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  • Hospitality to Strangers

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    Hospitality to Strangers

    Micah 6:1-8; Hebrews 13:1-6

    Beth Johnson

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Those of you old enough to remember Roy Rogers and Dale Evans from radio, television, and the movies may also remember that they had a very large family. Dale had one son, Tom, from her hist marriage, and Roy had an adopted daughter, Cheryl, and birth children Linda Lou and Roy from his hist marriage. They had one child together, Robin, and then adopted Mary, a Native American girl; John, a battered child from an orphanage in Kentucky; Marion from Scotland; and Debbie, a Korean War orphan whose birthfather was a Puerto Rican G.I. It was not only a big family, but it was multi-racial, something you didn’t see much in the 1950s. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were at the forefront of international adoptions in this country and inspired lots of people to adopt. They had nine children, sixteen grandchildren, and more than 30 great-grandchildren in their old age. It’s a good thing they were rich, huh? The only birth child they had together was Robin Elizabeth, who was born in 1950 with Down Syndrome. Roy and Dale were advised to “put her away” in a foster home, but instead, they thought God had a purpose for giving them Robin, so they took her home. Although she died just before her second birthday, Robin changed her parents’ lives forever. Angel Unaware,’ the book her mother wrote, pretends to be Robin’s account of her life as she looks down from heaven. As she speaks to God about the mission of love she accomplished in her brief life, we see how she brought her parents closer to God and encouraged them to help other children in need. That was the beginning of openness in this country to children with Down Syndrome. Children with special needs are not only not “put away” anymore, but they go to school, learn trades, and often live independently. The title of Dale Evans’s book Angel Unaware is taken from this afternoon’s paragraph from Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews comes to the end of his treatise—it’s more of a sermon than a letter, really—with a string of ethical exhortations. The hist, “let mutual love continue,” gives voice to perhaps the most recognized Christian virtue in the ancient world. A second-century Christian writer, Tertullian, claims that pagans often make the comment “See how these Christians love one another ”2 It’s not that the pagans are particularly envious of Christians, but mutual love is so characteristic of their communities that pagans recognize it. The word the writer of Hebrews uses is “love for brothers and sisters.” That’s why the NRSV translates it “mutual love,” since in Greco-Roman society relationships between siblings were virtually the only mutual ones. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Angels unaware. Hospitality too is a pecu­ liarly Christian virtue in antiquity. There are lots of Christians on the road in those days, some for business or for pleasure, but all of them talking about their faith. It is rather remarkable that the early church manages to evangelize the whole Roman Empire within such a short period of time—less than 300 years. It’s not that everyone becomes a Christian, but by the time of Constantine, there are churches in every city

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    and across the countryside, too. First-century Christians (and Jews, too, it should be added) tend to avoid inns when they travel, because inns are notorious for drinking and gambling and prostitution—a bit like the no-tell motels of our day—so Christians and Jews rely instead on the kindness of strangers. They carry with them letters of recommendation and seek out their own kind to stay with while they are away from home. You can imagine what kinds of strains that put on Christian households, to be open to any old stranger who comes down the road needing a bed and breakfast. The word translated hospitality means “friendliness to strangers,” and Hebrews is not the only place we hear reminders to be hospitable. First Peter says, “Be hospitable to one another without complaining” (4:9), and Paul tells the Romans, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers” (12:13). Among other things, what hospitality looks like is solidarity: “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them,” says Hebrews, “those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” It’s not sim­ ply that Christians visit people in prison and pray for those who are being tortured; they share those sufferings in their own bodies. It’s very much like what Paul says to the Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). In these days of extraordinary human suffering and the crying need for hospitality to refugees and displaced people, we do well to hear this call from Hebrews. It reminds me a lot of what the prophet Micah says. All the right religion in the world does not impress God without a just community to live it out. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” To do justice is to practice right relations: to give preference to the least, the last, and the lost; to put widows and orphans ahead of the rich and powerful. To love kindness is not just to be nice, but to practice covenant loyalty, a better translation for the word kindness. Sometimes it’s also translated “mercy.” To walk humbly with God is, as my students often say, to get over yourself, to be so shaped by the love and justice of God that you don’t worry about protecting yourself or your own interests and so can worry about protecting the interests of others, especially to show hospitality to strangers. Over and over, the Bible tells Israel, “remember that you were a slave in Egypt,” so you must treat each other fairly (Deut 24:18). Aliens in the land, in particular, are not to be cheated or harmed—or deported. Grady Memorial Hospital is the largest hospital in this state and the public hospital for our huge metro area. You probably remember it. It’s a level-1 trauma center and has one of the best cancer centers and the best HIV /AIDS center in the southeast, but mostly it’s known for taking care of poor people. It was built in 1892 for poor people, and it has served the poor ever since. Over 600,000 souls pass through Grady’s doors every year, the overwhelming majority of them covered by Medicare or Medicaid or not covered by any insurance at all. I’ve been there several times—once even as a patient—and I never cease to be amazed at the quality of care people receive at Grady. And this is a public hospital, not a church-related one. Every staff person I have ever encountered, every nurse and tech and doctor and orderly and secretary and janitor, is genuinely helpful, friendly, and respectful. A homeless man who smells like a sewer and is in the throes of a psychotic break is treated with the same kindness as

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    a middle-class, insurance-card-carrying woman like me. I don’t know how they do it. Perhaps some of them lose their patience sometimes, and maybe they all have a bad day now and then, but I have never seen it. When I spent a night at Grady (It was no big deal; I fainted at church and the ambulance took me to Grady because it was three blocks away), I noticed a recur­ ring sound at the nurses’ station, a sound like harp strings being strummed. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that it was the sound of the patient call buttons, because when I heard it, I sometimes heard a nurse say, “May I help you?” Although whoever invented that call button system could not have intended the sound of a harp to recall Hebrews 13:2, it certainly occurred to me—but then, I’m a Bible geek. How incredibly appropriate that in a place where everyone is treated with love and respect, where indeed they never neglect to show hospitality to strangers, the sound of a harp—that most cliched instrument of angels—should ring out when someone needs help. It is not only in heroic, huge places like Grady that we are called to show hos­ pitality to strangers. We can do it in small ways, too. In this season of uncommonly strident and bitter and ugly political rhetoric, when insults and accusations and vitriol are the order of the day, what a witness to the gospel it would be for us to treat the people who disagree with us with civility and kindness, to call out the meanness for what it is and refuse to participate. As we are surrounded by an upsurge in racist talk and behavior, what would happen if we deliberately treated people different from us as though they might just possibly be angels? In these days when even churches are often torn apart by conflict and anxiety, what might happen if we “let mutual love continue” and feel one another’s pain as our own? It is not only strangers to whom we are called to be hospitable. Sometimes it’s more difficult to practice hospitality toward the people in our own homes than to perfect strangers—who may look more perfect by virtue of being strangers than the people we live with every day. United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon tells the story of a congregation full of conflict and turmoil. Pastor after pastor left, declaring that this was the meanest church they had ever served. Today, though, that same congregation is an example of how the church can be a beacon of hope. What happened? Well, that congregation set up a safe home for women and children who were experiencing domestic violence. That ministry, welcoming outsiders, extending hospitality to strangers, helped the members get over themselves. One lay leader said, “The women and children taught us lessons in courage, faith, and love. We needed to get outside of church to learn how to be the church.” The outsiders were listening for words of acceptance, and the church members needed to listen for words of faith.3 Hospitality to strangers changes us as well as them.

