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  • Prayer In The Modern World

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    Prayer In The Modern World

    Allen C. McSween, Jr.

    Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laurinburg, N. C.

    “We are living through one of the great hours of history. The false gods are crumbling, and our hearts are hungry for the voice of God/’

    Abraham Heschel

    He was 27 years old and dying of cancer. His parents and wife had come by the house one Sunday afternoon to ask that I visit and have prayer with him. I did, but as I was leaving after a brief prayer, the young man grabbed my arm and with a look on his face that I will long remember asked, “Preacher, is all that true. . .is it really true for me?” A person cannot serve long in the pastoral ministry without facing a similar situation and similar question. Do our prayers really make any difference? It may be easy enough to see how prayer can be of some help to the one praying, but what about intercessory prayer? Do our prayers for others have any real effect? No issue focuses more sharply one’s basic theology (or lack of it) than the question of intercessory prayer. Here what one believes about God and his relationship to his people and his creation becomes inescapably personal and practical. During this Easter Season it would be well worth a minister’s time to give serious attention to the nature and effect of Christian prayer. It is to stimulate and aid in such reflection that this article is offered.

    I PRAYER IN OUR CONTEMPORARY SITUATION “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire. . .the Christian’s vital breath, the Christian’s native air.” So we occasionally sing in the words of James Montgomery ‘s old hymn. Perhaps that ought to be the case, but for a great many people today it simply is not. Once it was more or less taken for granted that prayer was at the very heart and center of the Christian’s life in the world. But that day has long since passed. Prayer has become a problem to all sorts of people, clergy and laity alike. Many of us are not unlike the French philosopher Voltaire, who, while going down a street in Paris with a friend, stopped and removed his hat as a religious procession went by. The friend^ surprised by his seeming reverence, asked, “What, are you reconciled with God?” With fine irony Voltaire replied, “We salute . . . but we do not speak.” The same thing could be said for many of us and our contemporaries. “We salute”—we acknowledge the reality of God, and perhaps even seek to serve his

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    cause in the movements of our day for justice and liberation, but “we do not speak”—not in any deeply personal sense. So we find a curious paradox today. On the one hand we know that for a great many people, including many in the church, prayer has become a lost art. Jim Angel, in his book Put Your Arms Around the City states the issues bluntly and accurately: “Most of us, if we are really honest, have to confess that we pray infrequently, unsatisfyingly, and on many days not at all.” For many of us prayer has lost its essential meaning and reality. And yet, the terrible irony is that at the very same time there is in our culture a deep hunger for authentic spirituality, for religious meaning and value. People who no longer, or perhaps never, found Christian prayer meaningful, are all too eager to pay $125 for a course in Transcendental Meditation, or worse. Books of serious theology collect dust on bookstore shelves while accounts of spiritual experience, even of the most egotistical and bizarre forms, become instant bestsellers. The sense of wonder and awe at the deep mysteries of life that has gone out of the life of the church has come back in through the local movie theater in such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, There is clearly a deep and persistent hunger for religious reality today. If traditional forms of the life of faith and prayer leave us empty, we find other things to fill the void. When people cease to believe in the living God, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out, they do not cease to believe in something. They are likely to believe in anything. Anyone who thinks we live in an Age of Unbelief is simply out of touch with the contemporary situation. It is not unbelief, but over-belief that is most striking today. Modern men and women for all their supposed sophistication, are still incurable believers. They do not gain or lose faith—they merely change the object of it. One way or another they believe: in astrology, health foods, U.F.O.’s, “salvation by grope through feeling,” “It,” free enterprise, a Buick, the Spirit. Like it or not believing is as integral to our humanity as breathing. The question is whether the object of our belief is true, trustworthy, and saving. In this time both of too much and too little prayer, when the Christian community is caught between reductionistic views of prayer that would reduce it to pious monologue and superstitious views that would make prayer an “Aladdin’s lamp,^ it is impertative that we seek to clarify for our peope the nature of Christian prayer. The late Abraham Herschel was right, “We are living through one of the great hours in history. The false gods are crumbling and our hearts are hungry for the voice of God.”

    II TOWARD A THEOLOGY FOR INTERCESSORY PRAYER

    Here let us move on to lay out a framework for considering some of the basic theological issues raised by prayer, especially intercessory prayer. In developing a proposal on intercessory prayer at least four basic points need to be taken into account. THE NATURE OF GOD: God is conceived in Christian faith as the ground, sustainer and goal of all reality. It is he by whom and in whom all things “live

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    and move and have their being.” He creates, governs, and sustains the world, not by sheer power, “naked sovereignty,” but out of the love revealed in Jesus Christ, “without whom was not anything made that was made.” A Christian view of God takes as its center of focus the life, death, resurrection , and continuing presence of Jesus Christ, and thus finds its paradigm for God’s activity in the world in the suffering love seen in the cross. The “living God” of the Bible is no remote, aloof deity, but a God who takes our suffering and sin into his own divine life. Such a God is best understood in terms of “personal, purposive love” (Gordon Kaufman), a love that is present and active in all events bringing good into being. He is one who can properly be addressed in the most intimate of human terms, Abba, dear Father. THE NATURE OF THE CREATED ORDER: The best contemporary thought about the nature of the world sees it not as a closed, static, mechanistic system governed by immutable “laws of nature,” but as a dynamic, interrelated process characterized by both order and novelty, contingency and indetermining , stability and freedom. Such a world-view looks at the universe less in terms of a complex machine (e.g. a watch) and more in terms of a living, evolving organism in which each part is involved in the life of the whole. This view does not deny contingency and causality, but it sees different forms of casuality operating at the different levels of existence—matter, life, mind, and spirit. The higher one moves up the scale of subjectivity the greater is the freedom and the less direct the causality. (For a good summary of this contemporary understanding of the world, see Ian Barbour’s Issues in Science and Religion.) HOW GOD ACTS IN THE CREATED ORDER: The older, mechanistic view of the world left little room for speaking of how God acts in the created order. God is not a being among other beings who acts by physical causation. But the new organic, or “process” view of reality opens up a number of new ways of affirming God’s active involvement in all of existence. It can be said that God acts in the created order in ways that are appropriate to the level of existence with which he is dealing. For example, with inaninate objects or forces (e.g. stones or gravity), he acts in terms of the maintainance of order, harmony, stability, (“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” Gen. 8:22) With persons, however, God acts in terms of freedom, of spirit, of the persuasion of love, of human initiative and response. In the human realm, as Alfred North Whitehead has put it, “the power of God is the worship he inspires .” We need to say more than that about God’s sovereignty in history, but certainly God’s primary action in human history is through the appeal of love, of hope, of creative trust. But here we must come a step further and consider God’s activity in that middle ground betwen the realms of nature and of freedom, for instance, in the processes of health and disease. It is in this area that our prayers of intercession most often fall. Is there a relationship between prayer and the physiological processes that lead to bodily wholeness? With the recent discoveries in the area of psychosomatic medicine it becomes increasingly clear that there is a close relationship between the mental-

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    spiritual activity of prayer and the body’s healing systems. Many physiological processes once thought to be automatic have been found to be subject to a considerable degree of self control. Through bio-feedback training, for example, a person can learn to control the rate of his heartbeat or skin temperature. The results in terms of treating stress-related disorders have been quite significant. It has also been found that even very slight changes in the body’s electrochemical systems can result in significant alteration in cell growth. Obviously, a word of caution is in order. Psychosomatic medicine offers a fuller understanding of how mental-spiritual activity is related to physical changes, but it should not be considered a new “proof of prayer.” In our praying, as in our believing and living, we walk by faith not by sight. Yet, having said that, it is my belief that what we learn from psychosomatic medicine does offer a conceptuality, in accord with our best understanding of the nature of reality, that helps us understand at least one of the ways in which God, as Spirit and Love, effects change in the created order. With such conceptuality one does not need to argue for God’s activity in the created order in terms of intervention, i.e. his setting aside of or violating its natural order. One can make a strong case for God’s active presence and involvement throughout all of creation as Spirit and Love. In such manner God works “in, with, and under” (to use the Lutheran sacramental phrase) the created agencies of the world. He acts to bring healing and wholeness, not through coercive power, but through the influences of Spirit upon the self and thus the body of the person. Intercessory prayer need not ask God to disrupt the order of creation, but to act in and through that order which itself is ultimately an expression of love and open to love’s service. AN INVITATION TO INTERCESSORY PRAYER: Someone has said that the real test of any theology of prayer is whether it leads one to pray. Here at the edge of all our conceptualities we come to the mystery of God’s command and permission that we address him in prayer in the trust that we are heard and answered according to his infinite wisdom and love and our deepest need. John Calvin speaks of the need for “reverence and moderation” in prayer “lest we give loose reign to miscellaneous requests and lest we crave more than God allows” (Institutes, III-20-16). But Calvin also insists that “if we would pray fruitfully, we ought therefore to grasp with both hands this assurance of obtaining what we ask, which the Lord enjoins with his own voice. . . .For only that prayer is acceptable to God which is born. . .out of such presumtion of faith and is grounded in the unshaken assurance of hope.” (III-20-12) And so, even at the limits of our understanding, we offer our prayers of intercession for three basic reasons. We pray as an expression of love. Fosdick called prayer “love on its knees” and so it is. Because we love and because that love is grounded in God, we cannot but pray for the well-being of a loved one. We find such prayers of intercession torn from our hearts almost in spite of ourselves. No one has dealt more poigrantly with this aspect of prayer than Peter deVries in his novel The Blood of the Lamb. The skeptical father, whose daughter was dying of leukemia, prays, despite his own rational objections, what is surely one of the most beautiful prayers in all literature.

    I do not ask that she be spared to me, but that her life be spared to her.

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    Or give us a year. We will spend it as we have the last, missing nothing. We will mark the dance of every hour between the snowdrop and the snow: crocus to tulip to violet to iris to rose. . .We will seek out these modest subtleties so lost in the blare of oaks and maples, like flutes and woodwinds drowned in brasses and drums. When winter comes, we will let no snow fall ignored. We will again watch the first blizzard from her window like figures locked snug in a glass paperweight. “Pick one out and follow it to the ground!” she will say again. We will feed the plain birds that stay to cheer us through the winter, and when spring returns we shall be the first out, to catch the snowdrop’s first white whisper in the wood. All this we ask, with the remission of our sins, in Christ’s name. Amen. (p. 228-229)

    We pray because Christ bids us pray. He invites us to offer to God all our deepest needs and desires. He does not guarantee that our prayers will be ansered as we desire—that would be magic, not prayer—but he does assure us that “if you ask anything of the Father in my name (i.e. in accord with my sovereign purposes of love), he will give it to you.” (John 16:23) Prayer in our acceptance of God’s gracious invitation and command to bring before him all our concerns as a child to a parent, in the assurance that even before a word is on our lips, he knows and cares and wills to help. If one does not believe that, obviously prayer is seen as of no effect. But if one does believe that, prayer is inevitable. We pray because through prayer we open ourselves and others to the working of God’s Spirit in our lives. This is the great and essential mystery of prayer, that the sovereign Lord of all creation is open for our needs and that he calls us to be his loyal covenant partners, to share in the accomplishment of his just and loving purposes in history. That is something we dare not take for granted. In prayer we share in God’s sovereign governance of the world. As Karl Barth has put it, “God’s sovereignty is so great that it embraces both the possibility, and, as it is exercised, the actuality that the creature can actively be present and co-operate in His over-ruling.” (Church Dogmatics, III/3, p.285) Without abandoning his control of the universe, God allows himself to be influenced by his creatures. “He not merely permits but commands him to call upon Him in the definite expression that He will hear and answer, that his asking will have an objective as well as subjective significance, i.e. a significance for His own will and action.” (p.286). We do not pray as a means of “lobbying in the courts of the Almighty,” nor as a magical technique to bend God’s will to our own. We pray in the faith and bold persistence that comes from knowing that God has freely and unalterably elected to be for us in Jesus Christ, to stand with us, to share our suffering and make whole our brokenness. Intercessory prayer is never a substitute for the means God has provided for the healing and preservation of life. But prayer can effect significant change in the object of the prayer, so long as such prayer is an authentic expression of love and does not violate the freedom and integrity of the other. Here again a word of caution is in order. While affirming that God does hear and answer prayer, we must also state clearly that his answer may not be at all what we expect or desire at the moment. God is simply not at our beck and call Christian prayer is no guarantee that we will get whatever we want from God.

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    But that in itself is an expression of God’s gracious gift of freedom and responsibility. Only in a world with rough edges, a world where risk and struggle and courage are woven into the very fabric of life, can the finest human qualities come into being. Because God’s goal for us is the achievement of “full maturity in Christ,” there are often times when he must refuse a specific request as an expression of his wise love. Just as we who are parents must often deny our children’s requests for the sake of their long-term growth and development, so God, at times, must deny our petitions. But what else should we expect—with our limited vision, our fragmentary understanding, our persistent sin and self-centeredness. How could all our prayers be answered without chaos in the world? Too often to grant what we ask would require that God play special favorites. In light of what we know of how interwoven our lives and destinies are with persons throughout the world, we can see how God must at times refuse our requests, lest in giving that which would be good for us, he bring harm to someone else. Abraham Lincoln, in his magnificent Second Inaugural Address, the most theologically astute State paper in American history, has expressed well the attitude of mature faith:

    Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered, that of neither has been answered just as they intended. . . . Yet still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

    At times God must refuse our specific requests, but even in so doing, he is still present and at work within us. He may not answer our petitions as we desire, but he does answer us. He gives us the strength and support for his love, and through it the courage and serenity to bear whatever may come our way, in the assurance that his grace is sufficient. And so we do not let the cautions we must take into account cut the nerve of prayer. Scripture and Christian experience take seriously the reality of ungranted prayer, but they take even more seriously the gracious invitation and command of our Lord to offer to him the deepest intercessions of our hearts in the lively and reckless confidence that he answers our prayers in ways that are “just and righteous altogether.” In one of the most moving scenes in Augustine’s Confessions he pictures his mother, Monica, praying all night in a sea-side chapel on the coast of North Africa, that God would not let her son sail for Italy. More than anything else in life Monica wanted her son to become a Christian, but she feared that if he went to Italy, with all its temptation, he would be lost forever. Yet even as she prayed, Augustine sailed for Italy. But there he came under the influence of the great Bishop Ambrose and in time became one of the greatest of all Christian theologians . Augustine “became a Christian in the very place from which his mother’s prayers would have kept him.” (Fosdick, The Meaning of Prayer, p. 120) Even if God does not answer our specific requests in the way we desire, it is our faith and confidence that he does answer our deepest needs in accord with his own wise and holy love.

