“United We Stand, Divided…”                                                                    Vance L. Toivonen

READING                   I Corinthians 1:10-18

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ." Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

READING                   Peter L. Steinke, Healthy Congregations

The fable (of the blind men and the elephant) reminds me of what happens when congregations over-focus on their clergy. There are two consequences, neither of which is healthy. First, when over-focused on the pastor, people find it immensely difficult to see the rest of the system. As a result, they are blind to how other forces and people contribute to what is happening. Perspective is distorted. No one part, however, can explain the whole. Second, when a congregation is over-focused on clergy, it cannot keep its focus on its mission. Instead of focusing on who they are and what they are about as a community, they peer intently at who the pastor is and what the pastor does. Again, perspective is skewed. Extreme focus on clergy is similar to putting extra strain on a body part or organ. Collapse, injury, or disease will follow.

SERMON

There are many versions of the fable of six blind men and the elephant. The version I read a moment ago with the children is a poetic version that Steinke includes in his book, a version he borrowed from a book by Charles Hampden-Turner titled Maps of the Mind. There are Hindu, and Buddhist, and Sufi versions of this poem. It never made it into Christian mythology, except in a briefer version of one of Jesus’ teachings about the speck and the log which suggests that it is a good idea to remove the log from my own eye before trying to help my neighbor with the speck in hers. Jesus also refers to the temple leadership of his day as the blind leading the blind, in which case all of the blind men will end up falling into the same pit.

This is the fragile economy of leadership. If all of us are to varying degrees “blind” then this is also indicative of the people we choose to follow, yours truly included. There was a commercial on television the other day where a lead salesperson was giving a pep talk to the staff of some company. He was holding a lemming, as in “like lemmings to the sea.” He spoke on and on about how we do not need to be like lemmings, but can be self led, all the while gently petting the soft, furry rodent in his hands. All of a sudden the lemming pushed its way out of his hands, bounced to the floor, and took off running down the corporate hallway; and at that moment, every member of that sales staff hit the floor and followed that lemming on their hands and knees.

Last Sunday afternoon over 60,000 rabid Packer fans filled Lambeau Field in Green Bay after paying what in many cases were exorbitant prices for their tickets, sat in sub-zero temperatures and watched their team fall to defeat in what was the biggest game at Lambeau Field in recent history. Their loyalty was beyond apparent. The sheer investment of time and dollars represented a multi-million dollar boon for the city of Green Bay. And yet, there was a cloud of depression that permeated the region on Monday. It made me wonder why we do this to ourselves. We get all caught up in backing a particular horse, whether it be a sports team, or a political candidate, or a pastor, or whatever; and then, as soon as our proverbial horse takes a left turn on us, we find ourselves feeling betrayed and forlorn. A fragile economy indeed, not unlike the real economy that is suffering now. Just ask my pension account.

Things were no different in Paul’s day. Paul set up communities of Jesus followers throughout the region on his journeys. His letters to these communities comprise a segment of the New Testament Bible. The first reading today comes from his correspondence with the community of the faithful at Corinth. Since he was not the only one traveling around founding religious communities, Paul notes others as well, suggesting that people are getting too caught up in who is doing the founding, and not centered enough in the very mind of Christ that is to be at the heart of one’s mission and ministry. That’s a term Paul uses again and again, the mind of Christ, referring to the directing energy for people who claim to follow the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ. It’s sort of like “the force” in Star Wars, or the Holy Spirit in traditional Christianity.

To return again to the fable of the elephant, what is the elephant for us? If I am not the elephant, and each of you are not the elephant per se, is Hope Church the elephant? And if Hope Church is the elephant, what does that mean? There are echoes here of last week’s sermon, to be sure, with that whole issue of purpose and meaning. But this week I want to bring this down to a more human and less philosophical level, to that “where two or three are gathered” level.

