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  • American grace: how religion divides and unites us

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Peter W. Marty

    St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa

    David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 673 pages.

    44Exactly who will show up this Sunday to hear the sermon?” Every preacher asks this question at some point during the long and solitary work of sermon preparation . Good preachers pose it often. They will also ask plenty of questions regarding the biblical text that is staring them in the eye. Yet if all of one’s energies are spent exegeting a scriptural passage, and one has little clue how to exegete parishioners’ lives, a fruitful sermon seems unlikely. Ministers are smart to ask themselves, as they do the hard work of preparing to preach, 44What is preoccupying the minds of these worshipers? What are they hungry for in a deep down way? Surely they are arriving with expectations and assumptions. So, what are they? What do these listeners think of their neighbors? How religious or holy do they understand themselves to be? If it’s true there is a broken heart in every pew, what do the cracks inside these people look like?” Questions that zero in on audience attitude and disposition are very appropriate. Unfortunately, there is no perfect way to answer them. A lot of guesswork is always involved. Guest preachers have it the worst. They must struggle to know the hearts and minds of completely unfamiliar people. Along comes a major new resource to better acquaint preachers with their flock. David Campbell and Robert Putnam provide over 600 pages of ideas for pulpit ministers to contemplate. Their massive tome, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, is surely the most exhaustive study published to-date of twenty-firstcentury religious trends in America. If you open the book, be ready for scrupulous research. Prepare to appreciate graphs; more than 150 of them fill the pages. Enjoy writing that is meticulous and comprehensive, even if fact-driven and analytic in tone. Campbell and Putnam’s multi-year research project outlines a host of characteristics and behaviors associated with people of faith in our day. Preachers will want to take special note of those that help interpret who might be sitting in the pew this Sunday. The rich findings are many, but some examples to inspire or give pause to preachers include the following. On average, religious Americans are less tolerant than secular Americans when it comes to defending the civil liberties of opponents. As discouraging as this may be—the author’s call it 44the darker side of religion’s link to citizenship”-it is well worth recognizing. Religious individuals tend to be less enthusiastic about tolerating political differences and dissent than their secular counterparts. Not surprisingly, religiously based social networks are a powerful predictor of life satisfaction and overall happiness. Wise clergy will pay attention to the impact of religiously based social networks on parishioners ’ lives. These networks, as defined by Campbell and Putnam, are comprised of elements like close friends at church, small

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    group participation within one’s congregation, and frequency of talk about religious topics among family and friends. As for neighborliness, Campbell and Putnam are convinced that the social component of religious community influences positive behavior toward others. Religious people who make a practice of belonging to a church are likely to engage in many more neighborly acts of kindness than fervent believers who prefer to pray alone and dissociate themselves from religious community. The value of religious friendship brings to mind the somewhat imperfect (though still meaningful) distinction between belonging and believing. When it comes to the probability of religious people engaging in kind behavior toward their neighbors, a strong sense of belonging to a community of faith outweighs the motivating influence of adhering to a specific set of beliefs. Most Americans are well acquainted with people who do not share their faith. In fact, two out of three are said to have at least one extended family member who is of another religion. Grudging acceptance of religious diversity is not the norm in America; explicit embrace is. So say the statistics. Religiously observant Americans tend to volunteer more and give more generously than their secular neighbors. They are also more conscientious on citizenship fronts, engaging in civic responsibilities more readily than the rest of the population. Trust is high for religious people. They trust others more than their non-religious friends do, just as Americans trust religious people more than non-religious people. Some of the Campbell and Putnam conclusions raise questions that deserve further exploration. If 44 percent of all Americans report saying grace before their meals, where are all these praying people hidden? I certainly do not see them in my own congregation, much less in other circles I frequent. Perhaps the key to accuracy here is the self-reporting element. Americans may believe they pray at mealtimes much more frequently than they actually do—a phenomenon that would correspond with how regularly Americans understand themselves to be in worship as compared with actual attendance figures. A great deal of page space references what the authors call “churchgoing liberals” and “churchgoing conservatives.” These do not seem to be especially helpful categories for meaningful conversation and analysis, even if some of the survey questions may have prompted their use. They present more ambiguity and confusion than clarity. Puzzling to some readers will be the claim that Americans peaceably combine a high degree of religious devotion with extraordinary religious diversity. If this is true, how do we account for all of the interfaith tensions of recent years, particularly those connected with accepting Islam in America? The authors’ data suggests that people tend to sort themselves into congregations where their lives will align with other people who share similar political perspective. In other words, people will gravitate toward churches filled with others who vote like they do. This “self-reinforcement” strategy for choosing friends may be true in many circles of life. It is not supposed to be true in the church, at least not in a church guided by injunctions of the New Testament. One would hope church leaders are busy striving for a plurality of perspective. I would be hard pressed to label the congregation I serve with a uniform political persuasion. Surely our community of faith cannot be an exception. The sample vignettes, or case studies of particular congregations, seem pecu-

    Journal for Preachers

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    liarly chosen. While they take up a good deal of narrative space in American Grace, they represent a minuscule sampling of congregational life in the United States. One wonders if selecting this odd assortment of congregations really contributes to the project’s findings in as many helpful ways as the authors intend. Perhaps the most notable gap in the book is the absence of any reference to the impact of social media on American church life today. We may cut the authors some slack on this score, given the timing of the book’s release. Still, one would think there would be at least a passing reference. The bulk of the Campbell/Putnam research was conducted in 2006 and 2007, with more than 3,000 respondents participating. The compilation of the survey data and the written conclusions emerged throughout 2008 and 2009. The book rolled off the press in 2010. At the start of 2009, there were 42 million Facebook users in North America. By the start of 2012, that number will have risen to 180 million. One in every nine people on earth now uses Facebook. Fifty percent of the 800 million users on this planet log in every day. The average user has 130 friends. Fifty percent of young people today report they receive their news through Facebook. I, for one, think the impact of social media may be the biggest game changer in decades for church attendance and church belonging. Facebook delivers an instant sense of community to users hungry for it. “Who needs Christian community,” one may ask in all sincerity, “if I can be religious and feel that many of my social needs are being met online?” A Facebook user may connect with scores of people in far flung places any time of day or night. Even when a user is not logged in, there is still the personal impression that one’s networks and affiliations are expansive. The individual interactions within these networks may bear little resemblance to the embodied face-to-face contacts with which we formerly defined valuable human interaction, but people connecting on Facebook have one important thing in common. They still call each other friends. In the final analysis, those committed to the preaching task may resonate with the most dominant theme in American Grace. There is a high degree of religious fluidity in our country. A lot of mixing and switching is constantly going on. People find religion, drop out of religion, and reconnect with some new expression of faith with growing regularity. It’s a dynamic reality guaranteed to keep even the best preachers on their toes.

