September 27 Sermon

“How Big is Our Tent?” Mark 9:38-50 Lawrence Jackman

When I was a kid, I was something of a geek. Oh, OK not something—a totally geeky little kid with interests that ranged from the esoteric to the just plain idiosyncratic and sometimes crossed the line to weird. ( I am much older now.) So, one of my kid interests was in raising and breeding Guppies. I wanted an easy task, that was the breeding part. But I also wanted color patterns and behavioral characteristics – that was the highly geeky part. So I got lots of observation time in with my silent little friends. And something that I discovered very quickly is a principle that I have never forgotten about animal behavior (including humans) is what I call the “Guppies in the fish bowl” lesson.

Essentially the population of Guppies in any container will expand to fill the capacity of the container. Then they will self limit. At a certain point the population will level out and no more expansion of population will happen unless there is contraction. If I took out a couple of dozen fish to give to a friend, they would be replaced rather quickly. If I did not take any out, no more would come along. This was a fascinating reality to a geeky little kid. And it fascinates me yet.

There is a lot of church organizational issues that parallel the issue of “Guppies in the fishbowl”. For instance, in some organizationally subconscious way we appear to develop as congregations a notion of appropriate size for our colony of faithful. We max out at that level and will exchange positions, but not really grow. If we loose a few families we will work to replace them, if not we will work to limit the population of our bowl. This is true of church congregations across the board. It is just something that churches do.

It is easier to see in others than it is in ourselves. I had a friend who was a Southern Baptist Lay Preacher before I helped him see the Presbyterian Light. David and I were observing a very successful Baptist group in our town. “Watch”, he said, “in another few months they will have a fight and then split into two groups. It is the way Baptists do it.” While one denomination may manage their bowls differently—every group seems to, again on a subconscious level, manage the size of their bowls.

Further, different congregations elect different sizes to “top out” at. Some of our congregations cap population at a couple of dozen worshiping persons. Some go to 100 as a top number; some cap things at higher numbers, etc.

Now all that is just a fact of life. It is no fault and if any of it fits this congregation, you need to know that it fits almost every congregation in every denomination. There ends up being a sort of a dynamic tension between inclusion and exclusion of others.

The passage from Mark discusses both the issue of inclusion and of exclusion of others. It is Jesus himself making some incredibly inclusive statements about who belongs in the tent or in the bowl as it were. But then, it turns 180 degrees and in the next sentence Mark sees Jesus saying some of the more powerfully exclusive statements of the New Testament. Which is true? Or are they both true in a sort of continuum or tension?
A couple of things about the passage. For more reasons than one the two parts do not seem to have originally been said together. The first part, the one that is so very inclusive seems more primitive and quite a bit more straightforward. The second part is one that is exclusive. It is symbolic in nature, more sophisticated in language, and implies a much more developed sense of the church than simply the disciples group with Jesus.

These two stories being made into one is an indication that as early as there was church history, there was a push and pull between being radically inclusive and being intentionally exclusive. It is almost like Mark spun these two stories together to explain and expand the first story itself.

The first one is pretty straight forward. The disciples have been out on a short mission and Jesus has stayed behind. They come back, find him and make a report that has little to do with their mission. “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name. We took care of that and told him not to do it.” “Aren’t you proud of us?”

“Oh, come on friends”, says Jesus, “if this man is not against us, he is for us. He is doing something good in my name. How bad can he be? And, even if he is bad and we have no evidence of that, how long can he stay that way doing good things and using my good name?” “Leave him alone.”

That is three of this baker’s dozen verses. Now the other nine seem to spin a different story. First this is symbolic talk according to most people. If the church is the body of Christ, then this talk of parts of the body become symbols for members of the church. This part of the passage becomes a discussion of excommunication at its earliest level in the church. A foot, a hand or an eye are individual members of a body. Causing the church to stumble is the sin of consequence, according to the passage. The lesson is this, if a member causes the whole system to go down—kick them out. Better to amputate a piece of the body than to have the whole thing go down.

