It Takes All Kinds

Sermon by James W. Crawford

October 6, 1996

Romans 14:1-12

Paul anticipates his trip to Rome. He has never been there before, he knows none of the congregation and so in preparation for his stay there he writes the Roman congregation a letter. He wants to introduce himself and to express some concerns relating to congregational problems he has learned about through his Mediterranean church grapevine. Paul knows the Roman church to be unique in its diversity. He knows also the church's diversity causes no end of conflict. There is a broad range of members in that church: Jews, gentiles, men and women of various religious background, or no religious background--a miniature of cosmopolitan Rome. The conflict seems to bubble up between members who practice their piety in different ways. There is, on the one hand, what we might call a "conservative camp." The conservatives believe that in order to be true to the faith and their religious identity they must adhere to a rigid diet, make certain days sacrosanct, dress in a particular fashion, assemble their worship in a specific order. These practices, they believe, are basic to the faithful expression of their religious faith.

On the other hand, what we will call the "liberals," see these particular practices as largely irrelevant. The liberals would make any day the Sabbath as Christ had redeemed all the time. They set aside prayer rituals, dietary laws, dress codes as being non-essential because of their new freedom in Christ. And here's the rub: The "conservative faction" looks on the "liberal faction" as permissive, libertarian sellouts, finger-to-the- wind Christians, devoid of discipline, accommodating to trends of the times, betrayers of tradition. The "liberals" see the "conservatives" as pinched, rigid, doctrinaire, confusing trivialities with the real mandates of the Gospel, those who need mundane practices to prop up their faith. As a result, the Roman congregation seethes with mutual hostility and contempt. The separate factions deride, mock, and malign each other. And for Paul, the worst thing they do is to call into question the integrity of one another's faith. "If you don't do it my way, you're outside the pale. If you don't believe the way I do, you're a heretic, a pagan, a religious fraud."

I

Does that sound familiar? I'm not sure we in the 20th century suffer any less from the hostility and contempt prompted by diversity in our churches. David Head, in a very telling prayer, captures just a little taste of this age-old problem. His protagonist prays, "O God, your eternal city as described in human terms seems unbearably cosmopolitan. There are some nations (which I will not presently specify), some denominations (which shall remain nameless), one political party (O Lord, you know it well) and many types of musicians (if such a word can be applied to them at all), with whom I could not possibly live. Could I, perhaps, have a quiet, detached mansion of my own, with a few specified visitors for a short period?"

 Uh, oh. Does this touch a chord--just a little bit--in all of us?

And the struggle goes on. Look at all these churches in the Back Bay, each steeple representing a legacy of some long-ago internal church division. Baptism has to be done this way. Holy Communion served that way. This is the way to read the Bible, wear this vestment, say that creed. And our own denomination finds itself these days fragmenting over who is a fundamentalist, who is a centrist, who is an off-the-graph heretic. And I do not doubt for one minute, each of us in this congregation consider a certain Christian lifestyle, a particular approach to the Bible, a set of religious code words, a mode of service, a style of gathering, a way of worshipping--you name it--more representative of true Christianity than another, and certainly more authentic and true to the Gospel, probably, than the minister, who has his own religious hobby horses, habits, codes and practices that upset his congregation. It is constant and seemingly inevitable. This shifting, churning, volatile hot-box of religious opinion and disagreement is frequently salted with the perception that mine is the Christian way and yours is not; for we know that in either case when we put a little pinch of God in our own opinions, when we drag God onto our side, dress him in our fighting uniforms and march her off against our enemies, we become more or less, as one observer remarked, "God's Gestapo"--censorious, self righteous, intolerant, insufferable, perfect illustrations of why the world at large looks skeptically at churches as models for the healing of a broken humanity.

II

Is there a way out of this conflict? Are we destined forever to break up into our own little sects, to seek homogeneity, to hook up with those who coddle our sense of righteousness? God forbid! When Paul wrote that Roman congregation he did not say, "Listen, if you can't stand each other, break it up, organize your own operations, do your own thing." Quite the contrary. He said, "Look. It takes all kinds to make a church. The glue holding you together is not a uniform opinion on the practice of faith nor an identical stance on public issues. Your unity depends not upon unanimity of affection or strict concurrence on doctrine. What holds you together resides in your loyalty to love grounding the universe, yourselves enabling that love to tumble into the lesions rending human life. "Love," Paul, insists "is measured by the amount of tension it can take, not by how it feels." Love finds itself tested in all human circumstances, most especially in the church. In a large urban congregation, he says, your church attendance patterns will differ, your prayer styles may vary, your ways of service will be dissimilar, your ears may be deaf to one another's religious language. But that is not enough to divide you. What holds us together is not so much a simple religious compatibility. What holds us together lies in our conviction of a Divine love that will never let us go no matter how stupid and wrong our own religious opinions, thus making it possible for each of us to treat one another as God has treated us, living in tension, to be sure, but never, in the name of the Gospel, writing one another off, always, as Paul writes to his Roman friends, always welcoming one another, expecting to gain a new friend, open to hearing a new truth.

May I close on a personal note this morning? Do you know why I love this church? I love it because it reminds me of that church in Rome. Talk about diversity! There is nothing uniform about this congregation. We disagree on priorities; we mean different things with the same religious words, our public agendas do not coincide, our private morality spans a wide spectrum, our tastes, habits, priorities, convictions lie scattered across the Christian landscape. Hey, the place sounds like a wreck, and sometimes it feels almost on the verge of flying apart. But I believe people who return here week after week stand convinced it takes all kinds to make a church and through impediments to unanimity, they--YOU!--stand loyal to more than the beauty of the music, the supposition of the preacher, the history of the Old South. I strongly suspect you discover solidarity not in homogeneity, but through our commitment as a body of Christ to loving one another through all of our diversity, demonstrating both the challenge and the joy of discipleship, modeling for a world splintering in mutual contempt and hatred everywhere else, modeling a new community grounded in humility and justice.

Now that's a church! And as we gather around the table this morning, breaking bread, pouring wine, eating and drinking together, we celebrate the one who, for all of our differences, graces each of us, binds us in all our difference together as one body, and confirms this absolutely glorious postulate of authentic Christian community: By heaven, it takes all kinds.