Biblical Busybodies

Biblical Busybodies

           

II Thessalonians 3:6-13

Rober J. Elder, Interim Pastor

First Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, Washington

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 2, 2012

We hear that some of you are living in idleness,

mere busybodies, not doing any work.

Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ

to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

When Paul began detailing the ways in which some of the folks in that early church in the city of Thessalonica were not pulling their weight, I can imagine that many in that little fellowship cringed to hear his truth-telling, no matter how true it was.

“For we hear,” Paul wrote in his letter, which was surely read in the middle of the gathering of that little church, since New Testament letters were designed to edify the whole church and few could read them on their own anyway, “For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.”

Ouch!

True as such things may be, we often create elaborate ways to avoid such truth, especially in church, because to face it means to have to do something about it. A study of any dysfunctional family will turn up many methods by which all the family members carry on their elaborate charades to avoid confrontation with truth; but not the apostle, not Paul. His hard words of truth remind me of a classic, short, modern parable I once read, and have long remembered, entitled, “The Day Rev. Henderson Bumped His Head.”[1] I can’t resist sharing an excerpt with you:

Leaning down toward the bottom shelf to retrieve his trusty Strong’s Bible Concordance to pursue “new moon” through both testaments, the Reverend Henry Henderson, pastor of Sword of Truth Methodist Church, bumped his head,

 “Darn,” he exclaimed, grabbing his forehead.

This he followed immediately with [a stronger expletive] which was muttered with atypical candor. The rather non-ministerial [utterance] surprised Henderson. He could hardly believe he said it. [Then] he heard himself say [it] again. “This hurts.”

That, so far as the Reverend Henderson could tell, was how it all began – an accidental blow to the brain while reaching for a Bible concordance.

Moments later, the phone rang.

 “Pastor,” whined a nasal voice at the other end, “are you busy?”

 “Not at all...” said Pastor Henderson out of habit. Then, from nowhere he continued, “I’m sitting here in my study just dying for someone like you to call and make my day! No, I am busy. I was working on my sermon for next Sunday. What is it?”

His words paralyzed him. They must also have stunned the whiny voice at the other end of the line, for there was a long, awkward silence followed by “Er, well, I’ll call you at home tonight after work, Pastor.”

 “No,” said Henderson firmly, alien words forming in his mouth as if not by his own devising, “call me during office hours on any day other than Friday. Thank you. Good-bye.”

The receiver dropped from his hand and into the telephone cradle. He felt odd. Yes, quite odd. His head no longer throbbed. Yet he felt odd.

Emerging from his study, he encountered Jane Smith, come to church for her usual Friday duties for the altar guild. “As usual, just me,” she said to Henderson. “They all say they’ll be on the guild, that they don’t mind helping out the church. Yet, when it comes time for the work, where are they?”

 “I think you know very well why they are not here,” said Pastor Henderson. “You gave them only a half-hearted invitation. Everyone knows you love playing the martyr. Their absence helps bolster your holier-than-thou attitude.”

Mrs. Smith nearly dropped the offering plate she was holding, along with the polishing cloth and the Brasso.

 “Pastor! How dare you accuse me of being a complainer! You know how hard I’ve worked to get the altar guild going! If you gave us volunteers the kind of support we ought to...”

… but Pastor Henderson was no longer listening. He staggered down the hall as Mrs. Smith continued her complaint. He was feeling dizzy, unsteady...

...He was a pastor in peril.

Henderson at the hospital that afternoon, Room 344: [found himself saying] “So the doctor tells you your heart problems are congenital? That so? Are you sure the doctor didn’t mention anything about (by my reckoning) eighty pounds of excess fat?”

And in Room 204: “Really? So this is the strain of emphysema that is not caused by smoking? Give me a break! Two packs a day for thirty years, and you wonder why you’re sucking on an oxygen tank for dear life?”...

...That fateful Sunday service, after a pastoral prayer in which Henderson admitted to God that “Most of us didn’t really want to hear anything truthful you have to reveal to us,” an emergency meeting of the Pastor/Parish Council was called [and the next call was to the bishop’s office]...

We can probably imagine how the end of the story went from there.

It was Flannery O’Conner, I think, who once reworded a familiar Bible phrase by adding a new twist, saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” Paul never needed a blow to the head to inspire him to declare what was true, but I am certain that more than once his unwillingness to soften the truth of the gospel must have made him a bit odd to those on the receiving end of truths they had made a practice of hiding. I can imagine there were a few sluggards in the Thessalonian congregation who dreaded to see an envelope arrive at the church with a return address bearing Paul’s name.

Their error wasn’t mere sloth, a simple laziness that afflicted some of the believers in Thessalonica. The fact is, there were some in that congregation who had decided that Jesus was going to return very shortly, so soon, in fact, that they determined that they might as well stop working. Why work when Jesus would soon be there to set everything right? By believing as they did, they became a burden on the others in their fellowship. Who was supposed to keep these blissful non-workers and their families from starving?