That is exclusive!

(I have a felt obligation to say one more time: this is symbol language. It is not meant to suggest that people go around performing self amputations on their own bodies. It never was that and is not now. This is about the body of Christ—the church.)

That said, this is exclusive stuff. So how does the tension work out between radical inclusive and powerful exclusion?

It may not seem it, but this is quite practical stuff. Suppose that a group of people who come to worship here sometimes begins to sense some ownership in the ministry of this place. They open up a web site to host a “Friends of Fairlawn” page teaching some biblical content, offering prayers for others, and promoting service missions in the community. Remember that this group is using the church’s name but is completely outside of the church. The session has no control, not even on a theoretical level over what the group does or says. How would we respond to that issue, keeping in mind Jesus’ directive to, “Leave them alone!”

That, by the way, is an issue before our Presbytery in precisely parallel fashion about the Presbytery and not a congregation. What is the biblical way to respond ? No surprise to you, perhaps, my impression is that we should run with the biblical imperative, “If they ain’t agin us, they are for us.” Let them run without a leash.

Now my perspective is jaded with the benefit of things like being old. After all, how far are they going to run on my watch? I believe that the tent ought to be monstrous in size. Can a church have half a dozen adulterers, three or four shady business people, a gossip or two, and a partridge in a pear tree? I have seen churches with more of every group except the partridge in the pear tree. (I’ve never seen one of those anywhere.) The question is not are bad behaviors present, but rather are those behaviors ones that either lead the innocent astray or cause the body to stumble.

It isn’t that those defects aren’t present that is important. It is rather that those defects in some, do not lead others astray. That they do not cause others to stumble.

The trick becomes determination of what is truly against. The assumption being, if it is not against us, it must be for us. Secondly the evaluation that is necessary is discerning that which “makes the body stumble” or “leads a little one astray”.

If someone’s defect, or sin, or life leads innocent people astray, then it is a problem. If it causes other people to stumble it is a problem. If my bad behavior truly leads others to fail in coming into Christian life, that is a serious problem and someone needs to leave or straighten up immediately.

Back in 1983 Presbyterians were involved in a massive effort to reunite the northern and southern churches. Like we do everything else, this was great committee, commission and Assembly wide processing and debate. A powerful and persuasive leader in the southern branch of the church kept us focused on framing the constitution of the church in a way that served a particular political purpose. The two entire denominations were literally stumbling over themselves to accommodate this clergyman.

All Andy Jumper did in that whole process was keep us stumbling on the road to reunion. I kept feeling and saying, “He is not our friend. He is going to leave anyway. Why are we doing what he says?” “Let’s put our backs to the wall and tell him NO!”

Well we didn’t do that. We continued to frame who we were and would become based on trying to appease this man. He did leave anyway, shortly after we took our last stumbling steps toward reunion. We should have done better and recognized our stumbling. That is the stumbling side of the issue.

Based in risk, there is a valid position for exclusion.

If, on the other hand, my sins (or yours) cause the church to be embarrassed – big deal. It is time for the church to get over itself.

My belief is that our tent is supposed to be big—great big. It needs to include almost everyone and nearly every group. We need not artificially identify some conditions for correction and others for benign neglect UNLESS this is about stumbling or leading astray.

There is a story about Pope John XXXIII. He was the revolutionary old man who lead the way into Vatican II. John was elected because they could not find a successor who enough people would agree on. John was old and somewhat frail. The logic was he would be an interim pope for a year or so because he would not live long. He lived for five years and changed the world.

So when he was first feeling his oats as pope, he was in the Vatican and a Cardinal was trying to talk some sense into him. “Holy Father”, he intoned, “what are we doing to the church?” John went over to one of the windows—the stained glass kind that you can’t see through—opened it and declared, “We are letting in a little fresh air.”

Time for us to do the same. Let our tent be an open one and big enough for all.