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    Finally, let us remember that in all our prayers we do not pray alone. Our prayers are a part of the intercession of the whole communio sanctorum. They pray with and for us. In so doing, all our prayers are caught up in the continual intercession of Christ himself. Again Barth emphasizes, “God is the Father of Jesus Christ, and that very man, Jesus Christ, has prayed and he is praying still. Such is the foundation of our prayer in Jesus Christ. It is as if God himself has pledged to answer our request because all our prayers are summed up in Jesus Christ; God cannot fail to answer; since it is Jesus Christ who prays.” (Prayer According to the Catechisms of the Reformation, p. 22) Having said all this, we return once more to the mystery of prayer. To speak of the mystery of prayer can be a cop-out. It can be a refusal to use our minds in the service and worship of God. But it also can be an expression of deep humility, reverence, and trust. L. Harold DeWolf, certainly no friend of obscurantism , puts it this way, “The ways and means He employs (in the answering of prayer) I cannot predict, but I know that it is He whose love impelís me to offer intercessory prayer. His love will not let it fall back in vain.” (A Theology of the Living Church, p. 362) And so, even in the face of incurable illness, we pray for healing, out of love, out of faith, and in the trust that in ways beyond our understanding God accepts and uses our prayers in his providential governance of the world. Through prayer we act as channels of his sovereign love, the love at the heart of all reality, by which in the fullness of time “there shall be no more mourning or crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have all passed away.”

  • Will Self-Sacrifice Work

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

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    Will Self-Sacrifice Work?

    J. Malcolm Brownlee, Jr.

    Yogyakarta,

    Indonesia

    Will self-sacrifice work? The question is a proper one, because Christian self-sacrifice is not an end in itself. It is a means to the realization of love to God and neighbor. When it is separated from love and sought for its own sake, self-sacrifice becomes a source of self-righteousness. It issues in a morbid austerity and a shriveling of the self rather than a purposeful magnanimity and the fruition of self. The question is proper, also, because its answer is not obvious. Indeed, many persons who are attracted by the Christian ideals of love, justice, and liberty react against self-denial. Self-sacrifice is deemed unnecessary for our love for God and a probable hindrance to our love for neighbor and self. Is self-sacrifice effective in a world of systems and power politics? Granted, if the grain that feeds the beef an American eats could reach a hungry family in Bangladesh, it would probably lengthen the lives of the members of that family. And if one family member were less than two years old, he or she would probably be saved from permanent brain damage. But there is no guarantee that the grain thus saved would ever get out of the U.S.A. Saving the grain might contribute to lower food prices and to farmers’ withholding land from production . Therefore, are not political efforts to bring about a more just U.S. food policy far more important than cutting down on the beef we eat? One person’s altered life style seems a futile gesture. Are not attempts at self-sacrifice a form of escapism? Self-sacrifice also seems contrary to the Christian and humanist emphasis on liberation and self-fulfillment. What is the place of self-sacrifice in the efforts of blacks, women, and the poor to fulfill their potential as human beings? Is not the struggle to gain one’s own human rights hindered by a willingness to surrender those rights? Also, does not self-sacrifice lead to a self-degradation which is at odds with God’s desire to make us more responsible and more fully human? The answer to these questions is that self-sacrifice is a relevant and necessary part of our relationships with God, neighbor, and self. The neglect of selfsacrifice has caused serious deficiencies in the Church’s faith and witness. It has led to the illusion that social progress is possible without cost. Specifically, the failure to call its members to self-sacrifice is crippling the Church’s efforts to respond to the greatest social issue of our day: the unjust imbalance between the rich and poor of the world.

    I. The Sacrifice of Self

    Self-sacrifice is, first and most importantly, a necessary condition for fellowship with God. Our self-denial does not create this fellowship. God has done

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    that. But nothing short of self-denial will allow us to enter his fellowship. Communion with God as Lord requires the death of the self as the ultimate object of our trust and affection. It requires the surrender of our relative security in order to find Christ’s security and insecurity. It requires discipline, suffering, and the willingness to die. Thus self-sacrifice is far from being an optional nicety of the Christian life. It is not a practice for only especially dedicated persons or for only certain periods of the year. It is a central requirement. Will self-sacrifice work? The answer is that nothing less will work. The failure of the church to take seriously Christ’s call to a self-denying yielding of ourselves to him is one source of the unfortunate division between Christians who emphasize conversion and personal piety and those who emphasize political action and social justice. Self-sacrifice is a point where evangelism, worship, and Christian social action all meet. Christian conversion, prayer, and ethics all begin with the surrender of our selves to God and the desire for his will to be done in all areas of our lives and all areas of the world. The message of the personal evangelist is, at root, the same as the message of the social prophet. It is a call to repentence, discipleship, and self-sacrifice, a call to let our self-will be crucified, a call to place all areas of our lives under God’s care and command. The temptation for the evangelist is not to go with Christ far enough. The personal and the religious realms of life are surrendered to God but not the economic and political realms. A half-way conversion allows us the solace of considering ourselves to be God’s people while making no effort to change those parts of our lives which are contrary to God’s will for justice and peace in the world. The temptation of the social prophet is not to start from the beginning. Thus, efforts to improve society are not founded upon a surrender of self to God. We try to change the world without changing ourselves. Such efforts may often produce reform that is in accord with God’s intentions, but they easily fall prey to arrogance or disillusionment; and they may produce a cold shell of structural justice, unaccompanied by acts of personal kindness and sacrificial love. Social concern without self-denial can also lead to an elitist directing of societal change 4’for the sake of the poor” or a paternalistic helping of the poor rather than a

    genuine involvement with the poor in their struggles. A spirit of self-sacrifice likewise unites the prophet with the mystic. Christian devotional life and Christian social service both require the willingness to follow Christ wherever he leads: to poverty, to rejection by friends, even to death. The spirit of Christian contemplation is the spirit of discipleship which Jesus demanded when he said, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk. 8:34). True prayer is not an escape from our responsibilities in the world; rather it is an act of self-forgetful yielding to Christ and his commands for service. In prayer and in service we give ourselves to God so that he can mold us into instruments devoted to his purposes. We are transformed and made whole in order to enjoy his company, labor in his kingdom, and to do his will among humankind. We are freed from self so that we may live for God and for others.

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    Worship and prayer are not simply means to a better moral life. Communion with God is not simply preparation for service in the world; it is the chief end of life. But this communion is found and strengthened in the sacrificial giving of oneself to God in both contemplation and service. Thus prayer and discipleship strengthen each other because both result in the increased placing of areas of our lives under God’s direction. The prophet and mystic both are able to distance themselves from society. They are not controlled by the systems of society because their loyalty is to the Lord over society. Thus they are able to stand against society and criticize it. The process of liberating ourselves from bondage to the false lords of the system is inseparable from the process of liberating others.

    II. The Sacrifice of Wealth

    So far we have been using the terms self-sacrifice and self-denial in their basic sense: the surrender of self to God. Is it proper also to use these terms for the sacrifice of wealth or the abstinence from certain luxuries? Certainly, we must reject the idea that self-denial means the giving up of a few pleasures, for example during Lent. On the other hand, no self-denial is complete which does not involve the placing of our economic life under the Lordship of Christ. The Bible repeatedly warns that possessions are one of the most dangerous obstacles to a self-forgetful commitment to God. Reliance upon possessions instead of God for our security is a prevalent from of unbelief. “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt.6:24). For the rich young man who sought eternal life, self-denial meant the selling of possessions (Mk. 10:17-22). Jesus warned about the danger of riches: “How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk.l0:23). Thus it behooves all American Christians to ask what self-denial means for us in our economic life. Let us remember that we are not talking about an optional area of the Christian life. We are talking about an absolute requirement . What does economic self-sacrifice mean in America? I confess that I do not know the answer. Certainly what many Americans would consider sacrificial would seem luxurious to most of the world’s people. My family is trying to practice a life-style that does not set us apart from the Indonesians around us. We are not succeeding. We spend $400 a month, more than—though within range of—any of the families of my collegues on the seminary faculty and eight times as much as the average Indonesian family of our size. Our family of four eats around three-fourths of a pound of meat a day; our neighbors eat no meat except on festive occasions. We drive a second-hand Toyota Corolla about 6000 miles a year. Only one of our neighbors has a car. Most ride bicycles or public transportation. The well-to-do have motorcycles. We are limited to 700 watts of electricity. Most of our neighbors have less than 200 watts. Our neighbors are all middle-class Indonesians, but they have far less than the poor in America. Yet during our furlough in America we found that we needed much more just to do the things we felt were important. We could not live and work without a telephone, 3000 watts of electricity, and a car that travelled 18,000 miles in

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    ten months. American society is organized in a way that makes it impossible to live at a level which the majority of the world’s people would regard as simple. I once tried to explain to a group of Indonesian students why poor people in America usually need cars to shop or to get to work. The students laughed. Indonesians can do everything they need to do without a car. Some walk up to five miles to work each day. There are trains, large buses, small buses, and pedicabs going in every direction. Only the rich have cars. American Christians, therefore, must work for a national pattern of life that is less dependent on automobiles, airplanes, gadgets, paper, and disposable products. In the meantime, however, economic self-denial in America is forced to use a different scale from that appropriate for most of the rest of the world. To live on $10,000 a year would mean real sacrifice for many American families. On the other hand, let’s not kid ourselves about what we need. Many Americans who make $15,000 or $20,000 feel that they are on the brink of poverty. They are revolting against taxes, which they feel are taking the bread off their tables. One such family, good friends of mine, has a swimming pool, two cars, two color T.V. sets, and top quality stereo equipment. They take frequent vacations at expensive resorts and often eat out at expensive restaurants . They do not see how they could live on less. Other friends have bought boats and campers, which they feel they must use almost every summer weekend in order to get their money’s worth. These persons remain my close friends. I am too concerned about my own life-style to condemn theirs. But I worry that they and I may have become dependent on possessions for happiness and security to a degree that jeopardizes our relationship with the Lord. The life-style of American churches also bears examination in the light of Jesus’ warning about the danger of wealth. Congregations are spending more money on themselves and less for benevolences. Luxurious new buildings, expensive programs, costly materials, and highly paid pastors all take money which could be used for evangelism or social service. We all know the justification for such expenditures: they are necessary to attract and educate people who will then give more to mission. But this strategy is not working. Indeed, the only stewardship strategy which will build the mission of the Church is one which calls for personal and congregational self-sacrifice. God calls his people not to privileged convenience but to costly service. Churches which do not heed this call forfeit their relationship to God as his chosen people. The glory of the church resides less in her towering cathedrals than in her martyred saints. Nothing less than self-sacrifice will work for a person or a church which wants to glorify God and enjoy fellowship with him.

    III. Self-Sacrifice, Credibility, and Sharing Self-sacrifice is, secondly, a necessary part of our love to others. We are to love others as Christ loved us and laid down his life for us (Jn.15:12-13). Love for others involves more than giving what we can spare without pain. It means commitment to them and sacrifice for them.

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    The Koinonia of the New Testament church was no trivial socializing with coffee, cookies, and small talk. Rather it was a bond of costly accountability of Christians to one another. Whenever persons were in need, others shared with them. “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of houses or lands sold them. . .and distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34-35). When Christians in Jerusalem faced financial hardship , their want was supplied by Christians in Macedonia, Galatia, Asia, Ephesus , and other places. Both within local congregations and across ethnic and geographical lines, Christians felt so responsible for one another that those who had much shared with those who had little. The present economic imbalance between the rich and the poor calls us to the same type of costly sharing which characterized the New Testament church. A total of one billion people are starving or malnourished. U.S. residents use five times as much grain per person as do the citizens of developing countries. The U.S. with 5.6% of the world’s population is consuming 42% of the world’s aluminum , 44% of its coal, and 63% of its natural gas. One American uses enough resources to support 50 Indonesians. In the face of such disparity, it seems ludicrous to use the term self-sacrifice for such adjustments as using smaller cars, less electricity and meat, and clothes which have gone out of style. Simple justice demands that we do at least this and much more. Such is not surprising, however, when we remember that selfsacrifice , like justice, is a central requirement, not an additional option, for the Christian. Economic self-sacrifice is one means to justice. Justice is one result of self-sacrifice. First, self-sacrifice is necessary to establish our credibility as advocates of political and social change. Improving the structures that produce injustice is a crucial part of the church’s agenda. Christians must use their influence to persuade the government to reform its food policies and bring about a more just system of international trade. But we must not fail to practice the morality which we urge upon the public. Major U.S. denominations are failing to realize in their own lives the economic and social standards which they are asking the government to legislate in society. The result is a loss of credibility. Our political influence will be strengthened if we practice what we preach. The Christian citizens’ movement Bread For The World, for example, receives greater respect because its staff members keep their salaries low. The director lives in New York City on less than $9000. Second, self-sacrifice is necessary in order to share with others. American Christians could make a significant contribution to the relief of world poverty if they were to give more. Let us assume an income of $17,177 (1974 median U.S. family income plus 6% yearly increases) for a family of four. Religious donations usually run about 3% or $515. If this family were to use $13,000 (the figure is an example only and is probably too high) for its own expenses, it would have to do without some luxuries, but it would still be able to live in comfort. This would leave $4,177 for others. Let us assume that $3000 of this is used to fight poverty. A mere 10,000 families could give $30,000,000. In 1974 the cash disbursements of Church World Service were $11,500,000; World Vision’s were about $20,000,000. Two millior ^milies (a small percentage of American Christians)

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    using this pattern could provide $6 billion, more than the amount which, according to the 1974 World Food Congress, developing countries need for investment in agricultural development. Such aid would have to be used with care to avoid paternalism and increased dependency. But strategies already exist to overcome these obstacles if funds become available. There are limits to the benefits that such aid can bring, but there are also unknown possibilities. Only 5% of American Christians could make a significant impact on world hunger and development needs.

