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  • Church of the Resurrection

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    Church of the Resurrection

    Acts 9:36-43, Revelation 7:9-17

    Chris Currie

    First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, Louisiana

    Church is what happens while we are busy playing church. Resurrection is what happens when we thought the only option was lifelessness and despair. In the small community church I used to serve, the clerk of session and I had a child together. Did I fail to mention that to you in the vetting and interview process? The boy was 12 or 13 and a member of our church. He was the son of an alcoholic father who died early in his life and the son of a mother who was mentally impaired. They were barely making it the whole time we lived there, and occasionally the church would be called upon to help out with financial support or car repairs or monthly rent. I can still remember when they were able to move into government subsidized low-income housing and move out of their trailer on a rural county road. I helped them move a few things and can remember standing on their floor and being able to see through to the grass below and hoping that floor would hold for a few more minutes until we could get out of there and move them into their new apartment. We had a weird early March snow in which there were about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, but it was not cold enough to stick to the roads. The roads, however, were wet and slick. They were on their way home from the grocery store in the early evening and were crossing a busy four-lane highway and did not see the oncoming car that struck them on the mother’s side. She was hospitalized and later transferred to the ICU of the University hospital where she lay in a coma for weeks. The phone call came just as I was getting comfortable clothes on and pulling back the sheets, ready for bed. It was the 13 year old boy. His mom was hurt bad, and the first person he thought to call, the first person he thought could help him, was his pastor. I wish I could say I immediately rose to the occasion and sprang out of bed, but I was not immediately sure what I needed to do. We had three young children at home and a 6 week old. Did he mean for me to come right then? Could I check in with him in the morning? Five minutes later the phone rang again; it was the boy, and he wanted someone to come now to be with him and to be there with his mom. So I called my session clerk (you session clerks remember what could someday be on your job de­ scription), and we went to the hospital together. In the midst of this moment, and on our drive to the hospital, I remember saying to her that this might be a moment for the church to show up. And it certainly was. None of this family’s extended family could take in this child long-term. We did not know what the outcome would be for this mother. It would turn out that she would be on a breathing machine/ventilator for nearly 3 weeks. And so one Tuesday morning in March, I found myself sitting in a courtroom before a judge alongside my session clerk requesting temporary custody of a middle school boy. For a brief period of time, we had a child together. Sometimes church is what happens while we are busy playing church. Sometimes resurrection is what happens while we are just hoping to get by. What I mean is that sometimes church is thrust upon us, and those sweet little vows we make at baptism bring late night phone

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    calls and highway emergencies and people into our lives that are difficult to manage. In this case, we prayed for a miracle and it came. The mother slowly recovered and was able to return home. Different members of the congregation housed the child for extended periods of time, medical bills were miraculously sorted out, and the church showed up, rose up, and showed us all once again what Christian community can be and also what Christian community demands of each of us. My time of parental custody ended up lasting 3-4 months, and as usual, the clerk of session did most of the work and still today thinks of our adopted child as one of her own. It was almost like Sunday after Sunday, hymn after hymn, prayer after prayer, sermon after sermon, we had been practicing and preparing for this moment. And when it came, we were jolted out of our regular routines and responsibilities and given a vision of what we were called to do and be.. .in that moment. Sometimes church is what happens to us while we are busy playing church. Sometimes resurrection just shows up and over­ takes us and lifts us up. A church is reduced to a dead and lifeless body until Peter kneels and prays and tells Tabitha to get up, and what was once a dead and lifeless body is raised to new life. Easter, it seems, is not just a one-off inexplicable and explosive miracle that took place once and for all with the crucified and dead Jesus, but Easter has ripple effects into which the risen Christ continues to create mini-resurrections wherever the spirit takes him, with Tabitha here in Joppa, with Paul on the Damascus road, with a small congregation’s response to a tragic accident. Jesus has a way of tumbling into our own lives in moments that both challenge us to our core and at the very same time resurrect us and reveal to us once again who we truly are. The point of life and the point of our lives is not to get us into heaven, but to get heaven into us; not to achieve immortality for ourselves, but to find that even where we are dead and lifeless, Christ is at work resurrecting us. “Get up. And she opened her eyes, and sat up.” Revelation begins with a declaration that the time is near (1:3) and ends with the prayer for Jesus to come (22:20).1 The author of Revelation is concerned that the Christian community is at risk of being coopted by the power and economic system of the Roman Empire, but even more, the author is concerned that the Christian community not be completely compromised and accommodated to the culture of that empire and its accompanying way of life rather than the beliefs, practices, and counter-cultural identity of those baptized into Christ’s life. The author of Revelation wanted to challenge the church to a way of life that sought to draw “sharper boundar­ ies between the church and the world,” because as Richard Hays reminds us, there were those in the Christian community who thought they could blend in as “normal” members of society and could accommodate the emperor cult as a civic obligation without betraying their faith in Jesus.2 Ultimately the author of Revelation believes such compromises are hard for the church to bear and that the risen Christ seems to do his best work raising up a church in the midst of intense opposition and the unjust order of the present world. The author gives us a vision of heaven not just as a place to go after death, but as a vision of what happens when the crucified and risen and living Christ takes up residence in our lives and gets ahold of us, sometimes thrusting church upon us rather than letting us have it on our own terms. Our robes will be white, Revelation tells us, not because of all the great things we will achieve or even all the special religious feelings we are able

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    to collect or even the important stands we have the courage to take. Our robes will be white because they will have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Our robes will be white because when the risen Christ shows up, he does not just let us play church or think we can accommodate every emperor cult that comes along or that we are here to solve all our world’s problems or even all our problems. Instead, we stand before his throne and sing our alleluias, we look forward with joy and confidence, and we trust that Jesus Christ will find a way once again to thrust church upon us while we think we are busy playing church.

    Notes 1 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 179. 2 Ibid., 177.

