THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2003

A Sermon preached by the Revd Canon William Wipfler, Ph.D., on the 11th Sunday after Pentecost, August 24, 2003

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Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" (John 6:66-67)

The life of faith often challenges us to make tough choices.

It sometimes demands of us courage that seems to push us beyond our reserves. The story from today’s Gospel is very representative of this truth. The heart of the story is clear enough. The further along life’s road these disciples traveled with Jesus, the more they realized how demanding such a life is. They are called to give up clinging to their precious traditions and convictions. The loving Jesus summoned them to get beyond the rigid fundamentalism of the Scribes and Pharisees. He used images and language that were abrasive to their Jewish sensitivities [e.g. "... eat my flesh, drink my blood!"] And so they decided that the life to which Jesus called them demanded too much change of them, and they turned back and left.

It would have been easy for any of them to leave at that moment, even Peter. Others had left. Who knew where Jesus would lead them? Why not get out while the getting was good? Peter was evidently a leader in the group and the spokesperson for a number of the disciples. Some of them would probably have left with Peter. At that moment -- Chapter 6 in John’s Gospel narrative — Jesus was not yet fully known to them. It was virtually the beginning of their relationship with Jesus. He was a charismatic traveling preacher whose outspoken words and ideas attracted as many enemies as followers.

But then comes the hard challenge for the Twelve. "Do you also wish to go away?"

Jesus had essentially asked his disciples: "Choose! Will you walk with me? Choose! Whom will you serve? Do you also wish to go away?" How many of us would have taken off? It took more courage than we realize for the Twelve to decide to stay, but Peter’s response was firm: "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life."

And that is probably because we also tend to forget what is asked of us in order to be a faithful Christian. Family, society, our culture, the media, fill us with so many subtle values and half-beliefs that are in direct conflict with the spirit of the Gospel. It takes great courage to face oneself honestly, recognize who we are, and to change our attitudes and uproot the deeply held convictions and prejudices that have crept into our lives when our faith demands this of us.

That is how it has been for the Church from the very beginning. The Church has not been a stranger to controversy ... in fact it was born in and has survived numerous controversies throughout its history. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles tells us of the first one that shook the Church during half of the first century. It pitted James and Peter and the chosen Apostles against Paul and Barnabas: it was the Judiaizing conflict. Can a non-Jew become a Christian? Must the Gentile first become a Jew? Must one’s lineage come through a Jewish mother or must males be circumcised in order to be baptized? It threatened the Church’s survival. It was a question of "Who can become a Christian?" And if it had been decided differently, where would we be today? As it so many conflicts it was about who will be excluded.

During the first five hundred years of its life another controversy shook the Church. It was the struggle of "orthodoxy" and "heresy" when doctrinal issues were at the heart of the conflict and when the creeds were formulated. At the center of the matter was the question: "Who is Jesus?" And lines of who was in and who was out of the Church were drawn on the issue of "what doctrine do you believe?"

Western Catholic Christianity with its center in Rome and Eastern Orthodox Christianity with its heart in Constantinople couldn’t reach agreements on matters of doctrine, authority, practice and language. They hurled charges of heresy and apostasy at each other and finally divided over the issue: "Who do you follow?" the Pope in Rome or the Patriarch in Constantinople?

By the eleventh century, cultural, ethnic, geographical and political factors had created great chasms between the Church in the East and the Church in the West.

There was a serious conflict in the hearts of the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. In the beginning of the Conquest, in spite of religious rhetoric, wealth took precedence. Indigenous peoples were enslaved. European diseases and forced labor decimated the population. In Santo Domingo, in 1493 the indigenous people were estimated to number 1.3 million persons. With the first official census in 1552 they had been reduced to 50,000. They had been considered "beasts of burden" and not human beings. Baptism had been withheld until Bartolome de las Casas persuaded the Spanish monarchs to ease their suffering. Christians were not to be enslaved by fellow Christians and so the question was, "Who is a child of God and who isn’t?"