    IV. Self-Sacrifice as Witness

    Third, the self-sacrificing Christian community can become a paradigm which demonstrates the possibility of a life free from bondage to mammon. God calls us to become the kind of redeemed community which points to the existence of his kingdom. By displaying a new quality of life, the church can expose the illusion that wealth and comfort are the primary sources of human happiness . We can exhibit a new pattern of relationships in which people are more important than things. We can show that it is possible to resist the lies of advertising and yet be satisfied. We can manifest the joy gained from human fellowship and from pleasures which are free or inexpensive. In short, we can show that people can live simply in America and still be content, more content than those who live luxuriously. What will be the impact of such a style of life on those around us? Certainly some people will regard us as odd fanatics. But there is a chance that more than a few persons will be impressed by the freedom we enjoy and will change their values. Following a poll Louis Harris wrote that many Americans were coming to the point “where the accumulation of physical possessions and steadily increasing consumption would no longer be as central to people’s concerns. . . . This would mark a striking turnabout in our country’s thinking.” Many people long to be liberated from the dehumanizing pressures that distort the true value of life. By demonstrating the possibility of a different style of life, the church can help to free some of the rich as well as some of the poor. Whenever it is possible, such a style of life should be organized by local congregations. When a congregation as a whole is unwilling, groups within congregations or from several congregations can be formed. Members of such groups should be committed to sharing with one another as well as with the poor of the world. If we know that others will help us in times of economic difficulty, we are given added freedom not to store up wealth for ourselves. Groups should talk over family budgets and major purchases in order to reinforce one another’s resolve and question one another’s rationalizations. We must rid ourselves of the illusion that the main contribution of American Christians to the war on world poverty lies in our wealth or our political power. That is part of the system’s lie which we are fighting. Certainly we should use our wealth and political power, but we should do so in a courageous and exuberant way. We should not hoard wealth and power or be afraid to risk losing them; rather we should employ them with a carefree attitude that shows that we regard them as being of secondary importance. More significant than our wealth and power is the opportunity we have to

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    live a simple, self-sacrificing life that manifests our trust in God and our love for one another. The weakness of Jesus Christ on the cross revealed a new type of power which comes not from money and force but from trust and selfsacrificial love. Christians today are called to demonstrate this same power by rejecting the illusions and materialism and living by the providence of God for the well-being of others. The church as an institution is summoned to give support to Christian individuals and groups who are living simply and to provide channels for them to use the money they are saving. It is also called to a vocation of poverty and self-sacrifice as an institution. Such a vocation means working and worshipping in less expensive buildings or no buildings of its own, combining programs with other denominations, and relying more on work by lay volunteers instead of paid professionals. It means that instead of seeking to be recognized as one of the powers in the world, the church must rely less upon its wealth and political connections and more upon the power which God can only demonstrate through those who are willing to be weak and poor for him. At the least, the church will have to divest itself of all investments and endowments which put profits and interest rates above the welfare of the disadvantaged people of the world.

    V. ILLUSIONS OF SELF-FULFILLMENT

    Since self-sacrifice is an indispensable part of love to God and neighbor, it is obviously necessary for self-fulfillment. Paradoxically, we only find fulfillment in our lives when we are willing to give them up. Jesus said: “. . .whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mk.8:35). This conception of self-fulfillment runs counter to all the prevailing conceptions which hold that self-fulfillment is getting ahead or getting more. Christians should know better. Human self-fulfillment should not be confused with winning—or even joining—the rat race, which is more appropriate for rats than persons. One illusion holds that self-fulfillment comes from possessions. We are important because of what we have and what we consume. Persons of greater worth own bigger houses and bigger cars. Buying things becomes the only visible way of acquiring a sense of identity and value. New cars, furniture, and T.V. sets are signs that our life is a success. Wealth which is sought in this way does not satisfy and does not fulfill life. Instead, it removes from life the very qualities which makes us human. It tends to take away our freedom and courage, our kindness and compassion for others, and our ability to see or feel the poverty of others. It separates us from the poor in both space and spirit. Most of the rich never see a child whose life is ebbing away slowly because of some disease caused by malnutrition. Most never agonize over a child who cannot learn because of irreversable brain damage. Many resent paying taxes that help welfare recipients. Most of the poor of the world must feel that Americans have the same unconcern as the rich man showed toward Lazarus (Lk.16:19-21). We like to think of ourselves as generous. Yet we give only 0.24% of our GNP for overseas development assistance. Does not such hardness of

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    heart indicate a life that is unfulfilled? The second major illusion of our day holds that self-fulfillment comes from power. This may be the power to move up the company ladder or to change the political system. It may be the power to get a job or to be heard. At least, it is the power to direct one’s own future; it may also include the power to direct the future of others. Being fully human does mean accepting responsibility for one’s own future. God means for human beings to be creative subjects who make decisions rather than passive objects of a process determined by others. We must applaud and join in efforts to liberate persons from patterns of servility. But when is a person liberated? Were Paul and Silas, bound in jail, liberated? Was Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross, liberated? Merely to ask these questions indicates that the liberation which Christ offers may be different from political and social liberation. Though oppression stunts human creativity and aggravates human suffering, one can be oppressed and still live with integrity, faith, and love. For the oppressed, self-fulfillment is difficult; for the oppressors, it is impossible. Every liberation movement runs the risk of copying the arrogance of former masters. Women will not find fulfillment by becoming as domineering as men, nor blacks, by becoming as oppressive as whites, nor the poor by becoming as self-seeking as the rich. Poverty and oppression distort life, but wealth and political liberation alone do not bring self-fulfillment. What is needed is a cure for anxiety. Anxiety is the source both of pride and of servility, of efforts to be more than human and of acquiescence to a life less than human. Anxiety causes the powerful to seek greater power and the weak to be afraid to use the power they have. Because of their anxiety, both the American executive and the Indonesian peasant are afraid to buck the system that confines them. Because of his anxiety Herod the king ordered the male children of Bethlehem killed to secure his power; because of their anxiety the children of Israel wanted to return to the secure slavery of Egypt rather than risking the dangers of the Promised Land. The same anxiety that causes persons to take away the freedom of others keeps them from being free themselves.

    VI. Self-Denial and Self-Fulfillment

    The cure for anxiety is trust in the security offered by God the Father and loyalty to his cause as more important than our own. Being anxious about self is the opposite of denying one’s self. It is putting self, not God, at the center of our world. Freedom from anxiety comes through self-denial, which recognizes God as absolute Lord. Self-denial thus brings the freedom to risk one’s property and power—even one’s life—for God and the freedom to give up one’s wealth and rights—even one’s life—for others. Self-denial gives us the courage’ both to fight for our rights and those of others and to give up those rights. A multitude of models exist. Gandhi and Martin Luther King insisted on the rights of their people, yet showed love and concern for their oppressors and were willing to risk suffering, humiliation, and

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    death. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of a God who meets persons in their strength and adulthood but who also calls persons to be aware of Christ only and not of self. In his life and death Bonhoeffer demonstrated the compatibility of human adulthood and self-denial. The apostle Paul was a clear example of a person who insisted upon his rights while being willing to give them up. He defended the rights of himself and other apostles to receive pay. Yet he did not use these rights in order not to “put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (1 Cor.9:l-18). He made clear his freedom from Jewish law; yet he was willing to observe Jewish law in order to win Jews (1 Cor.88:19-20). He insisted upon the freedom of Christians to eat meat which might once have been part of an idol’s sacrifice; he wanted no overscrupulous legalism. But he advised against eating such meat if it would damage the faith of some sensitive person (1 Cor.l0:23-ll:l). Paul’s advice to pastors today might be to insist upon salaries that are on a par with the members of their congregations and then to give away a large proportion of those salaries. Paul’s own model, of course, was Christ, who combined freedom and selfsacrifice . Christ was free to use his power to save himself, but he used his freedom to surrender his life in order to save humankind. He insisted that his followers recognize his divine authority; yet while he was still our Lord, he also became our servant, who was humiliated and killed for us. His life of perfect trust in the Father and of resolute self-giving to other persons shows us what it means to be fully human. Self-fulfillment comes to one who is filled with this spirit of Christ. It comes to one who loves life but is not afraid to lose it, to one who receives things and power as gifts, not to be clutched but to be used and risked and shared.

  • Pentecost Is for Preaching

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    PENTECOST IS FOR PREACHING

    J. Will Ormond

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Lectionary Limits: Pro and Con

    The lectionary, I am sure, can be a tremendous help in answering the age old question of preachers, “What shall I preach?” The minister who is convinced that preaching should be Biblically based, theologically balanced and mature, an effective means of communicating the gospel, and a genuine expression of concern for persons, needs all the help he or she can get in making sermons meet these criteria. The lectionary can be one source of that help. It narrows down the choice of a Biblical passage for exegetical study and sermon preparation for a particular Lord’s Day. It gives the preacher for every Sunday of the year a choice of three passages of Scripture upon which a sermon may be based. Being allowed to choose from three is better than being handed one with the injunction, “Preach this or else.” It is better than turning through the pages of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation hoping that a ready made sermon will fly out from between the pages like a butterfly suddenly released from its cocoon. It disciplines one to wrestle with passages which that particular preacher would rather avoid. For it is inevitable that on more than one occasion the preacher in search of a sermon will find that none of the three choices of passage either strikes fire or arouses interest on a first reading. Rather they may raise frustrating questions as to what the lectionary makers could possibly have had in mind when these three passages were joined together for this particular Lord’s Day. But if the preacher does not immediately abandon the three puzzling passages and go in search of homiletical butterflies he or she may discover that rarest of homiletical treasures—a new idea freshly expressed. The lectionary, however, is no cure all. To follow it slavishly, to consider for preaching no passages but those which have been canonized by the lectionary makers, can be almost as limiting as following one’s own private lectionary selected at random and traditionalized by repeated use. Furthermore, the lectionary does not live up entirely to its own billing. The Worshipbook says of the lectionary: “A lectionary not only aids worshippers in the remembering of the events of God but also assures the reading and the hearing of the Old Testament and the New Testament in their fullness” (p. 166). Well, not quite! Of course, “in their fullness” is not intended to mean that every jot and tittle of the entire Scriptures—including I Chronicles 1-8—should be read from the pulpit at least once every three years. We must leave that task to the marathon non-stop relay reading of the Bible from cover to cover which is done by certain enthusiastic groups from time to time. Even so, if one never ventures beyond the canon of the lectionary there are invaluable passages of Scripture which will never be introduced in a service of worship with the words, “Let us hear the Word of God,” and which will never

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    become flesh and dwell among us through the incarnational event of preaching.

    The Lectionary and Acts

    A prime example is the lectionary’s treatment of the Acts of the Apostles. This book is unique in the canon of the New Testament. It is the only systematic account we have of the life of the church in the apostolic age. However we asses its complete historical accuracy, one can appreciate the reaction of J. B. Phillips:

    No one can read this book without being convinced that there is Someone here at work besides mere human beings. Perhaps because of their very simplicity, perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be to die, the Spirit of God found what surely He must always be seeking—a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that he can work in them and through them with the minimum of let or hindrance.(l)

    The action of the Holy Spirit is so prominent in this book that it has often been suggested that a more accurate title would be “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, one might well expect that especially during the extended period of Pentecost many passages from the Acts would be suggested by the lectionary, for Pentecost is defined as “The festival commemorating the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, and an extended season for reflecting on how God’s people live under the guidance of the Spirit” (The Worshipbook, p. 172). But such an expectation is far from justified. On the first day of Pentecost, Whitsunday, the Second Lesson for all three years is Acts 2:1-13—a rather obvious choice. But in a church which strictly follows the lectionary, the every-Sunday church goer would not hear another reading from Acts during the whole half-year of the Pentecost season. In fact, the faithful would not be assured of hearing of Acts again until Eastertide of the next year. There is one chance in three that Acts 2:42-47 would be read on World Communion Sunday, and two chances in three that snatches of Acts 10 and 11 would be read on the first Sunday after Epiphany. These odds depend upon whether it happens to be Year A, B, or C. There is a concentration of readings from Acts on the seven Sundays of Eastertide. Acts replaces the Old Testament as the source of the First Lesson during Eastertide. (2) In most of these readings some connection can be seen between the passage and the proclamation of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. The lectionary suggests no readings at all from Acts beyond Chapter 15. Could it be that this is because most of the direct references to the action of the Holy Spirit come in the first fifteen chapters? And yet the lectionary does not use Acts as the source of readings “for reflecting on how God’s people live under the guidance of the Spirit.”

    Pentecost Preaching

    The Acts account of the Day of Pentecost is a well constructed composition which progresses from Event to Interpretation to Response to Result. But the lectionary makers have taken these component parts and juggled them about.

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    Snippets of Result (2:42-47), Interpretation (2:22-28) and Response (2:26-41) appear in that order on successive Sundays of Year A during Eastertide. The Event (2:113 ) from which the other parts proceed is postponed until the Sunday after Eastertide. So the minister who wishes to deal from the pulpit with the entire account of the Day of Pentecost and still be guided by the lectionary must exercise some flexibilty. His or her homiletical base must go beyond the suggested lectionary passages. These still may be used in the liturgy as the Lesson of the day, but the preaching passage will need to be expanded. But who wants to deal with the whole of Acts 2 from the pulpit? Nobody, it is hoped, if that is taken to mean trying to squeeze or expand every thought, theme, challenge or insight which may arise out of a study of that chapter into one sermon. In such an attempt all circuits would be overloaded, and the result would be more like Babel than Pentecost. But it is possible to take into account as framework, background, and base the whole of Acts 2 for one sermon. And Acts 2 can serve as the foundation for many sermons, either in series or strategically planned and placed during the preaching year. It seems to me that Acts 2 deserves to be considered homiletically more often than three Sundays in Eastertide every three years and once every year on Whitsunday. For surely Pentecost is for preaching, and not just for changing the colors of the paraments. What follows is not intended to be an exegetical study of Acts 2 nor a series of sermon outlines. I trust the readers of this journal to do their own exegetical work. What follows is intended, however, to provide a few sticks of kindling for fires for which practicing preachers themselves will gather the wood, lay it in order, and strike the match. I take no responsibility for the resulting conflagration-whether it sputters out, produces more smoke than heat, roars into an exciting flame, or causes an explosion.