We may find this a bit quaint, even odd, but I have to say, we still have not yet begun to hear the last of end-of-the-world prophets, they appear in every generation. As books such as the Left Behind and DaVinci Code novels of a few years ago continue to come across booksellers’ counters, don’t be surprised to discover the enduring cultural fascination with people who declare the end or beginning of all manner of things is at hand. Just remember, this is nothing new, and don’t quit your day job. Around 200 A.D., in a region in what is now northern Turkey, a church leader reported to his followers that he had dreams that the final judgment was coming at the end of the year. Many Christian believers in the area abandoned their fields and sold their personal possessions in anticipation of a day which not only did not come by the end of the year, indeed, it has not yet come. It has been happening ever since. Self-proclaimed spiritual leaders have been taking the gullible for a ride for centuries. Just remember Paul’s word: “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you...but with toil and labor we worked night and day...”

This is not to say that such a “Day of the Lord” is never coming. The Bible seems clearly to suggest that it is. It is to say that we have plenty of word from that same Bible about what we should be doing in anticipation, and none of it suggests we should simply stop doing the good work of God and sit by the side of the road to wait for the end. Paul said, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”[2]

It is a truth, even though it is one that may be hard to hear. “Brothers and sisters,” Paul said, “Do not be weary in doing what is right.” This goes for the righteous, industrious ones who do more than their share as well as the idle ones who do little, if anything. The hard workers must not take the example of the slothful as their excuse to despair in their task, and the slothful ones must not be left in this one of the seven deadly sins, as if it doesn’t matter.

On the weekend of Labor Day, this passage seems like an appropriate reminder of the nobility of work, of committing ourselves to doing some small, useful work, even though we know that other great things may be underway in the world.

In one of his Bible commentaries,[3] our favorite 16th century reformer, good old John Calvin, said, “In vain do persons who are delighted with an easy, indolent life, and with exemption from the cross, undertake a profession of Christianity.” He went on: “The true self-denial which the Lord demands ... does not consist so much in outward conduct as in the affections; so that every one must employ the time which is passing over him without allowing the objects which he directs by his hand to hold a place in his heart.”

Here is a word to us on this Labor Day weekend. Whether we work for peanuts or for millions, scripture is clear in its declaration that we are to work for the betterment of all until that time when the Best of all comes, lays our work aside, and says, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”

Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] by William Willimon, in Leadership, magazine, slightly altered by RJE.

[2] 2 Thessalonians 3:10

[3] On Luke 14.

Bold Declarations

Bold Declarations

Sunday, August 26, 2012

© 2012, Robert J. Elder, Pastor

Ephesians 6:10-20                  

Pray for me,

so that when I speak, a message may be given to me

to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

for which I am an ambassador in chains.

I remember one summer seeing an eye-catching promotional ad for an upcoming television show. An actress, who apparently had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the gym working on physical conditioning and strength, wanted to prove herself – to someone other than the attendant who hands out the towels at the door, I suppose. Actresses can be like that. So she arranged to take part in a circus trapeze act for one of those TV extravaganzas specially made for the late summer television doldrums. In the promotional piece, they showed her flying through the air, releasing her grip in time to spin around and be caught by a man on another trapeze who arrived just in time to make the catch. But I noticed right away that they had attached two lines to a special belt around her middle, so that if her partner failed to catch her, she would just bounce up and down like a yo-yo or a bunji cord enthusiast going off a bridge.

Right away I found myself thinking, “Oh, big deal! She’s got a net and a set of bunji cords!” How jaded and cynical can I get? I would never even climb the pole to the platform, let alone swing over the floor of a circus tent on a trapeze unless there was a substantial net, a large liability policy, and a highly trained staff of physicians and nurses in place. Still, we all know what is meant when someone says, “She’s performing without a net.” Whether we’re speaking of a circus performer or a Wall Street investor, it means someone is operating without precautions in the event that they might fail — they are operating at high personal risk. It is either confidence or craziness that causes people to take big chances. I can hardly look when one of those aerial performers, possessed of a maniacal confidence in their sense of balance, decides to walk a tight rope over Niagra Falls or between tall buildings.

Still, even the most daring circus performer takes some precautions, much as they may attempt to make it appear otherwise. The first precaution is thousands of hours, years of practice. They use special shoes so their feet can grip the line, rosin on the wire, a special pole to assist them with their balance. Not to do these things would be truly crazy, potentially deadly as well. Though they may appear completely vulnerable, there are subtle considerations providing for their safety, some of their own strength and ability to provide for them.

It’s interesting that when Paul wrote about the Christian struggle in the world, comparing our sources of strength as believers to the strength of a soldier’s armor, he was a prisoner, very likely guarded by someone wearing the very armaments he described. He was in the weakest of positions in which anyone could find himself, able to call upon few strengths of his own. Accused, arrested, behind bars, at the mercy of his jailers for his daily food, subject to the beatings of his more vicious captors. Yet in such a situation, he found the spiritual resources to write about strength, power, the armor of God. What confidence! Someone imprisoned for his faith who continues in his faith despite the penalties for it might appear to be working without a net, without a surrounding community of fellow believers, without the cultural support of a society that is tolerant of his religious affirmations, without even an outward sign that God approves of what he is doing — because if God was so fond of Paul, the thinking might go, why would he allow him to be imprisoned on trumped-up charges?

Without all those things that make for our accustomed measure of safety and security in declaring in this religiously free society that Christ is our Lord, what sources of strength are left? Just think if constitutional safeguards concerning our religious observances were taken away, if the entire culture around us were to turn to some set of beliefs directly hostile to our own, and if we saw our own fellow church members, one after another, abandon our faith, turning away from following Christ because it was no longer culturally acceptable — where would we turn for the strength to go on, to remain faithful?