    Notes 1 Dale Evans Rogers, Angel Unaware: A Touching Story of Love and Loss (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1953). 2 Apologeticus, 39, 7. 3 Personal communication.

  • Tale of Two Cities

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    Tale of Two Cities

    John 4:20

    Caitlyn Hathaway

    Henrico, Virginia

    I’m going to tell you a story this morning, but I want to start with a disclaimer by saying that this story doesn’t yet have an end. There will be no “and they all lived happily ever after. The End.” This is a story about my life, and it is one that is still unfolding, so I want to invite you to just sit with me for a little while in the discomfort of the unknown. The story I want to tell you is a tale of two cities, if you will. One of these cities is Columbia, South Carolina, where I have lived and worked with you all for the last year and eight months. And the other is Asheville, North Carolina, where I lived for a year prior to moving to Columbia. Many of you may know that while I was living in Asheville, I was serving as a Young Adult Volunteer, the PC(USA)’s service core. If you’ve heard me talk about this year at all, you will know that it was totally life­ changing. I lived and served alongside five amazing young women, and our jobs for the year had each of us working with the homeless population in some way. My particular work placement was with an organization called Asheville Youth Mission (AYM). Youth groups from all over the country come to AYM each summer for a week of what they call “mission immersion.” I spent most of the academic year writing weekly blog posts, managing social media, and assisting with curriculum development, but on the odd weekend that we had a youth group and all throughout the summer, I got to lead young people in mission and service work around downtown Asheville. My favorite place to take youth groups was Haywood Street Congregation—a worshipping community created specifically for Asheville’s homeless population. Every Wednesday they serve a free community lunch with a worship service to follow. So, every Wednesday we would load up our vehicles with corn hole, giant jenga, frisbees, and a cooler full of popsicles and head to Haywood Street. We’d hang out for several hours on the front lawn, just playing games and sharing popsicles with anyone who might walk up, and then at 1:00 we’d all go inside and worship together. There is nothing traditional about worship at Haywood Street The service is led entirely by the congregation, and the congregation is made up almost entirely of people who live on the streets. The cares and concerns of the congregation are not shared by the pastor speaking from the pulpit, but rather by each individual, standing up and naming his or her own struggles and vulnerabilities. And it is not unheard of for the closing hymn to be Prince’s Purple Rain. But let me tell you, I never truly understood the meaning of communion until it was offered to me by someone who had nothing else to offer. That year I put names and faces and stories to those I had only formerly known as “the homeless.” I met a six-year-old boy who was being raised on the streets by both of his parents and the entire homeless community. It was easy, at first, for me to judge his parents (and Buncombe County’s child protective services) for allowing this child to grow up without a roof over his head or the assurance of three square meals

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    a day. Then I met his father, who loved and protected his child so fiercely; who told me that he was doing the very best he could; who gave three fourths of any meal he was given to his son; who believed so strongly in holding his family together, even though his wife’s addiction to drugs and alcohol frequently left them without a place to sleep at night. The lines of right and wrong became just slightly blurred for me. I came to know and love this family and many others, not just in word but in deed. Professor and activist Dr. Cornel West said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” The people of Asheville invited me into their work of love in public—working to end food insecurity and homelessness; advocating for the rights of the poor, the sick, the elderly, the addicted, the LGBT community, and those who are undocumented. I loved this work because I so deeply loved that community. My time in Asheville was finished in August of 2016, and I promptly moved to Columbia to begin serving at Shandon and the UKirk Presbyterian Student Center. I came energized and excited to build community and love my new neighbors as much as I had loved my previous ones. I jumped at every opportunity that arose to take the college students to do mission and service work. Until one Tuesday, while we were serving lunch at a local soup kitchen, a violent fight broke out, and John and I found ourselves in a position of needing to get ourselves and our students out of there as quickly as possible. We decided not to bring students back to the soup kitchen to serve until they increased their security measures (which they have, by the way). But for me, the perception of safety within community was shattered. I felt hurt and a little foolish. Sure, I continued teaching and preaching to our college students and youth about radical welcome and acceptance, but in the everyday, I totally retreated into the security of the familiar. I avoided eye contact with those who call Main Street their home, and intentionally did not shop at certain grocery stores where I knew I might be hit up for money. Our scripture this morning says, “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.” But I wasn’t even seeing my brothers and sisters—how could I possibly have seen God? In recent months, as I have made more intentional efforts to ground myself in the Columbia community, I have started to step outside of fear and back into love. But like I said, this story does not yet have an ending. And my guess is that I am not the only person in this room who is struggling to love somebody— whoever that may be for you. That’s because the love Christ calls us to is a hard love. In our scripture this morning, the Greek word agape is used fourteen times. It is just one of many words the Greeks had for love, meaning “unmerited…self-less and self-giving love,” a “love that gives without expecting a return.” This kind of love requires us to move love from just a word or a concept that gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling to action that creates space for everyone at God’s table, but that makes us uncomfortable in the process. It requires us to put ourselves into situations that are outside of our comfort zone—making eye contact with the homeless person walking down the street; stepping out from behind the glass counter at the soup kitchen; befriending the person who doesn’t look, think, act, talk like us —the homeless person, the refugee, the addict, the member of the LGBT community, the immigrant, the northerner, the southerner, the democrat, the republican. Agape love requires us to lay down our stereotypes and preconceived notions of

