MARY LEE TALBOT
Staff Writer
The theologian Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale Divinity School, once gave a lecture on reconciliation. After the lecture a person rose and asked Volf, as a Croatian, if he could forgive the Serbian Chetniks for the slaughter of Croatians in the 1990s Balkan wars.
Volf said, “I had just argued we need to embrace our enemies as God embraced us in Jesus Christ. Can I embrace the ultimate other, so to speak? The evil other? It took me a while to answer … although I immediately knew what I wanted to say, which was this — ‘No, I cannot’ — but as a follower of Christ, I think I should be able to.”
Volf’s wrestling with this issue became his book Exclusion and Embrace.
The Rev. Robert Henderson used this example to begin his sermon, “Conflicted?,” at the 9:15 Wednesday morning worship in the Amphitheater. The scripture readings were Acts 15: 36–41 and Matthew 18: 15–20.
The book of Acts describes the growth of the early Christian church. Saul, who had persecuted the early church and presided over the death of Stephen, was knocked to the ground on the way to Damascus. “He had an immersion experience that led him to become Paul,” Henderson said.
Paul joined a group of men traveling around the Greek isles preaching about the resurrected Jesus. “Traveling around the Greek isles sounds more like boondoggle than a rigorous assignment,” Henderson said. But it was a tough assignment, and at one point, John Mark decided that he could not take any more and left the group.
Later John Mark wanted to come back and Barnabas, whose name means “son of encouragement,” wanted to give John Mark another chance. Paul, who had persecuted the church, refused to give him that chance. And the disagreement became so sharp that Barnabas took John Mark and went to Cyprus and Paul took Silas; Christians have been dividing ever since.
“I wonder if Paul regretted that decision,” Henderson asked the congregation. “Jesus preached loving the neighbor, don’t judge, take the log out of your own eye. But Paul, I want to ask, do you want the same standard of accountability that you’re applying to John Mark, do you want that applied to you? For Peter to say to you, ‘Look, pal, after all you have done to us, the way you have behaved, there’s not a chance you’re joining our movement.’”
Henderson added, “Most of us would like to do better, to keep differences from becoming divisions.”
There are three ways people can deal with differences, Henderson said. The first is silence: Think if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. “In one of my congregations, a woman said, ‘If you can’t say something nice, at least be vague.’ The illusion of harmony is more important than telling the truth, your feelings or even you.”
The second way is humble confrontation, to bring the problem into the light in hopes that the relationship will still be there even if there is no agreement. The problem, Henderson noted, is that the conversation tends to end with excuses and distance between the people.
The third way is revenge, to sneakily question the other person’s character. “You end up telling yourself that it makes you feel better,” he said.
Author C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, described hell as a vast grey city with many empty houses in the middle. Everyone quarreled with their neighbors and moved to get away from them. In their new neighborhood, they again quarreled with their neighbors and moved again. People lived only at the fringes of the city; they chose distance over confrontation.
“For people who prefer a better neighborhood, Jesus proposed a better way: to go to the other party and describe to them what we think is wrong,” Henderson said. Before we do, he told the congregation, we should answer some questions for ourselves.
These questions are: Am I sure I know what I am talking about? What are my motives for this confrontation? Have I assumed positive intent? What am I afraid of? Is the relationship worth the risk?
“The last question is the most important, because the only reason to take Jesus’ advice at all is to win back a relationship in danger of being lost,” Henderson said. “Once we have decided what we want, we can be inspired by the fact that we are working for the relationship, not against it, that our goal is reconciliation, not retribution, and that being in relationship is more important than being right.”
Henderson admitted that this work is not easy. “Offense is taken more often than it is given. As people of faith, we try not to let differences become division. As people of faith, we have to act like family. That is how we know God and God knows us.”
He suggested to the congregation that the answer was to throw a block party in hell “so all the residents will come into the center and see what joy is all about. I am going to give it a try. I hope you will too.”
Robert Wilson-Black, director of the Department of Religion, presided. Mary Beth Parrinello, corresponding secretary of the Friends of Smith Library, read the scripture. The prelude, “Improvisation on Simple Gifts,” by David Kelley, was performed by Sonya Subbayya Sutton, interim director of Sacred Music, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir, under the direction of Sutton and accompanied by Owen Reyda, organ scholar, on the Massey Organ, sang “Jubilate Deo” by Benjamin Britten. The postlude was “Toccata from Symphony No. 5” by Charles-Marie Widor, played by Reyda on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Geraldine M. and Frank E. McElree, Jr. Chaplaincy and the Harold F. Reed, Sr. Chaplaincy.