Paul helps us see that all the outward safety nets for our faith are just trappings. Strip them away, and what we have left is the one essential of our faith, not the strength of our own personal convictions, but the very strength of God. If we rely on our own strength, it will ultimately fail us. If we rely on God’s strength, we cannot fail in the end.

Over 20 years ago now I recall seeing a movie called The Doctor. Maybe some of you will remember it. While I don’t believe it won an academy awards, the impact of it has stayed in my memory all this time. I think it contained a good lesson for anyone tempted to think they can survive this world by their own wit and widsom alone. In the film there was an intriguing scene in which the main character, a powerful and well-known surgeon played by William Hurt, is reduced to the status of plain old patient in his own hospital due to a serious medical problem of his own. He finds himself being treated as a piece of anatomy, shuffled from one waiting room to another. In particular, his own surgeon treats him with a mechanical sort of efficiency, rather than as a human being. When he objects, she literally throws him out of her office; but before he goes, he says to her “What is happening to me is like something that will happen to you. If not now, then maybe thirty years from now but it will happen. You will get sick one day. You will know what I am going through.” I’m not picking on physicians. Any one of us can find, and may already have found ourselves in such a life situation.

Before the diagnosis of his own medical problem, it is likely that William Hurt’s character would have declared to anyone who wanted to listen that the source of his strength lay in the skill of his hands as a surgeon, in the quality of his mind, in the extent of his training and in his proven ability. But one little tumor reduced him to a status in which none of the things in which he customarily placed his confidence would provide strength for him now. Looking around, he saw little else to bear him up in his time of trial. Long since emotionally distanced even from his own family, he was going to face his surgery like an acrobat working without a net.

If we are sufficiently in touch with our lives to admit it to ourselves, certainly there have been such times for each of us. When our own mortality looks us in the face, reducing all our life’s priorities to a single overriding concern, we are bound to reach into the deepest parts of ourselves to search out a source of strength to see us through.

It is at precisely such times, when all other sources of strength have either failed us or been found wanting, or irrelevant, that we are in the blessed position in which Paul found himself in his prison cell. We may not think of it as a blessing, but I promise you it is. It may be the biggest trauma of our lives: our health threatened by a disease; our child marching off to war; our best friend dying before our eyes; the child we have loved into adulthood turning on us as though we were somehow the enemy rather than someone who loves them more than anyone in the world; a career collapsing around us; a marriage failing with no singular or even reasonably identifiable cause. Whatever the trauma, these are times when Paul says to us, as he says here, “Be strong!” Actually, this English translation of Paul’s Greek word is inadequate, making it sound as though receiving the strength of God were a step we could take, another achievement we could undertake, a self-help exhortation on the order of “Shape up! Be strong! Get with it! Just do it!”

A better translation would be something moe akin to, “Receive strength!” or “Turn around and open yourself to the strength of the promises of God which await you!” Receiving the strength of which Paul speaks is most certainly not another work we can perform, a variation of relying on our own strength. It isn’t an admonition to search within ourselves for a source of strength. It would be all too likely that we would have already searched as deeply into our own sources of strength as we could and found them wanting. There wouldn’t be any good news in that.

The blessing that hides in our severest trials is just the potential for this discovery that there is no trial we may face for which the strength of God’s promises cannot more than provide, not even the trial of death itself. Even when we “lose it” in the middle of our trials – get that feeling that we are totally out of control and suffering beyond hope, even then we may discover that our being out of control only provides us with all the greater opportunity to invite divine strength to control the situation in such a way that it’s resolution might be satisfying to God. A Christian is free to recognize that hope for redemption of a terrible situation may even lie beyond death, because in Christ, God reigns even there.

If you face life’s crises the way I do, you know that it is not within human ability to fully equip ourselves for facing all the traumas of our lives. Some battles are of such magnitude that rugged individualism, or professional counsel can’t help but fail us. So think of the pieces of armor that Paul used as an illustration, the qualities they represent speaking of ways God may strengthen us. If in the middle of our trials we find that there is truth to sustain us, it is likely to be God’s truth. If we find that we are unexpectedly succeeding in some things, it is likely to be a “right”-eousness that God has granted us, not our own faltering attempts to do things right. If we find that despite all expectations to the contrary we are able to hold our ground and remain standing even though everything familiar seems to be failing us, it is likely that our shoes are firmly footed in the gospel of shalom, the gospel of peace. If we find that things which usually drive us crazy now seem insignificant, hardly relevant, it is that the sustaining word of our faith is shielding us from those things which we might ordinarily allow to bring us down. If we find that even though every human being around us has failed us but we discover strength in the fact that God loves us in spite of it all, we are protected by the promise of salvation in Christ from having to rely on the strength of anyone else. If we find, astonishingly, that we can even talk to others about our difficulties and maybe even support a fellow sufferer by the ability to articulate our own pain, we are in reality giving voice to the word of God which lives within the heart of every believer through the strength of the Holy Spirit.

Strange as it sounds to modern ears, so attuned to a false gospel of rugged individualism and self-sufficiency, making ourselves ready to battle life’s demons that would tear us down has little to do with our own abilities and preparation, and everything to do with the sufficient grace of God, which stands ready to strengthen every believer in every hour. We need only look to our need to be open to God’s strength.

Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

Subject or Object?

