A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — September 7, 2008
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Exodus 12:1-14;  Matthew 18:12-22

For where two or three are gathered in my name,
I am there among them. — Matthew 18:20

It is truly amazing how hard being in relationship can be.  Jesus walks his followers through baby steps.  When someone offends, first go alone to the offender.  Then take one or two others.  Then seek the community’s aid.  But the main concern is always patching things up, not condemnation.  The whole purpose is to renew relationship.  Life is to be about communion with God and living in community with all people.  As Jesus makes clear in the Parable of the Lost Sheep, God is unwilling to let anyone be lost.  When Peter wants to know how far he has to go—“How many times must I forgive?”—Jesus says, “Lots!  Lots and lots!”

According to an old story,¹ there was once a famous monastery that had fallen on very hard times.  Its many buildings were nearly empty.  Only a handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters, and in their large sanctuary they praised God with heavy hearts.
On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a little hut.  He went there from time to time to fast and pray.  No one ever spoke with him, but whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk, “The rabbi walks in the woods.”  And their spirits would be lifted by his prayerful presence.

One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and to open his heart to him.  After the morning Eucharist, he set out through the woods.  As he approached the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched in welcome.  It was as though he had been waiting there for him.  The two embraced like long lost brothers and then just stood there outside the hut, smiling at one another with smiles their faces could hardly contain.

After a while the rabbi motioned the abbot to enter.  On a table in the middle of the hut, the Scriptures stood open.  They stood there for a moment, in the presence of the book.  Then the rabbi began to cry, and the abbot joined him in tears, crying his heart out.  The two men stood there like lost children, weeping.

After the tears had ceased to flow and all was quiet again, the rabbi lifted his head.  “You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts,” he said.  “You have come to ask a teaching of me.  I will give you a teaching, but you can only repeat it once.  After that, no one must ever say it aloud again.”

The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said, “The Messiah is among you.”  After a time of silence, the rabbi said, “Now you must go.”
The abbot returned to the monastery, and in the morning he called his monks together in the chapter room.  He told them he had received a teaching from “the rabbi who walks in the woods” and that the teaching was never again to be spoken aloud.  Then he looked at each one of his brother monks and said, “The rabbi said that the Messiah is here among us.”

The monks were startled.  They began asking themselves, “Is Brother John the Messiah?  Or Father Matthew?  Or Brother Thomas?  Am I the Messiah?  What could this mean?”  All were deeply puzzled by the rabbi’s teaching.  But no one ever mentioned it again.

As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a very special reverence.  There was a gentle, wholehearted, human quality about them now that was hard to describe but easy to notice.  They lived with one another as people who had finally found something, but they prayed the Scriptures together as people who were always looking for something.  Occasional visitors experienced the same reverence and were deeply moved by the life of the monks.

Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks and young men were asking, once again, to become part of the community.  And even though the rabbi no longer walked in the woods and his hut had fallen into ruins, somehow or other, the old monks who had taken his teaching to heart continued to feel sustained by his prayerful presence.
The rabbi’s teaching reaches into us and clutches at our hearts.  The “rabbi who walks in the woods” looks us straight in the eyes and says to us, “The Messiah is among you.”  Or from a different time, another rabbi—the rabbi we call Jesus Christ—encounters us, saying, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  Here is the heart of it all—smack in the middle between no one is lost and unlimited forgiveness.

What does it mean for the Messiah—the Christ—to be among us?  The two words are the same—messiah in Hebrew and christos in Greek.  Both mean “the anointed one.”  Perhaps most of the time, we take these words to mean that the risen Christ is somehow among us as some sort of a separate, invisible presence—perhaps sitting in one of the empty pews watching out for us or maybe checking up on us.  We fall into a Santa Claus reward-and-punishment version of Jesus among us—“he sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake; he knows if you’ve been bad or good; so be good for goodness sake.”  All too often, that’s the sort of difference the Messiah-among-us makes for us and for the way we live?

