This week has been the celebration of the great Magna Carta, and while we have heard many different presentations and essays and articles and television programs on the meaning of the Magna Carta, there is one thing that sometimes gets lost in the media coverage of it, namely that at its very genesis it was actually about the Church. Fundamentally, the conflicts that existed leading up to 1215 and the signing by King John of the Magna Carta were about who should be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Should it be the King, Barons or Pope who make the appointment? There were arising, before the Magna Carta was signed, great leaders within the Church, such as the great Stephen Langton, who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. But there were others within the realm of John, the King, who wanted to dictate who should lead the Church.
The Magna Carta of course has been debated in terms of its wisdom and depth for centuries. While it clearly had little or no effect on ordinary, everyday people immediately after it was signed, it nevertheless became a normative document in law right up to this very day. But, its beginning, its genesis was about the Church. If you don’t believe me, let me start out with the opening words of the Magna Carta,
John, by the grace of archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.
Clause Number 1: First, that we have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this to be so observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church’s
elections.
In naming the Church to be free became the predicate for the freedom of people from the tyranny of oppressive governments and rule, the right to a proper hearing – the habeas corpus – the right to be able to hold on to your lands and not have them arbitrarily taken from you and so on. It started out that the English Church shall be free.
I thought it was fitting today that it is a lawyer who read our passage from Corinthians 2. I thought it was fitting because Corinthians is about the freedom of the Church. An initial reading of this passage might not suggest that to you directly, but the Book of Corinthians 2 is a compilation of different essays and letters that Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth over time. Clearly, there was a problem, a dissension and a division within the Church of Corinth. The Apostle Paul’s leadership was being challenged, but more than that, the Gospel, the good news that he had brought was being. This exceptionally unusual passage overflows with both a sense of ego on the part of Paul, but also humility. He feels oppressed, that he has been falsely accused of something – we don’t know what it is, scholars have no idea! The people have turned away from him and have started to follow some other leaders within the Church, and he is concerned that the very things that he taught at the beginning – for he helped found the Church in Corinth – were going to dissipate.
In this passage he pours out his heart. You could cynically say he is trying to assert his own power and authority, and yet as we will see in a few moments, the language that he uses is actually of humility and grace. Nevertheless, there was a problem, so much so that Paul says “We” – and by “we” he meant he and a few of his followers – “have opened our hearts to you, but we have found that while we have done this there has been no restriction to the kindnesses that we have shown.” Now, he appeals to the Corinthian Church, “Open wide then your hearts.” Paul has opened his heart; he has laid it bare. He said, “Here I am as a servant, and now I expect you to open your hearts.” In other words, there must be reciprocity, there must be reconciliation. But it is more than reconciliation, more than just a legal agreement. The only way that we can live as free Christians, as people of faith, is if we open our hearts to one another. That is why last week when I addressed the whole notion of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, only to be followed of course by the events in Charleston a few days ago, you realize that even putting rights in law will only go so far if people’s hearts are not open to one another. Paul wants Christians and he wants the Church in Corinth, and I think he wants us, to open our hearts, and not just to have a law that says you must get along or you must work with one another or you must serve the Lord, but hearts that have been moved to do that.
I think sometimes there are obstacles to us opening our hearts. John McFadden, a great writer and chaplain in Wisconsin, says one of the things that holds us back from truly opening our hearts to one another and to the Lord is that we don’t distinguish between passion and fanaticism. Passion, according to McFadden, is a good thing; fanaticism is a thing that drives people apart and causes a wedge. He says that in our day and age in particular, we are all wary of fanaticism. A lot of people are scared of faith and religion and opening one’s heart too much because of the fear of fanaticism. Fanaticism is, of course, something that is obsessive, something that is uncritical. It is obsessive in that it focuses on something that is not important, and it is uncritical in the sense that it will ascribe to a leader way too much authority than they should have. We have seen that over the years. We see it do we not in fatwas, where there is this obsession and an uncritical desire to follow a certain path. We are seeing it in the Christian tradition in the crusades, which actually followed the Magna Carta, and you can see the effect of this fanatical obsession and uncritical view of leadership and of ideas. Clearly, the Corinthian Church was fanatical. If you read Corinthians 2, you realize that they were fanatical about following different people. One of them says, “I follow Peter” another says “I follow Apollo” another one says, “I follow Paul” and they become fanatical leaders of groups. They had become fanatical about their following of cultural codes. They felt they had to go along with whatever culture had to say.