Ephesians 5:15-33            

Robert J. Elder, Pastor

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time: August 19, 2012

One summer, I was riding through the Scottish countryside with my cousin, Malcolm and his wife, Muriel. They have a highly kinetic relationship, so a good deal of good-natured bantering was going back and forth between them. Finally, Muriel had spoken maybe a little more sharply than she might have intended, and there was a moment or two of uncomfortable silence. Then Malcolm spoke up, “Muriel, I know you love me; you told me so five years ago.” Without missing a beat, Muriel replied with mock seriousness, “That was then; this is now…” Referring to marriage in a sermon in our day, even in an oblique way, is among a preacher’s greatest fears...and with good reason!

Several years ago, on Orientation Sunday in Duke University Chapel, the text assigned to the preacher ... was ... Ephesians 5:21. The preacher’s heart sank. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands...”

“I can’t preach that,” the preacher thought. “Only the likes of Jerry Falwell would preach such a text! Especially is it an inappropriate text for a progressive, forward-thinking, university church. Forget Ephesians 5. The word for our day is liberation, not submission. But the preacher decided to let the Bible have its say. He began his Orientation sermon this way:

“[We] despise this text. No one but Jerry Falwell (may he rest in peace) or some other reactionary would like this text. What an ugly word! Submission. And yet we know that, taken in the context of the day, this is a radical word. Women had no standing in that day. The writer of Ephesians 5 expends more words giving advice to husbands, telling them about their duties to wives, than words to wives telling them what they are to do for their husbands...this is not a text about women’s submission in marriage, it is a text which urges mutual submission in a strange new social arrangement called the church.”

“And that is why we despise this text. Our word is liberation.”[1]

While scripture’s word is submission.

There is so much modern misunderstanding about this passage of scripture that our lectionary suggests preachers skip verses 21-33 altogether. Even less likely is a modern day sermon on the first 9 verses of chapter 6, with their emphasis on obedience in children and slaves. The use – and abuse – to which these verses have been put in many places and circumstances over the centuries, makes any preacher less than enthusiastic about preaching on them.

So, we have a whole section of scripture, much of which sounds immediately distasteful to modern ears, with words about subjection and submissiveness, directed at wives, children and slaves. Aren’t these verses a perfect example of the need to use the Thomas Jefferson method of scripture analysis, cutting out the passages which offend us in order to leave us with a Bible that is not only more agreeable, but which more closely reflects modern sensibilities?

Well, no, I don’t think so, though you are welcome to disagree with me, and if you do it certainly wouldn’t be the first time in my ministry! What is needed is the recognition of a few crucial principles in reading these verses.

I

Only a community of faith which receives these words

can hope to understand them correctly.

These words were not directed at the culture in general, but to believers whom together Paul calls the “body of Christ.” So, a real understanding requires, first of all, a life within the community of faith. These are not general human principles which would make sense to any thinking person whether they were believers or not. They sound crazy to non-believers, and, truth-be-told, to quite a few believers as well, and probably for good reason.

It makes no sense to urge non-believers to allow themselves to be subject to others, because in the world outside the family of faith, where power is the motivating force in most relationships, to suggest that people assume a powerless and subjective position would be tantamount to suggesting that they become permanent victims. There is no guarantee of mutuality there. Being subject in a world that treats people like objects doesn’t sound like good news but more like a prescription for servitude. No one in the world can assume that submissiveness on their own part will be met with mutual submissiveness from others. Quite the contrary. The world is entirely likely to victimize anyone who makes themselves so vulnerable.

We must grant that pursuing all relationships with a sense that they are about power is a way that leads to death, not life. But only a community of faith organized around a different standard can understand submissiveness in a way that leads to life and wholeness.

II

These verses may legitimately be understood

only with deep humility, convictionally and confessionally.

They are intended to be understood so that a spouse, for instance, may ask himself or herself from time to time, “Am I working toward loving my spouse as Christ loved the church, sacrificially, unselfishly?” They may legitimately be used reflectively, subjectively. They may not be used legitimately as a blunt object to threaten the opposite person, but rather as a personal moral guide.

So when, in Paul’s letter, husbands, for instance, are advised concerning their behavior, they are not permitted to ignore the verses directed at them while berating their mates concerning the verses Paul wrote regarding wives. Similarly, wives ought not read the verses directed at husbands as part of a riot act, while overlooking the admonitions Paul wrote to them.

There are those interpreters who attempt to show that these verses reveal a divinely ordained order for family relationships, with God at the top of the organizational chart, then husbands directly under God, with wives appearing under the rule of their husbands. I have seen this type of structure referred to with various headings like “God’s Chain of Command,” as though loving relationships among faithful people had mostly to do with organizing a power structure in which some give commands and others obey them. The odd thing is, the chain of command idea already existed in Paul’s time, though not as a guide for Christian living, but as a pagan listing of household responsibilities. In Ephesians, Paul called upon everyone’s familiarity with that idea in order to help believers break free from it, to move human relationships beyond the banal questions of who will be giving the orders and who is destined to take them.

The discipline encouraged in this passage is meant to be internal, chosen, not external and enforced; it is to be subjective, not objective. No one may legitimately use these verses to force subjection on an unwilling spouse, and neither may one use them to require sacrificial love from their “better half.” I recently read about a Christian speaker who was approached by a married couple with the husband asking, “I want to know who should be in charge of a Christian marriage?” The speaker looked at them and said, “But that’s not a Christian question! The Christian question is: ‘How can I best serve my spouse…?’”[2]

These are principles which must be freely chosen to have any meaning at all. And the operative principle in all of them is announced in verse 21.