  • Ash Wednesday Sermon

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    Ash Wednesday Sermon

    Psalm 51:1-12

    Amy P. McCullough

    Grace United Methodist Church, Baltimore, Maryland

    Why do we come here to this bare sanctuary to gather around these ashes and listen to such solemn texts? Why do we sit in hard pews on a late winter day to receive, without protest, the psalmist’s words, “O God, I know my transgressions; my sin is ever before me…. You are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment?” Why do we listen to such harsh truths about ourselves? I believe we do so because we are homesick. We are longing for home. The ache in our hearts brings us here. You remember being homesick, don’t you? The suffering in silence with tears falling on your pillow at night during sleep-away camp. The hist winter in college, when you caught a cold because there was no one to nag you to wear your coat or get enough sleep. Adulthood does not bring immunity from such yearnings. Too many nights on the road and I am longing for my own bed, the familiar route to work, and the simple comfort of someone who knows how I like my eggs. Lent is the time to admit our homesickness, to confess we have lost our protec­ tive coat of truthful living or found ourselves making camp in untamed compulsions, egos, and appetites. Ash Wednesday is the day we hear the psalmist’s words, breathe them into our beings, look around, and then attempt to find the right path home. Many possible paths beckon, some more helpful than others. One tempting path emerges from the posture of humanity presented as the sanctuary colors change from green to purple. Advent speaks expectantly about God being so infused with love as to enter human flesh. Epiphany proclaims that the light of enfleshed love radiates its message to the world. Lent makes a Ll-turn, announcing the wretchedness of humankind. “My sin is ever before me,” prays Psalm 51. “Indeed I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. ” The psalmist expresses something profound about human nature, something urgent around our capacity for wrong behavior. It is a truth that calls us home. Yet the confession, “I was born a sinner,” unexamined, can slide dan­ gerously into “I am nothing but sinful, good for nothing but harm.” If we are only wretched, then we cannot reclaim our place in God’s family. If there is no hope of being remade in God’s love, then we bear no responsibility for walking a different way. A second path tempts us with an inverse motif. This path says, “Do not be so hard on yourself. Of course you have made mistakes. Yes, you have sinned. But whatever your transgressions, they are not too serious a burden. ’’This path is marked “A lighter side of sin. ” It suggests that our primary task during Lent is to select something to temporarily relinquish. Lent is the time to give up Twitter or Netflix or Diet Coke, something excessive or indulgent whose absence is a mere discomfort. The lighter side of sin pathway slyly suggests that abstaining from our daily fix of Pacebook will fully contend with a prideful heart, a lifelong shame, or a festering wound we have inflicted upon another. If pounding away at the message sin, sin, sin leads us astray, then so does the perspective that simply tinkering with one particular habit will ad­

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    dress the pain of addressing the depth of our estrangement. Neither path will lead us home. One afternoon I was at my computer, furiously finishing an article. The computer was old. The deadline was looming. The screen began freezing every few minutes. I would pound out the sentences and then look up to see nothing appearing on the monitor. I tried saving, closing, and re-opening the document. Still the screen froze. I rebooted the computer. Started again. Nothing improved. After multiple cycles of these remedies and several episodes of losing my newly written material, I, in a fit of anger, grabbed the keyboard and slammed it down upon the desk. As I did so, the space bar flew off of the keyboard, sailing across the room. I had to get on my knees to search through the carpet, eventually finding it behind a chair near the bookcase. Although it easily slid back into its place, the spacebar never worked properly again. It stuck—just a little—each time I hit it. It resisted my touch, forcing me to press down more firmly in order to register a space. Have you ever noticed how often you hit the space bar when you are typing? The stickiness of the bar became an enduring reminder of one angry outburst, one instantly regretted action. From that afternoon onward, whenever I sat down at my desk to work, I faced a stumbling block, a bro­ kenness of my own creation. The stickiness of the space bar communicates something about sin. Sin trips us up, slows us down, hangs a weight upon our souls, and stops us from finding our pathway home to God. We lie to ourselves when saying “my actions didn’t really hurt anyone,” or “it was a tiny mistake already forgotten.” Like an essential key on the keyboard of daily life, sin stays with us, changing the fabric of a day, the story of a life. Ask someone how it felt to have a loved one walk away and the messages they carry from the hole within their heart. Ask a child what it was like to come home each evening to an enraged parent. Talk to a person who has seen combat, inquiring if they would agree with Sherman’s words, “War is hell.” Examine your own battle scars, carved by living in a world that measures lives by the color of your skin, the swell of your bank account, or the awards lined on your mantle. Think about this world where so many homes are stuffed with trinkets in hopes of being insulated from pain and to many other homes with bare cupboards, beaten up furniture, and dreams dashed by the burden of eking out an existence. This is the web of sin into which we are born, with which we daily contend, and from which the psalmist seeks God’s transforming mercy. Ash Wednesday is the day we choose to know this truth, for the sake of finding our way to the road paved by God’s grace. We confess all the ways we have been living apart from God’s generous, forgiving heart. We name the damage done to our­ selves and to another. We pray, “O God, my sin feels so deep I cannot imagine what it would be like to be at your doorstep.” Or, “God, my sin weighs so heavy that even if I knew the road, I could not travel it alone. Please have mercy on me. Surround me with your steadfast love. Put a right spirit within me. And lead me back to you.” Homesickness need not be a terminal condition. College preparatory manuals remind incoming students that everyone gets homesick at some point. These instruc­ tions include not getting too isolated. Do not lock away your life or your heart. They suggest finding ways to bring into the present some comforts of home. Jesus offered a homeward path based on the challenging comforts of God’s kingdom through his instructions to fast, give alms, and pray. These line the proper path of Lent.

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    To fast is not to relinquish a casual indulgence, but to abstain from a habit that typically hides your neediness. Fasting in a way that forces you to sit with your humanity—to feel your hunger, your loneliness, your boredom—and to allow that space to be altered by Christ’s presence. To give alms is to offer your resources to someone who is in desperate need. This practice forces us to confront our exces­ sive living and to truly see another’s survival as urgent and equal to our own plans. To pray is to speak honestly to God. It is to offer your self before your Creator, not hoping someone else will see your faith, but trusting that God will meet you in your neediness, as a cherished child. Make a discipline of offering your time to God. These are the three steps that line our path: fasting, alms giving, and prayer. Notice that they do not convey our unworthiness, but our beloved purposefulness as God’s children. Notice that they do not pretend we are without blemish. Instead they allow us to hear Love calling us from the doorstep of our true home and Christ offering us the strength to make it down the road to home again. May you walk a holy path. May you have a holy Lent.

  • What Does Christianity Have to Offer?