With the freeing of the Indians the colonies still needed laborers... the plantations and the mines couldn’t be left untended. Sadly, it was the liberator of the Indians, Bartolome de la Casas, the one who had been courageous enough to stand up for the indigenous peoples, who suggested that Black Africans take their place. A new controversy arose regarding these new slaves. As late as 1650 the struggle still continued over "Who may be baptized?" and then later, when Blacks felt a vocation to ministry, "Who can be ordained a priest?"

But we white Americans can’t be too self-righteous in this regard. Let’s not forget that many of the noble and patriotic (and Christian) founding Fathers of the United States were slaveholders. Slavery was not questioned under the concept that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." When the institution of slavery was being questioned prior to the Civil War, priests and pastors of many different denominations in the South took to the pulpit and utilized Scripture to defend it. Even Episcopal Bishops preached on its merits, and one became a general in the Confederate Army.

Finally, I know that we need not dwell on the more recent struggle of the 1970s to win an appropriate and equal place for women in the Church, because we have lived it? Remember when women had to keep their place within the church? When females could not hold a seat on a vestry, read a lesson in worship, serve as an acolyte. Even Paul felt that women should remain silent in Church There are still those who want to go back to those days and undo the inclusion of women in the ministry based on the inferior status to which Scripture relegated women.

Most of these historic struggles were won because there were Christians who firmly accepted the call to courage. Peter’s story in today’s Gospel reminds me of that. But so does another story about a contemporary disciple.

He was a senior in General Theological Seminary when I began my first year there in 1952. He was an older seminarian but we became great friends. Right after high school, in 1940, John joined the army and found himself in the Pacific conflict for the duration of the Second World War. Seriously wound twice, he came back from the war in 1946 with a profound sense of the inhumanities he had experienced but with a deeper sense of vocation to serve God in the priesthood. He was broke. He went to college on the GI Bill. When he graduated from college, he married and went to seminary. John was one of the warmest, kindest Christian men I have ever known. I knew that he would be a model priest. In 1953, he graduated, was ordained and became rector of a small church in Mississippi.

Two years later the organist and choir director moved away and Fr. Smith had to undertake the search for a new one. Qualified candidates for a small town church would be few and far between. But after a few months a resume arrived. It seemed too good to be true: a master’s degree in organ and a second degree, from a seminary, in sacred music. The man had experience, fine references, and he wanted the job even though it couldn’t pay him what he was worth. When he came for an interview, it seemed the only thing that he didn’t have was the right skin color for that town.

But it did. The vestry refused to approve the appointment even removing the organist’s salary from the budget. John appealed to the Bishop to speak to the vestry but he refused to intervene. John submitted his own resignation. Now we live on this side of the harsh civil rights struggles of the 1950s and it might be hard to believe that his decision not only cost him his immediate job but his ministry. Word spread quickly that he was a troublemaker, an integrationist, and he wasn’t considered for new appointments. After several years of being shunned, John became a fine high school teacher. But he never left the church. He remained so he could speak courageously for justice without restraints from vestry or bishop.

Fr. John didn’t care about that or think it would matter … or perhaps he didn’t think it should matter.

John Smith isn’t his real name.

The discovery of the Americas in 1492 introduced a new kind of controversy into the Church.

We tend to forget just how much courage it takes to be a Christian.

It takes courage to be a Christian. We don’t say that often enough to parents and godparents during baptismal instruction or to adults seeking baptism. We don’t say it clearly enough to young people in Journey to Adulthood and Rite 13, or to those preparing for confirmation.

It takes courage to be a Christian. We too often forget that, because we aren’t challenged in our comfortable pews or, when we are, we become deaf or obstinate!

And so Christ meets us this morning, as he has met his community, the Church, throughout the millennia. And his question to us remains the same: "Do you wish to go away?"

It takes courage to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. It takes courage to take a stand when you have to take that stand alone. It takes courage to get involved in other people’s lives and in society’s great and urgent ills, like Fr John. It takes courage, in a selfish and individualistic world, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self. It takes courage to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being, especially when the world strives to alienate and marginalize those who are different!