III

 “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

It is true that every home needs a leader, but the contest for that position should not be between one spouse and the other. The leader of every believer’s home should be Jesus Christ: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Paul declared. It is Christ who is the one deserving reverence in Christian homes.

All the things Paul encourages in his letter: that husbands love their wives as fully as Christ loves the church, which is to say, as fully as one who was willing to face death on a cross for the sake of his love; that wives should subject themselves to their husbands, which anyone who has been around our culture lately knows has about as much human chance of getting a hearing these days as a shellfish in a oyster bar; all these things should be things we hear with amazement, not with nodding heads. They are incredible, from a human point of view. But before we can hold up our hands and say, “No way!”, before we even hear words about submissiveness and sacrificial love, Paul predetermines our view of his instructions with the first instruction, the one that supersedes them all: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

He explains further, “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.” This isn’t an exhortation about how we can be if we just work at it, but about how Christ is. Christ was submissive even to the point of death, Christ loves his church – loves us – more than he loved his own life. It is only because we know that’s how Christ is that we can begin to see the mystery that Paul mentions as it applies to our own commitments – how we can be.  We begin to see that the commitments we make to one another – not just as husbands and wives, but as lovers, as friends, as families in the fellowship of the church – these commitments are going to be hopelessly control driven unless we submit them to the one who was totally submissive in giving himself away for us all.

Christ will not fail to honor those who reverence his submission for our sakes. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” For Christ has made himself subject for our sakes. May God bless us richly in him, and may each of us strive in every way to be a blessing for each other.

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[1] William Willimon, Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Abingdon, 1989, pp. 152-153.

[2] Stephen Knox, “Becoming One Christ’s Way,” Best Sermons 2, Harper & Row, 1989, p. 179.

If He Is Here, They Will Come

If He Is Here, They Will Come

                 

Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder, Pastor

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 22, 2012

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56            

And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Some of us likely will remember the Kevin Costner film of 20-some years ago: Field of Dreams. One key line in that movie, which became one of those cultural bywords that stayed around for quite awhile, was, “If you build it, they will come.” I can tell you that far too many businesses as well as churches have learned the error of that thinking, that people will come just because there is a nice facility. In the end, it’s the hearts that live inside the people in a building that attract or repel others.

Mark tells us that “they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.” But not for long. Every pastor can tell stories of dinners interrupted, conversations stopped short, attempts to dash home for a quick dinner frustrated by the insistent demands of people who come to the church looking for the help they think Jesus is going to make available to them. And if they spot you before they run into Jesus, well, that’s just how it goes.

I remember once reading about a pastor who “resigned from a suburban parish where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him down. He left to become a missionary, on the coast of Maine, of all places. In his new position he visited small clusters of Christians in remote locations. He reported that in many ways his ministry was the same as it always had been: he preached, taught, visited the sick. But there was this difference: between ports of call he traveled long distances by boat. Between sermons he could listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he could study the horizon. After visiting the sick he was anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his demanding pastoral duties he took a watery “road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”[1] I have heard from one pastor who takes a week every year to hike in the mountains alone. He asks his wife to save all the newspapers that have come during the week of his absence. Upon returning, he reads each newspaper. That way he can remind himself how readily the world and the people in it are able to continue on without him.

Mark declared that “…they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.” Doesn’t that sound good? In Mark's Gospel, Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee so many times that it is difficult to discern the pattern and motive behind the itinerary. Difficult, that is, until the sixth chapter, when the reason for the crossings becomes clear: the disciples needed a break.[2] Following the teeming demands of ministry, the exhausted disciples were due for a retreat to charge their batteries. Sociologists sometimes call this “compassion fatigue.” Just prior to this, remember, “...many were coming and going, and (the disciples) had no leisure even to eat.” Before the first spoonful of food had reached their mouths, here came the tap on the shoulder and the request, please, just this once, please help, won’t you help? So it was time for a discipleship retreat, and off they went to a deserted place. What a great plan. But no sooner had they tied up at the dock than “...many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.”

If Jesus is there, people will come. That’s how it has always been. Try any replacement for that name “Jesus” in that statement, anything that points to something other than Jesus, and the church ceases being a church. It is, at the last, the true test of a church. Over time, if Jesus is not present there, no one will come. Oh, it might take a long while for some who are just in the habit of coming around to stop, but over time it will happen.

I remember reading about a once-wealthy church in Pittsburgh. It was a large stone edifice, built in what we might think of as a sort of Presbyterian version of an English gothic style. It had huge, vaulted ceilings, and at one time was one of the largest open spaces under one roof of any building in the city. The lettering over the entrance where the arched Byzantine doors once stood now welcomes not worshipers, but people seeking a parking place: “Southside Parking Garage,” says the sign over the opening. With a straight face, the developer of the project said, “It was an ideal space for conversion.”[3]

Apparently this had been a church where people had parked for years: parked their money but not their bodies, parked their children but not their cars, and eventually the children grew up and nothing was parked there any more at all other than the left-over money of dead people, which kept the facility going on life support long after the heart had quit beating on its own. With the sort of funds they had, you could continue to offer programs for years without having to be bothered with a congregation. But in the end, the aging trustees, who were all that was left of the church, closed it anyway, since parking was all it was good for. Now it is truly a drive-in church.