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    What Does Christianity Have to Offer?*

    1 Corinthians 15:1-8

    Mary Katherine Robinson Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, Black Mountain, North Carolina

    If there was ever a time we needed Easter and to hear this story of resurrection again, it is such a time as this. As I’ve reflected on the past six weeks of Lent, there is certainly a lot to process. During this Lent alone, a white supremacist gunned down 50 Muslims in two New Zealand mosques, the sexual abuse of Catholic nuns finally spilled into public view, wealthy parents cheated the college admissions process, laying bare the duplicity of “equal opportunity,” depression and suicide in children and teenagers has risen more than ever before, three African-American churches in Louisiana were burned down by arsonists, and explosions at churches in Sri Lanka killed more than 200 people. If there was ever a year the world needed Easter and to hear this story again and again, it’s this year. There is something that is hopeful and comforting about this story that we tell every year. Jesus died, but he’s not dead. That is indeed the paradox of Easter. But it is a paradox that never changes. It always ends that same way. The stone has been rolled away; the tomb is empty; Jesus is loose! I can’t explain how it happened, but I want to be told again and again that it did happen. I think we all do. I think that’s why we come here on this day. When my children were little and we’d get to the end of their favorite bedtime story, they’d always cry out, “One more time!” Aren’t we the same? We want to hear this story of resurrection one more time! We need to hear it again and again. It’s not because we think the story has changed or might end differently. It’s because our story, our world, keeps on changing, and we’re just not sure how it will end. I love this book of 1 Corinthians because it’s written to real people with very real questions; they too are not so sure how their story will end. There’s a church in Corinth who is struggling with incredibly human things around human divisions of class and ethnicity and gender. They are striving to figure out what it means to be the body of Christ. “Can we eat meat that was sacrificed to idols,” they ask, “or can we not?” Now, of course, those aren’t our questions today. But we have our own ques­ tions. We have our own conflicts about what it means to be church amid a world that is divided. And we wonder if the Gospel has anything to say to this present moment. What does this story of resurrection, what does Christianity, have to offer the world? In the southern hemisphere, countries in Africa, Central America, and parts of Asia, where people are in dire need and desperation, Christianity offers hope. The skeptic would say, “Well, that makes total sense. When people are in dire situations, they want to believe in a benevolent and comforting God who will rescue them from their pain and suffering.”

    * A sermon preached on Easter Sunday, 2019

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    In those places, the Church offers education, healthcare, healing services, prayer, food, and shelter. Out of love for humankind, the Church responds to their basic needs. It also offers the promise and the hope of eternal life where there is no more pain and suffering. It’s no surprise that in this part of the world, the Church is growing in leaps and bounds. But what about in countries and places of prosperity and wealth? You’ve heard the statistics. In these places, the Church struggles. Membership and attendance are in steady decline. Contributions are down, as are the number of young people and families who participate. The culture is increasingly more secular, and the Church has become more of a museum where historical artifacts are guarded and treasured. So, what does Christianity have to offer those who are prosperous and somewhat self-sufficient? The Church may be culpable of offering the wrong things. Can you imagine being the person asked about describing the Church and all you have are some brochures on denominations? “Here’s information on what it means to be a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Baptist, a fundamentalist, a Pentecostal, a Mennonite .” I don’t know, but I think most people would walk off before you finished your speech or find an excuse to leave as quickly as possible. Or, imagine standing there trying to sell a body of doctrine. “We believe in this.. .that.. .or the other… .If you become a Christian, you will need to accept all of these beliefs. Just sign here on the dotted line.” You know that there are some churches that make you do that. If you were one representing Christianity, what would you have to offer? Some­ times I think they hear this: “Come and take a stand on social issues with us. Say no to abortion or yes to homosexuality. Stand against racism or for the rights of women. Take a stance on capital punishment, gun control, gambling, alcohol, drugs, or a host of other social issues. This is what it means to be a Christian.” Many of these are commendable causes, but is taking a stand on social issues all that Christianity has to offer? Is that it? We’ve also offered this:

    Membership in our Church entitles you to a majestic wedding in our beauti­ ful sanctuary. Our pastor will preside at baptisms and funerals. Members are given preference and first place in preschool registration. We care for you in your times of need, provide comforting worship services to help you through the week, and don’t forget, it looks good on your civic resume. Join the church and receive all the glorious benefits of membership.

    That certainly sounds appealing and may get some of them in the door, but the first time their needs aren’t met, they’re gone. It’s consumer-driven ideology. We also get it wrong if we ask a person to simply believe in the miracle of the resurrection. Believing in miracles isn’t really that hard. They happen every day. Did you know that while you sit here in this sanctuary, you are actually moving at the speed of 66,700 miles per hour? It doesn’t really matter if you believe it or not, but it’s true. Your brain tells you that you’re not moving, but in 365 days you will orbit around the sun and you won’t even know you did it. Miracles happen all the time, with or without us. What does Christianity have to off the world? To you and me? Maybe we should

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    ask the Apostle Paul. I think he has a lot to say about it:

    For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he ap­ peared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time…. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

    What Christianity has to offer, not only on Easter Sunday, but on every day of the year, is that Jesus is not dead and that Christ is loose in the world! My friends, it is not to a denomination or to a body of doctrine that we invite others to come. It’s not just taking a stand on a social issue or enjoying the benefits of membership. At the heart of what the Church has to offer the world is a relationship with the living Christ. It’s what Paul shares in a simple sentence at the end of his beliefs: “He appeared also to me.” You see, something, or someone, changed the Pharisee, leader of the Jews Paul. He was a keeper of the law, a strict legalist who judged others for their shortcomings. He was self-righteous, self-sufficient, and self-made. I don’t think I would have liked him at all. So, how did he move away from all of that? He met the resurrected Christ. He wasn’t looking for it. He sure didn’t want it. He didn’t even know he needed it. But God’s grace came to him unannounced, uninvited, unexpected, and undeserved. That’s what Christianity still has to offer, and anything less than that is not powerful enough to change someone’s life. Paul’s whole life was changed. He traveled the world, built churches, suffered persecution, and wound up a prisoner in Rome until his death. He wrote over two-thirds of our New Testament. He’s not doing that because of loyalty to his denomination or doctrine. He’s not driven by social issues or the benefits of membership. If Paul were here today, he would be offering a relationship with the risen Christ. That’s what changed him, and that’s who changes us. Anything less is not enough. So here we sit on this glorious Easter day, hearing about the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. If you are here this morning with someone on Easter Sunday but feel more like an observer than a participant, I get that. It’s like me going to the Masters! I appreciate all the passion in the fans. I know something big is going on, but I don’t really get the game of golf. I’m an observer, not a participant. You may be feeling like that this Easter Sunday morning. We’re not offering denominationalism to you this morning. We’re proud of our Presbyterian roots, and while there may be fifty retired Presbyterian pastors and mis­ sionaries among you in the pews, they too know that denominationalism is not what we are offering. And even though we have solar panels on our roof and fully recognize our own complacency when it comes to climate change, we are not asking you to take a stand on social issues. Today, this Easter Sunday, is not about the benefits of membership or even believing in a miracle. What Christianity has to offer today and every other day is a relationship with the living Christ. Anything less than that is not powerful enough to change your life. He is risen? He is risen indeed!

