COMMUNTON MEDITATION
JUNE 9, 1974
JOHN M. BUCHANAN

One wonders how long this nation can survive the self-doubt, self-

criticism, and cynicism that have come about as a result of Watergate | One
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wonders about the endurance of the nation the idea in the midst of a

crisis that seems to have no end.\ Ideas die first - the institutions built

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on those ideas more slowly - but they die just as surely.\ And so thoughful

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people are concerned today about what is happening to the heart of the nation.
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I was intrested, in this context, to d ditori i
ere $ : read an editorjal on the Presidency
in Time magazine entitled |"We go on as a peopte". | It began by documenting
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the current mood of crisis - but found commme in the observation that .
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\"something special endures, and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, ins
and outs, accused and accusers". \ What inspired that observation was a
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memorial, service for Columnist Stewart Alsop in Washington's St. John's Church.
The people who have made this country go for several decades were there.

They read the Psalms together, and afterward-according to the editorial,-

| "hate died. | As the service ended, there seemed to be almost a conscious

effort by adversaries to seek each other out and say a kind word."

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Newsmen and White House aides chatted: edi tors and former cabinet

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officers exchanged quiet greetings .\.. "There seemed to be a reluctance

to break the spell, to resume the family fight."

I was glad to read that editorial. | Having read Stewart Alsop's

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chronicle of his battle against Cancer, I think he would have liked the

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fact that his Memorial Service brought Americans together on a level deeper
than theirtdivisions. \ I eajoyed the editorial also because it reminded me

so much of the church’ peal who often are divided from each other:\people
who can be and are often petty with each other:\and yet people who in a
deeper sense belong to each other.

What came to the surface at Alsop's Memorial was a commonly shared

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nationality something literally given to each of the people present, bigger

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than any of them - \something with a history before them ad a future that

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COMMUNION MEDITATION
JOHN M. BUCHANAN
PAGE 2 -

witli go on after them.\ And what comes to the surface here in the church;

or rather what needs occassionally to come to the surface - at communion,
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for instance, is much the sane.\ A shared faith - a common hope - anda

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solid sense that no matter how divided or uhrelated we may seem, we really
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do belong to each other and love each other.
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It doesn't happen often enough, however, and I would guess that for

some people and some churches it doesn't happen at all.

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C. S. Lewis once wrote a delightful chronicle of a correspondence

between a Sr. devil ~ Screwtape and an apprentice devil - Wormwood, under

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the title The Screwtape Letters. \ Normiood is on assignment, charged with
seducing a man into hell.

Listen to Screwtape’s second letter to him:

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HHAK My Dear Wormwood,

I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become 4 Christian.

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Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual paalties; indeed

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in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish te do so. \ In the

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meantime we must make the best of the situation. \ There ig no need to despair;

hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in

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the Enemy's camp and are now with us. all the habits of the patient, both

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mental and bodily, are still inour favour.

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One of our great allies at present is the Church itselt. \b0 not mis-

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understand ne.\ 1 do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through al}

time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.

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That, i confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy.

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But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your pattent sees

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is the half-finished,sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. \when
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he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on
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his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy

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which neither of them understaads, and one shabby little book containing c

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COMMUNION MEDITATION
PAGE 3

corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small

print.| hen he gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that

selection of his neighbours.whom he has hitherto avoided.\ You want to Ttean
pretty heavily on those neighbours. \ Make his mind ftit to and fro between

an expression like C the body of Christ"}and the actual faces in the nest pew.

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It matters very little, of murse, what kind of people that next pew really

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contains.| You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's
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side.| No matter. | Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is_a fool.
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Provided thatany of those neighbours sing out of tusne, or have boots that

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squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe

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that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.\ At his present
stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he suppposes

to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial.\ His mind i§ full

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of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the

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other people in church wear modern clothes is a real ~ through of course

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an unconscious - difficulty for him. \Never let it come to the surice\ never

let him ask what he expected them to look Take. \ Keep everything hazy in his

mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by produc-

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ing in him the peculiar kind of clarity whichHell Bk& affords.

The tragedy is that Screwtape was more right than wrong.\ All & us have
a vision somewhere in thee recesses of our minds about what a Christian

cught to took like: \what the Church ought to feel Tike: \what real Christian

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Community ought do be. \ And for all of us those noble, albeit hazy vision
pop like so many balloons whenever we confront the very people with whom

we wordip Sunday after Sunday.

St. Paul confronted the dilemna in the early Christian Church at Galetia:

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he told the people that their relationship with each other ought to be
characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindn ess, goodness, gentleness,

faithfulness:\he told them to be healing rather than judging when one of

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their number offended the rest,and then he used a phrase that, for me at Teast

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COMMUNTON MEDITATION
PAGE aki nsppeus \perktee perp le

summarized that special, bed-rock were that keepers in the Church:

(rear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the_law of Christ".| (6:2)

Afiat’ s what a chureh is for. \ That is the special gu uality of life which
distinguighes a church from any other group:| and it ts around that activity
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that the church may rally in a time of crisis.\ We *BBMZX needn't be

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embarrassed by it - or ashamed of Tt. \ churst is where we go to find someone

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to help bear our burden.
So, we come this morning to the tdle of our Lord Jesus christ. Let us

remember that he has invited us to come - that he will bear whatever burden

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we carry.\ Let us remember that he has invited us to his tale together - and

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that in sharing the elements - in serving each other - we are celebrating

asaipceamanaaauapee mummies. | AMEN
~ above Ye, chunk, ~ ak aloo Ya Toture -

mmx that whichis special about us
|

FATHER, in Jesus Christ, you have promised to ber our burdens: you have
given us that ministry as a gift. Help us tw love each other - to accept and

forgive each oter: to bear each other's burdens. AMEN

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