I’ve been in other defunct churches. They always strike me as a sort of sad testimony, no matter how cheery – even inevitable – their transformation into some other kind of business. Neighborhoods change, people come and people go. But if the heart of Jesus had been celebrated and worshiped there, couldn’t the church have changed along with the neighborhood? This is what I always wonder. Often they are transformed into restaurants, another unintended symbol of the body of Christ, which had once been gathered in those places around the communion table. I know of another church in New Jersey, founded by people who were angry with their former church, so they gathered in anger and separation. Ultimately, the next generations forgot what the fight had been about, and since fighting was the glue that had held it together, the church came apart. Literally, it’s beams and timbers were dismantled and reused in what are now many fine homes in the area.

I once wrote to my former congregation about my visit to a small country parish in Wales during a vacation there. A sort of Stephen King cemetery surrounds this ancient building which exudes local history from every stone. And that may be part of the problem. It stands more like an artifact than a congregation. Sunday worship when we were there numbered 12, 4 of which were our party of not-very-competent Presbyterian-cum-Anglicans. The idea that a small church is a better place to become acquainted and feel at home was given the lie in this place.

But the very next week found us in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the 11:00 AM “sung mass.” It was high church at its best, and the Spirit was alive in the place, clearly a place of worship where all were welcomed and encouraged to take part. Jesus was there, and they came.

“They went away to a deserted place by themselves.” Sometimes this sounds like the very thing we need, to get away, to be alone. And sometimes we do. I know that many folks in congregations who don’t disappear in the winter for Palm Desert or similar warmer climes may be likely to be gone some time now during the summer. But such separation and self-tending is meant always to function as a servant of ministry, not as its main point. The disciples and Jesus were allowed precious little time to themselves in deserted places. The need of the world to be near Jesus was just too overpoweringly great.

“Mark says that Jesus and his disciples had come willingly to this deserted place. They were exhausted from ministry among the needy multitudes. They were seeking rest, retreat, a July vacation from the rigors of their work. Yet when they got to the deserted place, it was quickly filled with more multitudes who came clamoring after Jesus. The crowds did not come, like the disciples, in order to get away from life; they followed Jesus here because they were desperate to survive life. Jesus looked on them and quickly saw that they were harassed and helpless, ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ Here were the oppressed, the hurting and the poor, come out to this desert hoping for a blessing from Jesus.”[4]

When Jesus got to the shore on the other side of the lake he saw that the great throng had anticipated his next move and was waiting there for him. When he looked out on them and had compassion on them because they looked to him for all the world like a bunch of bleating lambs whose shepherd had left them alone in the wilderness, he realized that this sorry gathering of people had been paying rent to absent theological landlords for far too long. He decided that he would teach them something right then and there about what it means to have a real shepherd. If we had been there, we would probably have been like the rest of the crowd, anticipating a free meal, or at least a healing or some other miracle. But Jesus didn’t do that, not yet. He first did what the Shepherd was called to do for his people. He “began to teach them many things.”

There is but one true teacher. The rest that we who have followed him have to add is but commentary. The ministry of the church is not in the hands of pastors, nor even boards and committees. Not now any more than it ever has been. It rests largely in your hands; your able, fallible, caring, failing, tentative, willing, reluctant hands. My long-time friend, Jim Wharton, who taught at the seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, once pointed out that in the biblical story, God is singularly unimpressed by the differences between clergy and lay people on points of competence, fitness, equipment, credentials, or status. On one occasion, (in the book of Joshua) a rather harried prostitute named Rahab was able to minister to Israel; on another, a humble shepherd boy named David became minister to a king (I Samuel 16:14 ff); on another, a famous prophet named Elijah endured the indignity of receiving the ministry of a cackling flock of crows (I Kings 17:4 ff). The possibility of ministry is as near for any of God’s people as the next human being.[5]

Which brings me to this thought:

Hospitality is among the highest marks of the presence of Jesus in a place, the New Testament is filled with testimonies to this fact. Over 38 years if ministry I have been through the mill with transients who drop in on the church, all pastors have. I have dealt with the con artists, the demanding ones that try to make you feel guilty, the ones who have a knack for showing up as you prepare to leave for a well-deserved hour at home before returning for an evening round of meetings. But sometimes, it is different, not a hand-out, as the ads used to say, but a hand.

So Mark’s gospel causes us to consider this today, this presence of our Lord in this place. Because we know that if the needy and the harassed and the helpless ones are among us in our community, our church and even our homes, surely Jesus cannot be far away. If they come, he is here, giving us the opportunity to be a blessing even as we seek to be blessed. Amen.

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[1] “Watching from the Boat,” by Martin Copenhaver, Christian Century, June 29, 1994.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thanks to my friend, Dr. George Chorba, for sharing stories of “converted” churches.

[4] “The Loving Shepherd,” a sermon by William Willimon, Duke University Chapel, 7/20/97.

[5] Biblical Basis for Ministry, Earl E. Shelp et. al., Westminster Press, 1981, p. 61.