  • Advent and the Power of Positive Faith

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    Advent and the Power of Positive Faith

    Michael Brown Former senior minister of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, New York

    For fifty-two years Norman Vincent Peale served as Pastor of America’s oldest Protestant congregation, Marble Collegiate Church on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 29th Street in New York City. During those years he also became one of the nation’s most popular motivational speakers, filling civic centers and convention halls from coast-to-coast, primarily based on the almost unparalleled success of his book The Power of Positive Thinking. People around the world were familiar with that work and associated Marble Church with its message. For almost a decade, I had the privilege of serving as senior minister of Marble Collegiate Church. During that time I came to understand that there were two Peales, though for the most part, the world knew only one. There was Norman Vincent Peale the motivator, who traveled all around the globe proclaiming with vigor, “You can if you think you can! ” However, when back home in the pulpit at Marble, there was the lesser-known Peale the preacher, altering his message somewhat by teaching, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” In the civic centers, his focus was pop psychology. In the pulpit, his focus was Christology. The world knew (and still knows and purchases) his book The Power of Positive Thinking. But the church knew his other, less heralded book, The Positive Power of Jesus Christ. And that power is our locus of hope in the season of Advent. Our hope resides not in our own strengths or abilities but in the doctrine of Incarnation, our faith that the timeless Word becomes flesh in our day and time, shining light in human darkness which the darkness cannot overcome. Moreover, our hope is that we, enlightened by that Word made flesh, will be transformed into loving, serving, inclusive, how-can-we-save-the-world-from-its-current -madness congregations. Our hope is not merely located in the historical Good News that Jesus came, but in the spiritual Good News that He comes even still. Our hope is that, in certain ways, he will come through women and men who are open and faithful conduits of the Holy Presence. That is the definition of Incarnation. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, present tense. And so we face the challenges of our current age with its divisiveness and political polarization, with its sin and sadness, with is fears and fragility, knowing that Light comes in the midst of it all. It comes as a beacon of hope that seeks to dispel the shadows of racism, socio­ economic inequities, gender bias, oppression of individuals based on their sexuality or places of origin or faith systems, trafficking, child or spousal abuse, hunger, envi­ ronmental irresponsibility, despair, loneliness, anger, guilt, insecurity, and whatever other obstacles exist on the road to the Kingdom of God. “A light shines in the dark­ ness How did the Marble Church I served proclaim the Advent Message? It focused on the same story that was Peale’s focus (and every other preacher’s focus) all those years before: the positive power of Jesus Christ. That’s the message as December approaches. Incarnation informs and dominates proclamation. The question is simply “What does it mean that Jesus comes as Word made flesh?” The question is not ulti­ mately about pageantry or cantatas or the performance of current leaders vis-a-vis the

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    legacies of their predecessors. The question is purely and simply about the Birth of all births, the Infant cradled in Mary’s arms, and what that means to a broken world which needs to be made whole. Advent is about the message, the positive power of The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us as Light. And that Light shines in the darkness of our troubled world, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

    Journa l for Preachers

  • Easter Sunday

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    Easter Sunday

    John 20:1 -18

    Amy P. McCullough

    Grace United Methodist Church, Baltimore, Maryland

    On Good Friday afternoon, while our congregation gathered in this sanctuary to behold Mozart’s Requiem, across the Atlantic Ocean in northern England, bands of pilgrims walked with their crosses for an eighth and final day to their destination on Holy Island. Yesterday, on Holy Saturday, a group of women in Bosnia put the finishing touches on hand-painted Easter Eggs. Photographs show entire rooms full of their intricate creations, eggs awaiting hands eager to roll them or crack them to mimic the tomb’s opening. As Saturday gave way to evening, thousands gathered in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, whose cornerstone plaque, if she had one, would read 326 A.D. For hours they jostled with one another for a turn to pray before Jesus’ tomb. Whether it was in Jerusalem, Bosnia, Holy Island, or right here in Baltimore at our sunrise service, when the minister proclaims, “Christ is Risen,” the faithful respond, “Alleluia.” Then they take the light from the Easter fire, sharing it candle by candle across the congregation. We, in the brightness of this Easter midmorning , add to the candles more fanfare: trumpets, flowers, and our own Alleluias. We all are rejoicing in the same glory: nothing can defeat God’s wondrous life. The gospel of John was written in hopes that we might see God’s glory. The brightness shines as the Word becomes flesh, and the man who is God turns water into wine, heals those who suffer, and makes meals for multitudes. Even his death is called part of his glory, an unexpected path toward God for those who believe. Have you seen the glory? Has it made its way to you through a tender touch, a compas­ sionate word, or the God who remembers your story? On the first day of the week, while it is still dark, Mary Magdalene walks to a garden to visit a gravesite. The entrance is open, but the tomb is empty. For a moment, that is it. That is all of the glory. Mary Magdalene isn’t thinking about glory when she comes to the graveside. She is contending with earth-shattering loss. She had been among Jesus’s followers since the day he had healed her. She had seen him teach, feed, and bring others into life. She did not flee when he was arrested, derided, and condemned. She stood at his cross while he died. She brings to the tomb amazing memories of love, laughter, acceptance, and life. And she carries with her nightmarish experiences of hatred, violence, pain, and death. When she arrives the tomb is empty. So the first recorded announcement of Jesus’ resurrection comes through the word empty. Empty is what the house is after the last child has left. Empty is the extra chair around the dining room no longer needed. Empty is what you are when you have given life all the energy, effort, and hope you have and still you come up lacking. Someone has stolen his body, she thinks. Someone has stolen his last shred of dignity. Mary tells two other followers of this emptiness. Peter and the beloved disciple visit the gravesite, peering into the tomb. They notice, astonishingly, that it is not entirely empty. The linen cloths, with which Jesus’s body had been wrapped, are still