  • Indigestible

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    Indigestible

    John 20:1-18

    Scott Black Johnston

    Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, New York

    John 20JEarly on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.

    11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into

    the tomb; nand she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ]3They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? ‘ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. nJesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? ‘Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. ‘lt’Jesus said to her, ‘Mary! ‘ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘RabbounU’ (which means Teacher).1?Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 7 have seen the Lord’; and

    she told them that he had said these things to her.

    Mary Magdalene stood weeping outside the tomb. After the whispered betrayal and the bloodthirsty roars; after the crack of whips and the thud of nails sinking into green lumber; after the clack of dice and the taunts of guards; after the last gasping breath, all was finally quiet. And Mary Magdalene was weeping. I imagine her cussing softly. “When will the indignities stop? Haven’t they done enough? Did they really need to deprive us of his battered body? Do they really need to prevent us from rubbing a few spices into his bruised brow? All that is left to me is weeping.” The men are no help. As soon as Mary informs them that the body is gone, they race around in a panic. Peter looks like a crazed weasel. You can hear their nervous chatter on the wind. “Maybe they will come for us next.” “We better keep our heads

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    down.” “Stay away from public places.” “Disperse. Go… now!” The Gospel of John reports that the disciples fled to their homes. They were all gone, except for Mary Magdalene. She just stood there, looking at the empty tomb, and crying. After a while, to confirm her fears, Mary bends to peer into the open grave, and there she sees two figures, all in white, sitting on the stone. They look up at her and ask, “Woman, why are you weeping?” It has to be one of the stupidest questions ever asked. Why is she weeping? Good gracious. Think of all the answers Mary might give. I am weeping… • because he’s gone. • because he was gentle and talked about love, and the world takes a crowbar to people like that. • because he treated me like a human being, like someone with a brain and a soul and not as a piece of meat. • because his teachings pointed toward God in a way that made sense. They weren’t superstitious. They weren’t mean-spirited. They made sense. • because there will never be anyone else like him. • because now… now, I do not even have his body to fuss over. “Why am I weeping? Are you kidding? I’m standing in a cemetery. What do you think?” I have done a lot of funerals in my time as a pastor. I am still astonished at the change that comes over a limo full of friends and family—people chatting merrily (if nervously) as they adjust their neckties and fix their lipstick, when the car drives through the front gate of the cemetery. Suddenly, all goes quiet. Conversations stop cold. The proximity of the dead sucks the words right out of people. In other words, we “get” why Mary was crying. We’ve been there. We’ve stood by open graves. We know the power of death. It consumes our mothers and fathers, our friends and our enemies. Death dominates our headlines. “One hundred four people killed in protests against the government in Syria yesterday.” It gorges itself on our wars. It licks its lips over flag-draped coffins. It grins at every attempt to escape its grasp—chuckling at our plastic surgeries and our hair dyes and even our health food kicks. It haunts our every decision. Death is the ultimate opportunist. Just this week, the papers reported that every time the economy goes into recession, suicide numbers in this country rise. That doesn’t surprise us, does it? When the pressures seize us, we wonder how bad it would be to surrender. After all, one way or the other, death always wins. Acknowledging its all-consuming power, the ancient Hebrew people called the realm of the dead Sheol. Sheol was a realm of darkness—a vast place that could hold the spirit of everything that had ever lived. Curiously, Sheol wasn’t always pictured as a place. In the Old Testament, the prophets would frequently talk about Sheol as if it were a beast—a ravenous monster whose appetite for devouring the living is never satisfied. As Isaiah puts it, Sheol “enlarges its appetite and opens its mouth without limit.” Without limit. Yes, that’s what we know about death. It eats. It consumes without limit. It swallows our loved ones. One day it will wolf us down too. It is never satisfied. It always wins. Why is Mary Magdalene crying? Give her a break. Distraught, she turns away

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    from the two dudes in white choir robes and runs smack into the gardener, or what looks like a gardener if your eyes are filled with salt water and all you can see are colored blotches. Then, like a broken record, like a clueless guy at a cocktail party, the gardener asks the same stupid question: “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” Exhausted, done with pleasantries, Mary gets all New York on the guy. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” At this point, Mary doesn’t want the forces of death to thwart her last chance to care for her friend. All she wants is to wash his limbs, comb out his hair, and rub some fragrant oil into his skin. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.” She hopes that the gardener will lead her to Jesus’ body. It is the only hope that Mary has left. It is an incredibly touching thing—this hope of Mary’s. It’ll make you weep, it is so precious. And yet, it isn’t enough. That, my friends, is the message of Easter. That is the startling news trumpeted to us from a garden outside Jerusalem this morning. Mary’s hope wasn’t big enough. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to pick on Mary. The disciples didn’t have a big enough hope either. Heck, they didn’t appear to have any hope at all. They fled to their apartments. They were hiding. After the crucifixion, they looked into each other’s frightened eyes and knew that they were facing a harsh reality. They had worked the algebra, and they all came to the same conclusion. As my friend Michael Jinkins puts it, “Dead is dead. Gone is gone. Impossible is impossible.” Maybe none of us have a big enough hope for Easter. Can your expectations jump that high? Our spiritual hamstrings are so tight. Who has time to stretch them? All our lives we have been taught to exercise other muscles. We have been taught to assess danger, to hedge our bets, and, when things really get crazy, to duck our heads and run away. That is why, this morning of all mornings, we should give thanks that Easter pursues us. Easter comes after us and calls us by name. In today’s text, all it takes from Jesus is one word to upend Mary Magdalene’s expectations, one word to cast aside her scaled-down hopes and replace them with joy. One word, “Mary!” In a voice that was supposed to be gone, in a tone that she never thought she would hear again, Jesus says, “Mary!” And at that moment, all the algebra in Ms. Magdalene’s head, all the old lessons about how life sucks, how death always wins, and how the best we can hope to do is rub a little ointment on our broken friends—all the hard knock wisdom she has ever acquired goes flying out the window. Jesus says, “Mary!” and a new possibility dawns. What if death doesn’t win? One of the greatest preachers in the ancient church was a guy named John Chrysostom. Chrysostom was the Archbishop of Constantinople around the year 400. As a young monk, he was known as John of Antioch. Over time, however, the people of that region were so taken by his speechifying that they gave him the title Chrysostom—which literally translated means “Golden Mouth.” In one of his most famous sermons, an Easter sermon, Chrysostom asked his congregation, “How did death lose its power over people of faith?” Then, he answers his own rhetorical question by pointing to Christ. “That Body, which death could not digest, it received: and therefore had to cast forth that which it had ingested. Yes, death suffered in pain, while he held Christ, and was distressed until he vomited Him up.” I bet the people in Constantinople, dressed in their Easter best, out to hear a