I am not a we, and you, individually are not a we. One group of us within the congregation is not a we. That is just one group of us within the greater we. But when I act, or when any group of us acts, we are acting out of the we. One could say that the elephant moves when one foot is lifted off the ground. When I act, or when any group of us acts, we are representing the Hope community. It has taken me awhile to come to grips with this. I spent a few years here at the outset touching the elephant, and it didn’t always work out so well. I have learned the hard way to perceive the elephant that is Hope Church as a whole creature, and not just as a tusk, which seems to be where I was spending most of my time at the time.

Each of us must discover this symbiosis between our choice-making and the rest of the community. There is no doubt in my mind that I made some public choices in my early years here that had a negative impact on this community. And, no doubt, there was a lot more going on here at the time. But the left and the right hand not being acquainted with each other is no excuse. It became about me, and any time this community becomes about a me, any me; whenever it becomes about you, or you, or you, or any of the many groups of us, we are dwelling on only one part of the elephant; that one foot is sort of stuck in mid-air because the other feet are just stuck in place.

So, what is it about? Well, that is the question we worked on last week. My sense is that we are all contemplating that whole why are we here thing in our own unique ways. And if somehow we are all working on that question at the same time, it will bear some fruit and add to our growth as a community.

It is kind of like the complaint free phenomenon. I understand that fifty or more folks in the Hope community are in the process of reading a book about complaining less. This will raise our collective consciousness and change the emotional dynamics of our community, which is a wonderful, positive thing. But this community is made up of all kinds of people, and some will not be reading that book. The trick as we grow into the future is not to get more people to read the book, but rather to learn how to respond to each other when we complain. It is about how the book readers will react to the non-book readers. Can we grow to be gracious, loving, caring listeners when someone else is caught up in their own grief or pain? Can we attend to the aches and the pains in one part of the elephant while at the same time celebrating the relative health in another part of the elephant? This is our growing curve as a community.

Always, always, always…in every given situation and moment, we must remind ourselves that the why that binds us together is the grounding force, the foundation for all of our work together, for all of our gathering together, for all of our ministry to each other, and to the community. The why is the ground upon which the elephant stands, and elephants certainly need the most solid possible ground to stand upon.

What we offer here is a sense of the sacred in the midst of the chaos of life, and these are easily the most chaotic and anxious times that I have experienced in my lifetime. Economic woes, a crumbling infrastructure, wars, global warming and the severity of the weather that it spawns, all close in upon us. Margaret Wheatley puts it this way:

In this turbulent time, we crave connection; we long for peace; we want the means to walk through the chaos intact. We are seeking things that are only available through an experience of sacred. Yet sometimes in pursuit of these goals we flee from people and withdraw into an environment we cannot control. Or we blot out our longings with mind-numbing experiences or substances. But we cannot find connection, community, and peace by withdrawing from others or going unconscious. The peace we seek is found in experiencing ourselves as part of something bigger and wiser than our little, crazed self…The turbulence cannot be controlled, but when we stop struggling and accept it as part of life, it feels different…Sacred experiences give us what we need to live in this strange yet wondrous time. We need as many sacred moments as we can find. We invite these moments when we open to life and to each other. In those grace-filled moments of greeting, we know we’re part of all this, and that it’s all right. (Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning to One Another).

The first words in our Statement of Purpose tell us that we come together at Hope Church “to worship God.” We begin our sense of why with a sense of the sacred, a sense of the divine, a sense of that utterly mysterious presence, that binding force in the universe we usually, but not always, refer to as God. This is where we start. This is why we gather here once a week. That sense of sacred, of God-presence, need not be limited to this gathering. It is, rather, something that permeates all of our gathering, all of our efforts at unity, all of our efforts to perceive the breadth, width, height and depth of the elephant that is Hope Church. If this is where we always start, we will not fall apart. And it will never again matter quite so much who the pastor is. Our unity will lie in something, in someone, perhaps, far greater than the sum of our elephant parts. And I, for one, will never again get stuck on the pointed end of a tusk.