    Easter 2019

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    there. One cloth was carefully folded, a sign of tenderness. So the first conclusion of emptiness shifts toward an alternate interpretation. Emptiness can be depletion. It can also be an unused canvas awaiting the artist’s touch or the wide-open days on the calendar, awaiting fulfillment. Emptiness might describe the moments of silence before the necessary words can be spoken. The disciples look into the emptiness and see amid the grief, tiny hints of hope. They believe, even as they do not understand. Peter and the beloved disciple return home. Sometimes when the order of the cosmos shifts beneath you, you retreat to a safe space to flip on the television, fold the laundry, or check your phone, pondering underneath these mindless tasks what might have just happened. Rarely does resurrection faith instantly burst forth in glory. Often it is the slow process of sensing the future has been changed by God’s bottom­ less heart, God’s self-emptying gift that pulls the world forward into life. Mary stays weeping by the tomb. She has lost the Lord who changed her life, giving her hope, purpose, and freedom. She still believes someone has taken the body. She is so convinced her future is empty that she mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Even as he calls her Mary, Jesus warns her: Do not hold onto me. It’s such a strange instruction at such a joyous reunion. It goes against our instincts because when we find something that we have lost, we tend to hold on even more tightly. “Don’t cling to me,” says Jesus, because I am on my way to God. The glory is just beginning. The God whom death cannot defeat is not only my God, but also your God, not simply my Father but yours as well. The most glorious life you can have, not the easiest life nor the smoothest one, but the sturdiest, richest life possible, flows from God’s heart. This is where Jesus lives; this is where you can live also.1 The temptation on Easter morning is to promise all of that glory right now. It is Resurrection day, a preacher once said; today is the day to claim your new life.2 Yet amid that truth is another one. The Resurrected Jesus is not received easily or quickly by his followers. At first the tomb was empty. Mary was weeping. And every disciple meets the Risen Christ in his or her own life, his or her complex, unique struggle to faithfully follow. Peter brings to the tomb the shame of his denial. Mary’s tears hold memories of the crucifixion. That fact reassures us who celebrate Easter with both Alleluias and tears, with “Christ is Risen” as well as desperate prayers for those places within us still awaiting resurrection. Our lives are hidden deep in God’s great life, protected by God’s indestructible presence.3 “Don’t hold onto me,” says Jesus. I am still at work, still creating life for you, still leading you in the future, a future defined by God’s love. So here is the Resurrection invitation: peer into the tomb, face the deathliness. Notice, though, that someone with more power than you has rolled away the stone. See the care given to grave cloths left behind. Go home and think it over. Take time to weep, but keep pondering, watching, and listening until you hear Jesus call you by name.

    Notes 1 Rowan Williams, “Letting Go,” Choose Life: Christmas and Easter Sermons in Canterbury Cathedral (London: Bloomsbury, 2013),111-119. 2 Gomes, Peter J., “Starting Over,” in Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 264. 3 Colossians 3:3-4.

    Journa l for Preachers

  • An Easter Greeting

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    Page 30

    An Easter Greeting

    James Lowry

    Hendersonville, North Carolina

    Let Easter’s glad vision take you

    out beyond the last galaxy

    where there is no calendar, fence, or watch

    and back again to every wee place

    great and small

    and listen … listen

    as the grandfather clock chimes each new hour

    so filled with peril … so filled with hope

    all bathed in the light that is not overcome

    by even the darkest news cycle.

    Journa l for Preachers

  • THE SOUL OF AMERICA: THE BATTLE FOR OUR BETTER ANGELS

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    Page 49

    Two New Books for the Preacher

    William V. Arnold

    Myer Creek, Virginia

    Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York, Random House) 2018

    Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (Grand Rapids, MI, Harper One) 2018

    Preachers have long been advised to prepare, as Karl Barth is attributed to have encouraged, with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. This review suggests an occasional variation (or at least an additional perspective) and recom­ mends that further preparation take place with a sense of history in mind along with a discriminating fixation on the present moment. Perhaps we need four hands! Most readers of this Journal are assumed to be in the United States when prepar­ ing to address their congregations. Jon Meacham, in his Soul of America cautions us not to “catastrophise” during these turbulent times as if this were a unique moment in our life as a nation. Meacham, of course, is well-known as a historian, a presidential historian at that. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for his writing, and is presently visit­ ing professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. In addition, he appears regularly in the press and on television, offering perspective on both history and these present times. In other words, he is eminently qualified to give us a picture of our current, and past, state of affairs in the United States. To address the intense dis-ease of our age without awareness of where we have been dooms us, as the adage goes, to repeat our history to our detriment. Meacham is articulate and insightful in reminding us of our own history. As he puts it, “History shows us that we are frequently vulnerable to fear, bitterness, and strife. The good news is that we have come through such darkness before” (p.9). That good news can give us courage and perspective as we prepare to address our congregations during these clearly chaotic times. Meacham moves on to say, “What follows is the story of how we have endured moments of madness and injustice, giving the better angels of which Lincoln spoke on the eve of the Civil War a chance to prevail—and how we can again”(p.29). In laying out that story, he encourages us to acknowledge the difficulties of our time with unblinking honesty and, at the same time, identify the resources at our disposal in our own history for facing them with courage and reasonable confidence. Meacham, of course, is not invoking biblical or theological resources. Rather, he reminds us of historical figures and movements that have shaped this country: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, SojournerTruth, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to name a few. In contrast to the direction set by those figures, he also reminds us of the power of figures such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and, of course, many more. His recounting of the struggles that went on within and between these historical figures reminds us that, in many ways, we are living into a time that is not entirely new. There is no way to summarize adequately what Meacham does for us in this

