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WHO BLEEDS WHEN CHRISTIANS FIGHT?
#1
“THE RIGHT FIST OF FELLOWSHIP”
There was a Larry Thomas cartoon a while back in Leadership
magazine that didn’t just say it all — this one said it ALL. I imagine
pastors everywhere laughed until you could hear a pin drop, as the old
saying goes. It has a church secretary coming in to see the senior pastor
of a church, and she tells him: “The good news is, we’re adding new members.”
Then she gulps. “The bad news is, they’re the people who caused the conflict
at First Church.”
And that — I can guarantee you — is not the way you want to have your
membership suddenly increase by 20%. Because the feud at First Church
is now going to be the feud at YOUR church. But there are times when an
entire battle squadron at one house of worship drives over in their armored
tanks and decides to be a part of your house of worship until Colin Powell
and the UN can step in and settle things.
Why is feudin’ and fightin’ such an unavoidable part of the faith? Why
do Christians bicker and beat up on each other? “Blessed are the peacemakers,”
the gentle Jesus once said, over in Matthew 5:9, “for they will be called
sons of God.” And you could forgive the atheist and the backslider for
looking in through the stained glass windows and deciding, maybe, that
Jesus must have been an only child.
Speaking of bad news and good news, it’s troubling to realize that it
has been this way since Bible times. Peter and Paul had a theological
feud, which Paul writes about in Galatians 2; the new Christians in cities
like Ephesus struggled to get along with each other. The good news is
this: the Word of God, friend, has ample counsel on this very matter.
The reality that people quarrel and hold grudges is plainly acknowledged
and addressed many times in the New Testament. It’s not at all like that
classic old line in Casablanca where the crooked police chief, Louis Renault
is “shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on here.” The Bible
opens up the court transcripts and lets us read the rough with the smooth.
Over in the book of James, which scholars tell us might well have been
the very earliest New Testament epistle written, with the possible exception
of Galatians, the brother of Jesus addresses the fact that war has already
broken out in the infant church. It’s only A.D. 50 or 60, and already
the Presbyterians and Baptists can’t get along. Here’s what he says in
verse one of chapter 4:
“What causes fights and quarrels among you?”
And that’s a question for the ages, isn’t it? If this was written, let’s
say, in A.D. 60, then Christians have been looking for — or maybe ignoring
— the answer for more than 1,940 years now. Interestingly, James gives
us a pretty good answer to his own question in the very same verse:
“Don’t [quarrels] come from your desires that battle within you? You want
something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what
you want. You quarrel and fight.”
It’s interesting that the Message paraphrase for James
chapter four — speaking of “shocked, SHOCKED!” — has this subhead: “Get
serious.” And James writes in the 21st-century edition here:
“Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do
you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want
your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what
you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t
yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it.”
What do you think about that? Why do we fight? Why
do we disagree — and insist on continuing in disagreement? Why do we NURTURE
our disagreements? In both the elegance and archaic tone of the King James
and every funky, modern, CD-ROM version of the Bible you can find, the
answer is the same. We’re sinners. And friend, fighting is itself a sin
. . . FUELED by sin. It gets us coming and going. We have desires that
battle within us, and those desires are wrong ones. And so we are willing
to — and sometimes helplessly LOCKED into — committing the SIN of doing
battle with one another.
A few years ago, when we were enjoying a marvelous 16-week radio adventure
in the book of First Corinthians, we had our eyes opened by a verse in
chapter 3. Here’s what it says:
“You are still worldly.” This is Paul writing now, of course. “You are
still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are
you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?”
Did you ever think that quarreling was a WORLDLY problem?
I confess right here and now that I always thought “worldly” kind of referred
to a Christian who maybe drank wine, went to too many R-rated movies,
had on a lot of jewelry, skipped church to watch football, and maybe enjoyed
an occasional junket to Vegas. But here Paul tells us that the SIN of
quarreling is really the epitome of worldliness. Because, of course, the
world fights and scraps like this all the time. And when God’s people
do it as well, we’re being like the world.
We want to spend some time here this week and next thinking about the
whys and the how not to’s of fighting. And we want to take it out of the
church parking lot and the diocese board meeting and back to our own homes
and office cubicles. We won’t just focus on the fights that happen behind
the stained-glass windows. But for today let’s go back to that opening
anecdote where the battleground is the church sanctuary, the choir leader
is a commando, the deacons are drill instructors and demolition leaders,
the parishioners are the privates, and the pastor is a renegade general.
In their marvelous 1992 book, The Body: Being Light in Darkness, Chuck
Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn have a chapter with this almost church-y
title: “Extending the Right Fist of Fellowship.” I think the names and
location were changed to protect the innocent — or maybe, in this case,
the guilty — but an Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts got
a new senior pastor named Waite. And, no pun intended, he couldn’t WAIT
to start making the rounds – with pastoral “visits,” you see – and taking
copious notes regarding any dirt he could ferret out about this person
and that. Pretty soon he had to trade in his scandal book for a bigger
one, and began to exert more and more control over his trembling flock.
And there’s an interesting verbatim line from this book. Notice:
“[The] pastor’s talent for getting his own way was as large as the appointment
book. One of his pastoral conferences could reduce the most disagreeable
church member to sulking silence.”
Remember how James said in his epistle: “[Quarrels] come about because
you want your own way”? And here in this story, it happens exactly according
to the blueprint.
Colson and Vaughn continue to describe how the church soon is split right
down the middle — literally. Those who like the new general — I mean,
pastor — are sitting on the right. His enemies are over on the left. The
deacons are trying to hang in there in the middle, on the front row. And
the organist is trying to be like Switzerland and stay out of it, playing
“Blest Be the Tie That Binds” as often as she can.
And finally — true story — actual war breaks out. It’s Communion Sunday;
the bread and the wine are there on the table. Head deacon Ray Bryson
and Pastor Waite come to blows right in front of the entire congregation.
Two tenors and a baritone jump over the rail around the choir loft and
join the melee. Bryson breaks his hand in two places; the pastor has two
front teeth come loose and has a hard time with corn on the cob at church
potlucks for the next three years. Finally the cops show up and settle
things down, suggesting that some of the combatants might need to seek
medical treatment. Oh, and one final precaution: before driving away in
their patrol cars, the police confiscate, as deadly weapons, several sets
of knitting needles. And again the chapter title: “Extending the Right
FIST of Fellowship.” After the court trial, the warring parties drive
out of the county courthouse parking lot with bumper stickers on their
cars that read: “Christ is with us at Emmanuel Baptist.”
Well, maybe it hasn’t been that hot and hairy with you or with me. But
have you been in a quarrel lately? Did you stop to think that your quarrel
was a sin? And that instead of being a general or a lieutenant in your
little battle, a warrior named Lucifer is actually the commander-in-chief
when we indulge in controversy? That’s right. Friend, the stakes are bigger
than just a couple of loose teeth in the front, or a black eye. When Christians
are hauled into court for brawling in church, the entire body of Christ
— all of NATO, so to speak — suffers a loss. Satan rejoices, and God’s
people have to regroup.
Maybe it would help if all of us, whenever we’re tempted to indulge in
a skirmish, a battle, would stop and simply SENSE the whole war.
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