    Expectancy

    While Acts 2 is a unified composition in itself with a definite beginning and a rounded off conclusion, it does not exist in splendid isolation. It is part of a larger whole, placed and arranged by a master of literary structure so as to make the most appropriate impact. While the rush of the mighty wind came upon the gathered company suddenly and without warning (2:2), careful preparation had been made. This careful preparation is indicated in literary fashion by the arrangement and the language of the pericopes of Acts 1. Theologically, preparation is made by the deeds and words of the Risen Christ and by the response of the disciples under the leadership of Peter. The Risen Christ has convinced those whom he has chosen of the reality of his resurrection (1:2, 3). He has given them instruction about the Kingdom of God (1:3). He has promised that the age old promises of the Father which he had proclaimed will be fulfilled in his disciples (1:4). He has commissioned them as his witnesses to the ends of the earth (1:8b). He has promised them the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out that commission (1:8a). He has reminded them of the limits of their knowledge and the limitlessness of

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    the mysterious power of God (1:7). He himself has been exalted to the position of lordship, sovereignty and authority which he shares with God the Father (1:9-11). They restore the number of the Twelve, reflecting their continuity with the people of God in history (1:15-26). Every pericope of Acts 1 demands a sequel. Each leaves us on tip toe, searching the horizon with our eyes and ears, convinced that in the distance we see the dust and hear the rumblings of some mysterious procession which soon will top the hill. And top the hill it does in Acts 2:1-4. We are enveloped by sound. We are dazzled by sight. There is the rushing movement of the wind, the dancing color of the dividing flames. The silence of the gathered company is overcome by an outburst of strangely articulate speech. Is there any place in all this where the 20th century congregation can find itself? What about “they were all together in one place” (2:1b), and “the house where they were sitting” (2:2c)? What is more characteristic of the modern church than “a house” where the congregation “sits” “all together in one place”? As a church we do that much, if nothing else. Such a picture of “the sitting church” can have the most deadly connotation of stagnation. But can it be that such a picture has the potential of being stirred by the mighty wind, enlivened by the dancing flames, and set vibrating by language let loose to range the world? Have not the gathered Sunday-Morning-Worship-People had something of the same preparation as had those who were there when the Day of Pentecost arrived according to God’s schedule? The reality of the resurrection—the first day of the week is reminder of that. The phrase “Kingdom of God” is at least familiar. Surely God’s promises are not entirely forgotten. Witnesses. We might prefer to pay somebody else to do it, but we know it needs doing. Holy Spirit. After all, we are Trinitarians. “And sitteth on the right hand of God.” We say that every Sunday in the Creed. Prayer. No proper order of worship would dare leave this out. The pulpit Bible has the Old Testament in it, too: the account of God’s dealing with his people in history. Can these be made to live again? Can they rise from the page, break the bonds of printed word, shake off the cloak of nostalgia, become “lived” rather than “repeated” Creed, and take on that tip toe tension of searching the horizon? Perhaps from these musings a sermon could take shape which would help a 20th century congregation at least to hope—or even to expect—that something strange, mysterious and powerful can happen among us. A sermon which proclaims this hope can help a congregation be open to the possibility that “the house where they were sitting” is subject to invasion by the wind and fire of the Spirit. It can help them sense a kinship with those who first were “all together in one place” waiting for God to act.

    Identity and Mission

    For preacher and congregation alike, it may be tempting to go no further. For expectant waiting can set up a pleasant tingling in the soul which of itself gives a certain sense of satisfaction. The Waiting Place can become comfortable, safe and

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    silent. But according to the Acts account of Pentecost, not for long. The silence is broken not only by the sound “like the rush of a mighty wind,” but also by the exuberant words of the gathered company. A sound which had come from heaven finds expression through human voices on earth. Sound which “filled all the house” and enveloped the whole waiting assembly is given symbolic focus by the sight of “tongues of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them” (2:3). The mysterious power which is characteristic of the wind is given to the corporate body. They are a company of the Spirit, not a conglomeration of competing champions. And yet they are not fused into an indistinguishable mass where each looses individuality and none has personal integrity and responsibility. The tongues of fire are distributed to the individuals who make up the group. Corporateness and individuality—these are marks of the Christian fellowship then and now. The 20th century congregation which has been led to claim a kinship with those who first waited for Pentecost can through that kinship recapture a sense of their identity and mission. That identity and mission is summarized in Acts 2:4: “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” The whole account and event of Pentecost is expansion, explanation, and implication of that one sentence. “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” Promise (1:4), power (1:8), “poured out” (2:17, 32)—all these are related to the Spirit and the church. The identity of the Pentecost people comes not from their natural congeniality nor their individual piety. It is given by the God who is true to his promise by rousing the wind which cannot be summoned, captured, nor regulated by human schedules, and who distributes to whom he will the mysterious flames of purifying fire. The Spirit is God’s power at work in those whom he thus chooses to be the voices for his Word and channels of his works. The power is promised for witness (1:8) and for proclamation (2:17, 18). Since it is for witness to God’s mighty acts in Christ (2:22, 32) and proclamation of the good news of God’s salvation (2:38), then the power is not for self aggrandizement nor for boasting. “Poured out” brings to mind a generous flood freely flowing from a source that is itself filled to overflowing. And so it is. It is Jesus Christ who is filled with the Spirit (Luke 3:21, 22; 4:1, 18-19; Acts 2:33) and who pours out the Spirit upon his own from his own fullness. “Began to speak in other tongues.” To speak is to communicate—or at least to initiate communication—and the event of Pentecost is about communication. The mission of the church is communication. “In other tongues” implies that the communication is not confined to the narrow limits of easily accepted, familiar categories nor bounded by the accents of one culture nor conveyed by only one unchanging arrangement of words. The Spirit makes it possible for the Word to be understood in a tumbling multiplicity of words. The church which is open to the invasion of the Spirit will be given the power to discover and to speak new words which can proclaim clearly to strange ears the mighty acts of God. “As the Spirit gave them utterance.” But the words, new and startling as they may be to those who speak them and to those who hear, must be consistent with the Spirit’s message. The “other tongues” are not accolades to be displayed as trophies, nor puzzles to be fashioned into complex curiosities comprehensible only to an esoteric few. The Spirit is interested not only in the act and method of communication but also in the substance of that which is communicated. Pentecost preaching can lead a congregation of the people of God beyond

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    expectant waiting to a fresh consideration of identity and mission. To grasp the incredible truth that we are part of the people whom God has empowered by his promised Spirit from the overflowing fullness of Jesus Christ can be exhilarating, humbling, frightening, innervating, life giving. To open ourselves to the discovery of “other tongues” by which the gospel can be communicated to those who respond to something besides our usual dialect may well call for re-examination of how we express our faith. It may demand serious study of what the old familiar terms really mean in a changing world. It may involve seeking ourselves to understand the categories of another culture in order that we may translate the good news into other cadences than that of King James English or of Deep South American. But if communication is our mission, it is not for us to decide what to communicate. The message is “given”—given by the Spirit, acted out in history by him upon whom the Spirit rests in fullness. We are witnesses to God’s acts, not the inventors of them. We measure the validity of the message by what God does, not by what we would like him to do, nor by what we want to do ourselves. To be Pentecost people, we speak “as the Spirit gives us utterance.”

    Communication for Conversion

    If Pentecost is about communication, it is communication for conversion. For the end of the story is that the Word was not only heard but received (2:41), and receiving completes communication. The receiving leads to action. Those who received the Word were baptized; they committed themselves to a new community by the outward sign of repentance, cleansing, and acceptance. They submitted to the rite of entry. They became growing, learning, worshipping, dynamic, generous, joyful members of the apostles’ koinonia (2:42-47). Can today’s Pentecost preaching lead to such a result? There is no sure fire formula nor set of rules. The result is still dependent upon the action of the Spirit. But the movement of the Pentecost account from Event to Result may give some clues as to how the Spirit can work in communication for conversion. It is obvious that those who were filled with the Spirit and spoke in other tongues did not spend their time talking to each other. “Other tongues” would not have been needed for that. The very gift implied going beyond the walls of the house where they were sitting. There must be other ears than their own to receive the sounds which wind and fire had fused into spoken words. The picture of Pentecost seems to combine a going out and a coming together: “At this sound the multitude came together” (v. 6). Whether the beckoning sound was that of the wind that filled the house or of the excited speech of the gathered disciples is not made clear. What is clear is that something was happening in and through that company that drew people to them. There were signs of life, of change, of intensity which made people on the outside wonder what was going on. One prerequisite for communication for conversion is a sincere enthusiasm, a deep running intensity which arouses the interest, if not the immediate understanding, of those who are to hear. But the enthusiasm must be genuine. The sound of the wind cannot be reproduced by the gimmick of stereo tape players nor tongues of fire simulated by synchronized slide projectors. Christian fervor may have to take the risk of being misunderstood”they were filled with new wine” (v. 1)—but it cannot take the risk of being false. The account of the gathering together of the multitude which included persons

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    “from every nation under heaven” (v. 5) is characterized by such words as “bewildered,” “amazed,” “wondered,” “perplexed.” And why not? Look at the tumbling list of places from which the hearers came (vv. 9-11). Are we to picture a hubbub of dialects and accents, of tones and cadences, all orchestrated into symphonic disharmony? Such a picture is hardly the proper atmosphere for communication. The basis for the bewilderment of the hearers was not that they could not understand what was being said; rather they were amazed because they could understand: “we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (v. 11). The question, “What does this mean?” can be seen to refer not only to the mysterious event they were witnessing, but also to say, “What do these mighty works of God have to do with us? What difference do they make in our world?” If the facts of the gospel are communicated in lively, understandable language, many who hear will inevitably ask “What does this mean for my life?” And thus a door is opened for communication for conversion. According to Acts, Peter responded to that question at the Jerusalem Pentecost. It is, of course, too simplistic to suggest that an exact reproduction of Peter’s sermon is always the most appropriate answer to the question in every age and circumstance. But the characteristics, emphases, and themes of Peter’s response can be seen as powerful channels of communication for conversion. Peter’s sermon was Biblically based. He did not rely on psychological explanations of what was happening, nor did he regale his hearers with stories of his own spectacular sins in his unrepentant days as a rough and tumble fisherman before he was born again. He used Scripture for what it is—the Word of God which speaks of who God is and what he does. Peter interpreted Scripture to reveal that God is no remote monarch or absentee landlord of the universe. He is involved in history and concerned for humankind. For Peter what was happening was God’s doing, for it was consistent with his Word: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (v. 17). God is aware of “your sons and your daughters,” “your young men and your old men,” “his menservants and his maidservants” (vv. 17-18). He does wonders in heaven (that might be expected of God) but he also shows signs on the earth and reveals himself “in your midst” (v. 22) through a life so human that it knows the sting of murderous death (v. 23). Peter could see in the Biblical record that God acts faithfully. What he promises he fulfills: the Spirit upon all flesh (vv. 17-18), a living king upon the throne of David (v. 30). This is not an unrealistic view of history. It does not ignore the long dry spells of the human pilgrimage nor the ages when there was no throne, much less a king. Nor does it limit the pouring out of the Spirit to excited speech nor interpret throne and king as chair of gold and crown of jewels. It views history with the eyes of faith, faith that God himself is faithful. The Scriptures show that God acts purposefully. God may be always present (v. 25), but his actions are not static. He moves things toward consummation. Why else speak of “the last days” (v. 17), or “the day of the Lord” (v. 22), or overcoming enemies (v. 35)? What are those visions the young men see or the dreams the old men dream unless they have to do with what God is bringing to pass? God acts redemptively. One does not need to pick scattered proof texts to support that. The Old Testament passages in Peter’s sermon are consistent with the whole Biblical message on that score: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (v. 21).

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    “For thou wilt not abandon my soul in Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption” (v. 27). For Peter, God’s mightiest redemptive act is Resurrection, bringing life out of death. To that Peter and the others were witnesses (v. 32). Peter’s sermon was Biblically based in that it was founded upon the revelation of God’s faithful, purposeful, redemptive acts in history. Therefore, it was focused on Jesus Christ. Peter’s sermon does not say all there is to be said about Jesus Christ. Many times preaching for conversion will need to go beyond the limits of what Acts sets down as the essentials of Peter’s Pentecost sermon. But Peter’s sermon reminds us of basic elements which dare not be neglected in convincing proclamation of the gospel. Peter was preaching to Jewish hearers. He knew their history and their hopes, for he, too, was a Jew. Their history he called to mind with the name “David” (vv. 25, 29); their hopes he held before them in the title “Christ” (vv. 31, 36). Their history had given them glimpses of greatness. It had shown them that for God’s people there is something more than the present. There is promised fulfillment and completeness. But David was long since dead: “He both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day” (v. 29). If history is not to prove meaningless, then hope must march forth from among the weathered monuments of the past. “The Christ” epitomized that hope. God’s Anointed One would come bringing restoration, salvation, fulfillment. But when? Was this not such a long standing, distant hope that one could hardly lay hands upon it as attainable reality? Peter’s proclamation was that their history and their hope had now at last converged into a new age, a new opportunity, a new life. The hope foreshadowed by all that “David” symbolized had come to reality in a human life lived among them: Jesus of Nazareth, a man with a good Jewish name and a home town ordinary enough to underscore his essential humanity. This man is the Christ, the one who gathers up into himself the fulfillment of the promises of God. His life, human though it was, demonstrated among men and women the works of God in the world (v. 22). His death, however violent and untimely, was not outside the purview and the purposes of God (v. 23). His resurrection was not automatic, but it was inevitable because in God’s ordering of things life ultimately conquers death, good finally triumphs over evil, and light overcomes the darkness. Or perhaps it is better said the other way ’round: because God raised from the dead him who is incarnate life, goodness and light, we can believe in the ultimate victory of God’s purposes. But the converging of the history and the hopes of the hearers was not without the laying bare of their own agony of blindness. Not only had they failed to recognize the one who was the climax of their history and the fulfillment of their hopes, they had crucified him (vv. 23, 36)! Surely such a sin would seal their fate into hopelessness forever. How can one revive a murdered hope? Out of this hopelessness comes the good news. “God raised him up . . . God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (vv. 24, 36). In spite of the active failure of those whom the hearers represent, God has acted to overcome the intention, the effect, the ignorance of their sin. Resurrection life is a reality not only for the crucified Christ, but also for those who crucified him. For after Peter proclaimed the crucified Jesus as the Risen Christ and the

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    Exalted Lord, he offered the hearers both an invitation and a promise. The invitation is summed up in “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (v. 38). The specific sin, the memory of which cut them to the heart, was their murderous rejection of the Christ. This one sin gathered up the rebellious alienation of the human condition. It was a misinterpretation of their history; it was a blocking of their own promised fulfillment; it shattered the expectancy of their hopes; it limited life to inevitable decline toward death. To repent, for them, must mean to change from rejection of their Messiah to acceptance; to be baptized was to enter into the Messianic community; to receive forgiveness was to open themselves to the renewing grace of God who by raising Christ from the dead had overcome the consequences of their sin. The promise was the gift of the Spirit. God through Christ had not only dealt with their past sin; he also offered to include them in the company of those to whom his presence is ever real and through whom he does his work in the world. This invitation and promise were given concreteness and substance through an accepting community in which those who responded could find koinonia, mutual concern, generosity, and joy in the Lord (vv. 42-47). Those who have plowed through these last paragraphs hoping to find a “how to” manual for communication for conversion have been disappointed. But practicing preachers who are concerned so to proclaim the gospel that the way is opened for transforming response may do well to ponder these questions:

    Is my preaching Biblically based? Does my preaching focus on Jesus Christ? Is there implicit in my proclamation both challenging invitation and positive promise? Is my communication in, from, and toward the context of an accepting, serving, worshipping community?

