Sharing the Load

The first congregation that Andra and I served was in a small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Thus the town’s picturesque name: Altavista. As it happened, the "mountain view" from Altavista was not particularly impressive, but the view into the bedroom windows of the Presbyterian manse was clear and unobstructed.

To say that the pastor and his wife lived in a fishbowl is no exaggeration. The manse was on a low-lying lot on the main street into town. When Andra and I sat in our living room we could see the legs of people walking by on the sidewalk, and they could look directly into our second-story bedroom, which was eye-level with pedestrians. When we moved in, the manse had neither blinds nor curtains. Those had to be furnished by the occupants. And since we had no money, we had to wait for our bank balance to rise before Andra could sew curtains for the windows.

Life for a pair of newlyweds under these circumstances was – How shall I put it? – challenging. Self-revelation can be useful in pastoral care, but it should have its limits. When I received a complement from a total stranger regarding the color of my pajamas, I knew it was time to reorder our priorities. Forget buying a kitchen table for another month. We need those curtains now!

You might think that we found life in such a small town and an even smaller church a bit constricting. In fact, we loved it. It didn’t bother us that everybody seemed to know our business. What the town lacked in privacy it made up for with concern. If my car was parked in front of a older person’s house, people would ask the next day if Mr. So-and-So was alright. If the lights in the manse burned late at night, you could be sure that someone would ask if baby Adam was teething. People knew your business, but people also cared about you.

Once, when my Dad was visiting us, he went down to the bank, pushing Adam in his stroller. He wanted to cash a check, but forgot to bring his i.d. The teller took one look at my father and then at the toddler who stared up at her from his stroller. "That’s alright, Mr. Copeland," she said. "I’ll cash your check. You couldn’t be anybody else."

That sense of community crossed denominational lines. If the Methodist minister was on vacation, I visited his parishioners in the hospital, and he did the same for me. I even officiated at funerals for Baptists when their pastor was out of town. I just had to remember not to ask the mourners to recite the Creed.

Remembering life in that small town, it’s easy to visualize the community to which Paul addressed the words of today’s epistle reading. The Galatians, like the Altavistans, were not without their problems and divisions, but they were nonetheless a community of mutual concern and accountability. After spending several chapters of his letter lecturing them about their freedom from bondage to the law of Moses, in these closing verses, Paul emphasizes a different kind of bondage – a bondage to one another. "Bear one another’s burdens," Paul writes, "and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."

This imperative to bear one another’s burdens has implications for how the Galatians are to live together. If someone gets out of line, he or she is to be "restored," not chastised but restored, and that "in a spirit of gentleness." There is to be no boasting, no touting of moral superiority. If you think you’re something, you’re wrong, Paul advises. Compared to Christ and his righteousness, you’re righteousness is no big deal. "For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves."

The Galatians are "to bear one another’s burdens," but at the same time, they are to "carry their own loads." That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not really. If I read him correctly, Paul means that, as a community the Christians in Galatia are to help one another, but as individuals they are to remember that each one of them will have to stand before the judgment seat of God.

It’s the same for us. The time will come when we will have to account for the way we have lived our lives. In Paul’s words, will have "to carry our own load." If it were not for the grace of God in Jesus Christ, that load would crush every single one of us.

As I have been wrestling with this text this week, it has occurred to me that all this talk of mutual accountability and bearing one another’s burdens must seem a foreign language for many modern Christians. Gone are the days when the minister and elders would visit in each church member’s home to inquire about the family’s spiritual health and to make sure the parents were teaching the children the catechism. It’s hard these days to catch a whole family at home at the same time for any purpose, much less to hold them accountable for their baptismal vows.

There’s a passage in the session records of First Presbyterian Church of Quincy, Florida, that tells how the session chastised a woman for hanging out her wash on a Sunday. The elders called her up before the session, gave her a sound talking to, and sent her home to mend her ways. That was in the 1800’s.

Times have changed, haven’t they? Suppose I knocked on a member’s door, and said "I heard you lost your job and you can’t pay your mortgage. I’m here to say the church wants to help." That person might be delighted. But suppose I added, "I also hear you’re cheating on your spouse. What do you plan to do about that?" It’s likely I’d be shown the door.

If I’m reading this passage of scripture correctly, however, both comments would be in keeping with the law of Christ. The first would be in the order of bearing one another’s burdens. The second would be in the order of urging a member of the body to adjust the load he or she is carrying to the final judgment.

Church life these days has become so compartmentalized, so privatized, that an exchange like that is almost unthinkable.

Pastors, I fear, are part of the problem. In seminary I was taught to operate very much like a social worker or a therapist, keeping the strictest bonds of confidentiality. People in your congregation can share their lives with you, but you can’t share their lives with anybody else – that was the clear message I received. If it’s secrets that are at stake, that policy certainly makes sense. Nobody can trust a pastor who shares other people’s secrets.

But surely a pastor who does no more than retain a congregation’s secrets is not doing her job. There ought to be room for a kind of "sacred gossip" -- for mutual accountability, for reaching out to those who are hurting in lonely isolation. And, within the community formed by the Spirit, there should even be room for mutual admonition and reproof. Gentle reproof, to be sure -- reproof for the sake of restoring broken relationships, for mending the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.

From time to time, I have been the beneficiary of such gentle reproof. It was hard to hear at the time, but it was good both for my soul and for the body of Christ.

Because I am bound by confidentiality, I can’t tell you all the ways this congregation is fulfilling the law of Christ without even knowing it. I can tell you that last year, on your behalf, I expended $37,000 in aid to people in need – some members of this church family, most not. Most of that money came from gifts over and above the church budget. It came from people in this congregation who trust their pastor to be the agent of their concern for those carrying burdens too heavy to bear on their own.

"Whenever we have the opportunity," writes Paul, "let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith."

That’s exactly what this congregation is doing – even though you may not be aware of every instance. (Actually, the New Revised Standard Version translation of this phrase is a bit misleading. Paul has in mind the end of the age. A better translation might read, "While there is still time, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith." That makes working for the good of all an immediate priority, not a distant option.)

Times have changed since Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. He could not have envisioned life in the 21^st century with gated communities, caller i.d., session councils, and pastors’ discretionary funds. His way of being church was low-tech and high-touch. He didn’t have to cope with budgets and capital campaigns, although he was a first-class fundraiser.

But the fact that times have changed doesn’t mean that the church’s priorities have changed. We might go about it differently, but we are still in the business of bearing one another’s burdens and holding each other accountable for the way we live our lives under the law of Christ.

If we cease to do this, we are no longer acting like the church of Jesus Christ. We become instead something far less radical and much more comfortable – a debating society perhaps, or a political forum, a place to gather for good music and stimulating discussion, but no longer the church of Jesus Christ.

        I love what Martin Luther said about this passage back in 1519, in his Lectures on Galatians. He told his students:

        Bear one another’s burdens, and pray that when you stand before God’s judgment seat, you will not in fact be alone. Your brothers and sisters, and Christ himself, will be there to lighten your load.