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    people and see them for the fullness of who they are, who God created them to be. To recognize that God loved them, called them, and claimed them as God’s own before you ever stepped into the picture. To see them through God’s eyes, rather than the world’s. Agape love is also difficult, quite frankly, because some people are just hard to love. This is where I think parents have the leg up on all the rest of us—I can’t imagine how hard it was for my mother to love me in my terrible twos and terrible teens. But ultimately, I think, the hardest part about loving our neighbors in the way Christ calls us is that it requires us to acknowledge brokenness—both in others and in ourselves. Our world tells us that we have to have it all together, that our lives have to be wrapped up in a beautiful box with a big red bow on top. So we often walk around with armor on, not letting anyone see anything within us that might be a little bit messy. But that is not the way to real, genuine, Christ-like love, and it is not the truth about who God says we are. Once we recognize that we are just as broken as everybody else, though maybe in different ways, the walls that divide us can start to come down—walls made up of prejudice, pride, and fear—and we can start to move on to real love for one another. But there are two sides to this coin; just as we are commonly broken, we also are commonly chosen and loved by God. Author and priest Henri Nouwen writes that to be God’s chosen ones means that we have been seen by God from all eternity and seen as unique, special, precious beings…. From all eternity, long before you were born and became a part of history, you existed in God’s heart. Long before your parents admired you or your friends acknowledged your gifts or your teachers, colleagues and employers encouraged you, you were already “chosen.” The eyes of love had seen you as precious, as of infinite beauty, as of eternal value. When love chooses, it chooses with perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one, and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded (Life of the Beloved, p. 45). Our scripture tells us, “We love because God first loved us.” It is this very chosen­ ness, this initiating love from God, that makes it possible for us to love like Christ. It is hard. No one ever said it would be easy, but through God’s unmerited, self-sacrificing love, we are called, equipped, and freed to love our sisters and brothers in Christ. In preparation for this sermon, I went on Haywood Street’s website, and across the very top were the words to a hymn they are planning to sing together next week. It’s an old Shaker hymn, and the words go like this: “If you love not each other/in daily communion ,/How can you love God/Whom you have not seen?/More love, more love/The heavens are blessing/The angels are calling/O Zion, more love.”

  • Awaitng the Verdict: Good Friday

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    Awaiting the Verdict: Good Friday

    Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Psalm 22, John 18:1-19:42

    Walter Brueggemann

    Traverse City, Michigan

    We are, on this night, at the pivot point of the Jesus story. And it turns out that on this night we are at the pivot point of the story of the world. Everything depends on the outcome of the trial of Jesus before Pilate. It is a trial we get to remember tonight. It is a trial we get to observe as it is performed. It is a trial in which we get to participate. It turns out that this trial, like every serious trial, is a contest to determine who is telling the truth and who is offering fake truth.

    I. On the one side is Pontius Pilate, the one we mention in the creed. He is the Ro­ man governor who presides over the occupied territory of Galilee. He is a stand-in for Caesar and for Roman power. He appears at “headquarters” in all the pageantry of the empire; likely he wore a sash of Roman authority; maybe he entered the court­ room with drums and bugles and imperial flags flying. It is impressive drama. He is a perfect icon of great power. He is, moreover, a stand-in for the gods of the Roman Empire. These are the gods of force who did not mind violence when it is necessary. More than that, He stands in for raw male power; He stands in for money power and the legitimacy of greed; He stands in, among us, for white power in its supremacy. He assumes, with all this “god-backing,” that everyone can see and accept his authority. So he says to Jesus: “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” (John 19:10). There is no doubt who is in charge in the courtroom. There is no doubt who is in charge in the world!

    II. On the other side is Jesus; just Jesus! He has no credentials. He has no pedigree. He has neither a phalanx of lawyers nor any visible support. He is all alone in the courtroom, arraigned because his dangerous teaching was seen as subversive of impe­ rial authority. Jesus, however, is not intimidated by the Roman governor. He says to the governor: “My kingdom is not from this world… .My kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). This does not mean that Jesus ’ “kingdom” is in the never-never land of the after­ life. Nor does it mean that his “kingdom” is simply an internal, psychological matter of being right with God. He means, rather, that his authority is not derived from Rome. He does not depend on the governor’s validation because his authority is not “from here.” He owes Rome nothing. He did not depend on the imperial power of greed and violence, the imperial force of money, or the imperial claim of male power or white power.

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    That is because he is a stand-in for the God of the covenant: This is the God who showed up as the emancipator in the slave camps of Egypt. This is the God who came to the displaced exiles in Babylon. This is the God of widows who have no other advocate. This is the God of orphans who have no family. This is the God of immigrants who have no homeland. This is what they saw in this rabbi from Galilee: He carried no purse and had no money. He paid attention to women and valued them; He welcomed those of every tribe, tongue, and nation; He was like an advocate for widows, like a guard for orphans, like an attorney for immigrants. When they looked at him, they saw the God of Israel who specializes in justice, righteousness, mercy, faithfulness, and steadfast love. Jesus stands in the courtroom before the imperial governor. In every way he con­ tradicts the claims of the governor. There he stands in the court of public opinion: Wounded for our transgressions, Bruised for our iniquities. Jesus confused the governor. Finally the governor must ask, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). The governor had lived so long with fake news that he did not know what to make of Jesus who did not fit any of his categories. He has the sense that Jesus is the truth right in front of him, but he lacks the courage to recognize that truth lies outside the claims of empire in the drama of mercy, compassion, and restorative justice. So the issue is joined at the trial!

    III. There are two other parts in the drama. A third player is the crowd that is eagerly waiting outside the courtroom. The crowd is like a mob… boisterous, blood-thirsty, and thoughtless. The mob uncritically supports imperial authority. They did not wait for evidence, but shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him.” I suppose for us the like mantra, for either party, is “Lock him up, lock him up.” Because he does not fit the impressive world of imperial Rome. We do not need to linger long over the crowd. The crowd is predictable. It is impressed by money, power, greed, and it readily trusts in promises that cannot be kept. Pilate has tentatively labeled Jesus “King of the Jews.” The crowd rejects that: “He is not the king of the Jews!” Pilate wants to allow, in a grudging way, that this may be the Jewish Messiah. But he has no courage, so he gives in to the mob that shouts, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

    IV. The fourth part is played by his disciples represented by the fearful Simon Peter who refused to acknowledge him because it was too dangerous. You can imagine that the several disciples were scattered in the crowd watching the execution. It was not safe to be seen together. But they watched. And they wondered: Is this what he meant when he said that “the last shall be hist”?

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    Did he mean that this odd teacher from Galilee would be hist and the Roman governor would be last? Did he mean that the generous would be hi st and the greedy would be last? Did he mean that the vulnerable would be hist and the violent would be last? Did he mean that women would be hist and men would be last? Did he mean that Blacks would be hist and whites would be last? Did he mean that immigrants would be hi st and that home grown citizens would be last? His statements are enigmatic and we have to decide. He said, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble them­ selves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). He said, “Everyone who wants to save one’s life must lose it” (Mark 8:36). No wonder we have this poem that witnesses to him:

    He had no form or majesty that should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised and we held him of no account. (Isaiah 53:2-3)

    So his disciples watched and wondered. Not until now, on Friday, did they un­ derstand who he was or what he was doing. Late in the day, I imagine, one of them said, “Even in our sadness we have to eat something.” Then they remembered that they had some leftovers from his final meal with them on Thursday night. Do you know what they ate that night? They ate broken bread and they drank poured out wine. It was food unlike that of Pilate. The Roman governor never wanted broken bread, but would eat the whole loaf in one bite. He never wanted poured out wine, but swallowed the whole cup in one gulp. That, however, is what the disciples had late on Friday night, and it tasted to them like new life. We know how the trial ended then. But the trial is being reenacted again in our midst, a context for truth. We wait for a verdict this time. Or if you like, we get to decide the verdict. There is nothing easy about Friday. It is the pivot point of the history of the world. We are left, like the old governor, with the haunting question, “What is truth?”And there he stands, like he did before the governor, before us. The verdict will not be long in coming.