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    preacher whom they had kindly nicknamed “Golden Mouth,” gasped and covered their children’s ears. “What a rude image. What an irresponsible picture to put into our heads this happy morning. Really, Preacher, couldn’t you compare the resurrection to something pretty? How about a blooming lily? Can’t you come up with a better Easter theme than the indigestible Christ? Who really wants to imagine death regurgitating Jesus?” Who? I’ll tell you who. Mary Magdalene and everybody who has ever conceived of death as a monster whose appetite will never be sated. In fact, immune to any protests, Chrysostom keeps right on preaching. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I’m wrong. This whole vomiting thing doesn’t work. Christ didn’t pop back out of death’s mouth. No. Jesus cut his way out of death’s belly. On his way out, our Lord destroyed the beast.” Now, there’s an Easter image for you. Death couldn’t hold him. Jesus shredded the monster from the inside out. It is wild stuff, and it certainly gets Mary Magdalene going. Immediately, she runs off to find the disciples in their hidey-holes. She tugs them into the light and hits them with life-changing news. “Guess what?” she says, “I have seen the Lord.” “Guess what? Death doesn’t win.” Like those first disciples, Mary’s proclamation prods us into action, calling us all to run and shout words of life in every place where death would seek to renew its feast. This past week, I received an email from Matthew Davis. Matthew is the pastor of Lamington Presbyterian Church about an hour due west of here in New Jersey. Last Friday, Matthew got a call from the local nursing home. He was informed that a resident was dying and that her twin sister wanted a pastor to come say a prayer. So Matthew went. On arrival, he was confronted with the typical smells and sounds of a nursing home—signs that the monster of death is near. Finding the twins’ room, he met two women in their nineties. The sister who had placed the phone call introduced herself as Dr. Francis Craig and her dying sister as Dr. Eleanor Craig. Both of the women had obtained their doctorates in music, studying under Virgil Fox, the premier organist of his day. In their own careers, in a time when many believed that women could not be great organists, these two distinguished musicians played recitals at Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. “It was amazing,” Matthew wrote, “to see Francis come to life as she spoke of days gone past. I was taken by her story but deeply saddened to see that such accomplished musicians had no CD player or tape player let alone an IPod to comfort them. So, I went down to the nearby Borders and picked up a collection of Bach organ pieces (played by their teacher, Virgil Fox) and returned to the home. I cranked up the volume on a CD player so that everyone in the nursing home could hear—with or without hearing devices. As the music swelled, Francis’ hands, which are quite clinched, straightened as she played along with her former teacher. What a day! We played sister Eleanor into that great mystery.” What gives us the pluck to play Bach at full tilt in nursing homes? What gives us the courage to stretch our hopes to such an impossible height? The one who entered the grave like us, and then opened a way for us. The indigestible Christ. Jesus the Victor.

    He is risen. He is risen, indeed.

  • Advent preaching when everybody is talking about religion–especially politicians

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    Advent Preaching when Everybody Is Talking

    about Religion—Especially Politicians

    Guy Sayles

    First Baptist Church, Asheville, North Carolina

    When Advent begins this year, preachers and parishioners in the United States will have known the results of the national election for less than a month. They will either be wondering what changes in his approach to governing Barack Obama might make as his second term begins or pondering the likely shape and tone of a Mitt Romney presidency. They will also be evaluating the significance of whatever changes in the makeup and functioning of Congress the election might bring. Is it possible that there will be an outbreak of bipartisanship, pushing legislators, as distant as they can ever be from the next election, to work together on the nation’s pressing problems rather than to perpetuate gridlock? Or will change result because one political party will have control of both the White House and Capitol Hill? Or will the dreary status-quo remain, with government mired in business-as-usual? It is likely that people will feel a measure of relief that the constant campaigning, much of it negative, will have ended; but I doubt that they will feel much confidence about the condition and direction of the nation. That lack of confidence will have to do, in part, with the adverse economic climate which will be the weather of Advent worship. No one realistically expects that the harsh winds of high unemployment and frustrating underemployment will have abated much by then or that the storm clouds of the foreclosure and banking crises will have significantly dissipated or that the threatening thunder of debt-ravaged European economies will have suddenly stopped rumbling. As it has for several years, economic uncertainty will spread an uncomfortable chill through the Sundays of Advent. Political and economic stressors will have Advent worshippers in the United States on edge. As is always true, they will also bring with them anxieties and fears rooted in their immediate circumstances and growing from their personal concerns. Some will be tangled-up in loss and grief. Others will be in a thicket of thorny interpersonal conflicts at home or work or school. Still others will feel the weeds of addiction or apathy choking their vitalily. Some will be withering in arid soil of adversity, while others will wonder if they are being washed away by a flash flood of crisis. There will, of course, be some people who gather for Advent worship who are flourishing with well-being. Likely, there will be excited young parents who are nearly as wide-eyed with wonder as their children as they anticipate the magic of Christmas morning. Perhaps there will be a middle-aged man who recently got the news that his last X-rays and scans showed no lingering evidence of the cancer for which he has endured long and hard treatment. Maybe there will be single mom who will move in, with her two elementary school-aged children, to the Habitat for Humanity house she worked alongside volunteers to build. She will be home, in her home, for the holidays. It could be that there will be a soldier who has returned from a tour of duty overseas and feels her eyes fill with joyful tears as she sings these words from: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”: “Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease; fill all the world with heaven’s peace.”

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    What is the ancient and ever new message of Advent which, whether they can name their longing or not, people yearn to hear during these uncertain times? What is the Advent gospel for people who feel anxious, troubled, and trapped, as well as for people who feel confident, grateful, and free? What kind of language honors that message? What sort of words best express it? This Advent, what do we say and how do we say it?