    As we have seen, Peter could have given an affirmative answer to all these questions. And he preached his sermon after the company for whom he was representative communicator “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (v. 4).

    (1) Phillips, J. B., The Young Church in Action, p. vii. (2) There are two exceptions: On Easter Day of Years Β and C, readings from Isaiah and from Exodus are suggested for the First Lesson.

  • New Epiphanies or False Messiahs

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    NEW EPIPHANIES OR FALSE MESSIAHS

    William V. Arnold

    Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

    We are well into the era of “self-help” and promises for growth. Entire sections of book stores, libraries, and even news magazines keep us posted on the latest method or “process” for reaching more of our “potential.” Unfortunately, many persons speaking for the church have been as extreme in their praise or vilification of these approaches to living as are the approaches themselves. My purpose here is to identify some general characteristics that appear frequently in what we call the “pop psychologies” or the Human Potential Movement. Then, some brief theological rumination will be offered as a means of evaluating the “promises” that are involved.

    I. FIVE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

    Some of the approaches to human potential have been more appealing to the church and church professionals than others. Those that have seemed to be adopted most rapidly have several common characteristics that are emphasized in varying ways and to varying degrees.

    1. A BELIEF THAT PEOPLE ARE NATURALLY INCLINED TOWARD GROWTH. This belief is contained in the phrase “Human Potential Movement.” It is a characteristic of optimism that specifically centers on the notion of change. It’s basic tenet is that human beings are changeable and, furthermore, are naturally disposed to growing in positive ways. Some of the sources for this come from writers such as Abraham Maslow, who wrote a great deal about self-actualization, peak experiences, etc. Another early theorist of this notion is Gordon Allport in his discussions of inclination toward growth and movement toward maturity.

    2. AN EMPHASIS PLACED ON THE VALUE OF EMOTION OR FEELING AS A MA30R CRITERIA FOR DECISION MAKING AND CHANGE. Many phrases appear in the vocabulary of self-help and human potential to illustrate this. “Get out the anger,” “get in touch with your feelings,” etc. are common. Many areas of encounter groups, sensitivity training, Gestalt therapy, and some growth groups have a quieter reputation for intense emphasis on emotion and use of those feelings as a vehicle and motivator for positive change.

    3. AN EMPHASIS ON THE “HERE AND NOW.” To discuss one’s history or one’s hopes may be viewed as attempts at resistance or denial, thus impeding positive change which may be frightening because of its newness. The present moment is what offers us the “pass key” toward change. That emphasis is found in encounter groups, Gestalt therapy, and many of the forms of meditation. They emphasize a shedding of the past and future, an atomic moment as it were, in quest of one’s potential.

    H

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    4. A HEAVY COMMITMENT TO THE WELFARE OF THE SELF. “Selffulfillment , potential of the self, taking responsibility for the self, self-esteem, selfworth , autonomy of the self,” all are indicators of this heavy emphasis. One certainly is not encouraged to become a hermit or a recluse, but to varying degrees the self is the final source of appeal for what should be done for its own welfare. The introduction of external rules, “oughts and shoulds” are viewed as manipulative or “parental” —the assumption being that the self is of highest importance when a big decision is to be made.

    5. A REGULAR AND SOMETIMES CONTRADICTORY EMPHASIS ON THE CONCEPT OF INSIGHT. This appears to run full in the face of commitment to emotion and self. Nonetheless, in the careful diagrams of transactional analysis, in the high emphasis on feed-back in groups, in the rational/emotive theory of Albert Ellis, and the reality therapy of William Glasser, high priority is placed on insight. Clearly, to many, insight is more than a cognitive function. It is accompanied by emotion. Otherwise, motivation to change as a result of insight would not be likely to occur.

    These five characteristics, I believe, encompass reasonably the primary motifs of the Human Potential Movement which has laid so much claim to the commitments of many who practice care and counseling in our culture and indeed within our churches. It must be said, of course, that these themes can be caricatured to an exaggerated degree. All of them contain elements of caring, and few practitioners would be sterile in their use of these principles. Nonetheless, they present an image of human nature which should be examined carefully from a theological point of view. The image that is presented is one of the human whose primary source for meaning is in the present moment. Furthermore, it is possible to take control of that present moment and to shape it in such a way as to change the character of the self. The self has the power to assume that responsibility, and thus the highest expression of human nature is to do so. Furthermore, because it is possible and important for the self to care for itself, there is danger in allowing one’s self to become overly influenced by others to the point of deprivation in one’s own quest for fulfillment. One’s quest of potential should be an active one, including a willingness to experience pain as well as elation, since feeling and insight are gained from such movements and experiments, which are the vehicles for growth and change. An example of this would be transactional analysis, a method of theory and therapy authorized by Eric Berne. It is one of the most popular approaches to growth and development that has made the rounds in our culture. Its approach is straightforward and impressive, describing three ego states (parent, adult and child) which reasonably encompass the dynamics of the self. Change is brought about by a person identifying the ego state in control at a given moment and then deciding whether that is the desirable or realistic one for that situation. Such analysis moves on to examination of the interaction between persons, and responsibility is placed on each person involved to establish the ego state in action at that moment. Then each must act in their interest of engendering a positive or “winning” experience for the self. Note the presence of the factors I have mentioned. There is strong optimism about the power of the self to change, stimulated by feeling and controlled by a rational process of regular self-analysis. Emphasis on the importance of attending

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    to the present moment is there, and responsibility is assigned to the self primarily for the welfare of that same self.

    II. REFLECTIONS

    One of the first questions that must be asked about these characteristics revolves around the changing nature of the personality. This issue really is the old problem of optimism. How changeable are we really? It’s optimism versus original sin again! It seems to me that these psychologies offer an important word of encouragement to us, but they also promise more than they can deliver from a theological point of view. The narrative of the Bible appears to me to be an account of the continuing struggle to face one’s limitations as well as one’s possibilities. From the saga of the Garden to our ongoing attempts to bring in the kingdom ourselves, God continues to remind us that we are not God. The psychologies of change do not acknowledge those limits very effectively, although they remind us that we have often been too carried away in our preoccupation with sin and it’s limits. While I have seen many persons return from encounter groups, marathon weekends, and therapy in states of high elation, I have also seen them experience depression later when they discover that the changes did not last. The danger of an optimistic emphasis on the possibilities of change is the accompanying failure to learn to live with limits, to forget that we are not God. A second difficulty, of course, is that the optimism places a merciless burden on the self. If one believes that changes can be brought about, then one is expected to do so in order to be an adequate human being. The resulting failure, or falling short, carries with it a label of inadequacy. In other words, one becomes a failure rather than experiencing a failure. When one’s being becomes so identified with one’s experience, we have shifted the definition of self from what we were created to be to what we are able to achieve. This shifts the source of power and definition of self from God to the person. Of course the danger with an overemphasis on sin and limitation is the stripping of a person of motivation to change at all. At that point, the messiahs of the Human Potential Movement have a positive word to offer us. They have assured us that we can do something to change, and the change can be positive. I merely want to add the dimension of Christian thought that removes the burden of having one’s value and sense of meaning on the line in every encounter. Stated positively, we have the freedom to pursue change without the outcome being an ultimate judgment on our worth in our own sight or in the sight of God. Henri Nouwen, in an address at the 1976 ACPE meeting, phrased it clearly when he pointed out that Tom Harris (author of I’m Okay—You’re Okay) should have added a fifth dimension to his list which would have provided this note of Christian freedom. It would be “I’m Not Okay— You’re Not Okay, and That’s Okay!” Another arena which calls for theological inspection revolves around the emphasis on “here and now.” Such emphasis on the present moment is a derivative affirmation from an optimistic view of human nature. If one is only bound by the present moment, then control becomes a possibility again. Certainly there would be no argument about the importance of the present moment from a theological perspective. There would, however, be argument about an exclusive emphasis on the importance of the present moment. An adequate and holistic view of human nature will not lower the importance of one aspect of time to the priority of another and

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    remain faithful to the Biblical witness. We are people who carry responsibility in the present, have a heritage which provides us support from the past, and are the recipients of promises which enable us to move into the future. The emphasis on the present moment, accompanied by the need to control our lives, raises interesting issues with regard to providence. The real question with which we must wrestle is whether we are human beings who must control our own destiny. Or, are we willing to be participants in a life over which we have only limited control. Such an issue of providence, for me, raises the issue of trust. Am I willing to trust myself willingly (although theologically I have no real choice) to another with a certain confidence that, although often distasteful and undesirable, my value and meaning is not caught up in what I now see, feel, hear, and experience. The tendency of many current potential movements is to oppose such trust with a subtle affirmation that we can indeed control and shape our destiny. Of course the importance of the self is a further major concern. Self-fulfillment can stand in bold tension with the importance of loving our neighbor. Theologically, it appears to be in the nature of human beings to both care for the self and care for others. While in our history there has been the tendency to overdo emphasis on selfdenial , the Human Potential Movement has introduced a trend toward “other-denial,” usually put in a sophisticated, rational, and logical affirmation of the importance of persons “taking responsibility” for themselves and extricating themselves from dependency. Balance, again, seems to be the order of the day here. Taking responsbility for oneself in terms of gratification and growth can be an affirmation of freedom. On the other hand it is only freedom if there is an accompanying commitment to be concerned for and stay with persons who are a part of God’s and our community. The freedom comes again in the form of a shift of the source for worth. If the source for worth is external, that is with God, then the taking of responsibility for one’s self is something that can be done without the awful burden of having so much hinge on it. Relieved of that awful burden, I am free to care for myself and for others, rather than having to remain preoccupied with my own welfare. A final issue, and perhaps most significant, revolves around the rational or reflective nature of human beings. The Human Potential Movement has rightfully pointed out the importance of insight. Theologically, we would want to point out that insight does not come simply from within the self. We are a people who have had insight “revealed” to us. It enables us to transcend our sinful tendency to remain preoccupied with ourselves. Thus, the appeal that I would want to make in evaluating whether aspects of the Human Potential Movement are new epiphanies or false messiahs is a rational one, and a reflective one. What have we learned about ourselves and our own history? Certainly that we are able to distort perceptions in our own self-interest. There is a need for us to stand outside of ourselves and to hear a word from outside of ourselves as we pursue change, not as individuals, but as a community of God’s people. Interestingly enough, findings are showing up in secular research which strengthen such beliefs. Research carried out by Morton, Lieberman, and Miles demonstrated that those persons who tended to grow most positively were those individuals who reflected on their experiences. This was in contrast to those who operated more exclusively on emotion. Furthermore, those groups in which more opportunities for growth seemed to occur were led by leaders characterized by caring in a firm commitment to a theory or set of beliefs, about what was

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    happening. Masters and Johnson, often accused of being teachers of techniques, point out that our nature as human beings must be considered. The mere teaching of technique is not their cure. Cures come out of the experience of commitments between people which result in asking, “What can I do for you?” as much as saying, “Do this for me!” This would be the focus or dimension that comes from our theology. We are not merely creatures of the night oriented toward the greatest moment. Rather, we are our past, present, and our future, constantly reshaping and adapting. In fact, we are not creatures inclined to change, for we often resist it and must learn that there are many things that we are too limited to change. Neither are we creatures of pure feeling, self-indulgent and self-fulfilling. Rather, we have a reflective capacity and sense of care and awareness of revelation that enables us to transcend ourselves. And only when we come to appreciate all that complexity are we on the road to learning what being humans, created in the image of God, can mean.

  • Repentance in America: In Search of Sarah’s Circle

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    Repentance In America:

    In Search Of Sarah’s Circle

    Nancy J. Ramsay

    First Presbyterian Church, Rocky Mount, North Carolina

    Repentance in America has been truncated by an increasingly abstract understanding of sin that cannot be supported biblically. As a consequence, it is difficult to imagine any period in American history that required a fuller experience of the transforming power of repentance than our own. What follows is an attempt to recover the biblical understanding of repentance and an application of that meaning to the mission of the church in our day.

    I. The biblical themes of repentance are foreshadowed in this Ash Wednesday lectionary lesson. For the purpose of the fast is to show that a penitent searching after the will of God can be satisfied by nothing less than personal commitment to ministries of compassion and justice:

    Cry with all your might, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me daily, and desire to know my ways; like a nation that does righteousness and does not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask me what judgments are righteous, they wish to draw near to God. “Why do we fast, and thou seest it not? We mortify our flesh, and thou takest no knowledge of it?” Behold, in the day of your fast you pursue your own business and urge on all your workers. Behold you fast to quarrel and fight and lay about yourselves with wicked heels. Fasting like yours is no fasting to make your voice to be heard on high. Would such be the fast that I would take pleasure in, a day when a man mortifies his flesh, bows down his head like a rush, spreads sackcloth and ashes under him? Do you call this a fast, a day in which Yahweh takes pleasure? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the enslaved go free, that you break every yoke. Does it not mean sharing your bread with the hungry, and bringing the homeless poor into your house, when you see someone naked, to cover him, and not to withdraw yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing will

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    spring up at once, your salvation goes before you, and the glory of Yahweh is your rear guard. Then you shall call, and Yahweh answers, you cry, and he says, Here I am. If you take away from the midst of you oppression, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, and bestow your bread on the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light gleam in the darkness, and your gloom be as the clear day. Yahweh will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire in the thirsty land. And he will make your bones young again, you shall be like a spring whose waters fail not. Ancient ruins shall be rebuilt by you, you raise up the foundations of many generations, you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of what was torn down to dwell in.