  • Blessed Are the Merciful

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    Blessed Are the Merciful

    Donald W. Shriver

    New York, New York

    On the face of them, the Beatitudes seem to tempt us with a theological problem: do they call for a human action that results in an action of God? That should seem to contradict the principle that “by grace we are saved. By the gift of God.” Be merciful to your fellow humans, and then you will receive mercy from God.” Read it thus and you are captured by a cause-and-effect version of the Beatitudes which is at odds with the very concept of “blessing” as mentioned so frequently in both testaments in hundreds of occurrences of the words blessing, bless, and blessed. In almost every occurrence, there is implied a giver and a receiver. The passive voice in “blessed” seems to imply the same. Here the imaginative translation of Eugene Peterson seems to resonate with both the teachings of Jesus and our own human experience: “Blessed are you when you care. At the moment of being care-full you find yourself cared-for.”1 That way of understanding all eight beatitudes fits my experience of trying to practice a vocation we call ministry. Many are the times when a pastor of a congrega­ tion seems called to enact a ministry of mercy towards the mourning, the spiritually hungry, stragglers with interpersonal conflicts, and those suffering from alienations akin to persecution. Time after time such human needs escape the self-confidence of a pastor. In wrestling with this fact as a pastor I often remembered the word of Wil­ liam Oglesby, professor of Pastoral Care in the 1950s at UTS-Virginia: “When the call comes from someone desperate for your help, you may have no idea of what to do. But there is one thing you can do: just GO.” I remembered that word once when a devastated wife in our congregation phoned me with awful news: “He has killed himself!” It was my hist encounter with suicide. How to do anything “beatitudinally” in such a despairing moment? Well, I had to go, and in the going—in being present to that new widow in her devastation—something of mercy was given and received in the spirits of both pastor and parishioner. It was for me a version of the experience of the country priest described by Bernanos as “a miracle of my empty hands,” a fulfilment of Jesus ’ promise that those who lose their lives in following him and in being a neighbor to one’s neighbors will find their lives. Put differently, the path to human fulfillment is a path on which one must put one’s feet before knowing where that path leads. This is the way of Abraham, who did not know where he was to go. (Hebrews 11:8), but he went! It is the way of disciples who accept an invitation to “follow” before as followers they know what is in store for them. Perhaps it is also akin to the New Testament’s idea of “doing the truth” before you can conceptualize it. In all events, it is a unity of giving and receiving that seems to dominate all eight of the Beatitudes. It seems to dominate other teachings of Jesus, too. In the adjoining chapter of Matthew, he offers us a version of authentic prayer that ends with a line that has of­ ten puzzled some of us: “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you.” But if you refuse forgiveness to your neighbors, “ then….” You misunderstand and incorrectly respond to the gift of divine forgiveness if you

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    do not spend it in service to your neighbor. An italicized version of this postscript to the Lord’s Prayer comes in Matthew 18 with the parable of the king’s servant who is beneficiary of a million-dollar kingly forgiveness but who promptly ignores the meaning of the gift for his own local relation to a fellow servant (Mathew 18:2130 ). It is a terrifying story that ends in a punishment for crime in the form of a cruel sentence to debtor’s prison. When I meditate on that parable in the midst of news about prisons in American society, I have to tremble. The LInited States imprisons a larger percentage of its people than does any other country on earth, for a total of some 2.2 million. Prison is our “default option” for dealing with much human misbehavior. Isolated from the rest of us, those two million prisoners can then mostly commit crimes against each other and their prison guards. Research tells us that imprisonment minus opportunity for education and medical therapy has little effect on reducing post-imprisonment crime. Furthermore, former prisoners, once released, learn that in many ways, a re­ turn to this American society is a return to prison: the prison of exclusion from jobs, exclusion form public housing, and inclusion in a special section of the public that requires badges on their identity as “criminals.” So for prisoners behind the bars and others released from the bars, this society is likely to be experienced as merciless. And a merciless society is not really a society. No American poet has written with more conviction on this matter than Robert Frost in his poem “The Star-Splitter,” about a farmer who becomes so fascinated with astronomy and so wants to buy a telescope that he burns down his own barn for the insurance money. The police and the insurance company discover his crime, and he goes for a year to prison. When he comes back to town, his neighbors have to decide how to treat him. At hist they shun his company and make no attempt to befriend him. But then they have a second thought:

    The hist thing next morning we reflected If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with, For to be social is to be forgiving.2

    One might say too that “to be merciful is to be social.” For a society completely lacking in mercy is scarcely a society worth living in. Put every driver in jail for exceeding the speed limit by as much as 2 miles, and who among us drivers would be out of prison? Punish every little cheating on one’s income tax, and how large must the IRS have to be to catch us all? And how oblivious we would have to be to what Reinhold Niebuhr called “the one provable fact in the New Testament: ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’” (Romans 3:23) To be sure, there are crimes that may deserve prisons for the protection of the public, but to think of prisons as housing a special brand of human beings who break laws is a violation of what Christians are supposed to know about us all and about our common need for the blessedness of mercy. There is a great, consistent reciprocity in God’s way of dealing with humanity: that is the message of the Beatitudes. The divine giving is closely aligned with the human receiving. You cannot have the wealth of the mercy without spending it on