    The Message of Advent: The Nearness of the Kingdom and the Promise of a New Creation Advent announces that, in the coming of God’s kingdom, light will overcome darkness, hope will displace despair, and love will cast out fear. Under God’s rule and reign, and in harmony with God’s will and way, creation will be restored, the world will be transformed, and all things and all people will be reconciled to God and to one another. From the debris of the past and the chaos of the present, God will shape a radically and radiantly new creation: old things will pass away, and all things will become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). This Advent announcement of restoration, transformation, and reconciliation is in sharp contrast to standard political and governmental rhetoric which, most often, deals with incremental improvement of existing conditions, but not thoroughgoing change; with addressing and ameliorating problems, but not solving them, and with controlling or containing conflicts, but not resolving them. Political leaders might speak of “a shining city on a hill,” yet the city they envision is not a bright colony of God’s rule. At best, it is a city still ordered and disordered by the ways of the world, but patched, painted, and polished to appear new. They might call for a “new covenant,” but any covenant which they help to fashion would have only the ties of a shared need for freedom and order among differing social classes, ethnic groups, political parties, religious communities, and of economic interdependence —tightly woven strands of supply and demand, investment and return, capital and profit. Such a covenant would hardly be “new” and would be more like a set of interlocking contracts than an authentic covenant. A genuinely “new”covenant, characterized by equality, mutuality, commitment to the common good, spacious shalom, and overflowing abundance cannot be built on the “old” assumptions of scarcity, fear of the other, and violence as a tool of so-called “peace.” Political rhetoric, even (especially?) when it uses the language of religion, serves to maintain the status-quo and to legitimate the powers-that-be. It encourages adjustment to, and management of, the way things are rather than inviting people to receive and cooperate with the in-breaking kingdom of God. The assigned gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Advent (Luke 21:25-36, Revised Common Lectionary, Year B) concerns the surprising incursion of that kingdom (21:31). God is determined to finish the liberating work God started in the history of Israel and intensified in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As God did with Jesus, so God will do with the earth and with us; God will rescue it and us from the powers of diminishment and death. Advent begins, this apocalyptic text tells us, with the assurance that Easter will overtake the universe, and the hope of the resurrection will find fulfillment in every nook and cranny of the cosmos. Before that bright day, however, Jesus said there will be trouble:

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    There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken (21:25-26).

    This trenchant poetry essentially means that before God’s work is done, evil and chaos will nearly shatter our spirits. We will fear that we are stuck in a moonless and starless midnight. Tsumnais of tragedy will rush toward us. Nevertheless, Jesus said, we can trust that “the Son of Man will come in a cloud with great power and great glory.” That phrase—“the Son of Man coming in a cloud”— was (is) Christian shorthand for the Coming Again of Jesus. Members of the early church often reassured one another that the future would shine with wonder, because “the Son of Man was coming.” “When the Son of Man comes,” this old world will be made new and our broken hearts will be healed. “When the Son of Man comes, ‘distress among nations’” (21:25) will become peace; “fear and foreboding” (21:26) will give way to love and security. “When the Son of Man comes,” the burdened shuffle of the troubled will become gleeful dance of God’s carefree children. “When the Son of Man comes,” the dull, drab, and despairing kingdoms of this world will become the luminous, glorious, and joyful kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the glad truth which followers of Jesus have learned in the nearly 2,000 years since he spoke these words we find in Luke’s Gospel: God isn’t waiting until “the Son of Man comes” to do these surprising and saving things. Jesus doesn’t just come twice: once in Bethlehem as a baby and once “on a cloud” to wrap things up. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus comes over and over again. The Advent promise isn’t simply, or even mainly, about the end of time. It is about how, when the campaignstyle slogans of optimism don’t deliver a better tomorrow because they are part of the old world which is “passing away,” the truth and energy of Jesus’ words endure and call the new world into being (21:33). It is about how, when we have crashed into the limits of our knowledge, power, and courage, God’s kingdom breaks into the here-and-now to startle and save us.

    The Message of Advent: God’s Word in the Wilderness and the Gift of Repentance On both the second and third Sundays of Advent, we encounter John the Baptist (Luke 3:1-6 and Luke 3:7-18, Revised Common Lectionary, Year B). Luke contrasts John with the official leaders of both Rome and Israel:

    In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

    Given our contemporary distinctions between leaders of the “state” and of “religion ,” we often think of Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Piltate, Herod, and Philip as the former and of Annas and Caiaphas as the latter; but, in fact, such distinctions did not then exist. Rome legitimated its power by means of the cult of the Emperor which demanded supreme and worshipful loyalty to him. Annas and Caiaphas exercised

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    considerable executive authority in local matters and were first among equals in the Sanhédrin, a legislative as well as religious council. To use our terms, all of the leaders whom Luke listed held positions in which they wielded both “secular” and “sacred” authority. People expected to hear from the gods through the Roman officials or from the God of Abraham and Sarah through the high priests, but the word of God did not come to them in their imperial palaces or in the Jerusalem Temple. It came, instead, to John in the wilderness. Luke’s contrast of John in the desert with the leaders in the seats of power serves as a crucial reminder that God is not bound to speak through the messengers whom we authorize by means of ordination or election. In fact, the concentration of human pride and power in the institutions of both religion and government means that the people who lead them can be particularly blind and deaf to the sights and sounds of God’s kingdom. They are often not free enough of self-interest to receive and speak “the word of God” without distorting and manipulating it for their own purposes. The halls of power, whether palace or temple, capitol or church, can be so filled with the noise of self-promotion and self-justification that God doesn’t get a hearing. That is why God’s word often goes to the wilderness, to people like John. In his article in this issue of the Journal for Preachers, Will Willimon says, “Preaching is a primary means that God uses to dismantle religion, to take us into the wilderness.” I simply add that preaching is also a means that God uses to deconstruct the idolatrous claims of the state. In the wilderness, John declared that the God who dismantles religion and deconstructs the state was coming. John called people to prepare the way—and themselves—for God’s arrival by practicing the hard but healing discipline of repentance. Advent preaching offers people the gift of repentance, the gracious opportunity to reframe how they think and feel about God, about life, and about themselves. In this season, we say that, in Jesus, a new reality is rushing toward us from the future. We are at risk for missing it, however, if we do not turn from habits of the mind and heart which push God out of our conscious awareness. If, in the course of daily life, we think of God at all, it is as distant and disinterested observers. When we marginalize or minimize God, we are tempted to surrender to culture’s crushing fear of death, a fear which generates free-floating anxiety and, as a consequence , fuels addictions; intensifies insecurity and, therefore, increases conflict; and leaves people feeling powerless, and so, makes violence alluring and captivating. Without a palpably present God, we cannot deal with guilt and shame. Without an actively self-revealing God, we cannot find meaning and significance. Without a gracious and merciful God, we cannot discover the delight and freedom of knowing ourselves to be God’s beloved children. To repent is to turn toward God, made most fully known to the world in Jesus, and to center our lives on the good news that God is with us and for us, gladly, 10 vingly , and always. That news is garbled almost everywhere except the wilderness; but there, we can hear it: neither religion nor politics can save us. Only God can. Advent promises that God has saved us, God is saving us, and God will save us. Again, as Will Willimon says in his article, “Our vaunted religion is so sad because Jesus Christ has already fixed the problem between us and God, bridged the gap, done the work.”