    Isaiah 58:1-12 (Westermann, Isaiah 40-66 Old Testament Library Series)

    Like its counterparts in Old Testament prophesy—such as that of Amos who despises empty religious ritual, equating the search for God with the search for good, for justice, and compassion—this passage suggests that “sin” is our refusal to relate to God and the human community with love that is responsible and compassionate. It is to “hide ourselves from our own flesh,” to refuse our involvement in the human community. Postures of remorse and empty expressions of contrition that do not arise from any change of heart or promise new behavior bear no resemblance to the fast God chooses or the repentance to which Jesus calls us in the Gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Lent:

    Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

    Mark 1:14-15 Jesus expanded the Old Testament concept of repentance that called for changed behavior into the more fundamental call for a change of heart and mind that transforms our person as well as our behavior. That new dimension of repentance is revealed because it is Jesus, the embodiment of God’s inbreaking love, who calls us to repentance. It is in the context of God’s love that the nature of repentance is understood. Repentance occurs when we are overwhelmed by the love of God which is always a gift to us. It is not an act one makes in fear. The limited success of the fiery tent preachers confirms that true repentance occurs when we see as if for the first time who we can be and what the world is really like. Repentance calls us toward a new vision of reality and a new vision of what time it really is. It necessarily creates a new system of values and priorities. This transformation of values and priorities is suggested in the parable of the person plowing the field who goes and sells everything to purchase the treasure he discovered there. That radical transformation in priorities and goals suggests the difficulty in defining repentance by the static qualities of remorse or a guilty conscience. Repentance, as Jesus defined it, has an antiphonal qual-

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    ity in which the acknowledgment of our sin points beyond itself creating a new vision, the treasure in the field, in which we can invest our lives. Because the acknowledgment of sin cannot be separated from the new vision it creates, repentance and faith are poles of the same experience. Repentance is an active, future oriented experience. It is the call to mission. Obviously such an experience must occur in our own experience, but its emphasis is corporate. The brevity and precision of Mark’s gospel suggest that it is not merely coincidental that the call to the disciples immediately follows this call to “repent and believe .” To hear the call to repentance is to find ourselves claimed by the vision of the community of faith. As the central theme in the preaching and ministry of Jesus, repentance becomes the ordering theme in the life of the Church describing a readiness to allow our values to be shaped and reshaped by the new vision of the gospel of God. To speak of repentance in America requires that we discern its effectiveness in the life of the church. Its diminished role in worship is suggestive of our dilemma.

    II.

    Worship is a dramatic statement of our relation to God and our world. We are called to worship by the creative and redeeming love of God before which we can only confess whom we have become; we hear again who we are by the saving grace of God; we respond in commitment and prayer to the sanctifying instruction of God’s Word; and we depart with the renewal of God’s blessing. Throughout this sequence we can trace the transforming dynamic of repentance as we confess, hear of the new redemptive reality, and inform and recommit our lives to this vision. Particularly suggestive is the role of the corporate prayer of confession. It is that point in the liturgy at which tradition suggests we are to confess our predisposition to sin and our continuing need for repentance. With reference to the image of the church as the Body of Christ, I have come to understand this prayer analogically as the central nervous system. For it is the sensitive indicator of our state of being. Here is not only the opportunity to declare who we are, but also whom we want to become. It is particularly alarming to realize that the corporate prayer of confession is often absent or made ineffective by vague and abstract language lacking any specific relation to the actual life of the congregation in the world. Most often this prayer reflects the static definition of repentance as remorse as if God were convinced by “sack cloth and ashes” prayers that require nothing of us. I am haunted by the following verses from Amos, for we are the priests who preside at the feasts and order the solemn assemblies:

    I hate, I despise your fasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

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    But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream. Amos 5:21-24 The confessional section of the liturgy affords the possibility for more intentionally phrased prayers of confession that reflect the dynamic nature of repentance . In such prayers the confession of our sinfulness arises specifically from our experience and points beyond itself to call forth those commitments and new values that testify to our change of heart and mind. The significance of attention to confession that is more specific and realistic lies in the fact that it may help us recover an understanding of the power of sin as that estrangement or separation we experience from God and one another. As Karl Menninger suggests in Whatever Became of Sin, we have made sin increasingly remote from our experience. His analysis names this distancing of ourselves from responsibility for the consequences of sin as “collective irresponsibility .” This is simply a new and helpful title for familiar experiences. “Collective irresponsibility” is apparent in the feeling that we have no responsibility for what is primarily another’s decision. (We did not write the legislation that fails to protect migrant workers.) “Collective irresponsibility” rears its head in the sloughing off of guilt that can be shared and therefore never reach that “critical mass” that calls forth a response. (Who would take the blame for Vietnam now? Why should the slavery practiced by great grandparents implicate us?) Perhaps most frightening is the relatively recent emergence of the collective irresponsibility of the corporation which has no face or name, and, in the case of multinational corporations, no single government to whom is is accountable . (Who tells Nestles and its counterparts what to do in their marketing ethics?) The frightening fact of this phenomenon of sin as abstraction is that it works like dominoes. When sin become abstract, repentance is necessarily vague, and the mission it requires of the Church will be ambiguous. Repentance points beyond itself to where we want to go and be in order to help give focus to that vision Jesus embodied in his ministry and preaching. Who would contest the truth in these familiar lines from The Book of Common Worship: “We have offended against (God’s) holy laws. We have left undone those things we ought to have done, and we have done those things we ought not to have done. . . .” (p. 21)? But these sentences do not call us to face up to the particularity of our sin in its corporate dimensions; and therefore, they do not point toward the new values and new ways of being that such specificity would require. It is time to be concerned for more convicting clarity than “poetry.” The following excerpts from two confessional prayers suggest my meaning though the difficulty of its appropriate expression is also obvious: . . .Lord, you know the careful limits of our vision, the convenience of our commitments, the cautious sophistication of our praise. We love the pretense of power too much to serve, of security too much to dare to share your vision, of comfort too much to stand with the human community into which you call us. . . . . .We no longer look for One who transforms the predictable into new possibilities. We have made our peace with graft and injustice, but you

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    came to judge the world with righteousness. We’ve become calloused to televised starvation and statistical poverty, but you came to preach good news to the poor. . . . While I am not suggesting these sentences merit imitation, I do believe they are more convicting than the earlier familiar prayer because they arise more directly from our corporate experience and point with greater clarity toward the transformed values and life-styles to which we commit ourselves.

    III. I am suggesting that repentance in America will require that we move away from static prayers of remorse and the defensive postures of our guilty conscience . We must accept for ourselves and require of our neighbors an acknowledgment of our participation in and responsibility for sin as it separates us from loving and responsible relationships with God and the entire human community . The clarity of our prayers of repentance enable the clarity of our sense of mission. Rarely have the imperatives of that mission for Christians in America been clearer than now. At every level the human community is as a fabric so frayed that it cannot be patched any longer and must be rewoven. If the pattern and quality of that tapestry are to reveal the design of the Gospel’s vision, then the Christian community must be clear about its participation in the sin that precipitated this crisis and the new valuesand ways of being that repentance suggests. Repentance in contemporary America arises from the reality of the ancient and abiding sin cited by the Ash Wednesday lesson from Isaish, “we have hidden from our own flesh.” We have stood apart from the human community though we profess the Lordship of Jesus who identified himself with the “least” of humankind and defined our neighbor by the excruciatingly convicting story of “the good Samaritan.” Essentially, repentance in America must be characterized by the Church’s acknowledgment of its cultural captivity to American values and priorities. The sin of that cultural captivity and the repentance it envisions is imaginatively and dynamically portrayed by the feminist, Carole Etzler, in her song, “We Are Dancing Sarah’s Circle” (on her album, Sometimes I Wish, recorded by Sisters Unlimited). Her song is a perceptive comment on the church’s uncritical acceptance of American values. In it she suggests the rejection of the uncomfortable parallels between climbing Jacob’s patriarchal ladder and the exploitative hierarchy of the infamous, American corporate ladder. In exchange she shares the vision of Sarah’s circle which symbolizes the values of mutually supportive human relationships. The peculiar and brief history of American culture, in the context of global development, supports Carole’s critique suggesting that the fundamental value of which we must repent is that of our inordinately proud individualism. Characterized by a now waning innocence, it was formerly sustained by the pretense that our accomplishments were at the expense of no one or thing. It now is

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    rationalized by the abstraction of our collective irresponsibility. Our value system must undergo the radical transformation from ladder to circle as we repent from seeking the most we can have for ourselves in order to discover how we can live together more economically by sharing what we have. We must repent the pretense of our singular importance among the world’s peoples and embrace as our mission the vision of “Sarah’s circle,” the human community as a global village. The dramatic and provocative differences suggested in this image of the circle rather than the ladder point to the radical nature of the transformation in values required of us. The ladder suggests life lived in spite of, over against, in competition with, one another and often at the expense of the created order. The circle suggests the interdependence and mutuality of life lived in a global community where we learn to share power, talents, resources, and support in behalf of one another and with respect for the resources of the earth and universe . The global constituency and participatory design of the Mission Consultation held in Montreat February, 1978, was based on the same presuppositions as those of Sarah’s circle. Participants gathered to discern barriers to be overcome and the most critical needs to be met for the one mission of Christ’s church. Strategies were then focused on the particular resources of the host communion, but there were implicit commitments for the others present whose participation had deepened the reality of and their commitment to our interdependence in the world. The insights ofthat Consultation are particularly helpful in citing the barriers to the creation of the global community. The following excerpts from the “Justice” section of the “Claims Paper” illustrate more specifically what repentance requires of us who will repent, step off the ladder, and reach out to create a global circle:

    That even one person created in God’s image should perish from hunger, live in substandard housing, lack medical care, be denied the right to education and meaningful employment, or suffer from the tyranny of political , social, or economic oppression is an affront both to divine love and to human dignity. Our church is part of the affluent society of a powerful nation. We have material wealth and hold access to the centers of influence and power in industry, government, business, and education, while the vast majority of humankind lives at a mere subsistence level. . . . Surely the great disparity and imbalance between the rich and the poor nations of the world, and between the affluent and impoverished sectors within each country call for urgent and radical solutions.

    Because of ambiguity in understanding the Paper’s use of “acquiescence” as it relates to our participation in the capitalistic system, the following note was attached by the General Assembly.

    We do, however, affirm that uncritical acceptance of capitalism or any other system when it is exploitative and oppressive is sinful.

    The “Claims Paper” then goes on to say:

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    We believe Christ calls us to dissent from our present lifestyles and to make a radical break from the patterns of over-indulgence, consumerism, and reckless waste. Christ calls us to solidarity with the poor and powerless, not only through altering our lifestyle, but also by standing with them in their entitlement to justice and liberation. Christ calls us to share our resources, influence and power for the sake of others. Christ calls us to help create the political will for a new international economic order . . . . [that] fosters equitable distribution of the good bounty of God’s creation among all people. Christ calls us to redress the injustice we have done within [the Church] to women, to youth, to ethnic minorities, including Blacks, Spanish speaking people, native Americans, Asians and others.

    The significant realization that seems unavoidable in reading those calls to repentance lies in the fact that they are, as Roger Shinn suggests, “forced options .” Human rights, economics, energy, food, and ecology require our concerted response. They are not manifestations of abstract sin, nor may they be ignored by the machinations of collective irresponsibility; they require our collective responsibility. If repentance in our worship services is genuine and concrete, the specifics of the mission of the church will emerge as we confess our sin and turn in obedience toward the future. For repentance is a prerequisite for mission, and mission is an obedient, thankful response to the grace of God.

  • A Case for Pious Language

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    PROTAGONIST CORNER

    A Case for Pious Language

    D. Cameron Murchison, Jr.

    Union Theological Seminary, Richmond,

    Virginia

    Superman in the role of God incarnate! As jarring as it sounds, as travializing of the core of Christian faith as it seems—such was the suggested interpretation in a major news magazine as it sought to make sense of the appeal of the recent movie, Superman. The reviewer cited the unmistakable themes of the sending of the son, the action of a savior, the effecting of a “resurrection /’ and the persistence of life as clear evidence that our contemporary culture now uses epic, fanciful films as substitutes for the “great myths and rituals of belief, hope and redemption.” “Why shouldn’t those great revelatory myths come back into the collective consciousness in the most effective and dramatic ways that our civilization, God help it, has set up?” (Jack Kroll, “Superman to the Rescue!,” Newsweek, January 1, 1979, p.50.) The observation opens up the possibility of several kinds of theological inquiry. But for present purposes I will not quarrel with the assumption that the Christian claims for God incarnate, salvation, and resurrection are but one illustration of a class of claims known as the “great revelatory myths.” Nor will I take issue with the implied suggestion that we are better off in having these “myths” reproduced even in the admittedly garish image of Superman. What is worthy of comment is the possibility that some in our culture may in fact find their only contact with salvation, redemption, and resurrection in the mutant form provided by this aspect of popular culture. It bespeaks an urgent issue for the Christian community which has not always been able to speak meaningfully of God incarnate, salvation, and resurrection amidst the private and public forces of contemporary life. In fact the Christian church and its preachers have tended to mute distinctive Christian themes, substituting others thought to be more immediately useful and understandable because borrowed from the surrounding culture. Ironically, the culture has apparently seen fit to invent an alternative mechanism for reintroducing at least surrogates for the themes of Christian faith. The issue for Christians, and especially for Christian preachers, is whether they have an intelligible language which embodies the themes central to their definition as Christians. Are Christian people involved in careers, or are they called to the service of a God who has the well being of the human family as his cause? Are ministers in the Christian church expected to attain a high degree of competency in their professions, or are they to strive for a faithful stewardship of gifts in their fields of service? Are tensions between husbands and wives properly understood in terms of conflicting needs related to varying stages of personal growth, or in terms of the failure of both to recognize the inherent incompleteness of either partner in a creation where humanity is established as