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    your neighbor. It is one secret of the Kingdom of God. In many dimensions we Americans tolerate a criminal justice system that is both unjust and merciless. Hopefully in today’s America, there is some movement towards more mercy and less sheer punishment in public and legislative concern about our criminal justice systems. Take the strategy of solitary conhnement: we are currently building some prisons that have only cells for that way of dealing with misbehaving inmates. A little imagination is sufficient for any of us to begin feeling the horror and irrationality of this practice. For the crime of disrespect for one’s neighbors, we deprive the misbehaver of the company of neighbors. We coniine the misbehaver 23 hours a day to a lonely cell, and we vary the punishment from days to years. A prison chaplain, a friend of mine, testihes that solitary conhnement results in drastic deterioration of a prisoner’s personality. From that fact a commission of the United Nations has prescribed a “Mandela rule” for solitary conhnement in the world’s pris­ ons; the rule is to permit it for no more than 15 days. It is a rule that resonates with the experience of Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in South African prisons for his opposition to Apartheid laws. In a great irony, Mandela testihed in his autobiog­ raphy that his warders “made a great mistake” by requiring these political prisoners to work together in their “hard labor.” In that work they were able to communicate with each other and to help each other in such basic ways as teaching each other to read and write. Some, including Mandela, learned to understand law and history books that lay behind the power of their enemies to imprison them. In these years of conhnement, Mandela himself discovered that some of the white prison guards had family problems that needed to be understood and talked over, with the result that one of the guards became so real a friend of Mandela that in 1994, he invited the guard to Mandela’s inauguration as president of the new South Africa. It was a remarkable demonstration of blessed mercy: a gesture by a former prisoner who came to know his captor as a fellow human being. Such glimmers of hope break out in human life when we take to heart the wisdom and promises of the beatitudes. Memorable for me was the gathering of New Yorkers in Yankee Stadium a few days after the horrors of 9/11 01 when my colleague James Forbes was assigned the privilege of reading the Beatitudes of Jesus as part of that day’s liturgy, promises of blessing in the midst of the horrors of the murder of more than three thousand Americans and neighbors from over 30 countries. If at any time in recent history we knew that a world without mercy is a world we humans cannot survive in, it was this time in 2001 amid the wreckage of a World Trade Center and devastations of families caught up in hatreds alleged to be justihed by distortions of politicized religion. Reflecting on such historical events, we Chr istians do well to repair to the blessed­ ness promised us all in those Beatitudes. The mercy we need is both a gift and a power to imitate it. It is the blessed reciprocity of mercy truly given and truly received.

    Notes 1 The Greek makarios means “happy,” but the Hebrew barak seems to qualify as a synonym well translated as “blessed,” which implies, as often in both Testaments, a giver and a receiver of blessing. That implication seems to fit the whole of the Beatitudes, and it avoids a facile subjective American use of the word happy 2 The Poetry of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), 176-179.

  • Protagonist Corner: A Holy Exhaustion

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    Protagonist Corner

    A Holy Exhaustion

    Joe Phelps

    Highland Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky

    The invitation to write this column comes at a poignant time: After 42 years of preaching, I will soon hang up my pulpit robe. I took my first church job while barely old enough to buy a bottle of wine and have been serving the Church ever since, half of those years with a dynamic, liberating, “thinking, feeling, healing community of faith. ” I cannot imagine a more full, meaningful life. But in the last year, I began to notice that, like an aging cell phone, I was no longer able to hold a charge. My battery was depleted in a way that no vacation, retreat , spiritual direction, or sabbatical could recharge. Gone was that particular mix of energies necessary to pastor and preach and cast a vision as I had done for decades with great joy and confidence. I had anticipated serving a few more years until the culturally accepted age of 65. That age is arbitrary, of course, and wise friends assured me T d know when it was time to quit. They were right. When one’s battery no longer recharges, it is crystal clear. John O’ Donohue nails the feeling in To One Who Is Exhausted:

    Things you could take in your stride before now become increasingly laborsome events of will. Weariness invades your spirit. Gravity begins falling inside you, dragging down every bone. The tide you never valued has gone out. And you are marooned on unsure ground.1

    It happens. The weekly output. The desire to help people see or feel or revere life and to frame a sermon in ways that speak to both youth and to PhD’s in a single sermon takes practice, dexterity, experimentation, imitation, concentration. It also takes courage to fail and to try again as we slowly, painstakingly find our preaching voices. Seth Godin says,

    We become original through practice. We’ve seduced ourselves into believing that the this sort of breakthrough springs fully formed, as Athena did from Zeus’ head. Alas, that’s a myth. What always happens (as you can discover by looking at the early work of anyone you admire) is that she practiced her way into it.2

    Over decades this practice, practice, practice becomes exhausting. Yes, God is with us, which gives us a base level of assurance and energy. But to stand behind the sacred desk week in and week out, in season and out, through congregational conflicts, 9-11, elections, Charlottesville, and personal crises, and to consistently proclaim a gospel of peace with conviction? To preach your heart out? Only gradually am I able to accept this depletion as a kind of holy exhaustion. Even if part of the reason why we preachers put so much into our sermons is our fear of failure or to assuage our ego (and who among us could deny these realities), we

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    also preach our hearts out— our deepest convictions and intuitions and insights and experiences in walking with God—out of a desire to share God’s abundance. Being exhausted after having done the sacred work that was ours to do, and in spite of our flaws and failures, is to enter the liberating joy of Sabbath. Sabbath invites gratitude—to God, yes, but also to God through God’s ambassadors within the community of this Journal For Preachers readership. Thank you, scholars and students of the craft of preaching. You remind local church pastors that we are not alone. You give us language and cadence to frame our preaching in ever helpful ways. May you continue to explore and experiment with the craft of preaching God ’s gospel. Be brave and don’t let today’s forms of preaching limit how God leads you in your proclamation tomorrow. Thank you, voracious collaters of culture and theology and history and everything else. As a pastor of an increasingly complex congregation, I couldn’t keep pace with your reading log, so I counted on you to mine journals like this one and all the others. Generalists of my ilk need you to notice and distill and nuance and highlight and connect what we differently-gifted preachers can’t or don’t or won’t take time to discover. Throughout my ministry I have relied on my preaching friends who read more deeply and saw more clearly and simply spent more time than I in books and journals. Blessed are you. I trust that generalists like me complete the scholars ’ service to God by turning their insights into words and acts of love at the most local level. In other words, deep readers, the body of Christ needs you. To borrow a popular greeting offered to those in uniform, “Thank you for your service.” I am grateful to the many generalists who peruse the sermons in this journal, espedaily the ones from well-known preachers or based on an upcoming text or one with a catchy story. We silently vow to go back and read them. Our spirit is willing. But an opinion piece titled “Protagonist ’s Corner” sounds lighter, less theological, perhaps more entertaining than challenging. These are my people. We were the Boy Scouts who thumbed past the articles in Boy ’s Life and went straight to the jokes on the last page (and we still recite some of them). We are the activists who try to peruse the dense articles in Sojourners but always read Ed Spivey’s Hrmmp on the last page. We play a role too; we keep it real. I once aspired to be more serious and scholarly, more distinguished and reverent . It didn’t last long. I am who I am, by God’s grace. Which is true for each of you preachers. We have one of life’s consuming calls: to let God take who we are and to preach our hearts out.

    Notes 1 John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 125. 2 Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes, and respect, November 29, 2017.