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    The Language of Advent: The “Poetry” of Attentiveness and Longing Advent is a season of longing during which, as Gordon Lathrop puts it, “the Christian assembly tells the truth about a world still full of waiting and want.”1 The lectionary texts from the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms remind us of Israel’s waiting for the Messiah, and they give expression to our own longing for the fulfillment of God’s new creation. As followers of Jesus, we join him in his prayerful desire that God’s kingdom fully come and God’s will be completely done, on earth as it is in heaven. Advent puts us in feeling-touch with what Ronald Rollheiser describes as “an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience.”2 That ache includes a yearning for hope, a hunger for meaning, a thirst for joy, a need for mystery, a craving for ecstasy, and, most of all, a desire to be known and loved. At the same time, Advent invites us to attend to the wonders of God’s rule and reign already made visible and audible through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Such wonders are often hidden in plain sight and whisper beneath the clamor of noise which characterizes our plugged־in, online, and media-saturated culture. It isn’t that they aren’t present; rather, we are distracted from them. Advent calls us to “guard our hearts” and to “be alert at all times,” so that we do not miss the impending nearness of God’s kingdom (see Luke 21:29-36, Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, First Sunday of Advent). Poet W. H. Auden said that the “choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man [sic] is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.”3 Advent preaching hones our capacity for attentiveness and honors our truest longings . That means, in my view, that the language of preaching should reflect, even if only implicitly and indirectly, the preacher’s own longing, looking, and listening. I am troubled by preaching which trades in language which sounds like the preacher borrowed it from the keynote speech at a management seminar or patterned it after the latest self-help bestseller or paraphrased it from an op-ed in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. It’s unimaginative, motivational, moralistic, and, often, superficial language; it is easily heard, generates nearly immediate emotional responses , sounds directly relevant, might be temporarily helpful, and is then quickly forgotten. The poignant medieval hymn-text “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” poses this profound question: “What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend/For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?” Preachers are “language borrowers.” We search for words with which to render thanks and to offer praise for God’s own longing and eagerness to befriend us. What language can we borrow to describe the breathtaking love of God, a love so humble and tender, so welcoming and self-giving, that it causes us to call Jesus our “dearest friend”? The work of preaching involves a quest for turns of phrase, images, metaphors, and stories which narrow the gap (which can never be closed) between the glory of God made known in Jesus, the living Word of God, and our always limited and always inadequate words about that Word. While limited and inadequate, the language of Advent preaching shouldn’t be abstract. In his essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell lamented

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    “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision.” He offered this well-known, but worth repeating, example of how abstraction makes such staleness and imprecision inevitable:

    I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: “I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding , nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Here it is in modem English: “Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”4

    Abstraction blurs and muffles attentiveness: “the sun” gives way to “phenomena”; “the race” and “the battle” become “competitive activities”; “time and chance” are blandly blended into “a considerable element of the unpredictable” Preaching can become mind-numbingly abstract, general, and universal. Attentiveness grows when the language of preaching is concrete, particular, and local. In Sharon Creech’s novel for children, Hate that Cat, Jack, a budding young poet, disagrees with his Uncle Bill, a university professor and experienced poet, about the work of William Carlos Williams. Jack reports:

    Just as I expected my uncle Bill is not a big fan of Mr. William Carlos Williams.

    Uncle Bill says Mr.WCW is a “minor poet” and a “foe poet” (later my dad explained he meant faux which means “fake”) and I said

    “What about the ‘so much depends upon’ poem and the plum poems?”

    (which are stuck in my head and I can say them from memory)

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    and Uncle Bill said “Tuh! Overrated, highly overrated!”

    And I found myself sticking up for poor Mr. William Carlos Williams and the small ordinary things he writes about and the small ordinary moments that you don’t notice until you read his poems and Uncle Bill said

    “Small things? Small moments? Tuh! Give me LARGE things! LARGE moments! Give me poems about death and dying about war and tragedy and philosophical metaphors give me sonnets, give me odes.. ..”

    blahblahblah5

    Advent preaching can do for our hearers what the poetry of William Carlos Williams did for Jack; it can help them to notice the signs, sometimes thinly-veiled by “small ordinary things,” of God’s extraordinary new creation. When we linger over the stories of actual people who live in particular places, we learn to love them. Love sharpens our abilities to see and to hear in their lives the dramas of human need and longing, met by divine provision and fulfillment. Wendell Berry was right to say that “abstract love” is a “contradiction in terms”; there can really be no “abstract love,” because “love makes language exact.”6 When we use such language, we bear witness to the Advent gospel of God’s saving proximity and transforming power; we invite those who hear us to trust that God’s kingdom is near, wherever one is, and that God’s kingdom is now, whatever the time.

    Notes 1. Gordon Lathrop, Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003), 170. 2. Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 4-5. 3. W. H. Auden, Λ Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York: Viking, 1970). Cited in Winnifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life (NY: Penguin Books, 2009), 10. 4. Orwell, George. “‘Politics and the English Language,’ 1946.”M0unt Holyoke College. https://www. mtholy oke .edu/acad/intrel/orwell46 .htm. 5. Sharon Creech, Hate that Cat (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 94-96. 6. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983), 60.

  • Is Jesus the only way?

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    Is Jesus the Only Way?

    John 14:1-10

    Katie Givens Kime

    Atlanta, Georgia

    This sermon was preached on March 14, 2010, as part of a Lenten sermon series based on theological questions submitted by the congregation of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. Questions about the uniqueness and! or supremacy of Jesus Christ and Christianity were among the most frequently posed.

    In the fall of 2001, I was trying to choose a seminary. Only one month had passed since September 11th, and you may remember that at that time, it was hard for anybody to talk about the state of the world, or about God, or about anything ultimate without referring to that event. I will never forget one dramatic moment in my seminary search process. At one of the schools the seminary president came to address us, the prospective students, at the end of our visit. He said a lot about how Christian ministers should be trained for the new world that now faced us. The new, dangerous world. As this seminary president talked, the anger and heat in his voice seemed to grow with words like Islam and Muslims and evil. Finally he reached his crescendo: “It comes down to this: if our God is God, then they’re in trouble. If their God is God, then we’re all in trouble!” I didn’t end up going to that school, but that provocative statement stayed with me, at least partly because it pointed to a theological question with which I struggled. Entering seminary, I confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior. But did I have to believe that Jesus is the only Lord and Savior, the only way, the only path to God for anyone and everyone? I found no end of fascinating books by systematic theologians and others delving into this question, which many point to as the most important cutting edge of Christian theology today. But it was in New York City, and actually in the congregation of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, that I learned how much bigger this question is than systematic theology or geopolitics. It’s personal. Gut-wrenching, even. For many of our grandparents, and certainly our great-grandparents, people of other faiths were mostly the stuff of National Geographic, or the newspaper, or in the next-door neighbors’ vacation slides from a trip to some exotic place like India. But not us. Here in the city of New York at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the people in our lives who do not call Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior might outnumber the people who do. Muslims and Jews and Hindus and atheists and Buddhists and Sikhs are people next to us on the subway. More than that, they are kids at school with our kids. More than that, they are our friends, our boss, our co workers, our roommate, our closest friends. Even more than that, they are our family. The Jewish man marrying our daughter or our sister. Or the person we are married to. Or our son, who has just announced he’s decided to be Buddhist. It’s one thing to politely regard our Sikh taxi driver and benevolently say to ourselves, “Well, isn’t that nice. To each his own!” It’s quite another to look into the eyes of the person we love most and wonder, “Is it okay that we don’t believe the same thing about Jesus?” Let’s just get something out in the open. I’m going to guess that nearly all of

