Broken before it even started

This homily was preached at the College for Congregational Development, Morning Prayer, September 12, 2009.  The Gospel referenced was Matthew 3:13-17. The "TJ" reference is to my Meyers-Briggs typology.

It has been said, “To truly listen is to risk being changed forever.”  And this is what we often fear, being changed.  So much of the conflict I see comes from this fear. 

 

We are hearing, through statistics, and in real life, that conflict is fairly pervasive in the Church.  The length of rectorships gets shorter and shorter, and reports of conflict goes up. 

 

It made me think of something that was stated yesterday.  “It was broken before it ever started.” 

 

Broken before it ever started.   There does seem to be a lot of conflict.   The Vicar or Rector or Bishop, or President, or new boss arrives with so much promise, but then we discover they have feet of clay as well, alas they are human.  We have, in this society, a great contempt for the familiar, so time is often short before the conflict comes. 

 

Broken before it ever started.   I have some unresolved conflict right now.  You know that my life was a bit disrupted Thursday night, working too late, but doing it nonetheless when I heard my car alarm go off, I ran out my office door and just missed the thief.  Second time my car has been burglarized in four months.  I have to admit as I looked at the glass on the ground, and in my seat, and all over my car, that I so wished I had caught the perpetrator.  I have to admit I was thinking thoughts unbecoming a bishop.  They were “TJ” thoughts.  I wished I had caught him, and I was glad I hadn’t.  You know it is kind of like watching the kid on the beach that just won’t stop chasing the seagulls.  I often sit and watch and wish, just once, he would catch one!   I have a feeling it would not be what he had bargained for!!  So, you know, I am a TJ, so I want resolution.  The burglar bled in my car, and left the screwdriver used to bash in the window.  When I called the police, I told them, hey I have blood, DNA!!!  The man on the other end just kept saying, we are not coming out there sir.  I wanted resolution, but how will I ever get that?

 

My unresolved conflict, at the moment, is with someone I will most likely never know.  We all know how that feels, to have conflict with someone we will never meet or know.   We don’t have the luxury of sitting face to face to fix it all. 

 

Broken before it ever started.  This all got me to thinking that perhaps, in a sense, we all bring to any relationship, a little of this, broken before it ever started.   We can’t help it in a sense, it comes from the best place in us.  We all have a vision of what the relationship should be, be it a marriage, or family, or congregation.  It will not be long at all before the dreams and hopes don’t quite match.  We do this to some degree when we set up committees or boards in the church, or even write canon law, when trust is high, only to find when conflict sets in, what we built is unhealthy and untenable.  We might do better to design it based on when it doesn’t go so well.

 

Even in our Gospel today, John had another plan.  He actually had to give up what he had hoped for, to fulfill what Jesus needed.  One has to wonder if there was a bit more conversation than what we get here. I think we are really getting a summary! 

 

Broken before it ever started.   Maybe we should start there, more.  Maybe we should just acknowledge that, when we enter into relationships, in a sense, it is broken.  Maybe we need to put the same amount of energy into listening as the relationship begins, as we do when we have decided it just might end.  In a sense it is what President Kennedy meant when he said Success has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.   We see it played out in the church when I get a call that says, “You know that mutual ministry review we are supposed to do with our Rector, well we haven’t ever done one, and it’s time.”   This usually means, there is a rub.  Something is not going right.  And that, is not the time to engage in a mutual ministry review.   More than anything, that requests comes, and were it to be honored, simply keeps the dysfunction going by making a way for us, once again, not to actually speak to one another, and, maybe even more importantly listen to one another.  Because we know, to truly listen, is to risk being changed forever.

 

OK, I know this sounds a bit down, but it is not meant to be.  I guess what I am saying is, why don’t we practice with the idea there is a little bit of brokenness in all of us, and that this is going to, eventually, enter into every relationship.  Better to get that down while times are good, while the trust is high, than to wait to learn it when the chips are down.  That is what you and I are doing.  It is what we should be up to in this whole endeavor.

 

Broken before it ever started.  I tried to think how to end this, I reviewed a few Psalms, some scripture, but I kept coming back to this, the refrain from the Leonard Cohen song, Anthem.

 

"Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in."

               

---- Leonard Cohen

Comments

[Kevin Johnson]

My nephew recently wrote that he was "destroyed."

This, of course, I told him, is the good news.