"Faves"1
12-09-07
There is a TMobile commercial on television these days. A family is sitting around the dinner table and mom turns to the kids and says, "So have you kids picked your 5 yet?" The daughter responds "Yeah. I chose Sarah, Beth, Crystal, Jackie, and Jen." The brother smiles and says, "That’s funny, I chose Sarah, Beth, Crystal, Jackie, and Jen. Your friends are hot." The girl looks at her father in desperation and pleas with him, "Aren’t you going to do anything?" The father’s reply is, "Maybe you should have uglier friends." The commercial then cuts away to talk about unlimited calls to your five favorite people. "Stick together. TMobile." This commercial is both creative and disturbing in more than one way; and it relates to Paul’s words, I promise.
First I want to ask you, so who are your Faves? "Your faves" is the latest marketing scheme for TMobile, designed not only to draw individual customers, but entire groups or cliques of customers at one time. There is a reward for joining together. If all of you have the same network, your inner circle talks and texts (as in text messages) for free. In exchange, your inner circle talks and texts for free. For TMobile, your five top designees are "My Faves". "Faves" of course is an abbreviation for favorites, and it follows the cultural trend to shorten the language to make text messages easier and faster. Other carriers call that group your "IN Network", still others talk about the "Family and Friends" plan.
My Faves, the IN Network, Friends and Family, every phone company has its ploy, but "your faves" leans into a sociological trend in most of us. There’s a small group of people around us with whom we are most interested and most intimate. We each have our own in crowd. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just the way it is. We all form relational associations around our faves. Free calls to my faves? Like, totally. No, for real. PTMM" (Please Tell Me More.)2
Well, Jesus appeared to have had his faves. There were the 12 disciples and the close friends like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Jesus had three he was especially close to. His phone would probably include Peter, James and John. The author of John’s gospel refers to Jesus’ Beloved disciple never calling the disciple by name. Yep, it appears that Jesus had his favorites as well. Here is the important distinction we need to pay attention to though, while Jesus may have had his favorites, he didn’t have un-favorites. Jesus’ in-network included the social outcasts, and he sought out the ill, crazy, and the lame. He paid attention to the unhealthy and needy people more often than those who were doing well. He even loved those who could very well be his un-faves: the religious elite, who threatened love and grace by creating a legalistic atmosphere that lacked love and grace. Even these people, Jesus was said to weep for (Matthew 23:37).
Paul relies on Jesus’ example of radical inclusion when addressing the house churches in Rome. He uses Jesus’ example to talk about unity, harmony, and community. Last week’s key word was ‘hope’. This week’s key words are ‘love’ and ‘grace’. We cannot hope to ever share God’s message, and we cannot hope to ever have people experience (or experience ourselves) that powerful gift that God gave in Jesus Christ, if we have never practiced or experienced love and grace. Paul is writing to the house churches in Rome. They are struggling with theological and ritualistic differences. Paul closes his letter to the church in Rome by addressing the Jew-Gentile tensions that existed in their fellowship. Many of the tensions had to do with clean and unclean foods. For many of the traditional Jews who became Jewish Christians, the meat sold in the market was unclean, since much of it was used for sacrifices in pagan temples. They didn’t know if meat from the market was kosher or not. Other Gentile and longtime Jewish Christians, believed as Paul did that the cleanliness of meat from the market was not important, because the gods of the pagan temple had no power of the one true Lord of Christianity. The ritual of slaughter and what the meat may have symbolized shouldn’t matter, because the rituals themselves have no power. Many of the Gentiles came out of non-Christian traditions, and some them also struggled with the power of their tradition. They purposely were vegetarians to distance themselves from a life that was. Others thought these "old" ways of thinking were weak and that there should be meat at the potlucks. So, inside the church religious cliques formed and they were separated by traditions, fears, and understanding of scripture. An IN Network and an OUT Network, if you will. Paul is insisting that there should be no such thing in the church community, because through Christ there is no such thing in the Kingdom of God.