Steady On

 Steady On

2 Samuel 6:1-15         

2 Corinthians 8:7-15         

Vancouver, Washington, July 8, 2012

Our Old Testament text is hard to read. I don’t mean that the names are difficult to pronounce, though they are. I mean it is hard to read because it appears to be a story we might wish wasn’t there in the first place. We have come to believe in a gospel about a God who wouldn’t do capricious things like tossing lightning bolts at someone who just casually touched a religious object. Presbyterians emerged from a Puritan type of tradition, so we don’t put too much stock in the religious significance of inanimate objects in the first place. Come on up here any time you like, touch the communion table, dabble your fingers in the water on the baptismal; you will not need to fear being smitten by God in the chancel of First Presbyterian Church for touching any of the furniture! So what was this Old Testament story in 2 Samuel about, anyway?

To answer, we have to begin by remembering that one of the problems with Sunday readings of little snippets of scripture at a time is that often we may miss, or be unaware of, the context, the background of the stories. The 2^nd Samuel reading is an excellent case in point. The little portion we read seems to be a narrative account about moving the Ark of the Covenant – a religious artifact once famously (but rather grotesquely) celebrated in one of the Indiana Jones movies – from a temporary resting place to David’s new capital city of Jerusalem. On the way, an unfortunate but well-intentioned man gets himself killed by touching a sacred object. The story is bigger than it appears. It turns out not to be a story about how innocent people used to suffer in Old Testament times before God decided to become loving, but rather a story about the ways in which the headstrong political maneuverings of people can get them into deep trouble even when they least expect it.

David, having recently become king, decided that if he was going to unite his kingdom into a single people, the way other kingdoms around them were united, he needed to find a city in which to establish unquestioned political authority, a capital city. Some people were not so excited about the idea. One morning he awoke with a thought: What about the old Ark of the Covenant? It had been neglected, languishing, almost forgotten, out behind Abinadab’s carport for about 20 years. The old traditionalists still remembered it and all it represented since the time of Moses.

In the old days, the one who possessed the Ark of the Covenant could lay claim to an authority over the people that was sanctioned by God. What a brilliant move it would be to go get the old box, and carry it to the new capital! In one deft maneuver, David would capture the imagination of the progressives who wanted to be more like the other nations with a king and a capital city, and the loyalty of the traditionalists, the conservatives who wanted nothing more than the religious reminder of the good old days dating back to Moses.

As political symbols go, it was as brilliant as wrapping yourself in an American flag, kissing babies, and then sitting down to a big piece of apple pie. It was a surefire public relations winner. I remember from my brief study of Oklahoma history as a youngster growing up in that lovely state, that one dark night in 1910 the city fathers in Oklahoma City sneaked up the road to the new state capital in Guthrie, purloined the state seal, and took it away to protective custody in Oklahoma City. These days we might think that would have little to do with the location of a state capital, but in those pioneer days, without the official state seal, Guthrie couldn’t function as the capital, and with it, Oklahoma City could. The capital has been in Oklahoma City ever since. The ark of the covenant functioned a bit like that for David, and his initial intention in acquiring it for Jerusalem may have been as cool and calculating as the motives behind that midnight raid to Guthrie, Oklahoma.

One of the mistakes we make when we read this story is to assume that the human motives behind all the action were pure. Anyone who has studied David and his followers even a little should know better, but we forget. David’s faith was continually tested by a temptation to try to be God rather than to serve God.

As the ark was being carried on its new cart toward Jerusalem, a man named Uzzah, casually reached out his hand to steady it the way you might steady a ladder for a friend heading up to the roof. We would read that as a straightforward gesture, but in doing so we fail to read the religious significance that lies behind even casual actions. Uzzah’s gesture was an impulsive confession of faith in the power of human beings. The ark of the covenant was treated just like a regular box, calculatingly included among plans for political consolidation without sufficient thought as to God’s hopes for Israel. It was being handled with a familiarity that suggested that David and his supporters had begun to consider God to be their God, belonging to them, more than they saw themselves as God’s people who belong to God. Israel was forever getting the covenant turned around that way, and that is what this story is really about.

God’s graciousness toward Israel was really God’s own graciousness, not some commodity they could elicit on command and use to further their own ends. We are not meant to use God for our purposes, God intends to use us for God’s purposes, and when we have that straight, we are much more likely to live in an appropriate relationship with God.

Uzzah’s gesture represented that too-familiar attempt to manipulate God to serve human purposes. The result of Uzzah’s death was that David was forced to reconsider what he was doing, he had to send the ark to another storage site for three months while he got the proper order of things straight again. “How can the ark of the Lord come into my care?” he finally asked himself. If it was to come, it must come through a power not entirely his own, and he would have to give heed to that reality. The renewed procession into Jerusalem took on a whole new spirit when David remembered that he had been anointed to serve rather than to be served.

The last word was and is to be the power of God’s graciousness, not the human ability to seize what it wants. God’s grace, not our grip, is our central source of authority. This isn’t a bad thing to remember on the Sunday following our biggest national holiday.

Paul reminded the Corinthians of this grace of God in a wonderful way. The 7th verse of our 2^nd Corinthians reading used to be translated: “You excel in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness...” When we hear lists of things like this, what we expect to hear next is, “Since you excel in this, this, and this, why not excel in this?” And that’s the way the verse used to end, does in fact end in older translations of the Bible. But having taken a more considered look at an ancient Greek text, the New Revised Standard Version gives us what makes more theological sense. Now the passage reads, “You excel in faith, in speech, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you.” Our love for you? How can you excel in the fact that someone else loves you? The new translation makes so much more sense. The final word in the phrase is now grace. You excel in these things that you do, but you also excel in our love for you, that is, in something which is in no way beholden to your own effort.