    Page 50

    book. His sweep of history is articulate and global, on the one hand, yet focused on particular issues and persons illustrative of what he considers to be the “soul” of our country. What does he mean by soul? He moves through an interesting discussion of the concept, speaking of it philosophically as “the vital center, the core, the heart, the essence of life” (p. 13). He moves on to say that in our Western thought, the soul is what makes us us. But, what makes us us lies in the history of what we have loved and hated. After giving numerous illustrations of those events and movements that have moved us to love and to hate and everything in between, he writes, “The only comfort, if we can call it that, is that a knowledge of our past failings may equip us to confront evil without delay when evil comes again. For it will” (p. 222). Now, we may quibble with Meacham about his understanding of “soul,” but he does remind us of the importance of seeing and acknowledging threats to our “soul,” understood, in his terms, as our sense of well-being, our health as a nation. And, while the preacher is not necessarily called to be a patriot in the pulpit, we are called, just as were the Old Testament prophets, to look around, identify sin, praise virtue, and lead our congregations in ways that will strengthen us for what lies ahead. One of the ways that can equip us to see beyond present day troubles is to look carefully at present day sources of courage and gratitude. T m conscious here that one of the historical responsibilities of pastoral care (and preaching) is to remind people of resources that, in their preoccupation with fear and/or anger, they may forget. This is an important reason for my varying from the Journal’s usual invitation to suggest one new book for the preacher and, instead, offering two. Diana Butler Bass, in her most recent book Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, like Meacham, invites us to look at the present moment squarely and unflinchingly. But, her invitation is to look for the sources of gratitude that we may miss in our preoccupation and fascination with what is threatening and disillu­ sioning in our current ethos. Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. So, yes, I’m pointing you to two historians. But, Bass has her gaze more firmly fixed on us in the life of the church in our present cultural context. One of her hi st observations is that currently “we live in a toxic habitat of ingrati­ tude” and “nothing really escapes its poison” (p. xix). As a historian, she then finds herself drawn to parallels between our times and the 1930s in Germany. There, she notes, “a citizenry well-versed in a theology of grace…had turned gratitude into a path of individual salvation and personal comfort, all the while allowing deep social discontent and anger to fester in public life” (p. xix). The most well-known voice to speak out about that, she maintains, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. With that observation, she moves to engage us in carefully defined self-examination (no narcissism, please!), noting that we need to discipline ourselves to identify the sources around us for which we are grateful. We must not allow our current preoccupations with bickering, per­ sonal attacks, discouragement, and mayhem to separate or distract us from the deeper resources available to us in the midst of it all. And, when we recover those sources of gratitude, our aim should not be to “yield to temptation” and retreat with them into a protective, private, nest of self-consolation. Rather, we are called to reach out in a way that can persuade others that there is more than what they see in the media. Here again, whether she claims it or not, she is performing a “pastoral responsibility” in reminding us of that which we may have forgotten or overlooked.

    Journa l for Preachers

    Page 51

    Bass does not take us into a careful theological exploration. Rather, her approach is a confessional stance, noting how vulnerable she herself has been to being stripped of gratitude while caught up in binge-watching the circus of political chaos swirling around us. As a manual for re-orienting ourselves in ways that will have theological integrity, this book serves as an invitation to hold onto and deepen our roots in the reality and power of grace in all times. This is a valuable book. It will preach! And, it certainly would be a wonderful book for discussion groups. As her mantra, at the very begin­ ning of the book, she quotes Maya Angelou (source not identified): “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. ” That is the invitation that both Jon Meacham and Diana Butler Bass offer to us in our pursuit of perspective for our preaching and daily life in these times.

  • We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy

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    Page 45

    One New Book for the Preacher

    Agnes W. Norfleet

    Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

    Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Year’s in Power: An American Tragedy (New York: One World, 2017)

    Preaching in the age of Trump is no picnic. For over thirty years of ministry, my preacher friends and I have tried to be faithful to scripture and relevant to local, national, and world events, as well as to address the pastoral realities of the congre­ gations we have served. These three decades have seen the multiple crises of rising urban homelessness and rural poverty, wars and rumors of wars, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes, famines across continents, migrations of refu­ gees, escalating gun violence, the frightening degradation of the environment, and the increasingly voluminous #MeToo movement. Through all of these critical moments and developments is woven a tangled and insidious web of racism. So what’s changed with Trump? Public discourse has deteriorated civility and escalated division. Rude disrespect for the other, including overt racist and sexist commentary, regularly engenders applause at big public rallies and occasionally erupts in evil on parade as in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017. Our nation’s higher ideals are daily the fodder of ridicule, truth is ever called into question, and the free press has been deemed fake news. If there were ever a credible belief that we could be a forward thinking, generous society where people help each other as the arc of history bends toward justice, that feels now like a dashed dream as phrases like the common good, fi’eedom for all, and valuing human dignity are virtually becoming meaningless in the public square. Those of us seasoned preachers who have gained a fair measure of expertise for interpreting scripture, consulting biblical scholarship and theological resources in order to relate texts to the world around us, need a different kind of help now. We need more guidance exegeting current movements and social institutions in order to figure out what is happening in a rapidly changing cultural and political milieu. As I write this review on the heels of the Christine Blasey-Ford and Brett Kavanaugh hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a preacher friend sent me a note lamenting, “I feel like America is slipping away. I have become increasingly aware that America is not a given. America is a choice. And it feels to me that elected leadership is choosing something other than the values of America I have assumed.” The mantra from our seminary days of “faith seeking understanding” seems to have morphed into “despair clinging to a modicum of hope. ” Since Trump was elected, my preacher friends and I have experienced the left-lean­ ing folks telling us at the narthex door that we are not being prophetic enough while the right-leaning parishioners say they are tired of our sermons being too political. As I confessed to a cohort of pastoral colleagues recently, no matter the text, I feel like I have preached the same four-point sermon repeatedly for the last two years: the world is messed up; we have good reason to be distressed; the future is in God’s hands; therefore, we have hope.