    Pentecost 2018

  • Three Hundred and Fifty-five Days

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    Three Hundred and Fifty-five Days

    Lisa Baroody Culpepper

    St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, Plemingway, South Carolina

    It was just ten days out of my 365 that I served in the Moria Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece. Yet, those ten days felt like an eternity. Having followed the Syrian War closely since it began, I stepped on to Moria where I found the people for which my heart had already broken. At Moria I met the children with their parents, bold young men and desperate fathers, young widows of war and their infants. I encountered men and women who held within their ice blue and umber eyes the secrets of war, the pain of abuse, the fear of death, and the courage to hope. I found the people that I had read about and whose photos stopped Time in a magazine’s glossy pages. I found the people who from desert sands and sandaled paths stepped into a rocking rubber raft where midnight waves offered safe passage for some and for others an eternal asylum in deep unforgiving waters. I found the weary souls and calloused feet of those who had exchanged their sea drenched garments for a stranger’s dry goods and waited in line for a bottle of water or a hot meal. In this, the greatest migration of peoples since WWII, 65.6 million people are presently forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, or human rights violations. And Moria, one of several refugee camps in Greece, is a former prison installation, a setting of contrasts where babies and barbed wire keep company together. Those who enter her gates are shocked to find yet another imprisonment and since the past two years have saturated Europe with refugees. To them the camp seems more of a residence than a hoped-for pass-through. During my seven days in the camp, I joined dedicated volunteers from Euro-relief, who served meals, monitored gates, assembled tents, processed paperwork, wiped away tears, and listened to pleas for help. The smiles of playful Syrian children, the courage of Congolese men, and the longsuffering of Afghani mothers and fathers turned my heart into water and my tears into puddles of humility, for in these people, I saw the face of Christ. Each day at Moria was both the best place I had ever been and the worst place I could ever imagine. As I prepared to depart, my 50 pounds of North America had been replaced with bubble wrapped olive oil and a few Greek pastries, yet my heart had also been replaced with the faces and stories of unspeakable trauma. After my ten days at Moria, I returned to spend my remaining 355 with a 22member congregation in the rural South. Upon my return, these fine folks who had prayed me up and down steep hills in searing heat now sat attentively before the flicker of my power point and an emotional monologue. “So that’s all,” I said, “Any questions?” All was silent except for my own unrelenting interrogation. How will my experience in Moria inform the war-tom congregations on this side of the pond? Where is the face of Jesus under the steeples split by denominational snipers, demolished by institutional self-fulfillment, and ravished by age? Where is Christ to be found in congregations who are left traumatized by unprecedented acceleration of cultural change, those for whom the church is no longer a home, whose ecclesial loyalties are displaced by a leisurely cup of Sunday morning coffee or career-shaping

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    grade school soccer practice? How does the church, shaped by cultural Christianity, live out a redeemed life in its own familiar yet ever so foreign culture? How does a cross-cultural mission experience inform the preaching and pastoral ministry in the local worshipping community? The challenge before us calls forth the development of a «?/.v.v/o/r-shapcd ecclesiology in which a much broader view of God’s Kingdom work in the world is embraced.1 This paradigm shift entails a change in identity of the church from a “place where certain things happen, and a vendor of religious services and goals,” to a “body of people sent on a mission.”2 A mission-shaped identity is one which is formed each Lord’s Day as the people of God gather for worship. In worship, Christ is encountered in Word and Sacrament. And in worship, we are sent out into the world beyond our walls and across our property lines into the neighborhoods where our Lord is waiting. As the Son was sent by the Father, so Christ sends us out with the Holy Spirit’s power to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine (John 20: 21; Ephesians 3:20). When touched by the suffering of people an ocean away, the small, aging, and childless congregation of St. Paul’s responds to the call of Christ with eyes and hearts open to the face of Christ in our local community. This two-fold hermeneutic, one which relates Biblical truths to the church as well as to the social order, inspires the church to reach out in ministry beyond our walls. We have done this through a Community Vacation Bible School (which serves up to 100 children) and through a partnership with a private school in which we welcome 30 students each Wednesday for Bible Study and fellowship. These students, battered by academic pressures and social malice, find in St. Paul’s a refuge from the unforgiving waters of the world and a safe haven for faith to grow and flourish. And in turn, we are infused with the new life that comes from the vision and purpose of the call of God to mission and outreach. Informed by the global experience, our worshipping community bears witness locally so that through daily experiences, we encounter the face of Christ in the world. In many ways, worship wakes us up to a new address. We may be in the same dwelling, but by God’s grace, our neighborhood is global and our calling more expansive than we ever imagined. In worship we discover that we have new neighbors, a new love, and a new calling.3 Now, while I am counting the days until I can return to Moria, I am also living the days in which the transformation of my local worshipping community will bring forth a congregational missiology and the embrace of Missio Dei. In these days of daily ministry and Lord’s Day preaching, may the displaced, the homeless, and the traumatized hear Words of healing truth, and may we not miss the face of Christ as it appears in our own stories as well as in the stories of others.

    Notes 1 Craig Van Gleder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), 47. 2 George Hunsburger, “Defining the Church,” in Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, ed. George Hunsburger and Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1006), 287. 3 Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (Downers Grove, IIlinois : Intervarsity, 2007), 78, 80.

    Pentecost 2018

  • To a Place of Celebration: EBENEZER 8.7.8.7 D

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    To a Place of Celebration

    EBENEZER 8.7.8.7 D

    To a place of celebration filled with laughter, dancing, joy, Came such violent devastation— one man’s efforts to destroy. God, we grieve for loved ones taken; we lament, “What can we do?” Now, we’re feeling lost and shaken; heal our nation! Make us new!

    Weapons kill— and so does silence; hear our prayer as we confess: We have given in to violence, we have bowed to hopelessness. God, we’ve lost our sense of vision of a world where there will be Plowshares made from violent weapons, justice in society.

    Give our leaders strength for action, give them minds to mend our haws, Give them courage and compassion, and the will to change our laws. May we work for legislation that will curb guns’ awful toll. God, renew our dedication to a world that’s just and whole.

    Give us love to change our vision; give us love to cast out fear. Give us love to speak with wisdom— love to work for justice here. Give us love to welcome difference— love no hatred can destroy. Only love can stop the violence; only love will bring back joy.

    Biblical References: Isaiah 4:2; 1 John 4:18; James 3:1-12; Micali 6:8; Matthew 25:35 Tune: Thomas John Williams, 1890. Alternative Tune: BEACH SPRING Text: Copyright © 2016 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved. Email: bcgillcttcAcomcast.nct New Hymns: www.carolynshymns.com Permission is given for free use of this hymn for church services.

    Journa l for Preachers

  • What Does It Mean to Be Human?

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    What Does It Mean to Be Human?

