

   At one point, the handlers brought out a 70’ Burmese python and asked if any of the staff would like to have it draped on their shoulders.

   I was one who volunteered and when they put this very heavy pale-yellow snake on me with one handler holding the snake at one end and another handler at the other end, the director took a picture.

   She put that picture on the wall in the pre-school offices and whenever a child had become so inconsolably upset that the director had to be asked to get involved, she would bring the child into that office and show them the picture. “Look! There’s a picture of the pastor with a big snake on his shoulders.”

   The image seemed to so stun the child and take his/her focus off whatever had upset them that they calmed right down.

   I’ve talked and written about the causes of our polarity (spoiler alert: social media is a major factor), but today I’m just thinking about how to get past that polarity. Fix the problem, not the blame, as they say.

   How do we get past the divisions at every dinner table, on every church leadership council, every youth sports team, every workplace, and school? It has become nearly impossible to hold a civil conversation among friends, families, and even church members.

   I’ve had responses to these videos/podcasts/blogs that take issue with my support of masks and vaccines. They often say something like, “Don’t get vaccinated! Faith in Jesus is all we need.” I respond that if we don’t care for ourselves or others, is that not putting God to the test as Jesus said during his temptations?

   But I get the feeling that we are talking past each other. For some, that’s it and some of those who responded regularly to our media in the past no longer do so.

   How can we at least recognize the good intentions in one another and have a civil conversation? Is civil conversation even possible in our society? And is that even enough for Christians?

   If it’s not happening anywhere else, I think that it most certainly should be happening in the Church, at a minimum.

   How do we get there? What can unite us when we are ruled by distrust and suspicion? I offer four suggestions:

   First, I think that, like the boa constrictor, there must be restraining influences at both ends of the issue spectrum. Influencers, perhaps voices from near but at less than the extreme ends, can have a moderating effect on their careless brothers and sisters.

   Second, the weight of these issues is, like supporting a boa constrictor, being shouldered by those in the middle or near the middle of the spectrum. They should not be shunned but be sought-out to be moderators from the middle. They can see the bigger picture and so are in a position to be a part of the solution to our impasses.

   Third, I think that the Church can, and should, lead the way in being a constructive influence in our society going forward, even moving toward love for one another. We have learned through countless controversies that we don’t need to be disagreeable when we disagree. The hallmark of the early Christians in very stressful times was their love for one another and for all people, including those not only outside the Church but even for those who were actively persecuting them.

   Peter’s 1^st letter, chapter 1:22 – 2:3 contains this exhortation:

²² Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. ²³ You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴ For

“All flesh is like grass
    and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
    and the flower falls,
²⁵ but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

That word is the good news that was announced to you.

2 Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. ² Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— ³ if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

   “Being civil” or even “being nice” is not the standard for Christians. Rather we are called to listen to one another, to seek understanding, and to be reconciled with one another, to respect one another. In other words, to love another.

   On the night of the last supper, the night that he was betrayed, Jesus said to his disciples in John 13:34-35,

³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   Early church father, Tertullian, a Roman theologian from Carthage in Africa who lived from around 160-225 A.D. said of Christians in the culture of his day,

   'Look,' they say, 'how they [Christians] love one another' (for they themselves hate one another); 'and how they are ready to die for each other' (for they themselves are readier to kill each other).  (www.oxfordreference.com)

   The same Holy Spirit that was at work in the Church then is at work now. Can we not aspire to be known for our love for one another in our culture today?

   What might that look like at a time when our culture supports polarization. Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, gave us a clue, I think, in his explanation of the 8^th Commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”). He said,

   “We are to fear [which means awe-filled respect] and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

   Those are strong words. They would mean that our interactions with one another would start with love.

   Fourth, have we not tasted that the Lord is good?!

   I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to assemblies and conferences of my denomination and found myself in the minority with regard to some hot-button issue. Sometimes the tiny and now shrinking minority.

   We often disagreed about what God was saying through the Word of God, the Bible, to the Church, but I know of no one who was saying that God was not speaking to the Church. It was my hope that our common relationship with God would draw us together just as spokes on a wheel get closer to one another as they get closer to the hub.

   Most of those gatherings ended in worship that included Holy Communion. Without exception, I remember walking away from receiving the bread and the wine and looking at those with whom I had had emotional debates on opposite sides of an issue and seen, not enemies, but brothers and sisters in Christ.

   I recall the gratitude I felt for the presence and reconciling power of God. I believe that this same Holy Communion, what some call the Eucharist or the Sacrament of the Altar, is the primary thing that God has given us to reconcile our polarization in the gift of faith we have all received in our common relationship with the one true living God.

   How do we love with one another in our churches? The same way we always have, by putting our relationship with God at the center of all that we do, and our love for God and for one another at the center of all we say.

   That love that Christians have for one another is not a warm feeling. It is hard, and it doesn’t always make us feel good.

   The word that the Bible uses in its original Greek for that kind of love is “agape”. It differs from friendship, natural affection, attraction, or love for one’s country. It is selfless love. It is the kind of love with which God loves humanity, the love that led God to die for us on the cross. It doesn’t come from us, it can only come as a gift of God’s presence within us.

   In John’s 1^st letter, the 4^th chapter, the 16^th verse, he writes:

¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

   What brings us through this current polarization will be our willingness to moderate our extremes, our willingness to bear the weight of the task before us, keeping our focus on what we have in common in the Word and Sacraments, and the love of God that abides in us, expressed in our love for one another.