God in community
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 25th October 2009 by Rev Wilfred Orr
Readings: Exodus 25: 10-22, Matthew 18:15-20
Exodus: 25
"their faces were turned towards each other"
"There will I meet with you"
I thank your chaplain, Dr. Jamie Walker for his kind invitation to preach, and for his words of welcome this morning. I am grateful also to the students from my own congregation whom I suspect must have been lobbying on my behalf! Family links with the University, on my wife's side, go back to my late father-in-law's matriculation just after the Great War. I, myself, as a student of St Mary's College sat in this chapel Sunday after Sunday, and I have to say, in the arrogance of my youth, often very critical of the succession of guest preachers we had. I suppose there is some kind of rough justice which places me where I am today!
The student body in St Andrews has always enjoyed a special closeness or bond. It's got to do in part with 'proximity'. Sitting out on the east coast, it's quite a trek to get here, and so students have tended to stay for the duration of a term; and when here, it's - (and this is a positive) - it's a relatively small university numerically and a compact campus. Students live in close proximity. That helps generate something more important: - a good sense of community. Certainly, in my day, student clubs and societies were well supported by students representing different disciplines and backgrounds: and, from what I read in the Alumnus Chronicle, that proximity still helps generate a strong and lasting sense of community.
It was while I was here that I came across a phrase which has stuck with me all my life. It was penned first, although others have used it, it was penned first by an alumnus of the University, the late Rev. Professor Murdo Ewan MacDonald. Writing at the very end of the 1950's, he was reflecting on the difficulties and dangers of the world he lived in, and said 'What we have is proximity without community'. At the time, he was thinking of the Cold War. Technology had shrunk the world, particularly the speed at which inter-continental missiles could fly from base to target: where ever we lived, we lived in close proximity to each other. Ideological differences, however, together with the fears that they generated, so separated the Western World from the Communist Block, that there was no sense of world community. 'Proximity without Community.'
Once the phrase lodges in the mind, it becomes descriptive of the weaknesses and threats of so much of contemporary life. The problem has not changed.
At a political level, in the Middle East, for example, Jew and Palestinian are compressed into close proximity in a small territory, without community. In my own small Province of N. Ireland, we live in close proximity, but with no proper sense of community. In Belfast, 'peace lines' still run across streets and localities physically dividing people who should form neighbourhood communities. The test for our local political representatives is this: elected, many of them, on a kind of tribal basis, to what extent will they be able to face towards each other in Assembly and Executive, and to what extent will they look away from each other and towards their different constituencies? 'Proximity without Community'.
I have a suspicion that it's found in the academic world! My wife has just completed work for a higher degree, studying autism in the context of education. She did this in the School of Education at Queen's University Belfast. Now, autism is a subject both of medical and of educational research, and she read a bit in both disciplines. Some medical terminology crept into an early draft of her work, and it got the red pen from her tutor in the School of Education: 'that's not vocabulary we use. Same subject, different vocabulary. 'Proximity without Community.'
The Church, sadly, provides too clear an example. At the most basic level, think of three churches sitting on the same high street, and taking very little to do with each other. 'Proximity without Community.'
I met with a clear case a few weeks ago. I walked round to my local bus stop, and found one other person already waiting; a young woman with longish hair. I said,'Hello, isn't that a lovely morning' as some of us still do in Belfast. There was absolutely no response: none at all! Then I spied the tell tale wires emerging from below her long hair and leading down, I suppose, to her i-pod. There we were, literally shoulder to shoulder, but she was somewhere else entirely. 'Proximity without Community.'
Well all this serves as an introduction to one of the richest themes in the Bible. We are told that when we turn towards each other, struggle in our proximity to form community, God is there ¿ there we find God.
We could begin with Abraham in the Book of Genesis. You may remember, one day three strangers approach his tent in the desert. Abraham could have been suspicious - they were invading his space - they posed a potential threat - but Abraham welcomes them, has a meal prepared. Then seamlessly, but dramatically, there is a shift in the dimension and significance of this encounter. We are aware, without further announcement that Abraham is talking to God, and God is speaking to Abraham. We could begin there.
But, turn your attention to an odd and rather obscure little description in the Book of Exodus. We read it earlier. We are learning about how the Israelites are being formed into a people - a community. At the heart of the community will be the worship of God, centred in the sanctuary. The holiest piece of furniture in the sanctuary will be the ark - a box with carrying poles - and in the ark there will be the holiest of all objects - the tablets of stone on which God had written his law - the ten commandments.
