Cutting to the Chase….and the Heart
First Congregational Church -- Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 17, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Genesis 45:1-15/Romans 11:1-2a, 29-36/Matthew 15:21-28]

"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live in unity!"

The Psalmist cuts to the chase and to the heart in that simple, profound line. Indulge me for just a moment, because I want to talk about those commonplaces for just a second. The phrase “cut to the chase,” according to the multiple wisdoms of the internet and a couple of books I own on idiom, originates first with printing. When a body of text was set in type and ready to print one could cut the chase, the frame holding the type, and move it to the press. Later it was used in the movies to talk about getting to the action shot – cut to the chase.

The other phrase, “cut to the heart” is also interesting. I rain across a paper by a British “Media Ecologist” named Robert Blechman who examined the development of heart idiom in popular culture. He had this to say: “The heart we read about in our literature, sing about in our songs and associate with feelings and deep insight is not a cardiovascular pump. If you look up “heart” in any Webster's dictionary you will discover a long list of the ways the heart is used metaphorically. An individual can have a heart, take heart, be heartless, show heart and be in the heart of things. Our language betrays deeper beliefs about the heart. We speak of our core beliefs or principles, “cor” from the Latin for heart. When we want to truly understand a topic, we seek to get to the heart of the matter.”

In houses of worship all over the world today folks will cut to the chase, and to the heart, when they reference the blessedness of unity as they profess belief in "one, holy, catholic (meaning universal) and apostolic church." If we look to the roots of our own Congregational tradition, we'll see that we have always held to the 'oneness' of Christ's church as well, even though we do not always recite the historic creeds. (And let me, again, remind ourselves that the Congregational Church is not a-creedal, we do believe something, we use creeds as testimonies to what is commonly believed among us, rather than as tests.) Why is it, then, that life together as Christians seems so difficult? If the church is 'one,' why are there more than twenty-five hundred variations on it in the United States alone, with at least twenty or more of them variations on the Methodists and four or five Congregational groups, just to name a few? If unity comes from God and doesn't seem very apparent, does it mean that God has given up on us?

Paul pondered a similar question in his letter to the church at Rome. If one believes because God has given the grace to do so, since all comes from God, has God rejected the Jews because they don't believe in the Messiah? Paul's answer is a resounding, "no." Rather, he says, God has used even their seeming disobedience to bring about something good, the extension of God’s mercy to the Gentiles. God works, as Paul says, in a hidden or mysterious fashion to accomplish God’s ultimate purpose: the redemption of all creation.

What Paul tells the early Christians in Rome is very much paralleled by the experience of Joseph. Confronting his brothers -- who broke family unity by selling him into slavery -- Joseph doesn't seek revenge or heap recrimination upon them. Rather, he explains how evil on their part has been used for good by God.

Had Joseph not been put in the place he had in Egypt many people, including his own family, would have suffered greatly. Instead, God, as the saying goes, "wrote straight with crooked lines" to provide relief for God’s people. What is more, as we'll see in the lessons from Exodus over the next few weeks, God will time-and-again use seemingly evil or sometimes simply ordinary circumstances to accomplish his purpose: the good of all creation.

God's promise to God’s people, then, is very much a present reality. It's not always evident, but God's covenant is being kept. The covenant, the binding agreement, is that God is our God and we are God’s people. That covenant was made with Abraham and continued forward. It was given new and deeper meaning in Christ, because through him we are all engrafted into God's very life. God's providence and grace are naturally and always for all people. However, it often takes time for that to become apparent, as it does in the story of the Samaritan woman.

When Jesus is approached by the Samaritan woman, whose daughter is in need of healing, he at first rejects her request. He tells her, "I was sent only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It would seem from this that salvation is for the Jews alone. She, however, is persistent in asking help. Jesus again rejects her, "It is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." And her response is equally sharp, "But even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the children's table." Jesus marvels at her faith, which goes right along with her persistence to make sure her daughter is healed, and her insight as she implies that even the Gentiles are fed by God. That faith in Jesus' power is what allows for the admission of the Gentiles to covenant relationship. It is in relationship with Christ that we come to sit down at the banquet table of God and become partakers of Divine nature.