But we need to ask the kind of question those monks asked.  Could it be that one of us here is the Messiah?  What a difference it would make (!) if, growing out of that question, we began to treat one another and, indeed, every person everywhere with a very special reverence.  Does it strike you as strange to think of one of us here being the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one?  If so, then remember and ponder the words of that most familiar of the Psalms, the 23rd Psalm—six words we address to God when we speak the psalm—“Thou anointest my head with oil.”  So we claim in saying or singing or praying the psalm.  Could it be that one of us here is the Anointed One?

We need to ask this question in all situations, in all encounters and relationships, not just here in the church.  For considering this possibility lies at the very heart of the ministry to which Jesus has called us.  Only as we can begin to look for the Messiah-in-our-midst in strangers, in our neighbors, and in ourselves will we be able to love our neighbors as ourselves.  In fact, only then can we truly love either ourselves or our neighbors.  Only when we ask the question and look for the Messiah in every person can we embody that “gentle, wholehearted, human quality… that [is] hard to describe but easy to notice.”

What about when the question is not asked, not even considered?  Well then, unfortunately, Christianity can become harsh and judgmental and resort to things like condemnation and exclusion.  I take as an extreme example those Christian groups that make a practice of condemning things like homosexuality and homosexuals, or Muslims, or secular humanists, or pro-choice, liberal politicians.  A church sign in Blacklick, Ohio recently displayed two lines of text.  The first quoted a line from a popular song sung by a woman, “I kissed a girl and I liked it.”  The second line went on, “and then I went to hell.”  Such a sign makes it abundantly clear that this group of Christians is incapable of asking the question, of even considering the possibility that the Christ might be present in any person who is a homosexual or who supports the dignity of homosexuals.

Some might respond that a portion of today’s text provides justification for the actions of such groups.  As the conflict continues, Jesus does say that if the person “refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  They sound harsh, don’t they?  For centuries, these words have been used within Christianity to justify the condemnation and excommunication of sinners and people called heretics.  Leaving aside the fact that there is not at the time of Jesus a “church,” as such, for him to be speaking about, this cannot possibly be what his words mean.

First, they follow immediately after the Parable of the Lost Sheep, where God is a shepherd who will go to any lengths to find the one who is lost.  And they are immediately followed by Jesus’ words to Peter about unlimited forgiveness—not seven times but seventy times seven.  The context will simply not allow for rejection and condemnation.  For it is not God’s will that anyone be lost.  Second, just how did Jesus himself relate to Gentiles and tax collectors?  Did he reject them?  No!  He sought them out.  He called them to follow and be part of the community.  One of his disciples was a tax collector.  And in the end, Jesus sends his disciples to proclaim the Good News to all nations.  The very same Greek word, ethné, means both “nations” and “Gentiles.”  Finally, we have the promise of Christ among us.  What if the offender just might be the “Christ among us”?  So while the saying may have something to do with the process of church discipline at some later time, it can never justify condemnation, exclusion, or ostracism.  We are to invite all people to join with us in a genuine community of mutual reverence where we can know the presence of the Messiah-in-our-midst.

This morning we have the opportunity right to experience and ask that question:  “Could it be that one of us gathered here is the Messiah, the Christ?”  We can practice looking for the Messiah among us.  Shortly, we will come to the Lord’s Table to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  It is the Lord’s sacrament.  (The Lord be with you… [and the people respond] and also with you.)  So let us look for the Lord Jesus Christ among us.  Look for Christ in the one who passes you the bread and the tray of cups.  Is this person the Messiah?  Look for Christ in the one you are serving.  Is this one the Messiah?  And then, as you eat the bread and drink from the cup, don’t forget to ask yourself, “Am I the Messiah?”  Finally, when you go from this place, take those questions with you and keep asking them—not seven times, but seventy times seven times.  In other words… always!  For the Christ is always among us.  Alleluia and amen.

 

 

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¹ Story from Storytelling: Imagination and Faith, by W. J. Bausch (pp 138-140).