Paul saw this as divisive, because this fanaticism wasn’t passion. Passion, for the Apostle Paul, is the language that he uses in our text where he describes himself as somebody who is genuine, who loves, who is humble, who forgives, who wants to put wrongs right, and who has a wide-open heart. A wide-open heart is not fanaticism. A wide-open heart is passion. Paul wanted the Church to have that passion. The problem is it had become fanatical. Passion, for Paul, was rooted in the self-giving love of Jesus. Passion is a way we describe the death and the resurrection of Jesus – that is the word that we use. It is a self-giving love. It is not a love that takes other lives! It is not a love that kills and destroys! It is not one that causes dissension and division! Rather, it is one that embraces with a wide open heart! Tell me where, in all of human history, do you see a more wide open heart than Jesus on the Cross? That is exactly what it was!
For Paul, the grace of Jesus and the grace of the faith is a wide open and an expansive one. At the Xchange Service on Wednesday night, I shared a story with the group and they said, “You know, you’ve got to tell it to everybody! It is so good!” It is the story about a boy who goes to the dentist. After his appointment, the dentist hands him a great big bowl of suckers. (I always think there is something bizarre about that! I mean, maybe it is another way of continuing the decay of teeth so you can see the patient again! I don’t know, but why you hand them suckers, I guess it is a reward or a treat!) and says, “Reach in and grab some suckers.”
The little boy wouldn’t do it.
The dentist said, “It is okay, you can have them. It is all right. You can have them.”
The little boy wouldn’t take them.
His mother finally says, “Come on, now, the doctor’s office bought some suckers. You really should reach in and take them.”
He said, “No, I won’t!”
So, finally, the dentist reached in and he pulled out a bunch of suckers himself. He hands them to the boy.
His mother says, “Well, why didn’t you do that?
The little boy says, “His hand is bigger than mine, so I get more suckers!”
Smart kid!
God’s grace is just like that. God’s grace is greater than ourselves. It is greater than our apprehension of what is good. It is greater than any laws that we make up. It is a wide, open, and expansive love, and Paul wanted the Corinthians to have it.
They also had to have a bigger concept of the kingdom of God. They had limited themselves in their notion of what constitutes forgiveness. Many of the Corinthians were tied down by the rituals of their culture. They were tied down by the rights and the wrongs or the things that were accepted in their culture. For example, they believed in the kind of a spirituality that had no substance to it, and were spiritual but weren’t fervent in their love of God or love of people. It was a spirituality that was self-serving. And there were others who held on to some of their old pagan beliefs, thinking they were going to make their lives rich. There were a lot of things that they did, because they had a vision of the faith that adapted to Corinthian culture, rather than a Corinthian culture that adapted and was open to the faith. Paul sees this as disruptive. He sees it as a wedge being brought between Jewish and Greek Christians. He sees it as a wedge between the Corinthian Church and other churches in Macedonia. He sees it as a wedge in terms of the leadership within the Church as a whole. What he wanted for them was to have a broader sense of the kingdom of God than the narrow focus of their own city and what their own city thinks is right. For Paul, the faith was greater than the constraints of their culture.
The great Thomas Aquinas says that it has always been our destiny, our ultimate destiny to be friends with God. It has always been our destiny to be at home with God. It has always been our destiny to be free with God and when we place other things between our relationship with God and our relationships with one another, we then cause the dissension that takes away the freedom that makes the faith so different. Open wide your hearts! And if there is a word for the parents and the grandparents and the families who have baptized their children this morning, encourage them to open wide their hearts, to live lives that are open to the presence and the wonder and the grace of the glory of God. Don’t deprive them of that in a cynical age. Give them the sense that a wide open heart is a wide open heart to the people that are around them, for the Christian faith isn’t about fanaticism; it is about passion. Passion is borne out of faith and love. And remember, no matter what laws may say or be, it is ultimately with hearts opened wide that we live that life.
The first clause of the Magna Carta was for the freedom of the Church. The very last words of the Magna Carta were these:
It is accordingly our wish and command that the English Church shall be free, and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fullness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places, for ever.
A wonderful call to live with wide open hearts! Amen.