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    us have suspected at some point that the Christian way is not the only way. In fact, maybe you’re pretty sure you believe that Jesus is not the only way to get to God, to reach something Holy. But if most of us were to sit down and describe what we believe Scripture tells us, we feel obligated to say that people from other religious traditions are lost, wrong, not saved, even condemned to hellfire. And which words from the Bible tell us this? What gets quoted first and foremost in this argument about Christianity being the single and superior path? “I am the way, the truth, the life,” said Jesus. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” And there it is. The line in the sand. The phrase that some Christians hold up like a trophy in the winner’s circle, while other Christians try to hide it like an embarrassing family secret. Talk to anybody who has left the church, or most any person under the age of 30, and this perception that to be a Christian means you have to claim that non-Christians are wrong or damned. It is a very serious stumbling block and often the number one deal-breaker. But still the words sit there, staring at us from the page: “I am the way, the truth, the life,” said Jesus. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Theologian John Thatamanil writes that when it comes to John 14, “liberal Christians avoid it like the bird flu, and conservative Christians preach nothing else,” but “strangely and ironically, both parties agree about what the verse means.”1 And we’re wrong. Way wrong. It’s kind of like this. Imagine that two thousand years from now, some culture beyond ours finds the text from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, or maybe pieces of the speech. And let’s say these “future people” don’t apply much contextual information to understanding it. It gets translated and retranslated into whatever language people are speaking two thousand years from now. They might conclude that King’s speech is about how to dream at night, and they might use the speech to make conclusions about dream analysis and how people of the past thought about their own dreams. Well, of course, this would be silly and wrong! I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that we modern Christians have done the same thing to this passage from John. Here’s the context. Jesus’ disciples are shaken up. What we hear Jesus saying in chapter 14 is really part one of a Farewell Speech. The disciples, who have truly banked everything, their entire lives, on Jesus being the one, have just been told that someone among them will betray them, and that Jesus will be going away. “Excuse me? Going away? Jesus, we don’t have any place to go if you leave us. Remember, we left our homes and our families and our synagogues; you are what we’ve got! What do you mean you’re leaving us? Where are you going? And why now?” And so we heard Jesus responding in that first verse, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Don’t worry. You know where I’m going.” And Thomas, dear Thomas, says pretty clearly, “What are you talking about? No, we don’t 4know where you’re going’… .How are we going to know the way to find you?” And Jesus just looks at Thomas. “Really? Really Thomas? This is me you’re talking about! You’re not going to lose me. Thomas, I’m not only the place where you’re going, I’m the way to get there.” But Philip anxiously continues, “Lord, just show us God. That’s all we need. That’ll make us feel better.” “Come on, Philip,” Jesus seems to say. “How can you say that? I’ve been here, walking with you, talking with you, in the flesh. How else do I need to say this! I am all of that! I am the route and the destination, I am

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    God, I am the life you’re looking for! ״Jesus’ words are meant as gentle reassurance about the terrifying things that await him and all the disciples. This passage is an answer to the question: “Jesus, are you leaving us? What’s happening?” But of course, the question that Christians and non-Christians pose to this text is, “Jesus, what about people of other faiths? Who will be saved, and who will not?” In the conversations of today, we hardly ask what this text really means. We act as if the meaning of Jesus’ words has already been decided. Thatamanil writes, “I’m willing to bet good money that Jesus did not have the Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammed in mind when he made this statement!”2 In this passage, Jesus is reassuring us. He is also beckoning us. Gesturing towards a path, a choice we can choose. Choice. If there is a word that characterizes what is unique about the age in which we’re all living, maybe it’s choice. We’re choking on choice. We have more channels and choices than any human beings ever. And the choices available to you when you pull up a web browser, well…if someone has ever thought it or said it or taken a picture of it, you can probably choose to get your eyes on it too. You can choose to learn and know just about anything, if you are literate and have the time. As Americans, choice is seen as an intrinsic good, a part of freedom. Choice is even a part of our identity, what and who we choose to be, to say, to buy. Whether you are in the voting booth or in the ice cream section of the freezer aisle or looking at the search engine on your screen, you have a lot of choices. Jesus is beckoning, asking us to come down His path. So if we’re going to choose to do that, or to decide again to follow Him, then shouldn’t we research the other options? Think of the time we spend researching colleges or the kind of vacuum to buy. Surely we should give some kind of attention to choosing our faith? But religion is not like any other choice in our lives. We cannot get objective when it comes to religion. A faith path, whether it is Christian or Buddhist or Animisi, is much more than its guiding principles, much more than its history or even the people who claim it as their faith, or anything that can be contained on a Wikipedia page. To really know a religious tradition is to live with it, study it, eat it, swallow it, and let it move through your system for years. To learn a faith is to learn a language and then speak with other people in that new language about how they have found the holy, about the history of how they’ve done it and the stories they carry around. And that’s just the first few steps. Knowing whether or not a religious tradition has something of holiness in it is not necessarily something we can quickly or easily assess. We can’t peer out of God’s eyes and survey all religions equally. I think this is hard, because with just about everything else in our lives, we can stand back, look at all the options, and pick what fits us best or what seems most true. Now, it’s true, we can evaluate some things about religions. In the first Epistle of John, there are some wise words: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” I bet you’ll join me in saying that David Koresh does not get to play on the same holy court as Mother Teresa…or even Mahatma Gandhi. We all can list things done or beliefs held by other faith traditions that we just cannot imagine being close to what we know about God. I do not believe that all faiths teach the same thing, or that it’s all relative, or even that faith is one big mountain with lots of different paths leading up its face. 4Seems to me we’re looking at entirely different mountains.