The church, which is born of God's covenant faithfulness, has to reflect that same covenant faithfulness in our life together. What the Quaker theologian and mystic Rufus Jones observed is very true: “It is of no avail to talk of the church in general, the church in the abstract, unless the concrete particular local church which the people attend can become a center of light and leading, of inspiration and guidance, for its specific community.” The early Congregationalists understood that idea well. They acknowledged the existence of the "invisible," universal church, but understood that church really exists in the particular, local church which is made up of "visible saints." "Visible saints" are people who reflect the life of Christ in their everyday living and not just in ascribing to a set formulary of beliefs.

Our Congregational forebears also understood that the word 'church' itself is significant, because it is derived from the Greek word kyriakon -- meaning "the Lord's." The other word which denominated church is ekklesia -- which means "assembly" (we get our word ecclesiastical from it). These words both derived from the description of the whole assembly of Israel (qahal YHWH), a people gathered in covenant relationship. When the local church is gathered it makes the whole church present and proclaims God's presence in his people to the world. By the way, this why it's important that we attend church -- do tell the folks that aren't here -- because it's when we're gathered in this way that we are most God's people.

This covenant relationship implies action and, truly, that is what the church is supposed to be about. The church is a gathering for worship -- together we ascribe worth to God and demonstrate our values, the principles which define us and we hold dear. Here we gather for prayer and study, recognizing that it both with the heart and the mind that God is honored. The church is a gathering for welcome -- here we receive all who come, "reach out with compassion to those in need" (as our own church covenant bids us do). As we gather all should feel at peace, should feel safe, should feel loved and appreciated for who they are. The church is a gathering for reconciliation -- here we lay aside differences and divisions (“to treat each other with love and understanding”). In this gathering, ideally, radical and conservative should be able to worship side-by-side. Here, I hope, the chairpersons of the local committees of the Democrats and Republicans should be able to sit together in the same pew if both can own the covenant and Lordship of Christ. The church is a gathering for listening -- here we listen for the voice of God speaking to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. What is more, we become a listening people, listening deeply not only to God, but to each other. The church is a gathering for service -- here we are renewed and refreshed spiritually so that we can care for ALL God's people in our everyday activities. We are also motivated to care for the sick, the poor, and the lonely acting as one body, for we are the Body of Christ.

The church, then, should say to the world that unity does not mean uniformity – that certainly cuts to both the chase and the heart. We need to realize that as there are many different people in the world, so there will be different expressions, responses to the Lordship of Christ and his call to life together. Historically, the church has never been just one thing, but it has known oneness because the people who make it up are gathered together in the One Lord, Jesus Christ. So, the church should be a visible entity whose actions speak as loudly as its words.

I think it important for us to remember, again, that God works in mysterious, baffling ways, and the church is certainly an example of that. I remember one of my former students, at that time a young Roman Catholic deacon out in a parish internship, coming into my office exasperated. He said, "Father, I love the church. . . . it's the people of God I can't stand!" Yet another teaching moment, to remind him, and now us, that the church IS the people of God. Sometimes we Christians project our ideal of what we think the church should be onto it and then are disappointed when God's church doesn't conform to our ideal.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian martyred by the Nazis, addressed this mistake in his reflection on Christian community, Life Together. Listen to what he says, “Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may appear great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases. Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.”

It is good and pleasant to dwell in unity because the unity doesn't depend upon us, but upon Christ. God doesn't forsake his people or his covenant relationship and we, in turn, as the people of the new covenant must also be faithful. If we want unity as a local particular church, it will come because we are faithful to living out the covenant we have made with the Lord and with each other. If we are faithful, God is even more so, and our life together will deepen and grow as we follow Christ together.

Perhaps, someday, we'll begin to realize that Church unity is not an ideal we realize, but, like Christian community, is a mysterious work of God in which we participate. Until that day comes, our task must be to cut to the chase and the heart of the matter by entering life together in Christ, beginning here on Church Street. Here we'll open our eyes and see the truth laid out for us in the lives of people we love, and some we don't even like, and we’ll cut to the chase and the heart: that it is good and pleasant when kindred live in unity! Amen.