    Walter Brueggemann

    Traverse City, Michigan

    In the Christian biblical tradition, being “human’’ is being in the image of God. The kind of humanness we embrace depends on who God is and how God is. In this tradition (shared with Judaism) God is marked by five big terms: justice, righteous­ ness, steadfast love, faithfulness, and compassion (mispat, sedeqcth, hesed, ctmuncth, and raham). All five terms refer to tenacious relatedness to the other who is unlike us. Being in the image of this God means we are most fully human when we are tenaciously related to others unlike us in terms of justice and righteousness. There is, however, a fake god masquerading in Christian tradition whose actions contradict the gospel. This fake God yields a gospel that is fake news. The fake god is one of fear, greed, tribal exclusiveness, and ready violence. This is a god who is worshipped and obeyed by fake Christians who believe the fake news, and who ad­ vocate for fear, greed, tribal exclusiveness, and violence in their own lives. And when we are honest, we find that we ourselves, all of us, are susceptible and sometimes tempted to that fake news and that fake life. As a result, a Christian notion of being human is always one of contestation between the image of God and the false image that arises from fake news. That contestation needs always to be done in vigorous, intentional, and in public ways around real is­ sues of restorative justice at the sore points in our society. Thus Christian humanness is not a private parlor game or a head trip, but an engagement with the reality of the world. That contestation is well voiced by the prophet Jeremiah:

    Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

    On the one side are might, wealth, and wisdom of a worldly kind. On the other side are those things in which God delights: justice, righteousness, and faithfulness. To be human means to be aligned with that in which God delights. Being human means to be at this work in a society that is smitten with wealth and might and that is enthralled by transactional wisdom. That humanness of a relational kind, in such a world, is risky inconvenience with practical costs. That contestation, we Christians say, is clearest in the life of Jesus who gave himself away for the sake of restorative justice in the face of the empire. Such humanness requires immense intentionality, because the alternative of a fake way sponsored by a fake god is compelling and convenient. This humanness consists in daily acts of resistance and subversion ac­ cording to a truth that has come bodied among us in covenantal Israel and in the life of Jesus.

    Journa l for Preachers

  • WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?: ESSAYS

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    O. Benjamin Sparks

    Richmond, Virginia

    Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? Essays (New York, Fairer, Straus and Giroux), 2018

    An inordinate timeliness hovers over this review. We read regularly of the decline and fall of the Western Alliance and the liberal, humanistic, and mostly democratic culture that has triumphed for the last seventy years.1 What will be upon us as we pre­ pare Advent sermons is anyone’s guess. We cannot possibly know what new outrages “slouch toward (Washington, Moscow, or Phoenix) to be born.” Indeed, “things fall apart; the center cannot hold; the falcon cannot hear the falconer.”2 These images from W.B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” offer an entry into Robinson’s latest book of essays, What Are We Doing Here? The title is taken from the second of fourteen essays. There she laments the tendency in higher education to ignore, if not denigrate, the study of what we have traditionally known as “the Hu­ manities,” and to put in their place a materialist view of human life which describes our capacity for noble sentiments, for faith, for beauty, and for wonder as merely random events in the evolution of the universe and the human species. A consequence of this widespread understanding of human nature undergirds a persistent movement to turn the great institutions of higher learning into production facilities for “useful and practical workers,” people who know how to crunch the numbers and make the deal, to build the submarine and create an app. Increasingly then, there is little place for learning which is good for building moral and ethical muscle, for ennobling the human spirit, and for enlarging human understanding. In this essay, Robinson argues that “what we are doing here,” especially in education, is nothing less than continuing a project—a human enterprise—that began at least 500 years ago with the Renais­ sance, continued through the Enlightenment and Protestant Reformation, and gave us the open, liberal, and inquiring society which we value and the benehts of which we enjoy. Of preeminent importance, this same project gave birth to the revered institutions of higher learning (many of which were founded for training ministers and preachers) and helped develop and sustain the political institutions which have made their continuance possible. This title is profoundly suggestive for preachers. That same question might blessedly trouble us every week as we prepare to enact the great liturgy of Word and Sacrament, as we prepare a sermon on sacred texts, as we face the congregation in worship or join them in prayer and praise. What are we doing here? As we explore the text, encourage faith and obedience, “preach liberty to the captives and announce good news to the poor,” are we inviting our congregations to see themselves and God—even the entire cosmos—through the truth and beauty, humility and wonder, suffering and glory that we have discovered in the sacred text and that has been gra­ ciously revealed to us in Jesus Christ? This is Robinson’s fourth collection of essays, and this, no less than the others, together with her novels, further establishes her as an internationally known and

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    sought after public intellectual. What Are We Doing Here? is mostly a collection of lectures given at universities from Lund, Sweden to Princeton and Stanford, from Brigham Young to the LIniversity of Virginia. There is an address at Westminster Abbey and a searing meditation, “Slander,” given at Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock based on James 3:5-10 about the dangerous power of destructive speech: “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire” (5b-6a). So how might preachers benefit from these essays? First, Robinson repeatedly demonstrates the nature of faith: that believing is a corporate act and has common as well as individual consequence. This act of faith is not primarily about my right to believe what I chose, my freedom of religion—or me. Faith involves the community, the society, and the church that we intend to convene, then to nurture and build, and finally to sustain. That is how congregations and institutions are created and how they endure, not only to perpetuate themselves, but as generators of the values that make common life good and worthwhile. “When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the de­ crees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you? ’ then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt… ”’ (Deut. 6:20-21a). Here is perpetuity, but also blessing. In one essay Robinson catalogues what she calls a “dark view of the world,” not only in order to pose the inevitable question of what is to be done, but also to respond “in terms that are now more or less precluded by the practical urgency of these problems” (38).

    The response I propose is that we preserve as best we can the heritage we have received and that we enlarge it and enrich it for the sake of coming generations. For a long time I assumed this was simply a thing civilizations did, a practical definition of the word civilization. Now I see that wealthy countries are stepping away from ancient commitments to humanist educa­ tion. … In the West it was theology and its consequences that built these great institutions, and the ebbing away of theology that has made them seem to many to be anomalies, anachronisms, and burdens… (38-9).