The description of the ark is detailed in the extreme: the passage reads like a workshop construction manual. In his book, 'To heal a Fractured World' the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks picks up on a detail in this construction and identifies a very powerful image. Two figures are to be crafted in gold. The figures are to be placed one on each end of the lid or top of the ark. Specifically, they are to be turned facing each other, and the space in between them will be known as the mercy seat.
Now the Israelites had been forbidden in no uncertain terms from making any graven image or idol. This sanctuary is being constructed shortly after the debacle of the golden calf and the judgement which followed. No images! Why then these figures, turned to face one another?
It was because between them that God would be present: it was between them that God, on or above the mercy seat, would speak. 'There I will meet with you...from there I will speak to you.' Clearly the importance of this symbol outweighed the dangers of imagery. And the imagery declares 'God is present' 'God speaks' when persons face one another! In love, in generosity of embrace, in naked need, God is there. While God is every where, it is not every where that we sense his presence; it is not every where that we can receive him. When we open our 'I'to an others 'Thou' - God is known.
We advance to the New Testament, and a well known saying of Jesus in the Gospel according to St Matthew: 'where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them'. It's the saying every minister uses to lift the spirits when the numbers at the prayer meeting are very thin! But again, if you look at the context, the saying carries far greater significance. The setting is one of dispute: - 'if your brother sins against you'. The fingers are pointing in accusation, hurt has been done, people are turning away from each other hunched over their hurt. In those circumstances, where two or three turn face to face - struggle in openness and honesty to find reconciliation, healing - to restore the community Christ says, 'there I am in the midst of them'.
God present, when in our proximity, we are turned towards each other and struggling to form community.
I left St Andrew's with my newly minted B.D. degree in June 1972. Two weeks later I was asked to do a Summer locum in a congregation in Londonderry. It was a shock! I swapped the quiet peace of St Andrew's for the rattle of automatic rifle fire two or three nights a week. I swapped the beauty of St Andrew's for a divided and damaged city. But, it was a rich experience too. Let me try to paint just one picture from that experience, one picture which remains vividly in my memory, and a picture which has shaped the whole of my ministry in Ulster.
The centre of 'Derry, where a number of streets meet, is known as the Diamond,. It was the place to find a number of up market shops and therefore a target for bombers. I had been in 'Derry for about three weeks when I was asked to visit an old Presbyterian couple, pensioners, who lived up near the Diamond. I went up to the door - one in a rather dilapidated terrace row - the old man beckoned me down to the kitchen at the back. There I found a total of four people: - the old man and his wife, there was no doubting their identity on one wall a big framed picture of King 'Billy' (William of Orange) on the opposite wall large framed certificate of his membership of the Orange Order but sharing their home, an old Roman Catholic widow and her brain damaged son, aged about forty. The Catholic couple normally lived in the house next door, but, following a bomb, an engineer had declared their house as structurally unsound. So, the four were sharing the one home.
It was a little after 5.00 p.m. when I called. The kitchen table was 'set' and I can see clearly each item on it. There was a sliced white loaf of bread, a tub of margarine, an open tin of chopped ham and a bottle of brown sauce. On the range, there plumped a kettle of the blackest and probably most toxic tea you can imagine! 'Will you say a wee prayer and join us for a meal, your reverence?'
I have shared communion in many forms and many places. I have never had a more powerful sense of God's presence than I did in that damaged city- sitting round a deal table and breaking bread with that household our faces turned towards each other in vulnerability, need and shared community.
When ever we are so beggared by our behaviour that we have to face each other: or when ever circumstances evict us from the prejudices and practices, the prides and the postures that are structurally unsound and we turn towards each other in the depths of our naked humanity - God is present: Christ is known.
Should we be surprised? The witness of the Gospel is this. God beggars himself in Jesus Christ - (as Paul would put it, empties himself) - in meeting us most immediately 'face to face - vulnerable on a cross. This is where he places himself at the centre of our failed and fractured living on a cross. As we turn towards each other so we turn towards him.
And more: - through the cross - beyond the cross - a hint, a hope, a promise, a beginning of the new community Christ forms in and through his risen presence.
"..their faces were turned towards each other"
"There will I meet you"
As we discover that community in him - to him be all the praise and the glory.