We always need reminders that the gospel of Christ is not about doing good things, but about doing grace-filled things, walking the extra mile, giving a shirt as well as the cloak, turning the other cheek, offering what is not expected because the power under which we operate is not of our own devising. We are free to respond at the Spirit’s direction rather than by the counsel of human calculation, because the freedom of Christ has set us free.

© 2012 Robert J. Elder 1st Presbyterian Church

Death and Taxes

Death and Taxes

Romans 13:1-7; Acts 4:1-20

© 2012, Robert J. Elder

Sunday, July 1, 2012

I recall once, a few years ago, reading an article called “Bumper-sticker theology,”[1] about the difficulties of preaching from the biblical book of Proverbs, then making up our own bumper sticker phrases to capsulize some important belief in a single phrase. It’s not as easy as it looks. Everyone should try summing up something of their whole philosophy of life in six to eight words. There are lots of these gracing reader boards outside churches that, like ours, have reader boards. I have a friend who collects them and sends them to me, phrases like:

Give Satan an inch and he will become your ruler,

and this friendly one that might ride on a bumper you’d do well to avoid:

 “Go to God or go to hell.”

A couple more demonstrate other points of view:

“I'm for the separation of church and hate,”

and this, that takes more time to think about than is usually provided at a red light:

“If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.”

In 1816, a few years before he would die in one of those brainless nineteenth century “honor” duels of the type that took Alexander Hamilton’s life, a handsome naval hero named Stephen Decatur coined one of the more famous bumper sticker phrases of all time, even though there were no bumpers – or stickers – at the time. That doesn’t mean we can’t find his famous words sticking to some bumpers even today. He spoke his famous phrase at a banquet in Norfolk, Virginia, ending a toast by saying “...our country, right or wrong.”[2] Everyone you speak with is likely to know the quote, few will know its origin. I had to look it up in the Oxford Book of Quotations.

But most who hear it will recognize right away an ethical or even theological problem inherent in the statement. Its implication is that the actions of my country, no matter what they may be, are the highest moral standard to which we need make our allegiance, that there is no ethical authority higher than that which benefits my country.

56 years later, in 1872, in an address to the US Senate, a German immigrant and Civil War hero named Carl Schurz refined Decatur’s words, unfortunately in a sentence too long to fit on anything but the bumper on a Humvee or a Greyhound Bus, but it is well put nonetheless: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right!”

The implication of this is that there exists some authority, some higher standard by which we may judge all human actions, and seek to put right the ones that are in the wrong by that standard. This is something that surely transcends our common ways of looking at matters before our nation, whether they are liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. But we do often appeal to one another with the idea that we ought to be thinking about our national life in terms of values, and of course, this suggests that whether we call ourselves conservative or liberal, we recognize that many issues before us are fundamentally moral in nature. Are right and wrong measured by something higher than national interest? I know you probably will have an inkling how I would respond to that question, and how you might, but, as a friend of mine said to his congregation, “You know how anybody who believes in a God worthy of the name has to answer that question. In blunt poker language, God trumps nation, even my nation.”[3]

Our Bible passages today speak to the sometimes heated dialogue between “our country right or wrong” and “our country ... kept right or set right.” On the one hand, there have been more than a few who have used Paul’s words in our text from Romans as some sort of apostolic injunction to give blind obedience to governing authorities no matter how wicked or wrong-headed they may be:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Romans 13:1-3 NRSV)

This text was popular with the slave-holders of the nineteenth century as they tried to argue from the Bible for the continuation of that peculiar institution.

On the other hand, our passage from Acts seems to provide an equally strong case for resistance to authorities who misuse their power in order to stifle expressions of faith.

“While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them ... they arrested them and put them in custody ... The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem ... they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:1-20, selections NRSV)

It is the sort of passage to which the American patriots of 1776, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and others appealed when subjected to persecution at the hands of unjust governing authorities.

Setting these two passages side by side strikes our minds like watching a juggler handle five baseballs. At first it might seem easy enough, but when we observe closely, it’s not as easy as it looks.

Put Paul's words in Romans – “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” – next to Peter’s response to the command of the Jerusalem authorities that they keep quiet about Jesus – “... we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” – and we have all the makings of an animated discussion in the earliest days of the church’s existence about its relationship to governing power, the sometimes cosey, sometimes hostile relationship between church and state, a discussion which has continued from that time to the present.

Thinking on these things on Independence Day weekend, a friend of mine concluded, “these two passages are ... like a pair of goal posts for Christians to aim between as they bring their faith to bear on politics. To the one side, ‘Yes, Paul, we are subject to the authority of the state, and must value the good of the commonwealth.’ And to the other side, ‘Yes, Peter and John, when push comes to shove and you have to choose, God is the higher authority.’”[4]

In just a few minutes you and I, no matter where we agree or disagree politically on the issues of the day, will come together to take the bread and the cup offered in the name of Jesus Christ and thereby reaffirm our ultimate personal and corporate loyalty to his kingdom, his reign, his Lordship, above all other lords.

  

Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century, April 4, 2006, p. 43.

[2] Brought to my attention in a sermon, “Can Religion and Politics Mix?” by Michael Lindvall, delivered at Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.