    So I argue that each sermon, each bible class, each anthem, together with the prayers and liturgies we offer up every week are the church’s small efforts (even at times very large contributions) to keeping alive understandings of God and the universe, of Jesus Christ and his enduring impact on history, all with the aid of the Spirit herself in the preaching, interpreting, singing, and the hearing of the Word. Second, these essays, carefully attended to, provide historical examples and habits of mind (ways of thinking, reflecting, and shaping convictions) that will undergird the preaching of the Word. Consistent biblical and theological preaching, especially over a number of years, builds a congregational understanding of itself and gives people a way of abiding from generation to generation in the community in which a congregation goes about its public and individual witness. This does not require continual “prophetic” preaching about whatever outrages are being done in our world. Rather such preaching and teaching inculcates faith and understanding (not only in the preacher, but in the leadership of the church) so that when a crisis comes, we who believe and live in faith will be prepared to give our own witness, to act in faith, and

    Advent 2018

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    to be authentically who we have been formed to be (by water, Word, bread and wine, and by the Spirit. I read this book hi st as part of a study group. In the conversation that day, I raised a question about Robinson’s purpose here, as well as in her other books of essays. From different angles and with different historical and biblical/theological reference points, she makes much the same argument: that the Western project is imperiled because we have lost our theological, moral, historical memory—our underpinnings and especially our understanding of God as Creator of a cosmos filled with wonder, mystery, and majesty—not the least of which is human existence and the human enterprise itself. For Robinson, that we are at all is providential (divinely intentional in the best sense) and not mere evolutionary happenstance in a random universe. In that study group, I raised this question: Is the body of her work nostalgia—beau­ tifully written and argued, but nonetheless nostalgia, a loving lament for what has been lost? Or is it a prognosis and prescription, a call to right thinking and right action for recovery and restoration? Perhaps it is both. Whatever her intention, Robinson’s work recalls powerfully for me T.S. Eliot’s haunting queries in “Choruses from the Rock,” a pageant-play written in 1934:

    Do you think that Faith has conquered the World And that lions no longer need keepers? Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be? Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments As you boast in the way of polite society Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance? Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of life and death and all they would like to forget… They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

    In these increasingly difficult days, when we have so few modest attainments left in the increasingly hostile, even nihilistic, public square, the call to preach and teach has never been more urgent, more compelling, or more capable of bearing fruit—fruit that shall last. “All flesh is grass. The grass withers, and the flower fades…but the word of our God endures forever” (Isa. 40). That is “what we are doing here.”

    Notes 1 Three columns: David Brooks, New York Times, “The Murder-Suicide of the West,” 6/16/18; Robert Kagan, Washington Post, “The West spent a decade playing into Putin’s hands,” 8/8/18; Ross Douthat, New Your Times, “Oh, the Humanities,” 8/8/18. 2 W.B. Yeates, “The Second Coming.” The Poetry Foundation (internet). 3 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York, Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1958), 105-6.

  • Holy currencies: six blessings for sustainable missional ministries

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Thomas E. Breidenthal

    Diocese of Southern Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio

    Eric H. F. Law, Holy Currencies: Six Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries (St. Lewis, Missouri: Chalice Press), 2013.

    Eric Law’s Holy Currencies is an untapped resource for preachers seeking to move their congregations from survival mode to a renewed commitment to mission. Law’s basic thesis is that human nature, in concert with the Holy Spirit, provides the church the means to be effective ministers of the Gospel. We are made for relationship , and we are essentially connected to one another. If we live into that reality and trust it, we will recover our voice, our witness, and our drive. Living into that reality involves recognizing and seizing on our connection to one another: for instance, offering to be in partnership with neighboring schools, police departments, and faith communities, and to make our buildings available for all kinds of neighborhood events. Furthermore, it requires a deeper engagement with one another. Truth is the product of our common struggle to speak out of our own experience and listen to the experience of others. This is the heart of Law’s book. As followers of Jesus, when we actually listen to one another, it becomes possible to begin to work together, not so much despite our disagreements as in the power of our unity in Jesus Christ. Law’s insistence on listening and common ground arises from his early work in cross-cultural awareness. But this present book culminates a steady shift in his approach . Successful cross-cultural encounter means mutual understanding, respect, and a commitment to ongoing exploration and partnership. This requires listening and humility. But the practice of patient listening and the attitude of humble service arise out of an even deeper place. Law quotes Desmond Tutu’s observation that we are different from one another in order that we may discover our dependence on one another. With regard to race, ethnicity, and culture, we might say that true engagement is driven by a hunger for relationship with human beings who are not like us. So the drive to engage is not only a moral obligation—although for religious faith it certainly is that. It is also a yielding to our overwhelming need to know and to be known. This is the fundamental insight that is implied in all of Law’s work, but which swings into full view in Holy Currencies. Since the establishment and constant renewal of friendship is the natural bent of human nature, our capacity to be present to one another may be compared to cash which can be converted into goods to be exchanged. In this case, the good to be exchanged is nothing other than the possibility of friendship and common cause. Because this is a precious good all too easily squandered, even when we are dealing with those most like ourselves, Law has shifted the focus of his work from cultural interchange to the dynamics of interpersonal relations within congregations and between congregations and the neighborhoods surrounding them. New life can be breathed into the church when we cash into what we can offer to one another and to our neighbors. Thus it is almost never about money primarily. I have already mentioned the currencies of relationship and truth. Law also discusses the currencies of wellness, time and place, and gracious leadership. For instance, a

    Easter 2018

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    congregation with ample physical space but an aging and exhausted membership might invite young adults from a thriving but cramped building to come and re-seed it with fresh energy and leadership. Obviously, the notion of exchange is front and center here. This may be off-putting at first, as it seems to reduce relationship to a transaction. But Law’s insistence on exchange as a spiritual dynamic points to something more essential. His point is that all of us, individually and collectively, possess relational gifts with which God our creator has gifted us. As in the parable of the talents, we are called to take the initiative to spend those gifts, expecting to receive gifts in return, not as payment, but as connection acknowledged, affirmed, and carried forward. LUtimately, Law is drawing us toward the classical Trinitarian doctrine of God, understood as an eternal exchange of love among the three persons. This is not about profit and loss, but about a constantly circulating give and take. The Gospel message here is that this give-andtake is not a zero-sum equation. God is infinitely self-replenishing, so the gifts God pumps into us are inexhaustible. We only need to trust that as we give them away, they will be returned in excess, if not by our neighbor, then by God. Whoever lets go of life will find it. I hope I have already demonstrated the worth of Holy Currencies for preachers. In my view, the whole purpose of preaching is to hold the church together as it prepares to set out in witness to the justice and mercy of God. We are to embolden our congregations to engage in deep conversation about faith and the struggle for faith, and to imagine how to parlay that internal conversation into engagement with other faith communities, with all people of good will, and ultimately with those whose will may not be good. Eric Law provides both the inspiration and the tools to do this. To begin with, Holy Currencies is filled with concrete examples of congregations that have been transformed by discovering and exchanging the currencies they have already obtained. Secondly, he has included concrete lesson plans as follow-ups for every invitation into any deeper identification and exchange of gifts. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, he has identified the “margin of grace,” the space between false comfort and paralyzing fear, where a congregation in fear of death can hear Jesus calling them to live in new ways.

    Journa l for Preachers