    Page 46

    Searching for that hope, I am grateful for the scholars and writers of our time who help us better understand the culture into which we dare to proclaim a prophetic and pastoral word: Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and. Redemption, Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and. Culture in Crisis, andTa-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Whereas I used to lean on the likes of Frederick Buechner, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Maya Angelou for an eloquent and beautiful expression of meeting God at some unexpected intersection in order to drive a biblical sermon home, I now devour these new books about the tragedy of American culture, looking for wisdom and longing for illumination. Among them, I have especially appreciated having Ta-Nehesi Coates as a conver­ sation partner on the topic of race and the pervasive tentacles of racism in American history and current realities. He has helped this liberal white preacher see through the lens of the black experience in these troubled days of division. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy is a collection of essays originally published in The Atlantic during the Obama administration. The title is taken from the hauntingly wistful words of Thomas Miller, the black state legislator from South Carolina elected during Reconstruction after the Civil War, in that brief moment when black people outnumbered white people in the legislature until the south was “redeemed” by laws and terrorism that validated white supremacy. As the title suggests, Coates is now skeptical of possibilities for positive political change, and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t due in part to his admitted atheism. This book is filled with important insights about race and culture from a distinguished black public intellectual, but fleeting moments of hopefulness seem to give way to pessimism, mistrust, anger, and resignation. Coates’s indictment of left leaning liberals like me is every bit as sear­ ing as his assessment of the bigotry that pervades our political and cultural realms. I hear and believe him when he says, “The maintenance of white honor and whiteness remains at the core of liberal American thinking” (362), and having read him, I better understand my own complicity. Each essay is chosen from one year between 2008 and 2016 and is introduced by a note that gives its context. The book’s introduction and epilogue draw the themes together, but as a collection of essays written over eight years, the book lacks a certain coherence. Covering topics from fear of America’s hist black president to Michelle Obama’s dawning sense of race, from the influence of Bill Cosby and Malcolm X to hip hop, from lessons of the Civil War to the Case for Reparations, the book converses with other voices, old and new. It reads in almost equal measure as memoir, social commentary, history, political critique, and even confession. While giving credit to Obama’s season in power for his own rising success as a professional journalist, for example, Coates acknowledges his achievements are due in part to his assuaging the guilt of white liberals contending with our own white racism. Just as the title We Were Eight Years in Power revisits how post-Civil War Re­ construction gave rise to new insidious forms of white supremacy, so Coates joins many others in explaining the election of Trump as a backlash to the Obama legacy. The book is meant to be unsettling, ending with the epilogue which both tries to ex­ plain and critique the election of Trump. Two years into the Trump presidency now,

    Journa l for Preachers

    Page 47

    I found myself longing for a next chapter that looks toward a more positive swing of the pendulum, but Coates is not optimistic. He continues to be an important conversa­ tion partner for any contemporary preacher seeking to sort out the racist mess of our reality, but we still need to count more on the scriptures for hope.

  • Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

    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.

    Page 49

    Two New Books for the Preacher

    William V. Arnold

    Myer Creek, Virginia

    Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York, Random House) 2018

    Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (Grand Rapids, MI, Harper One) 2018

    Preachers have long been advised to prepare, as Karl Barth is attributed to have encouraged, with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. This review suggests an occasional variation (or at least an additional perspective) and recom­ mends that further preparation take place with a sense of history in mind along with a discriminating fixation on the present moment. Perhaps we need four hands! Most readers of this Journal are assumed to be in the United States when prepar­ ing to address their congregations. Jon Meacham, in his Soul of America cautions us not to “catastrophise” during these turbulent times as if this were a unique moment in our life as a nation. Meacham, of course, is well-known as a historian, a presidential historian at that. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for his writing, and is presently visit­ ing professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. In addition, he appears regularly in the press and on television, offering perspective on both history and these present times. In other words, he is eminently qualified to give us a picture of our current, and past, state of affairs in the United States. To address the intense dis-ease of our age without awareness of where we have been dooms us, as the adage goes, to repeat our history to our detriment. Meacham is articulate and insightful in reminding us of our own history. As he puts it, “History shows us that we are frequently vulnerable to fear, bitterness, and strife. The good news is that we have come through such darkness before” (p.9). That good news can give us courage and perspective as we prepare to address our congregations during these clearly chaotic times. Meacham moves on to say, “What follows is the story of how we have endured moments of madness and injustice, giving the better angels of which Lincoln spoke on the eve of the Civil War a chance to prevail—and how we can again”(p.29). In laying out that story, he encourages us to acknowledge the difficulties of our time with unblinking honesty and, at the same time, identify the resources at our disposal in our own history for facing them with courage and reasonable confidence. Meacham, of course, is not invoking biblical or theological resources. Rather, he reminds us of historical figures and movements that have shaped this country: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, SojournerTruth, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to name a few. In contrast to the direction set by those figures, he also reminds us of the power of figures such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and, of course, many more. His recounting of the struggles that went on within and between these historical figures reminds us that, in many ways, we are living into a time that is not entirely new. There is no way to summarize adequately what Meacham does for us in this

    Page 50

    book. His sweep of history is articulate and global, on the one hand, yet focused on particular issues and persons illustrative of what he considers to be the “soul” of our country. What does he mean by soul? He moves through an interesting discussion of the concept, speaking of it philosophically as “the vital center, the core, the heart, the essence of life” (p. 13). He moves on to say that in our Western thought, the soul is what makes us us. But, what makes us us lies in the history of what we have loved and hated. After giving numerous illustrations of those events and movements that have moved us to love and to hate and everything in between, he writes, “The only comfort, if we can call it that, is that a knowledge of our past failings may equip us to confront evil without delay when evil comes again. For it will” (p. 222). Now, we may quibble with Meacham about his understanding of “soul,” but he does remind us of the importance of seeing and acknowledging threats to our “soul,” understood, in his terms, as our sense of well-being, our health as a nation. And, while the preacher is not necessarily called to be a patriot in the pulpit, we are called, just as were the Old Testament prophets, to look around, identify sin, praise virtue, and lead our congregations in ways that will strengthen us for what lies ahead. One of the ways that can equip us to see beyond present day troubles is to look carefully at present day sources of courage and gratitude. T m conscious here that one of the historical responsibilities of pastoral care (and preaching) is to remind people of resources that, in their preoccupation with fear and/or anger, they may forget. This is an important reason for my varying from the Journal’s usual invitation to suggest one new book for the preacher and, instead, offering two. Diana Butler Bass, in her most recent book Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, like Meacham, invites us to look at the present moment squarely and unflinchingly. But, her invitation is to look for the sources of gratitude that we may miss in our preoccupation and fascination with what is threatening and disillu­ sioning in our current ethos. Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. So, yes, I’m pointing you to two historians. But, Bass has her gaze more firmly fixed on us in the life of the church in our present cultural context. One of her hi st observations is that currently “we live in a toxic habitat of ingrati­ tude” and “nothing really escapes its poison” (p. xix). As a historian, she then finds herself drawn to parallels between our times and the 1930s in Germany. There, she notes, “a citizenry well-versed in a theology of grace…had turned gratitude into a path of individual salvation and personal comfort, all the while allowing deep social discontent and anger to fester in public life” (p. xix). The most well-known voice to speak out about that, she maintains, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. With that observation, she moves to engage us in carefully defined self-examination (no narcissism, please!), noting that we need to discipline ourselves to identify the sources around us for which we are grateful. We must not allow our current preoccupations with bickering, per­ sonal attacks, discouragement, and mayhem to separate or distract us from the deeper resources available to us in the midst of it all. And, when we recover those sources of gratitude, our aim should not be to “yield to temptation” and retreat with them into a protective, private, nest of self-consolation. Rather, we are called to reach out in a way that can persuade others that there is more than what they see in the media. Here again, whether she claims it or not, she is performing a “pastoral responsibility” in reminding us of that which we may have forgotten or overlooked.

