Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: 2 Samuel 11: 26-12:13a; Ephesians 4:1-16

We welcomed a new family member this week. Santo is a mostly black puppy, a Portuguese Water Dog, and he is 8 weeks old today. His full name is Afortunado's Santo Pedro do Barco. Afortunado is the breeding kennel name, and the rest is Portuguese for Saint Peter of the Boat – a reminder of some of my favorite sites in Israel as well as a reminder that the puppy is a water dog. And it is also a reference to who we are called to be in the church. We're called to be saints. The breeder and several other folks familiar with Portuguese Water Dogs laughed when they heard I was calling the puppy Santo, or Saint. They said it was an entirely unrealistic name, as the breed is known for its activity and intelligence but not its compliance. One of the other breeders thought his full name should be “Afortunado's I Ain't No Saint” (never mind the double negative). Of course, some of you know that my family are Cub fans, and that Santo is also the last name of a retired Cub 3rd baseman. And after all, our other dog, a Welsh Corgi, is named Wrigley, after Wrigley Field. But Santo is primarily named Saint. And I understand the irony, but I think that the irony is also present in our faith. We are called to be saints, but we wear that label uncomfortably – most of the time we think that we ain't no saints, either.

People are human, we are frail, broken, people who are apt to make mistakes, and sometimes we even choose to be less than our best, all of which is to say: we sin. I sin, you sin, we all sin.

As we prepared for the arrival of our puppy, though we have had 4 other dogs, including Wrigley, I started reading more about dog health and dog training. Our breeder advised us to read Patricia McConnell and Ian Dunbar, who advocate positive dog training; and to stay away from Cesar Millan and the Monks of New Skete, who advocate basing the training on establishing dominance over the dog. While McConnell and Dunbar agree that it's important to establish leadership with the dog, the process is based on positive rewards. Similar differences are found in child-rearing literature between Dr. James Dobson, author of Raising Your Strong-Willed Child who argues that physical punishment is necessary in raising children, and Dr. William Sears who disagrees with Dobson about the role of physical punishment, and advocates an approach Sears calls “attachment parenting” to help children develop the inner resources that create discipline. We find the same divide in theology – between folks who think of God in terms of judgment and find the starting point of faith to be salvation, and folks who understand God as welcoming and find the starting point of faith to be love. Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God makes the distinction between fear-based and hope-based religion.

Returning to my preparing for Santo – and I guess it would be fair to observe that my preaching is going to the dogs – I've been reading Ian Dunbar's book After You Get Your Puppy, which in addition to being more in keeping with my approach to dogs, children and theology, also is available as a free download online. Dunbar says that the most important skill that a puppy needs to learn is bite inhibition – so that he can be with other dogs and especially around humans, and not hurt them. So play-fighting among dogs is one way that puppies learn how to be able to fight without seriously hurting others.

As humans, we also need to learn how to engage in conflict without hurting others. Having conflict is not a failure in life, it's a fact of life. Let me repeat that: conflict is not a failure in life, it's a fact of life – it's how we deal with conflict that shows who we are. As Christians, we don't have any expectations that we are better than anyone else – as I mentioned last week, a minister I once knew referred to his church as “a group of sinners who pray together”. We all sin. We all have incomplete understanding of other people, and our own tempers fray, and sometimes we choose to put what we want ahead of what others want. What distinguishes the Church from any other group of people is not that we are better than other folks – anyone who has been around many churches knows this! What distinguishes the Church is supposed to be our approach to relationships – it is an approach that is rooted in the love of God, and that is characterized by the two R’s of repentance and reconciliation.

When David was confronted by Nathan about the wrongs he had done in taking Bathsheba from Uriah the Hittite, he repented. In the Hebrew, the word for repentance is shuv which means to turn around, or to return. In the Greek, the word for repent is metanoia which means to change one's mind. Metanoia is a compound of two words: meta which means after, and noia or mind. So repentance is an “aftermind” - there is a sense of seeing things differently than before...or as the classic hymn, Amazing Grace, states it: “I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

In the story of David and Nathan, the king experiences that kind of change of mind, or perhaps better described as a change of heart. In the Book of Psalms, Psalm 51 carries the introduction that it is a psalm of David, written after Nathan had confronted him about the affair with Bathsheba. And the psalm is the epitome of repentance; listen to these excerpts: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.... You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you….

Probably none of us here has done anything like what David did – yet I suspect every single one of us understands that kind of repentance, an awareness that we have done badly, that we have created harm to ourselves or others, as the classic statement of contrition says: through my words and through my acts, by what I have said and what I have not said, by what I have done and what I have not done.

But as I said last week, it can be useful instead of sin (which we mostly think of as specific actions or omissions) to consider the condition of brokenness - that is the frailty of humans, and the ways in which we feel incomplete or inadequate – it is brokenness that characterizes us when we are not in healthy relationships with ourselves, other people, and God. Shalom is the word that describes wholeness and harmony in all our relationships, although we profoundly oversimplify it by translating it simply as “peace”. In our context, we might use the word wellness – to describe a condition of health in multiple dimensions: social, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and vocational. Brokenness is the opposite of shalom or wellness, wholeness. It's a far more complete description of what ails us than just “sin”.

The Bible talks about two things, though, that characterize the appropriate response to our brokenness, because our brokenness impacts both our relationship with God AND our relationships with other people. We've already spoken of repentance, and most of us are pretty familiar with that anyway – we say confession every week in church, and most of us examine ourselves on a fairly regular basis, to try and see what needs changing.

