September
8, 2002 - Sixteenth
Sunday after Pentecost
Romans
13: 8-14
NRSV
KJV
CEV
Matthew
18: 15-20
NRSV
KJV
CEV
“Hands to Work and Hearts to God”
“The world is a different place.” How many times have we heard that phrase in the almost one year since the events of September 11th? The world became a different place for us because our nation, our society, and our culture were violently challenged. Our world became a different place for us, but in so many ways the events of that day and the days that have followed have simply brought us into the world in which most people live, at least those outside of the United States and the European Economic Community. That being said, what does it have to do with what we’ve heard from the Scripture and with ‘Rally Day” at First Congregational Church? Well, I think it has plenty to do with both.
Our theme for Rally Day and for our whole church programming year is Hands to Work and Hearts to God. , Mother Ann Lee, the foundress of the Shakers gave that little instruction to her followers. It set the parameters for their life together as a community, focused their values, and directed their work. In the aftermath of September 11th we were brought to reconsider what we value and how we go about everyday living. Some of what we learned from the experience of that awful day has continued with us. Unfortunately, a great deal of it – like bi-partisan political cooperation – quickly went by the wayside. It’s important for us as a community of faith to focus on the basic, simple, vitally important values that give us meaning and help us to live in our world. Hands to Work and Hearts to God is a simple, elegant, and poignant reminder of what is important to us as followers of Jesus Christ.
As a student of American religious history I find the Shakers endlessly fascinating. While their theological position would have easily qualified them for the “New Age” movement, they flourished in the early to mid –nineteenth century. Shaker spirituality was infused with a remarkably sensitive mysticism, but was also grounded in an appreciation of the created world and material things. The Shakers may have looked for angels and ‘spirit beings’ all around them, yet they were the inventors of many of the laborsaving technologies of the nineteenth century. One can still find furniture copied from their elegantly simple designs, but I am not so sure that the copies carry the same workmanship as the originals. As the spiritual writer Thomas Merton observed, “the peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.” [in Belden Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred, p. 140]
At the core of what that craftsman believed was the presence of God in the created world and of work as yet another means of prayer. When we allow our spirituality to influence our attitude toward work we draw order into this world from another. One nineteenth century Shaker writer said:
There is as much good workmanship done in the right spirit, as in any other act; the spirit of the thing dome and not the act itself is the key to tell whether anything done be worship or not, but God, the master workman, who has made the minutest insect with as much care as the mammoth elephant, sets us the example of good works. Imitation is the sincerest praise. [in Lane, p. 141-2]
Our Puritan forebears probably wouldn’t have agreed with Shaker doctrine, but they would have resonated with that idea. Remember our ‘thought to worship by’ from John Milton? “The end of all knowing is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.” Hands to Work implies that we’re taking our being made in God’s image and likeness seriously and that we will continue to make our world as carefully as God did at the outset.
The Shakers were a communitarian movement that sought to live a quiet, peaceful, and ordered life. I believe that developing good community life is still one of the great values of the Christian faith, and one of the perpetual needs in our society. Paul’s words to the Romans are precisely about this life together to which we are all called, both as human beings and as Christian believers. The call to love is at the heart of community life.
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet;’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” [Romans 13:8-10] If we love God and love our neighbor then everything else falls into line. When we live in love we’re living in right relationship with God and with all creation. Augustine could write “Love and do what you will,” because he understood that the standard for love was in a living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ, who works with us, showing us the way of love. Jesus lived life for others, even to the point of giving up his life on the cross. Hands to Work Hearts to God involves living in that same manner, attuned to God’s presence in the world, and loving as we have been taught. Perhaps that is why Paul uses language of getting dressed when tells us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ’? We clothe ourselves in his attitude, his way of living and begin to make our world a different place.
I suppose that one way we could talk about Hands to Work and Hearts to God is as ‘attunement.’ To attune means to bring into harmony, to adjust, to adapt, or to become accustomed. When we’re living in right relationship with God and with one another our lives will reflect this attunement, this harmony with the Divine. Our hearts will be in the right place, so our hands and our hearts will follow in the work we do and in our orientation to the center of our life – God. The principle of Hands to Work and Hearts to God reminds us that our relationships set our priorities. The people, the activities, the things that matter always get the appropriate attention – and if they don’t, it’s a sign of how we’ve determined our values. Which reminds me of a little joke. It seems that a dedicated group of golfers were out one morning at their regular time. One of their number was about to address the ball as he noted a funeral procession. He dropped his putter, doffed his cap and covered his heart as the procession passed. His friends were surprised and shocked. As he put his cap on, picked up his putter and prepared to putt his friends said, “Bill, we had no idea you were so religious.” “Ah,” he replied, never looking up from the ball, “it’s the least I could do. After all, she gave me the best years of her life.” Where was that gentleman’s attunement?
There can be little question that the Church, “the Lord’s free and gathered people,” is the place where our attunement is put to the test. When everyone is getting along it’s a fairly easy task to feel attuned. However, when there are difficulties our attunement to God’s love, the mind of Christ, is put to the test – and I know of few Churches in our Congregational sphere or in any other denomination where there aren’t difficulties. Part of the problem, I believe, is this great desire of Christian folk to “be nice.” I really don’t see the command to “go forth and be nice” anywhere in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures. Instead I see exhortations to honesty and the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Quite frankly, loving one’s neighbor and speaking the truth in love is very different than being nice.
Jesus gives some very practical advice on how we’re to deal with difficult situations in our faith communities. I don’t see a great deal of niceness in what he says, but I see a tremendous foundation of love and a priority on reconciling someone who has been separated, regardless of reason, from the community. What we see in Jesus’ prescription for one who “sins against you” is the application of Hands to Work and Hearts to God. At each stage of the encounter the emphasis is on our acting in a right, loving manner, doing with our hands what our hearts know to be true. Sometimes being properly attuned calls for us to be brutally honest. So long as we are acting in love, however, the sting of that honesty will be softened and the right intention will restore a hurting, separated sister or brother to right relationship with God’s people.
We have had our share of situations around First Church that required reconciliation – there are, indeed, some that still need to be addressed. I am confident that we are going to act in the manner that befits a “follower of Jesus Christ” and put our Hands to Work and Hearts to God in dealing with people and issues. I don’t think we’ll be ‘nice,’ but we will be loving, we will be open, honest, and fair. Acting in that way is what makes the Church what it is, and every time we are what we’re supposed to be it helps to bring God’s kingdom a little closer.
You and I are not going to make a huge amount of difference on the world’s geopolitical stage. We can, however, make a difference in the little worlds in which we function. If each of us began to really live out Hands to Work and Hearts to God think of the difference it would make. The world is a different place after the events of September 11th a year ago, but it’s been a different place far longer than that and we would realize it if only the Churches would be what they profess to be. Some wise person once said, “Christianity hasn’t failed. It’s simply never been tried.” Shall we begin to try it right here on Church Street by putting Hands to Work and Hearts to God? Then the world will be a different place, a person at a time.