    Journa l for Preachers

    Page 51

    Bass does not take us into a careful theological exploration. Rather, her approach is a confessional stance, noting how vulnerable she herself has been to being stripped of gratitude while caught up in binge-watching the circus of political chaos swirling around us. As a manual for re-orienting ourselves in ways that will have theological integrity, this book serves as an invitation to hold onto and deepen our roots in the reality and power of grace in all times. This is a valuable book. It will preach! And, it certainly would be a wonderful book for discussion groups. As her mantra, at the very begin­ ning of the book, she quotes Maya Angelou (source not identified): “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. ” That is the invitation that both Jon Meacham and Diana Butler Bass offer to us in our pursuit of perspective for our preaching and daily life in these times.

  • The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

    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.

    Page 35

    One New Book for the Preacher

    Joseph S. Harvard III

    Durham, North Carolina

    David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, Ran­ dom House, 2019)

    Mountain climbing is not my thing! I suffer from acrophobia, a fear of heights. It’s not a good condition for a mountain climber. It can be hazardous to your health. I have friends who are avid mountain climbers and God bless them. They train for and hnd satisfaction in scaling great heights, but that’s not for me. When I hist saw the title The Second Mountain by David Brooks, it was not appealing. Once I began reading it, I found the book to be, as the hymn writer put it, “a balm to heal the sin-sick soul.” I like reading David Brooks’s columns in the New York Times and watching his insightful news analysis with Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour. I do not always agree with him, but he makes me think. He is a thoughtful and insightful conservative. In the last few years, there has been a shift in his perspec­ tive with more depth and spiritual engagement. It was with this background that I approached the book. What I found was an amazing and extremely helpful response to the awful mess we hnd ourselves in today. I could list all the things that make “the worst of times,” such as the outrage, hate speech, division, and violence. We are bombarded daily with so much bad news that our souls, individually and as a nation, are in danger. Harry Emerson Fosdick described the condition as being “rich in things and poor in soul.” David Brooks describes the struggle this way:

    Maybe it is time we begin to see this as a war. On the one side are those forces that sow division, discord, and isolation. On the other side are all those forces in society that nurture attachment, connection, and solidarity… .And here’s the hard part of the war: It’s not between one group of good people and another group of bad people. The war runs down the middle of every heart. Most of us are part of the problem we complain about (269).

    According to Brooks, we are living in a moment of transition. In order to make our way towards a moral life, Brooks uses the metaphor of climbing a mountain. He suggests that there are two mountains: “The hist mountain is the individualist worldview, which puts the desires of the ego at the center. The second mountain is what you might call the relationalist worldview, which puts relation, commitment, and the desires of the heart and soul at the center” (296). We are all familiar with the hist mountain. It is the track that we are put on early in life. We get an education, begin a career, start a family, but when we scale this mountain, what we achieve may be considered “success,” but it does not satisfy. It often becomes what we call a “rat race.” Think about the story in the Gospels of Jesus casting out demons who requested that they be sent into a herd of swine (Matthew

    Advent 2019

    Page 36

    8:28-34). Jesus granted the demons their wish. Imagine the herd rushing toward a cliff. One of the pigs asked, “Where are we going?” Another pig replied, “Shut up and keep running!” We may not be running off a cliff, but Brooks suggests we’re in a valley where the aspirations of the hist mountain do not satisfy our deepest needs. The valley may be loss of a job, a broken relationship, the death of someone we love. It is such times that lead to genuine transformation. Sam Wells, former Dean of the chapel at Duke University, told a graduation class in his Baccalaureate address that if they had not learned how to deal with failure, then the university had failed to prepare them for the journey ahead. Brooks points out examples from the Bible, the lives of others, and his own life in which being broken open led to renewal and a deep joy. This is a turning point which offers an opportunity to climb the second mountain. He also offers a description of happiness and joy which is extremely helpful. Brooks tells us about his own valley after a divorce left him feeling lost and alone. What took place in his life was transformation. His journey led him to the Christian faith by way of Judaism as they coexist in him now. It is a remarkable journey where he intersects with fellow climbers like Dorothy Day, Frederick Buechner, Victor Franco, and many others. It is a journey that takes him deep into the meaning of faith, grace, and commitment. As I was reading the book, I could not help but hear the words of Jesus: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mark 8:35-36). There is enough good sermon material and enough illustrations in the book to make it worthwhile. “It’ll preach,” yet it also invites you to take a look at your own faith journey. Brooks believes in the transformation of lives and of a culture. He traveled the country for a year as co-founder of Weave, the Social Fabric Project sponsored by the Aspen Institute, talking with people who have put relationship building at the center of their lives. In his travels, he encountered people climbing the second mountain by investing in the welfare of others and building community. It was an inspiring and hopeful journey. There is much more as he diagnosed the illnesses in the soul of our country, which is a deep sense of isolation, which manifests itself in mass killings, suicide, and grow­ ing levels of depression and anxiety. His prescription for a cure involves investing in relationships and building communities. This reminds me of something my friend and colleague in ministry, the Reverend Mel Williams, used to tell his congregation: “Pick up the near edge of some great problem and act at some sacrihce to yourself.” Brooks would agree with this prescription as a cure for our souls, and so would Jesus. I heartily recommend this book. It is my conviction that it offers food for the soul.

    Journa l for Preachers