But the other “R” is equally characteristic of wholeness as described in the Bible, and we are considerably less comfortable with it. The other “R” is reconciliation. We are OK with approaching God about the mistakes we've made, and the things we'd like to do differently. But we don't really understand the centrality of reconciliation in God's prescription for living whole.

Throughout the Bible, from beginning to end, our relationship with God is inseparable from our relationships with people. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us about relationships in the church, “Love one another as I have loved you – by this people will know you are my disciples.” We are supposed to be people whose relationships are transformed by our relationship with God. And there is no suggestion, anywhere in scripture, that this is easy. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, our second reading today, is a straight-talking exhortation to work at relationships. Paul reminded us in the preceding chapter that “I pray that… you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through [God’s] Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. “ In other words, Paul is reminding us that it is our relationship with God that is foundational, that makes us persons who “are rooted and grounded in love” and that it is through the power of God within us that more is accomplished than we ourselves could imagine. So with that foundation of understanding God's amazing love for us, and living within that sense of being powerfully loved, that Paul, in today's reading, challenges us to understand that we are a diverse body who is called to unity in the church, and that although we are different people who are gifted and called differently, we are called to grow up, and live with a faithful integrity that will lead to unity.

Listen for the word of the Lord: I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it is said, "When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people." (When it says, "He ascended," what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

This is tough stuff. And unfortunately, it doesn't always characterize the Church. Unfortunately, because we are not so comfortable with conflict, many of us have not understood the centrality of reconciliation to the life of faith. The apostle Paul wrote in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, in the section from which part of today's assurance of pardon is taken: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation....” It is the same thinking that is central to the Lord's Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us....” which is the real meaning of debtors and trespasses. Because we are people who are fully accepted by God, who are loved just as we are, and who are fully forgiven – we are called to fully accept others, love others, and forgive others. And at times we will need to ask forgiveness as well. The Church is called to a pattern of transformed and transforming relationships.

Many of us come from families where conflict was not allowed, where we learned that nice people don’t disagree, and so learning how to speak the truth in love is a difficult process for us. If we are not used to that kind of honesty, it can feel frightening, even when expressed without aggression. But being nice all the time can end in broken relationships because we can’t discuss the things we need to talk about.

We're called to the ministry of reconciliation, and that means that we need to stay open to one another, to engage with each other when we are in disagreement rather than writing each other off. Again, this is not easy, but it's what we are called to as disciples of Jesus Christ. Modern churches, particularly mainline churches, have not recently called for this kind of accountability from our members, officers or ministers, although in the Presbyterian Church, our officers and ministers make promises when we are ordained that include these two: Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world? Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?

And this is not just for officers and ministers: reconciliation is at the heart of the Christian mission, and it's what we need to get straight, each of us and all of us, before we can authentically join with one another in mission to the wider world. Perhaps a reason that the mainline denominations are in decline is because people look at us and don't see that our faith has changed us.

As difficult as it may be for many of us to relate to God, it is more difficult in many ways to relate to each other. Most of us are very afraid of conflict, and when it occurs, we may avoid resolving it. But conflict is an inevitable part of life – as Ruth Bell Graham, wife of famous evangelist Billy Graham responded when asked if she and her husband ever disagreed: “Of course we do – if we didn't, one of us would be redundant.” In the book of Proverbs, we read that “iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another.” Our disagreements can make us better. As our strategic planning team begins its work, the resource that we are using – a book called Holy Conversations – reminds us not to be afraid of conflict, that without differences, we will probably not grow as a community. If we all are always in agreement, it's likely that we're not changing, because as we engage change and growth, we likely have different thoughts about priorities. Holiness does not exclude disagreement. And holiness does not mean perfection – saints are normal people who are seeking to grow more and more in relationship with God, each other and themselves. That means recognizing our own imperfections as a starting point. And as we honestly recognize our own imperfections, we find ourselves more accepting of the imperfections of others as well. In talking about sins, it’s important for you to hear me say that I sin – I make mistakes and I do and say things I regret. And when I do, I try to go to the other person, admit my mistake and ask forgiveness.

Over the past two weeks, we had a very public example of repentance and reconciliation – President Obama publicly apologized for the words he had used in characterizing a police sergeant as “acting stupidly” and he sat down with the two men whose tempers had led them into increasingly entrenched positions to try and open the possibility for conversation. This is the kind of leadership in relationships that the Church should be showing. Repentance and reconciliation go together – we need to be open to honesty about ourselves in order to be ready for honesty with each other.

We're called to be saints. That doesn't mean that we're better than anyone else, but it should mean that we are working harder on ourselves, and that we are always open to one another. We need to be rooted and grounded in the love of God, and we need to learn how to speak the truth in love to ourselves, and to each other. It's not easy. The way of God is not easy at all, but it's the only way to wholeness. God doesn't heal us of our brokenness without our active participation in the process.

I bought a card at the Companion Shop on Friday. It shows a dog and a cat, and the caption reads, “A simple friend thinks the friendship is over when you have an argument. A real friend knows that it's not a friendship until after you've had a fight.” Let's be real friends with one another. Let's be willing to disagree, to listen, and to be transformed in the process, individually and as a community. Let's understand that relationally, sometimes we are still like puppies, nipping when we don’t mean to, and learning every day how to be the saints we are called to be. Amen.