Today is World Communion.  We talked about this day with our first graders and their parents yesterday at our class on communion. We said, and the boys and girls understood this, that over the next 24 hours, time zone by time zone, literally hundreds of millions of Christians around the globe will come to the Table. From dirt floor house churches to storefront congregations to concrete block fellowship halls to little country churches to soaring cathedrals followers of Jesus will come to the Table to share the most important thing we have in common – that in Jesus of Nazareth the forces of life have overcome the forces of death.

It was out of the need to affirm that basic trust despite their differing nations, races and cultures that Christians started World Communion in the 1930s.    Those were murky, anxious days – during the Depression, on the eve of World War II. And though times have changed, never since the 1930s has the church or the world lived in such harmony that World Communion has lost its relevance. I borrowed the title for today’s sermon – “all of us for all of God” – from a sermon preached at Chautauqua a couple of summers ago. The title works on World Communion Sunday 2000 just as well. There is much that glitters and sparkles today but there is also a very real sense of murkiness and anxiety. Social/political fault lines crisscross our city, church and culture. There are signs of renewed initiatives in the Presbyterian Church for confrontation and battle between liberals and conservatives. “All of us for all of God” is not a bad vision for Presbyterians or world citizens.

Today’s story from Mark is a window into hearts of Jesus’ closest followers. What Mark allows us to see so clearly is the all too human response of feeling a little more special and privileged than other workers in the vineyard, other followers of Jesus. Not ten verses after they fail to exorcise an evil spirit from a child and Jesus chides them for their lack of faith do the disciples come to Jesus complaining that someone they do not know is casting out evil spirits in Jesus’ name. Like a cat dragging the corpse of a chipmunk across the threshold of the front door, the disciples proudly display their resolve to put an end to the stranger’s ministry.
I am not sure if Jesus laughs or cries but he does use the occasion to teach – “do not stop him…for no one who does a deed of power in my name will speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.” You can almost see the long faces of the disciples, hear their disappointed moaning, “Shucks,” they are thinking, “our little, privileged circle is neither as little nor as privileged as we thought.”

One preacher observes, “sometimes the experience of being loved can lead to an unhealthy feeling of specialness…it can breed a form of elitism and self-importance that builds barriers between groups and persons rather than bridges.”  When a second child comes into the family, a new kid moves onto the block, a new employee joins the regulars at the lunch table sometimes the older sibling or inner circle says: “There won’t be enough love or friends or time or attention to go around. This wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for that stranger.”

But Jesus is shrewd. Rather than identifying the problem as the stranger, he says to his disciples and to you and me, be concerned with your own style of life and ministry.If you cause anyone to stumble it would be better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck and be tossed into the sea.  If your hand or foot or eye cause you to stumble cut them off, pluck them out. Enter the kingdom lame rather than go to hell as a whole person. These are challenging words to say the least. When we read the passage this past week at staff prayers and I concluded with, “This is the Word of the Lord,” the traditional, “thanks be to God” was lacking sincerity.

But I say Jesus is shrewd because his graphic words catapult us out of self-centeredness. Not worrying about whether we’ll get enough time or attention but putting ourselves in the shoes of the other person wondering how our words and actions affect them. “Is there any possible way what I say and do cause others to stumble? Or, how do I cause myself to stumble? In what ways am I my own worst enemy?” Imagine if every single teacher in the City of Buffalo and every single member of the school board took even a few minutes to reflect on the ways their tactics prevent agreement and mutual understanding. Imagine if Hillary and Rick or George and Al and the legions of journalists and pundits who make a living over their disagreeing – imagine if they took time to consider the ways in which their opinions and analyses get in the way of uniting the state and nation. Imagine if church leaders who are sharpening their axes now for the coming debates on homosexuality and a host of liberal/ conservative issues took time to reflect on their rhetoric and remove the corrosive and divisive language.

There is an ancient prayer used in the early church that enabled just such imagining. A colleague introduced it to his congregation a few years ago. I’d like to try it out with us. The prayer goes like this: “God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my heart and in my thinking.” The purpose of the prayer is to remove the barriers we erect and allow God’s presence to transform our words and actions. Here’s how it works.

God be in my head and in my understanding. I want you to conjure up in your head someone you cannot understand. The worker in the office or at school who more than anything you wish would get a pink slip. The child you are raising. “How does he listen to that kind of music?” “Why do they wear their pants that low?” Some group of people whose actions you cannot comprehend. “How in God’s name do they act that way?” Now get them in mind and repeat after me, “God be in my head and in my understanding.”
If you lived that prayer, how would you see that fellow worker or child or group member? You’d see the same things that make them happy or sad make you happy and sad. That their hearts can be as broken in despair or filled with hope as yours. Your humanity would become larger, wider.  God be in my head and in my understanding.

God be in my eyes and in my looking. I want you to conjure up something that you can’t bear to look at. Someone you need to visit but the ravages of age and cell deterioration have taken their toll and you have been avoiding that visit. Or maybe you’re conjuring up some image from the nightly news of a mother carrying a spindly, gaunt, blank-eyed child on the brink of starvation. Or a family living in poverty in a rural shack or urban slum. Get it in mind. Now repeat after me, “God be in my eyes and in my looking.” What would happen if that prayer came true? What would happen if you looked in the face of human need? You might very well see the one who said, “I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, in jail and you visited me.” God be in my eyes and in my looking.

God be in my mouth and in my speaking. I want you to conjure up in your mind that you are on the telephone or at the water cooler and you have a piece of gossip. You don’t know if it is true, but boy is it good. I want you to picture yourself at a public meeting or in a boardroom. It’s been a tough meeting. The tension is high. People have been disagreeing, throwing gasoline on the fire and now you are about to throw some more. Get that situation clearly in mind, the word you are about to say. Now, say the old prayer with me, “God be in my mouth and in my speaking.” Where did the word go? Think of all the words we throw out and hurl at each other poisoning the air. God be in my mouth and in my speaking.

God be in my heart and in my thinking. Now I want you to go deep. To the core of your being. To the place where we dream of getting revenge. To the place where human war begins. To the violence that is in all of us. Hold it for a moment and then say good and loud, “God be in my heart and in my thinking.” Good and loud, “God be in my heart and in my thinking.”

If we pray and live into the truth of those prayers…God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my seeing. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my heart and in my thinking – if we do what Jesus invites us to do taking down the barriers between ourselves and the stranger…if we open ourselves to the presence of God in our lives then I believe the vision of World Communion Sunday, the wonderful coming together of God’s people from left and right, east and west, white and black, rich and poor, and straight and gay…I believe the vision of World Communion will be more than an empty ritual. I believe it will actually come into being. What we share in common despite all of the other things that may differ about us, is the trust that in Jesus of Nazareth the forces of life have overcome the forces of death. That trust has the power to turn the bold vision of World Communion into reality.

All of us for all of God. God’s dream for you isn’t for just part of your life but for all of it. God’s dream for the human family isn’t just for a select elite but for all people. The reason we can give all that we have and are to God is because at this table, in this supper, we discover God gives all of himself to us.

Amen.