10-27-2019 “We’re All in This Together”

Pentecost 20

Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

I preached on Jeremiah last Sunday, so the reading from the prophet did not really move me to explicate it this week. The passage from 2 Timothy is a good one: Paul looks ahead to what awaits him when he dies. Mmm, maybe… Luke tells the story in which Jesus shows how a humble person, who comes before God in an act of contrition, is justified over a self-righteous religious man, who brags about the fact that he tithes and fasts twice a week.

Sometimes you feel drawn to preach on a particular passage, and sometimes the selections for the day push you elsewhere. That’s the case today.

So…what to do? I’ve got it!

A couple weeks ago, I was getting ready for Bible Study. It was about 6:40 pm. (The group meets at 7:00 o’clock.) The Boston Church of Christ, who rents this sanctuary on Tuesday evenings, was starting to gather. I was sitting at Patty’s desk in the office, and a woman came through the door. “Hello,” she said, “I just wanted you to know: I’m an Uber driver and I just dropped someone off for your Bible study. She is in the sanctuary.” The woman continued: “I just wanted to let you know, because the person seems very frail. I helped her into the building, but wanted to be sure that someone knew she was here.” I thanked her, and as she left, she turned and said, “We’re all in this think called life together, you know.” She gave me a compassionate grin and left.

Strange, I thought. It was as if the woman made a point of telling me this to assure me of its truth. What’s even weirder is that when I went to look for the women she apparently dropped off, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t sitting in the sanctuary as I was told, she wasn’t in the Social Room with the Bible study’s early comers, nor was she among the Boston Church of Christ early attendees. It was as if she vanished. (That makes for a great ghost story with Halloween just a few days away, but I’m not going there.)

But what has remained with me is what the Uber driver said: “We’re all in this thing called life together, you know.”

That word “together” comes in all shapes and sizes. It depends who you talk to. How wide is the circle that contains all of those with whom you are joined together?

Many times, in church, we see one another (“us”) as our brothers and sisters in Christ. I use such language all the time. We are, after all, joined together as a family in Christ. That is the foundation of our identity. I will continue to use that language in my preaching and focus on the unique relationship we share. However, in an article I recently read entitled “The ‘Other Side’ Is Not Dumb,’” an article that has nothing to do with religion, the author Sean Blanda describes what psychologists call the “false-consensus bias.”[1] Basically, the bias is that we tend to associate with people who think the way we do and like the things we like. Our feathers become ruffled when we learn that someone who is one of “us” appears to be one of “them.” There is a disconnect. Blanda notes that we tend to “mock the Other Side for being ‘out of touch’ or ‘dumb.’” How can “they” be part of “us” and also part of “them.” This does not fit our worldview.

What does all of this have to do with where I began: with the story of the Uber driver? When she left the office and said, “We’re all in this together,” I’m pretty sure that she did not mean “Christians” when she said “we.” She meant people — all people.

Too often, the Church focuses on we and makes us (whether consciously or not) diametrically opposed to them, whoever they are. Maybe they are members of other churches or denominations. Maybe they are people of different faiths. Maybe they are people of no faith. Maybe they live in different countries. Maybe they look radically different from us. Maybe they don’t speak our language. Maybe they are worse off than we are. No matter who they are, the sides are drawn, and never shall the twain pass.

I’m guilty of such thinking. As a pastor, my focus is on this church, and, outside of it, the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Outside of the NACCC, I think about the Church Universal. In my preaching, that’s about as far as I go. And yet, I am drawn to what Jesus says in John’s Gospel: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (10:16 ESV). Many interpreters claim that the “fold” of which Jesus speaks here are the Jews; the sheep that are “not of this fold” are the Gentiles. However, especially as we apply this teaching to our contemporary context, those “not of this fold” may be people outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, even atheists. Doesn’t Jesus love them, too. Doesn’t Jesus seek their salvation?

When the Uber driver claimed that we are all in this together, she may have been referring to us as Christians. She was, after all, standing in a church, and, as far as I know, she could be one of the most devout Christians on the block. I doubt it, though — not that she may have been a Christian, but that her comment was meant to be more encompassing. “We’re all in this thing called life together” means everybody, not just some of us.

If the Christian Church wants to survive the next eighty years of this century, and the ones that follow, we need to be less judgmental and more loving. We need to see ourselves as part of a larger fabric, and not the only one, the only cloth that exists. This does not mean that we have to compromise our beliefs, but it does mean that we are to reach out to one another (Christians and non-Christians alike) in love.

Unfortunately, the Church, like many institutions in this divided nation, often sees everything through the lens of an us vs. them duality. The Church, of all organization, should see the entire world as a fellowship. We have a mission to invite everyone into our faith and fold, which is rooted in Christ’s death and resurrection, but that does not mean that they are some sort of pariah before they come in — or if they chose not to come in. The Uber driver was right: we are all in this together.

How long is it going to take us (and by “us” I mean the Christian Church Universal), how long is it going to take us to get it together? How long is it going to take us truly care about all people? How long is it going to take us to see that there is no us and them — it’s only us? How long is it going to take us to truly be compassionate? How long is going to take us to love — to truly love the way Christ loves? How long is it going to take us to realize that, indeed, we are in this together? Amen.

[1] Sean Blanda, “The ‘Other Side’ Is Not Dumb,” taken from Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst, They Say/I Say (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018), 212-218.