“May your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your church.”
I have wondered this week what it means for mercy to defend someone or something. How is mercy a defense? It has seemed to me that if the church needs defending, someone or something must be attacking it, and it’s important that this prayer we used to draw ourselves together today speaks of the church in a singular way, just one church, like our passage from Ephesians asserts: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
So, though we are split and divided by many factions, denominations, theological convictions, political affiliations, interpretive bugaboos, somehow God in Jesus Christ recognizes one church. This is part of what drew me to Anglicanism in the first place, the belief that if we take Christian faith down to the studs, just the essentials, that everyone could somehow agree and worship together, and not suffer divisions. I read once somewhere that Anglicanism — which is the community of Christians throughout the world who are known as Episcopalians in the American “leg” of the body — is the only denomination that actively seeks its own end, its own demise. For Anglicanism’s project and reason for existing to succeed, there would be no more denominations, no more divisions in the body of Christ that is known as the church.
It’s why we say the Nicene Creed, tying us to Christians from the fourth century, and why we say that bit of Scripture from Ephesians when we baptize people, tying us to Paul and the very first Christians. It’s why we read the psalter every day and why praying in church in our local language has never been an issue to debate. You all know well there are plenty of pieces that Anglicans, Episcopalians, have debated over the centuries, with varying success. But I want to bring these verses and this concept a little bit closer to our skin this morning, and it might get a little itchy. It might be a little uncomfortable. So, you’ve been warned.
Leaving to one side our theological disagreements and our political dissension and the squabbles of our forebears over the centuries — though these things do tear apart the body of Christ, and even our precious body of believers here, what else might this prayer and the passage from Ephesians be goading us toward this morning and this week?
God’s mercy is asked to defend his church, to keep it from being torn asunder. To keep Christ’s body from breaking, from being dismembered, from dying, again. Without the special and singular protection of God, even a gathering of his faithful people in this world has no hope of unity. Only in the mercy of God can humans in a congregation continue to get along, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I do not need to tell you, beloved brothers and sisters, that this is a fraught time. Temperatures continue to rise, not only outdoors, but in our hearts, and the choice is to allow this dissension to drive us apart, or to allow it to transform our hearts and lives.
Often when we are faced with discomfort, with heat, or anger, we respond by spitting it out, passing the heat and anger to others to deal with — for them to be burned or consumed, for them to quell and quench, for them to shove like a hot potato into yet another person’s hands and heart. All these reactions ignore the power that is offered to be transformed ourselves, to be remade in the heat, to be put together anew and differently because of our anger and our grief.
I’ve found that the biggest driver of anger is grief. Anger comes from mourning something lost, anger comes from sadness, anger comes from sensing injustice, and the root and cause and origin of all these is grief. Anger may seek to drive us apart, but acknowledging grief, looking our sadness in the face, having the courage to stand next to one another while we look together at the lost, and the sad, and the unjust — this is where transformation through the unity of God in Christ dwells.
Our political assumptions are divided. Our interpretations of science are divided. Our perceptions and grades of acceptability with risk and freedom and responsibility are divided. Our values are divided. Our lifestyles are divided. There is much to be separated about. And there is so much space in that separation for anger. There are chasms open between us all, yawning voids that dissensions want to fill.
But brothers and sisters , I’m here to tell you this morning that we are called to a different way. We are not called to point fingers and deny another person hungry for God’s presence at the altar or in worship. We are not called to stomp feet and draw battle lines on one or another side of a scrap of fabric over our faces. We are not called to gossip and snipe and whisper and write vitriol. There is no room for this in the body of Christ.
“May your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your church.”
We cannot transform ourselves. We cannot hope to be unified in our strength. We will break apart. We will die without one another. We will be defeated if the house is divided against itself.
Isolation and grief drag us into darkness, they hurt and make us writhe in pain, they stir up our anger and our loneliness. And if we allow those things to master us, if we allow our grief to come between us as pieces of the body of Christ, then Christ’s body is again dismembered, again torn asunder, again facing death. God can resurrect, it won’t be the end of his story, or of the world’s story, but it will make real scars and tragedy and damage here. It will kill us.
Be made alive again, brothers and sisters. Do not succumb to the anger and isolation of darkness. Grief is a fact, but death-drawing division need not be. Allow God to make over your grief through the body of Christ. Surrender your hurt to him. He is in the end the only one who can heal.
“May your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your church.”
Emily R. Hylden is an Episcopal priest & yoga teacher. Currently, she resides in Southern Louisiana with her scholar-priest husband and three little boys.
The Rev. Emily R. Hylden lives with her husband, the Rev. Jordan Hylden, and three sons in Houston, Texas, serves as Upper School Chaplain at St. Francis Episcopal School, and is host of the podcast Emily Rose Meditations.