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    But still… ,it is a big fat modern-day delusion to think that it’s all about us doing the choosing. You can’t read the Bible without tripping all over a major message that screams to us in flashing neon: God speaks of Israel as a chosen people – once you were no people, now you are God’s people. You will be my people, and I will be your God. Just one chapter later in this gospel of John, Jesus says, “You do not choose me. I choose you.” It’s a lot less like us picking Christianity as a preference, like a brand of cereal off the grocery shelf, and much more like us being born to parents we did not choose. God reaches out to us through the very ordinary and very particular configurations into which we were bom. God reaches us through the context of our lives, through languages we know, through the people around us. God has reached you and me through the Logos, the Word, with words we can understand, because as long as we are walking around in these limited human bodies, we cannot and will not know anything beyond our own limited perspective. I know God through the story of Christmas and Easter, through coloring pictures of Noah’s Ark, and saying grace at my family’s dinner table, and later, through youth group mission trips. And I am called to walk in the way of Jesus. I believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Visualize right now one or two of the non-Christian people in your life whom you know best. For me, it’s the four young moms, all Jewish, whom I met last year in prenatal yoga. We all had our first babies within a few weeks of each other, and we all have clung to each other like velcro during this first year of raising our babies. We’ve laughed and cried and shared fears and secrets with each other. I know and love and trust these four women who happen to be Jewish. I daresay they are just as good for the world as I am, loving their families, finding ways to make the world better, enjoying and worshipping God in the language God happens to have come to them. You know people like this too. And when they go to synagogue, they hear God calling them Chosen people. But, so many others have heard themselves as chosen: the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Sumerians, and the Assyrians. Heck, followers of Jim Jones thought they were chosen by God too. What about them? In the BhagavaGita of Hinduism, Lord Krishna says something awfully familiar to his followers: “Whatever path men travel is my path, no matter where they walk, it leads to me.”3 Whom did God really choose? All of us? Some of us? Who’s right? At some point, we have to let God be God and admit that perhaps we are not to know the answer to that question on this side of life. Saint Augustine had some good wisdom on this: he said that we should do our best to seek answers to difficult questions. Having done that, he said we should “rest patiently in unknowing.” For me, at the end of the day, these questions are not what haunt me at night. As one theologian put it, “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me, but the parts I do understand, like loving God with my whole heart and loving my neighbor as myself,”4 and my enemies! That’s plenty hard, all on its own. As a world community of so many diverse faiths, we’ve got our hands full with problems we all care about. Whether you are Muslim or Jewish or agnostic or Christian, it matters whether or not our planet is going to be livable a few centuries or decades from now. No matter who or what you worship. It should matter whether or not we are one button push away from nuclear destruction, it should matter that 11 million children die annually of preventable disease, and it should matter that the gap between the richest and the poorest is gaping. No matter how we point to God, we

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    all need better laws and better leaders; we need more worshipping and less warring. As the faiths of the world, we had best be collaborating on our common problems rather than competing for theological conquest. Our common causes are far more important than trying to prove superior the unproveable truths of our faiths or trying to water down the particularities of our faith so that we find some ultimate common denominator between the world religions. No, we are called to walk the path of Jesus Christ, not stand at the head of the trail, looking at our map and making guesses about how it is actually pretty identical to three other paths. To be chosen for the path of Jesus Christ is to not choose other paths. And the sacred, ancient directions on our path say…what? They say we are to love, first and foremost. To love. I just cannot see how it is loving to bring others to Christ by coercion, by beating them over the head with the threat of damnation. We are not keepers of the trail. Here are more wise words from Thatamanil that ring true to me: “Walking the way of Jesus Christ means walking the way of Jesus Christ, not circumscribing it. We are called to follow the Way, not police it!”5 My daughter Abby is this close to taking her first step. So are those four other babies from my prenatal yoga group, all born to Jewish families. Her wobbly little steps are taken at the beginning of what I hope and believe is the unique path of Jesus Christ. But I believe in a God who loves, fiercely loves, those other four wobbly babies , and their mothers, as nervous as I am about what this world holds for our sweet babes. I believe Abby can learn something good and true and holy and unique from her sisters and brothers, something about God. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places” Thanks be to God.

    Notes 1 John J. Thataminil, “No One Comes to the Father but by Me?” sermon preached May 7,2006, at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel at Vanderbilt, Nashville, TN. 2 Ibid. 3 Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 212. 4 Dan Clendenin, “Is Christianity a Sublime Bigotry? 10 Reflections on the Gospel and World Religions ,” April 14,2008, Journey with Jesus blog, http://www.iourneywithjesus.net/Essays/20080414JJ. shtml#20080414JJfn2 5 Thatamanil

  • Do you see this woman?

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    Do You See This Woman?

    Luke 7:36-50

    Martin B. Copenhaver

    Wellesley Congregational Church, Wellesley, Massachusetts

    Jesus asks a lot of questions in the gospels—307 different questions, to be exact. (No, I did not count them myself, but someone did.) I am told Jesus only directly answers three questions of the 183 questions he is asked in the four gospels. Instead of answering a lot questions, Jesus responds in other ways. In some instances, Jesus simply keeps silent, as when Pilate questions him after his arrest. Or, Jesus responds to a question with another question. When asked, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus responds, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” And then, pointing to a coin, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” (It reminds me of the old Jewish joke, “Why does a Jew always answer a question with a question?” Answer: “Why shouldn’t a Jew always answer a question with a question?”) Or, sometimes Jesus responds to questions indirectly. For example, when Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he responds by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. Obviously, Jesus prefers to ask questions rather than to provide answers. For every question he answers directly, he asks a hundred questions. He is not the ultimate answer man, but more like the Great Questioner. Does that surprise you? Catholic author Richard Rohr writes, “In general, we can see that Jesus’ style is almost exactly the opposite of modem televangelism or even the mainline church approach of ‘Dear Abby’ bits of inspiring advice and workable solutions for daily living. Jesus is too much the Jewish prophet to merely stabilize the status quo with platitudes.” Jesus is not a giver of advice. He doesn’t give us a neat list of ten ways we can be closer to God. He doesn’t offer spiritual tips. He does not provide easy answers. Instead he asks hard questions. In that he is more like the Zen master who asks questions to take us beyond the obvious to something deeper. He is like Socrates who taught the people simply by asking probing questions. He is like the prophets, who railed against the ruling authorities and sought justice by asking challenging questions . So why have we paid so little attention to the Jesus who asks questions and instead have focused on his seeming answers? Here is Richard Rohr’s response to that question: “[Answers] give us more of a feeling of success and closure— Easy answers instead of hard questions allow us to try to change others instead of allowing God to change us.” In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is having dinner at the home of a Pharisee. A woman, who is described only as a sinner, crashes the party, falls at Jesus’ feet and begins to “bathe his feet with her tears.” Because this woman is known as a sinner, she is an outcast. People in polite company would have nothing to do with her. She would be overlooked. Upright people would act as if she doesn’t exist. So when Jesus asks, “Do you see this woman?” it is a probing and challenging question. The woman may be right in front of them, but that does not mean that they see her. Sometimes people choose not to see. That’s because there is a cost to

