Of Independence and Interdependence (with a nod to Codependence)

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost + Proper 9 + July 4, 2010
"For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!" Galatians 6:15

In Saint Paul’s day, there was a lot of controversy over the “right” way to be a Christian. The folks in Jerusalem believed that a person had to be a Jew first, then a Christian. If you weren’t a Jew, you had to become one before you could be baptized. If you were a man, this meant that you had to be circumcised, no matter how old you were, and that was a major stumbling-block to attracting people to Christianity.

St Paul, and other Christian missionaries outside Jerusalem, disagreed. They felt that it was more important to get people to become followers of Jesus, and that there was no need to be a Jew, at all. So, there was a clash of ideas, tempers flared, and accusations were flung in all directions. Paul and his followers were accused of trying to change centuries of tradition. They were accused of breaking God’s law about circumcision. They were not welcome in Jerusalem, and there was doubt in the minds of some Jewish Christians as to whether Paul and his followers were even truly Christian.

Paul made it clear that circumcision was not the real question – loving one another, and winning hearts and souls for Christ were more important than any law.

The battle went on for a long time, and it must have appeared that, even at this earliest stage, Christianity was doomed to be divided forever. Finally, Barnabas acted as an intermediary. He persuaded Paul to come to Jerusalem to meet with Peter and some other leaders of the church there. They all finally agreed that Christians who were not Jews did not need to be circumcised. Today it seems strange to even think about this, but at the time, this controversy tore the church apart.

The Church is a divine institution that is fully staffed by weak human beings. We know we are not perfect. We sometimes wonder if we can even rise to the everyday challenges of being Christian, let alone the major confrontations that beset us.

Things got off to a rough start in the time of the Apostles, and there are still church-shaking disputes today, as we can see just by looking at the news.

Even though we think a lot about independence today, I want to address a related word, interdependence. It refers to the ways in which people, groups, or institutions depend on each other.

In an interdependent relationship, both parties treat each other as equals, even if that is not exactly the case. They behave in ways that provide for their mutual benefit because their relationship arises out of some set of shared values.

It’s also important for us to consider another term: codependence – an unhealthy situation in which a person places the needs or wants of another above his or her own, sometimes even doing harm to himself by caring too much about what the other wants.

Let’s look at the two terms: in interdependence, two parties (two people, two groups, two institutions) depend on each other in a mutually supportive way. Because the same things are important to both of them, they operate from shared goals and values. Examples of healthy interdependent relationships are husband and wife, parent and child, teacher and student.

In codependence, the two parties need each other, but not as equals. One party takes advantage of the other in order to fulfill its own desires or to advance its own agendas, while the other party meekly complies with what is demanded.

Here’s a good example of a codependent relationship: the State of Louisiana gets 40% of its annual income from the oil and natural gas industry. Without that money, the state could not meet its commitments to its people. Everything from fire hoses and textbooks to bridges and highways, is paid for with the money from oil and gas. The state makes decisions and takes actions that actually harm it in the long term, in order to satisfy the needs of the industry.

In our world today, and – sadly – in our church today, there are major obstacles to true interdependence. There are others outside our country and church who have tried to put us into a codependent state, and when we finally said “enough,” they have declared the relationship to be finished, blaming us for the failure.

We must never stop striving for the goals for which we prayed in our Collect this morning: loving God and our neighbor; seeking to be “devoted to (God) with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection.” [Collect for Proper 9, BCP 230] However, we must be alert: if we find ourselves in an unhealthy relationship with someone or some group or some institution who will simply exploit us, who will take advantage of our willingness to compromise without making any compromises or keeping any promises of their own, who will take advantage of our desire to do what is good for them, then we must know when to walk away.

So there we have it: it is right and desirable to try to live interdependently with others. It is especially important to try to do it with people, groups, and institutions that disagree with us. It is proper to offer compromises, to observe restraint, to go as far as we can to do what the others want us to do, to do all that we can to understand their positions and try to find a common ground, or at least a middle way where we can all co-exist.

But once we realize that the others are not interested in true interdependence, that they actually want us to be codependent, that they are not matching our efforts to compromise and meet them half-way, then we need to shake off the dust of that relationship and walk away.

Two hundred and thirty-four years ago today, this country declared its independence from Great Britain. That decision was not done by referendum; there were no polls taken to see whether the majority of colonists agreed with the idea. Instead, the duly-elected representative body acted in good faith on behalf of the entire nation. And it was not done hastily. Instead, there had been years of attempts to persuade, to compromise, to find ways to preserve the relationship with the mother country. But there was no true interdependence.

One side refused to compromise and instead tried to impose its will using every tool at its disposal. In the end, the colonies had to end the relationship, to break the ties that bound them.

When we have done the best we can, only to be rejected, it may be time to shake the dust off our shoes and move on, doing the Lord’s work and keeping the faith, as we have been given God's grace to do. Amen.