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    male and female? Is the terror of death tamed by familiarity with the typical psychological experiences through which the terminally ill pass, or by a personal trust in the reality of God who does not deny yet transcends the pain and separation death brings? An obvious response to all these questions is that they pose false disjunctions . In none of these cases is it a matter of either one mode of understanding or another. In fact, the most insightful Christian theology is often one that integrates the authentic Christian perceptions and those gained from other sources of knowledge and insight. Yet there seems to be a clear danger that contemporary Christian preaching is failing to accomplish such integration, substituting the other sources of knowledge and insight in its place. At least this is one way to understand the call by contemporary American culture for Superman to provide theological insight. Preachers within the Christian community should remember that there are distinctively Christian ideas and views for which cultural sources of knowledge provide no substitute. If the Christian community does not keep them alive, they will either die or be replaced by the ersatz religion of Superman. Yet the challenge all this poses is not simply for clergy or other “professional” theologians. It is a challenge for all Christian women and men to learn to use the language of faith in describing their own life experiences, letting that language open up new vistas in otherwise common-place experience. But surely it is a prime task of the preaching ministry today to see that the challenge is issued and response is made. Happily there are some specialist theologians who have recently transcended the methodological preoccupation of so much modern theology and have tried to give a summary of the Christian faith in an intelligible and’illuminating fashion. Other Christian people can be guided in the quest for a suitable and usable language of faith by such as Karl Rahner (Foundations of Christian Faith) and Hans Kung (On Being a Christian). Nonetheless, the task is finally a very personal one which no one can entirely do for another. It is a matter of thinking about my life and the life of my world in terms of the basic themes of Christian faith, letting its fullness be disclosed by those themes. Preachers who succeed in advocating such language of faith will do so in direct proportion to their own capacity for construing the concrete details of their own lives in terms of the central claims of Christian faith. In part this is a call to the use of pious language. Our consciousness is shaped by the language we use. If we persistently use the language of “Career” as we contemplate our life’s involvement, we will surely end with only the narcissistic project of the self at the center of our attention. A quite different kind of consciousness is engendered by talking about our live’s tasks in terms of the call of God to a covenant fellowship and service. Rather than narrowing our awareness of the project of a self, this kind of language broadens it to the project of God with the whole creation. Such pious language is always fraudulent when it is reduced to the parroting of clinches and jargon that has no grounding in one’s own experience of faith and life. But where such pious language grows from such nourishing roots, it becomes a means of intensifying, clarifying, and extending the grace and truth

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    already known. In a culture which looks to Superman for at least a nostalgic hold on transcendence and hope, it is not too much to suggest that the recovery of pious language is an urgent task for all Christians; that its recovery depends in large measure upon the strength of the preaching ministry; and that its achievement could have a profound impact on the health of the church and the life of the world.

  • DCEs as Church Professionals

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    PROTAGONIST CORNER

    DCEs as Church Professionals

    Kenneth B. Orr Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Richmond, Virginia

    For sixty-five years the Presbyterian Church in the United States has been engaged in educating directors of Christian education. Over these years these persons have contributed outstanding leadership to the Church as educational specialists in congregations, presbyteries, and within Assembly boards and agencies. Today 500 or more serve in the PCUS alone and their employment costs the Church more than five million dollars annually in salaries. The intensity of demand for these persons is greater today than for most other Church professionals. While the movement of the DCEs is a 20th century phenomena—dating back to 1910 or so—it is a movement now seeking full recognition as Church professionals. Unfortunately, the Presbyterian Church, U.S. has never adequately recognized the DCE as a professional, preferring instead to treat these persons as those who occupy a lay role at an advanced level. What DCEs or Church educators are asking for today, quite simply, is to be recognized as the professionals they are and can be. They are quite willing to concede that the ministry of the Word and Sacrament is the first office of the Church, as our Book of Church Order declares. But they are not willing to have the pastoral ministry be the only professional office in the Church. The dilemma of the DCE today, and the ambiguity of their role in the Church, grows out of the ChurclVs failure to recognize DCEs as a second professional office in the Church. By using DCEs as full-time Church employees, and yet by denying them full participation in the courts of the Church, the Presbyterian Church, U.S. is weakening its effort to mount a strong, denominationwide program in Christian education. The DCE is treated as neither clergy nor laity. Unlike the clergy, the educator is not ordained. Like the laity, the educator is usually a member of a local church. Unlike the laity, however, the DCE is rarely elected as an officer of the congregation because he/she is employed by one of these boards, the Session. So the educator is discriminated from both sides: neither a lay leader who can serve as an elected leader, nor as the paid professional who can, by virtue of the ordained elder office, be assured of having access to the Session. This ambiguity often renders the DCE powerless to serve as a true second professional in the life of the Presbyterian Church.

    WHAT EDUCATORS WANT IN THE FUTURE

    What do DCEs want and need in the future? A consultation held in 1977 and attended by more than 75 DCEs from across the denomination isolated four conditions as goals they wished to achieve and which I wish to comment on in some detail.

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    1. STANDARDS. The DCE lacks a designated place within the Church’s order. They are in the working life of the Church in many areas, but not in the Church’s ordering of its life, except as they are referred to rather briefly in Chapter 24 (Par. 224-1 to 7) of the Directory of Worship. This section covers only the commissioning of these persons and has nothing to say concerning relationships, accountability, or standards. When we compare this brief section with the detailed provisions for the officers of the Church, we can see better why DCEs have some of the current problems they do. There are no uniform standards that are commonly accepted or even acknowledged by the General Assembly as important enough to put in the BCO, seemingly. Another facet of the standards issue is that the authority to employ and to terminate the services of the DCE is the prerogative of the Session. As a result, there is no way for the denomination, beyond the local Church, to require any uniform standards of competence for the educator. There is at the present time an excellent certification process at the General Assembly level which is recommended for all Christian educators. Many of the Christian educators are certified. Certification, however, is an optional procedure. The Session, in the words of the BCO, “may employ properly qualified persons to direct the educational program. Such persons shall work under the supervision of the pastor.” It is left to the Session to define who is “properly qualified” and it may, as many do, totally ignore the certification procedures and standards of the General Assembly. The call for standards that can be enforced if a person is to be called a “Director of Christian Education” is a desirable requirement if the role is to have quality and integrity. Imagine, if you will, what chaos would exist in the PCUS if we had no written standards for those serving as ordained ministers. The office would be crowded with a hodge-podge of persons with little uniform competence. The request for standards that really are enforced by the denomination is to remove a rather chaotic situation for DCEs. It would not necessarily prohibit a Session from hiring anyone, but it would insure that if the person is to be called a Director of Christian Education in the PCUS, they have met certain educational standards. It is an irony that often those most critical of DCEs because of their performance are also those who oppose the provision of uniform standards for DCEs.

    2. ACCOUNTABILITY. Currently the DCE is accountable only to the Pastor and Session. DCEs want to be accountable to these parties certainly, but they also feel the need of some way by which they can have redress of grievances. Their desire would be to have some relationship that provided for Presbytery, through its Commission, to be available to consult when personnel difficulties develop. As a third party, the Commission, or some other designated party of Presbytery, could mediate differences as they occur and be useful in maintaining effective work. Such a request is understandable and to be expected by persons who are seeking to have a career as professionals. In the academic profession, for example, the rise of tenure procedures protecting faculty was due to the need by professors in the 30’s for protection against the vagaries of presidents and trustees who by whim of personality or social view could indiscriminately fire faculty members. Educators are not asking for tenure procedures, but rather some recourse for appeal or assistance when difficulties develop that can be handled by third parties. In this way they can have more job security and function more effectively, free from the fear of being terminated for unjust cause.

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    3. MINIMUM COMPENSATION STANDARDS. DCEs have no fixed compensation standards in our denomination. Some are well paid; many are poorly paid. Minimum compensation standards would serve to hold persons in the role rather than having their services lost when they can gain higher salaries from working in public education or public service enterprises. To have enforced minimum standards for salary and benefits would require the action of Presbyteries, obviously, if the standards were to be followed. As employees now solely accountable to the Session, no such standards can be enforced. Let me say, parenthetically, that one of my major concerns in this matter is the talent we lose from educational leadership roles because we have no standards. This talent drain is a loss to the Church of many capable, committed, well-trained persons who often find that other organizations and agencies recognize the value of their leadership skills more readily than does the Church.

    4. VOICE AND VOTE. DCEs have neither voice nor vote in the Session of congregations or in Presbyteries. This is because they are neither elected to a recognized office of the Church nor ordained by the Church. As a result, DCEs feel disenfranchised from decision-making levels. They are forced apart and isolated. This exclusion from the levels of decision making enforces an aura of second-class attitudes and accentuates a sense of powerlessness. It is only natural that DCEs can feel that they have little dignity in our Church.

    These four goals, therefore, are the agenda DCEs have set for themselves to achieve in the PCUS in the future. To achieve them will take changes in our Church polity. The issue the Church faces, as I see it, is whether or not it is going to recognize and give support to the needs of DCEs to develop as professionals in the Church. If it does, it will assist the development of a recognized second professional office in the life of the Church in some way that will contribute to the standards of the role. It will put the blessing of the Church behind this role so that salary levels are adequate, routine procedures are followed to keep records of the profession current, and other institutional support structures are maintained. In this way DCEs can continue to serve the Church with self-dignity and with the confidence that they can have careers that are useful and valued.

  • Pastors in Koinonia

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    PROTAGONIST CORNER

    Pastors in Koinonia

    J. Jey Deifell, Jr.

    Trinity Presbyterian Church, Clearwater, Florida

    There are many interesting changes one experiences when leaving the seminary and entering the parish ministry. One of the most pronounced for me was not having my strong, supportive group of friends with me . . . those who during the three previous years had shared with me laughter and tears, moods and pressures, memories and dreams. It wasn’t until after about six months as a pastor that I realized how significant such a peer group had been in my nurture and growth. Now I was being called upon to feed others with few opportunities of being fed myself. Soon I began to experience a sense of professional inadequacy, pressures on how to balance my personal and professional life, how to deal with financial matters, what to do with my own moods of depression or exhilaration, how to translate from my head to my guts the knowledge that I could not be an adequate “all things to all people” pastor for the Lord. Many of these questions I was facing by myself, and this accentuated my loneliness. During my first year, I obtained the newly-published book Ex-Pastors: Why Men Leave the Parish Ministry by Jerald Jud, Ted Mills and Genevieve Birch. This study examined many of the same problems with which I was dealing and pointed out a very critical truth that I needed to embrace if I were to survive and be creative in the parish ministry. Those who had left the parish ministry had listed many reasons for their actions, the most dominant of which was “the professional support structures that would have bound them more effectively into the occupation were nonsupporti ve, whereas the really effective support structures were extra-professional, helping during a tough time but not capable of strengthening occupational commitment.” They were saying what I was discovering —that one cannot go it alone without close and loving fellowship of other pastors. Almost immediately I began to look around for ways to experience such a fellowship. Through several makeshift groups of ministerial associations and neighboring Presbyterian pastors, I began to find something of the support peer group I was needing. However, all of these seemed to be insufficient in terms of the depth of the fellowship and extent of support. I have never quite understood the failure for these attempts except that possibly these other pastors , along with myself, never really established a commitment to nurture and support each other. It was about two years later that Louis H. Evans, Jr., came to be the senior pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Although this man seemed “to have it all together/’ he too had a similar need for a close support group of fellow clergy. He asked five of us to join him in forming a covenant group which would meet regularly and share both personal and profes-

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    sional concerns. It was in this group that I experienced again the koinonia of my previous seminary days. The six of us began to share, first on one level and then on deeper levels, the truths of the Gospel and of our lives. Sometimes we would reflect upon scripture that would launch us into periods of spiritual growth. Other times we would log in our agendas, our highs and lows, our problems, that were then focused upon by five loving souls. We were of different theological backgrounds and held different callings in the Presbyterian ministry , but with the help of the Holy Spirit, this contributed richly to the perceptions of truth and the encouragements of love. What made this covenant group so beautiful was undoubtably the presence of the Spirit and our common love for our Lord Jesus. Also we enjoyed each other’s presence whether playing basketball, sharing a bunch of grapes, or a decision to be made. However, one of the most practical ingredients that blessed our covenant group was the eight “Covenant Principles,,, written by Louie that enabled us to trust and to commit ourselves to each other. These were later elaborated upon and made into his book “Creative Love” (Revell, 1977), but they included affirmation, availability, prayer, openness, sensitivity, honesty, confidentiality, and accountability. When I left the Washington area in December of 1977, one of the celebrations that affected me the most was the last gathering our covenant group had with our spouses. We knew love had come down at Christmas and had been very present with us those last five years. I have now been in my new parish for a year and have not delayed in trying to establish a new covenant group of ministers in this area of Florida. With seven other ministers, and using the same covenant principles, we have already begun to experience the koinonia that Christians so desperately need, especially clergy. By reflecting and recreating, by sharing pressures and prayers, we’ve already begun to experience a supportive love that is sure to be blessed. Our model is that we meet once a month from 12:00 to 2:00, taking turns at each others’ churches with the host covenant member calling the shots for our agenda. We have had a one-day retreat at the presbytery camp. I strongly urge all ministers everywhere to join themselves in covenant with a small group of clergy and use whatever model that would enable them to experience a similar koinonia, (Other models are suggested in Gordon Cosby’s Handbook for Mission Groups, Robert Raines’ New Life in the Church and Robert C. Leslie’s Sharing Groups in the Church). Could the local presbytery be such a support group? It depends on whether you are speaking theoretically or realistically. The present nature of our presbyteries seem to rule this out. However, they could well encourage such covenant groups forming! For sure, the church, the clergy, their families, and their congregations would be much healthier and happier if covenant groups were part of the pastor’s life.

