CALLS TO ORDER

A sermon given on Sunday, September 6, 2026

by Robert B. Shaw

Both of our scripture readings today instruct Christians in how they should behave toward one another in their shared life and belief. Paul, in this passage from his Letter to the Romans that we have just read, gives these instructions immediately after a passage in which he tells them to be good citizens and to remember to pay their taxes.  (Besides being a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin and—of course—an apostle of Christ, Paul was a Roman citizen, and we see in the Book of Acts that he was not shy about acknowledging that part of his identity.) For Paul, a sense of order carries over from duties toward society as a whole to those duties that Christ’s followers in Rome owe to each other. And in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is insistent in urging his disciples to avoid disputes that might fracture the infant Church. Both passages, we might say, put a decided emphasis on the unity in community. And rightly so. Especially in the earliest days of the Church, surrounded by an uncomprehending, sometimes hostile social, political and religious order, the earliest Christians required solidarity simply to survive, let alone to thrive. And in this there is a difficult balance to be observed: especially in the Gospel, in the painstaking steps Jesus describes, the preferable aim is to reconcile people. The troublesome members are only to be excluded as a last resort. Bringing people in is, or should be, a more inspiring strategy in any human association than pushing people out.

None of this is easy. Social psychologists can argue whether our aggressive drives are more powerful than our ability to feel and express friendship and affection, but clearly both tendencies are present in us, and all too often aggression takes the upper hand.   Reading these scripture lessons reminds us how prone to argument people in groups can be, if we needed any reminding. Certainly, if we pay attention to the news, every day delivers up its share of political and social discord. People speak of the country being “torn apart.” It may seem as if this is a particularly rancorous time in national and world affairs, but there have been times like this before. Some of us remember the Vietnam war. I certainly do, because I came of age for the Draft during it. I attempted to register as a conscientious objector and was denied. As it happened, when I was called for my physical, my eyesight was problematic enough to classify me 4-F. (One of my eyes is so far out of line that I could not have aimed a rifle properly, and they were probably worried that I might shoot the man next to me during practice.) Anyway, this is only relevant because the woman I fell in love with around that time and eventually married was the daughter of a high-ranking Army officer, who retired as a Major General after a last posting at the Pentagon. My college roommates found this hilarious, though it took me a good while to see the humor in it. As you might imagine, there were some interesting dinner table conversations with my in-laws in the early years of our marriage—plenty of indigestion on both sides. Things got more comfortable when we were able to provide grandchildren.

As Jesus and Paul both recognize, conflict is a possibility whenever people come together in groups—even in families, as I experienced, even in bands of friends, in gatherings of colleagues, and even in situations in which one might expect reason and calm to prevail. I taught for forty-two years in colleges and universities, for thirty-three of these at Mount Holyoke. Recently I used a calculator (I couldn’t have done it any other way) to get an approximate idea of how many Mount Holyoke College faculty meetings and English Department meetings I attended. Both types occurred once a month for nine months of the year, so I found a total of close to six hundred, plus (I estimated) close to a hundred more for hiring interviews, emergencies, and so forth.  Until I became numbed to it, I remember noticing how intense, even venomous, some meetings could become when certain issues were debated. There was a lot of performative speaking, not enough careful listening. And often what was just as striking was how small the stakes were in many of these arguments. I remember a colleague of mine saying after one such meeting that it reminded him of a group of bald men fighting over a comb.

So: what are we to do, knowing that in any group interaction there is the possibility of discussion disintegrating into argument? One recommendation, which is mentioned in the guidelines for new Vestry members at St. Philip’s, is the use of what is called the “charitable assumption.” It works like this: if we disagree with something a person says about an issue, we should from the first assume that the person honestly believes what he or she is saying, and has no ill motives in saying it. Then, if we disagree, we are disagreeing with what has been said, not attacking the person who said it. This has the value of bringing the temperature down, keeping the focus on issues rather than personalities. There can be profound disagreement, but it doesn’t need to be of the sort that leaves a festering wound. I only learned about the charitable assumption a few years after I retired, and well after my in-laws were deceased. When I think of them, and of a few of my former colleagues, I wish we could have managed to listen harder to one another, and to argue less.

None of this comes naturally to people in any sphere of human activity. It has to be said that although for Jesus and for Paul the ideal for the Church is one of pleasant unity, that has still to be realized. Two millennia on and counting, their calls to order have not been heeded. In fact, from the great schism dividing Eastern and Western Christendom, followed by the Reformation, the Church has suffered division, disunity, again and again. The twentieth century saw some coming together among Protestant denominations, but more recently the splintering has resumed, often driven by disputes over ordination, and matters of social policy that seem to some of us more political than religious. In recent decades Christians with differing doctrinal and institutional points of view have spent a disheartening amount of time fighting with each other, and we have yet to see any of these combatants putting on what Paul calls “the armor of light.”

All the more reason, then, to do what we can to foster unity in our community. St.  Philip’s is in a time of clergy transition, and that understandably can make people edgy.  We need to listen closely to one another, and when we act, we need to act willingly together. Above all, we need to follow Paul’s summary of the Law, which he took from Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It isn’t always easy, but it can be easier if we remember whose Presence we are in. A few Sundays ago, we sang a beautiful hymn, “Ubi Caritas.” One of its verses reads:

          When we Christians gather, members of one body,

          let there be in us no discord but one spirit.

          Banished now be anger, strife and every quarrel.

          Christ, our God, be always present here among us.

And then the refrain: “God is love, and where true love is, God himself is there.”  May this be true for us at St. Philip’s, now and in the days ahead. Amen.