As we read Paul’s encouragement, we can’t help but think of our own church communities. For example, we can look at the major and minor conflicts in the Methodist church. There was a split over the right to own slaves. There was a major schism in the Methodist church when, in 1860, a group of unhappy people formed the Free Methodist church after an argument about the practice of renting and selling pews for worship. The wealthier members of a congregation would rent or buy a pew for their family to sit on in church each week, often leaving the poorer members with seats or standing in the back of the church, or outside of the church altogether. The church almost split on the topic of ordaining women in the 60’s, and the topic that threatens to divide the church universal today, is homosexuality. These are all important theological discussions. Then there are the smaller fights that seem huge in the moment. What Methodist church, small and large, hasn’t argued about the music, room arrangements, outdoor signs, structure of worship, and the budget? Sometimes these arguments can be more deeply dividing and dangerous, than the larger questions of politics and social justice. The real problems usually are not about the issue itself, but they are about ego, power and control - stated another way, they are about the failure to love and respect each other. Notice how Paul's thinking is driven by concern for people, not by being right and not by being free to do as we like. For Paul we are free to love. Love matters most. Sharing the transformative power of God not only with each other but with the world around, is vital, but impossible when the church is imploding over issues such as where the meat at potlucks came from.
Paul is asking the Christians of Rome to be patient with those still maturing in faith. We are all still maturing in faith, so farther along the path than others. Some of us are brand new to the whole Christian system. Some of us are still caught up in the trappings of the world or of a former life. Some of us are struggling to understand Christian concepts or the decisions of the church. Some of us are feeling impatient and insecure. Some of us are feeling confident and a sense of entitlement. How can we look at each other, still journeying our faith paths, with disdain, knowing that our journeys will vary? Paul is telling us that the mark of Christian maturation is increased care for and deference to each other, resulting in the ability of all to focus on Jesus Christ and his ministry. This focus creates a positive feedback loop of spiritual energy and growth. Paul wanted the Roman Jews and Gentiles to become occupied not with ritual but with concern for others; they were to build each other up with love and grace and not judge each other’s concerns. We are not called by God to all think alike, do alike, like alike. We are not called to understand alike, approach a task alike, or communicate alike. Our differences are gifts to the body of Christ, and each of us with our differences should be treated as gifts to the body of Christ.
We maintain unity in dedication to the Gospel by learning to love one another. This love has nothing to do with how we feel toward one another. Because, Lord knows, just as we have our "faves", we have our "un-faves." The love we hear of today about how we will treat one another. God does not have un-faves! God has no room for division among God’s people. If we spend all our energy fighting, we don’t have any energy for the work of God. God has always asked God’s people to exist for one another. In Christ’s example we learn that Christians are to love all people, show compassion toward all people, and extend a hand of kindness. If we’re stuck on our own personal faves and we ignore or are even remotely unkind toward our un-faves, then we have a problem. And herein lies one of the more difficult aspects of our faith: applying this passage today means that we don’t just rave about our faves, but we must embrace the whole body of Christ. This includes the person who rambles on and on in the small group, it includes the nagging, the opinionated, the ignorant and the negative person. It’s a spiritual challenge to think and feel from the perspective of another person, especially when that person is harder for you to love. And this is what the mature do in order to follow Jesus: they displace themselves from their privileges and rights, and place themselves in service to one another. Unity is not accidental. It’s practiced and trained. On the other hand, it is in our very DNA to develop our favorites and un-favorites, even in the body of Christ! But Jesus’ ethic and example undermines this mentality. We can have our favorites, but we cannot have our un-favorites. Living in Christian harmony means we practice the forgiving attitude which understands unity despite diversity in the body. Living in Christian harmony means me and what I want doesn’t always come first.
Gordon MacDonald, pastor and author, notes the essence of what separates the church from the larger culture: "The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace."3 The acceptance, deference, unity and harmony that Paul commends to the church are not natural. They are gracious; the grace of Christ at work first in us and then out of us. We are all entitled to our faves, but a mature follower of Jesus will always be living the grace that has no room for un-faves. If we all choose to follow Jesus in this way, the result will be the very message of Advent — love, hope, and grace. Hope that our Christian claims work themselves out in harmonious community. Hope that a watching world will know that we are His disciples because we have love for one another. The Messiah that we await is given for all and is worshiped by all, thus forging a new community of harmony and inclusion. What grace. What hope. What a message to struggle with this Advent Season. Amen.
1 Thank you for the words of Rev. Bob Kaylor, Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah. His words greatly influenced this sermon.
2 Words from a Homiletics article by the same title, "My Faves". Article found in the November-December 2007 edition of Homiletics periodical.
3 MacDonald Gordon. Cited by Philip Yancey in What’s So Amazing about Grace? Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997.