  • God’s ‘Affirmative Action’ Plan

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    PROTAGONIST CORNER

    God’s “Affirmative Action” Plan

    Winston A. Lawson

    PCUS Mission Board, Atlanta, Georgia

    Last year the Supreme Court of the United States, in a “landmark decision,” ordered the Medical School of the University of California at Davis to admit Alan Bakke. The Court was interpreted by some people as implicitly saying that in spite of the social, psychological and historical legacy of WO years of slavery for Blacks, to admit a Black of lesser grade point average than White Bakke (refused admission by 13 other schools) was to subject Bakke to “reverse discrimination.” This, such an argument cynically continued, was obviously inconsistent with the amendments of the American Constitution which guarantee basic freedoms and rights to all citizens—including the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, or class. Proponents of this argument would reemphasize the point that it has never been a matter of national outrage for Blacks to be denied their constitutional rights in favor of others. But with Bakke, there was an hysterical outcry against “injustice.” This was generated, no doubt, because for the first time in this country’s history, it seemed as though it might become policy for “those who came to work late in the day to receive the same wages as those who were there early.” This decision of the highest court caused various reactions among people in the Church. These reactions reflected their different perceptions of the role of the Church in society—to withdraw from the society’s “contamination,” or to conform to social norms or to transform the status quo which informs those norms. In addition to these theological and ethical perspectives, another obvious factor contributing to Church people’s reactions to the Bakke decision was their racial and cultural background, for people’s ethnic identity figured significantly in their response to the alienating predicament precipitated by the Supreme Court’s ruling. However Christians analyze the problem of evil and alienation as to its source or product, as we look at the New Testament’s doctrine of God’s justice and mercy, we cannot help seeing that part of the reaction to the Bakke decision is due to the fact that there has always been a pervasive falsification of people’s selfunderstanding as to their roles and goals in life. This is variously referred to in the Bible as the result of “deafness,” “blindness,” or “hardness of heart.” Theologically, we would say that people have clung to illusions of being “special,” “elect” for privilege and not for responsibility for justice and righteousness. On the other hand, there are those who, in dealing with the Bakke decision, take their cue from the clear, consistent, ethical norms of love, justice, and mercy taught by Jesus as the gospel of hope for human happiness and harmony. They see what they would call “God’s Affirmative Action Plan” most pointedly enunciated in the parable of the farmer who hired workers at different hours of the day and paid them all a denarius (Matthew 20:1-16). Their exegesis of this parable points to the normative principle of “love” for human social organization and function. The

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    parable provides a model for dealing with the dilemma of need, greed, scarcity, injustice, and inequality of access to the abundant resources of the earth. For them, Jesus was really saying: “As you live in this world of evils, remember that the Kingdom of God, which is surely breaking in, is like what happened at sunset on a typical Palestinian vineyard, when an angry day-worker confronted the owner: ‘These last worked only one hour,’ he shouted, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’ But the owner replied, ‘My dear friend, I am doing you no injustice; did you not agree to work for a denarius? Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge me my generosity?’” Behind the theological insights found in the pointed question at the parable’s climax, were environmental, social, and economic realities of Palestine where the grape harvest ripens toward the end of September immediately before the rains. In such a situation, harvest involves a frantic race against time. So the farmer kept going to the marketplace to hire men at various hours from dawn to five o’clock, which was one hour before the end of the normal workday. This he did because he saw after each hour’s work that he needed more help to complete the harvesting. He also knew that those men who were standing around the marketplace were not streetcorner idlers “on welfare,” merely passing the time in meaningless frivolities! No! In Palestinian culture the marketplace was the “union hall” where day-laborers gathered to avail themselves of work. Their situation was more precarious than that of slaves, who at least lived on the farmer’s property and had access to their owner’s provisions. Like our migrant workers, there was for them no guarantee of a livelihood, so when the farmer came to the marketplace at five o’clock inviting them to work for one hour for what was “fair,” i.e., a small percentage of the denarius, they readily agreed. In contrast to these cultural and economic expectations, Jesus concludes this astonishing parable in the spirit of the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25), saying: “Think what it must have meant for these men to have received a full day’s pay, a denarius, and not just a part pay as had been agreed to and deserved! Think what it must have meant to them to take home a whole day’s pay to their destitute families!” But then comes “Mr. Legal,” our Alan Bakke, protesting: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us . . .” To which the farmer retorts, “Friend, do you begrudge my generosity? I am simply carrying out God’s Affirmative Action Plan!” Herein lies the contrast between the world of God’s grace and the world of merit. The parable compares the legalism of religious people, who look for their reward, with the gospel of love and mercy seen in Jesus Christ. Jesus is saying a radical and stunning word to his disciples, to the Scribes and Pharisees, to Alan Bakke, and to all of us who bridle with indignation at “Affirmative Action Plans,” Years of Jubilee, and other schemes designed to rectify perennial injustice. He is saying that God’s word to the querulous Isaiah of the Exile is still applicable to us who are “hard of heart”: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways” (55:8). He is saying, “God is not some ‘celestial punch-clock operator.’ For if he were, your paycheck, remarkable worker that you fancy yourself to be, would be docked beyond recognition! No, God is not like that but is rather the God of mercy and grace who gives to those who come late the same wages as those who were there early.”

  • Life In The Midst Of Death

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    Life In The Midst Of Death

    Charles E. Raynal, ΠΙ

    First Presbyterian Church, Hammond, Louisana

    Death is life’s greatest question. That we who once came to be will one day die is a fearful mystery, the consequences of which are too terrible for ordinary personal resources. To face our own death and the death of loved ones is the most stringent personal test of Christian faith. The question for individuals is whether or not life is finally meaningful, whether the end of human life fulfills or betrays what is most distinctively human. We preachers should not minimize death’s horror by easy appeal to some inevitable component of the universal grief process nor acquiesce in the mortician’s thin cosmetic disguises of its ugliness. Before the limitation that God places on the span of our life, we shall be afraid. Yet death is not simply personal. It takes a peculiar guise in today’s world as a mark of our fallen age. Examples of death as social policy are not difficult to find. Elective abortion has become a routine means of birth control, and though it is clearly wrong for the government to bind the conscience or deny equal treatment to the poor, it may be more deeply wrong for any of us to obscure this violence against helpless human life by aseptic technique. Capital punishment is a mark of the brutality of our society. Its efficacy in deterring violent crime is unproven, and it has been so inequitably administered that it perpetuates more injustice than it punishes. World hunger is a vast and complex phenomenon whose root causes are embedded deeply in the gap between the rich and the poor. Keeping and torturing political prisoners, like Steven Biko, the South African moderate whose death in prison still remains unexplained, or like the thousands of other cases documented by Amnesty International, are symp­ tomatic of the use of the threat of death as a means of oppression. The memory of Vietnam, a war for which our leaders could give no justification finally believ­ able by the American people, much less by the rest of the world, brings death as social policy squarely home. Our neutron bomb, which preserves property while slowly killing personnel, is but one of the most recently publicized refine­ ments of the horrible ingenuity of modern warfare. Our arms trade is turning the whole world into armed camps among which the probability of nuclear war increases. Though death is particular, even so it is the wages of the sins of our life together and the reminder of the sickness of our human condition. Death as an instrument of social policy has a new face in our time, and its power over our communities is more vast than we are accustomed to acknowledging. For the Church, the question of death must be raised and answered in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death on the cross. The resurrection is the unique and pervasive testimony of the earliest preaching and teaching of the Church. There is no discernible level of tradition within the canonical New Testament for which the resurrection is not essential. Apart from the rising of Jesus from the dead on the third day, there would have been no Lord’s Day nor any remembered gospel to preach. Without it there would be no grounds for hope before the personal dilemma death poses nor any reason for boldness before

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    the brutality of death as social policy. The resurrection is essential as the basis for the Easter gospel. It is essential for any real candor in the face of death’s destruction of individual personality. It is essential for any hope in the presence of the new face of death as social policy.

    I Paul identifies Jesus for the Church as follows:

    For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (I Corinthians 15:3-5, RSV.)

    Soon after he was converted, Paul received this already traditional formulation of the first faith of the Christian community.1 Its sequence of Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and appearances is presupposed by all the other writings of the New Testament. Even those in Corinth who oppose Paul’s theology of the resurrection do not deny that Jesus was raised on the third day (See I Cor. 15:1218 ). The rest of this chapter is the most deliberate and the richest exposition of the implications of faith in the resurrection in the apostle’s writings.2 Its difficulty is token of its depth, and even though our minds are forever falling short of Paul’s own, his words may well renew our preaching of the Easter gospel. As for Paul, so with contemporary Christians: faith begins in the recognition and acknowledgement that God raised up Jesus from death on the cross. If we ask “Who is Jesus?” the answer must be “He is the crucified and risen Lord.” If there were no resurrection there can now be no faith or forgiveness: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (v. 17). However, given this unique happening, this unexpected surprise, the Christian Church affirms a personal, individual hope even though we die. Offered this unasked for grace, Christian faith affirms life over against every appearance of the new face of death as social policy. There need no longer be any cover-up of death’s power over human good. Nor need we fear that God’s best intention for our well being will be foiled. In the resurrection of Jesus we see that God’s characteristic activity is to rescue His people from the grip of death.

    II The resurrection is essential for a personal hope in the face of death. Hans Conzelmann has argued that in I Corinthians 15 Paul was writing to “spirit enthusiasts” who believed that the personal implications of Christianity were “for this life only.”3 Instead Paul argues that there is an analogy between what God did in raising Christ from death on the cross and what God will do for “those who belong to Christ.” Like a seed that must disappear to become a plant, the human self must die in order to be transformed into a new self. Dr. Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross and others have exposed how our society often seeks to cover up the ugliness of death.4 Elderly people are confined to nursing homes and so the difficulties of aging and the pain of dying are frequently borne

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    in relative isolation. The death of a patient is identified with personal failure by many physicians. The terminally ill are too much isolated and their thoughts of dying remain unexpressed because neither medical professionals or families are able to face the inevitability of death. The artifices of the “funeral home” (Who lives there?) are readily apparent to any preacher whose pastoral duties ally him with morticians: the make-up and wax, the neutralized “all faiths” chapel, the tremulous tape-recorded music, the pretentious flowers, the artifi­ cial turf over the grave. Against the conspiracy of silence or outright denial, Christian faith recog­ nizes death as real and as the most telling consequence of the corruption, the ignominy, and the weakness of human existence. Christian faith does not deny or seek to cover up the sorrow and loss that death represents in human experi­ ence. Nor does it affirm an easy out with “pie in the sky by and by.” Christian faith faces the mortality of the human person. Whence this power to face the awesome reality of death? The affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed, “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” is a faithful rendering of Paul’s theology of the resurrection. “The resurrection of the body” means “the resurrection of the human self,” and though the phrase is not itself Pauline, it nonetheless reflects his thought. In traditional forms of Christian affirmation, the immortality of the soul, held to be a spiritual sub­ stance within the body, is the warrant for the life everlasting. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, teaches that the soul is an “immortal subsist­ ence” within a body which turns to dust (See Chapter XXXIV). In Paul’s thought, however, immortality and incorruptibility are not attributes that sig­ nify the continuity of the self through death. They are rather the deathless perfections of those whom God raises from the dead. The life everlasting repre­ sents a radical change that comes as a result of the victory of Christ, not as the natural endowment of the human person. That the resurrection of the self is a gift, however, does not undermine Paul’s supposition that there is continuity beyond death for the person. Embodiment is essential to selfhood for Paul, and therefore signfies continuity in the resurrection. Of course neither is this conti­ nuity subsistent within the self, but is rather given by God in a manner appro­ priate to the new condition of life in the resurrection. Paul calls it a “spiritual body” (v. 44) and implies that the change from the self which dies to the new self given by God is a regeneration and a fulfillment of the old self. Therefore the resurrection means that facing death, we nonetheless find the promise that our death is not our end. As God vindicated the righteousness of Christ by raising him from the dead, so we may count on him to forgive our unrighteousness and preserve our identity as his children. We are given no details of the life everlasting nor should we pretend that our faith or knowledge is sufficient to cover all our anxiety. Yet in Christian faith we have “the comfort of a reasonable religious and holy hope” 5 that God will complete what we cannot

    complete for ourselves and sustain us through our dying.

    ΠΙ

    In the third place, the resurrection of Christ is essential as the basis for justice in the human community. According to Paul, the power of death is

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    destroyed by the fulfillment of the purposes of God in his coming kingdom (vv. 20-28). As risen, Christ is the first fruits of a new and universal order: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all,be made alive” (v. 22). As the resurrection is the basis for personal courage in facing one’s own death, so it is the ground for the Church’s witness to the injustices that are perpetuated in the human community. There is no individual resurrection apart from the context of the larger purpose of God for his whole kingdom. Faith is not an opiate, dulling the Church’s sensitivity to the pain of the impoverished world, muffling its cries for justice. Just as the resurrection of Jesus is God’s chosen way to make right the injustice and loss that his death on the cross represents, so is the resurrection the necessary condition for the Christian hope that the suffering of the world will find respite in God’s coming kingdom. Juergen Moltmann has said of Christ raised from death on the cross: “In that man the future of the new world of life has already gained power over this unredeemed world of death and has condemned it to become a world that passes away.”6 As the affirmation of the vindication of God’s victory over death, the resurrection is the indicative upon which rest all the imperatives of the Christian ethic. Rather than being a hindrance to concern for the problems of human community, the resurrection is the only basis for a realistic social ethic. Finally, injustice manifests itself in death. Death may be latent—such as in the relatively higher rate of infant mortality among American blacks. Death or the threat of death may be patent—as in the systematic oppression of apartheid in South Africa or the supression of dissent in Brazil and Soviet Russia. Death makes our forgetfulness of social justice insidious. For Christian faith the power of death everywhere manifest in today’s world is possible only as the denial of God’s righteous rule. It is the defiant brutalization of life which is God’s gift, the betrayal of the preciousness of every human person. Therefore the resurrection is not an escape from the urgency of justice but rather the only adequate basis for the Christian ethic. The resurrection of the crucified Jesus is God’s vindication of the righteousness of the kingdom he preached. It is the only assurance that an ethic of love is a reasonable course for human community. The assurance is not that justice will be achieved by human endeavor. Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom of God and ended up on a cross. Likewise, should we take up the struggle of God’s coming Kingdom , we may find defeat. But the resurrection stands as the sign that what we cannot make right, God will finally accomplish for His people. Thus Paul’s conclusion from the resurrection is an admonition:

    be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (v. 58).

    1 Hans Conzelmann, “On the Analysis of the Confessional Formula in I Corinthians 15:3-5,”

    trans, by Mathias Rissi, Interpretation XX, 15-25. See also Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 9-49; Jean Hering, The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, trans, by A.W. Heathcote and P. J. Allcock (London: The Epworth Press, 1962); C. F. D. Moule, editor, The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ (Naperville, 111.: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1968). 2 H.W. Boers, “Apocalyptic Eschatology in I Corinthians 15,” Interpretation XXI, 50-65. Boers’

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    structural analysis is very helpful. His conclusion that “Paul is lost to us if we attempt to make his message speak to our time” (p. 64) is unsatisfactory. 3 Conzelmann, p.24.

    4 Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1969).

    5 The Book of Common Worship (Philadelphia, The Presbyterian Church in the United States

    of America, 1946), p.207. 8 Juergen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York, Harper and Row, 1974), p. 171.