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    seeing. After all, if you see this woman, actually see this woman, you may need to move beyond the stereotypes and the preconceptions and the condemnations. You might have to relate to her as a person, as one soul to another soul. You might have to respond to her with compassion. “Do you see this woman?” Do you even want to see this woman? No, in some ways, it is easier not to see. Most of my early life was spent within the gravitational field of New York City, and I spent a good deal of time in the city itself. A while back, I was going to see a play with some friends from other parts of the country, and so they are less familiar with the city’s sometimes strange and difficult ways. As we walked to the theatre, I had a certain spring in my step. After all, I was with people I enjoy, the exhilarating rhythms of the city were all around us, and I had in my pocket tickets to the hottest show in town. To get to the theatre we had to walk through a particularly tough neighborhood. No problem, I assured my companions. I’ve done it many times. Conversation flowed. There was much laughter. And then I realized that my companions had become suddenly silent. Then one said, “Did you see that woman? She looked like a prostitute. Did you see the way she was crying?” Everyone else immediately responded, obviously struck by the same sight. We walked the next few blocks in silence. The reason for my silence was probably different, however. I had also seen the woman who so haunted the others, but in a sense I didn’t see her at all. Somehow, in all the times I had walked in that neighborhood and ones like it, I had lost some of my ability to see. Do you see this woman? Of course, she’s right in front of me. No, I mean do you actually see this woman? Well… no, not really. Years ago there was a wonderful New Yorker cartoon by Gahan Wilson in which two men are sitting at a kitchen table drinking beer. There is a single window over the table, but as is true in many city apartments, immediately outside that window is a brick wall. One fellow says to the other, “I like this view. It leaves you alone.” And is that one of the reasons why some of us live in the places we do? Beyond the good schools, the safe neighborhoods, the elbow room, the relative quiet, do we also choose to live where we do because it offers a view that leaves us alone? Do you see this woman? Do you actually want to see this woman? One of our congregation’s wonderful young people, Liza Carens, is a student at Connecticut College. She just finished a semester studying in South Africa. Liza—like many who visit that remarkable, beautiful, troubled land—has confronted the stark contrasts found there. She stayed for a week in a rural village with no running water or plumbing. In a letter describing her experience, she writes, “I lived in a one room house with the sweetest mama and her two grandchildren. She gave me her bed and slept on the floor every night so I would be comfortable.” From there, Liza went to the home of a wealthy Afrikaner family. They had all the amenities of the affluent life, including three cars, a pool, a guesthouse. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But of all the homes where Liza stayed, she found this one the most uncomfortable. You see, the family has a domestic worker, and the only time they address her is when they are telling her to do something or yelling at her for doing something wrong, like letting the tea get cold. She has a name. Her name is Sara, but most of the time, the family would refer to her as “the domestic worker.” “Leave your key to the guest house on the counter so that the domestic worker can straighten

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    up.” “Leave your dishes in the sink, and the domestic worker will do them when she returns from her day off.” And, of course, Liza found that quite unsettling. Do you see this woman? Do you actually see Sara? Earlier this year I got an e-mail from a minister named Bonnie Roseborough, who, in addition to her ministry at a church in suburban New York, is a volunteer chaplain at Sing Sing prison. In that e-mail, she told me that she teaches a class, offered by New York Theological Seminary, for prisoners at Sing Sing. As you may know, Sing Sing is a maximum security prison in Ossining, just north of New York City on the Hudson River. In fact, that’s where the expression “sent up the river” comes from. Most of the prisoners are from New York City. If you are found guilty of a violent crime, you are sent “up the river” to Sing Sing. The class taught by Bonnie Roseborough is called Foundations of Ministry. It meets for two and-a-half hours every Wednesday afternoon on the prison grounds. She was writing me because she thought I might be interested that the students in her Sing Sing class were reading a book I co-authored with another minister, Lillian Daniel. The book is called This Odd and Wondrous Calling. It offers some personal reflections on the vocation of pastoral ministry. And, indeed, I was curious both about the class and about how the prisoners were responding to the book. So I wrote Pastor Bonnie, as I learned she is called, with some questions. After a bit of backand -forth on e-mail, she asked if we might be interested in meeting with her class at Sing Sing. So we did. I have been to prisons before, but frankly, this was something different for me. We learned from Pastor Bonnie that the class has fifteen men enrolled, all of whom are doing “hard time” for violent crimes. They are all serving sentences of over twenty-five years. Some are serving life sentences. What is your picture of someone found guilty of a violent crime and serving a long prison sentence? I tried to stay open, to not have too many preconceived notions, but I must admit that I wasn’t entirely successful in that. I did have something of a picture. I pictured that the men in the class would be hardened by their experience, guarded, maybe sullen or cynical, perhaps even scornful of these two suburban ministers coming to meet with them. After all, what would we have to say that would be of interest or relevance to their lives? So after we met Pastor Bonnie, we waited for all of the security measures to be completed. (I learned that, not only is it hard to get out of Sing Sing, it’s not easy to get in, either.) I asked her, “So what do the men in the class make of our coming today?” She said, “Oh, they’re really looking forward to it. They have so little interaction with the outside world. They often feel forgotten, locked up with the key thrown away.” After our identities were verified, and we had been frisked, we were asked to sign a book, something like an enormous guest book, heavy as a millstone, with yellowed pages that must have gone back years. We went through a lot of doors that would shut behind us with a decisive clang. The room where the class is taught looked like a basement room in an old church where there is a lot of deferred maintenance—cinder block walls, peeling paint, a leaky steam radiator that hissed like a snake. But I only saw that later. What I saw at first were the prisoners who got up to shake our hands, to thank us for coming, to ask, “Would you like a glass of water or some tea?” I just wasn’t expecting that.

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    We sat down. Pastor Bonnie introduced us to the class and then asked the prisoners to introduce themselves. I think the man in the group who had served the least time had been in Sing Sing for fifteen years, others much longer. At least one man had been in that prison for over thirty years. (I try to remember what I was doing thirty years ago.) It was later explained to us that, in the prison system, it takes a great deal of time to earn the privilege to attend such a class, so it only makes sense that we would see people who had been there for many years. The members of the class had prepared for our visit, and the prisoners’ first question was about the nature of pastoral authority. By the way, in my work with new pastors, I have learned that pastoral authority is one of the first things they have questions about. But I still found it curious that this was the first question in this setting. But then the teacher asked the members of the class, “What are the signs of authority here?” “Handcuffs, badges, nightsticks,” one man said. “Guns. Mace,” said another. So, yes, what is the source of a pastor’s authority when you don’t have any of those things? There is much more that I could tell you about this experience, but let me summarize by saying that any preconceived notions I might have had were completely blown out of the water. We were warmly welcomed by the men in the class. They were eager to engage with the book and with us. Several of the men were so articulate that, if you closed your eyes, you might think that you were in a seminary classroom at Yale or Princeton. Here’s an example: When Pastor Bonnie asked the class, “What is your definition of evil?” one student (I mean, prisoner) gave a definition that was so thoughtful and brilliantly phrased that Pastor Bonnie came back, “George, did you get that answer from a catechism or something?” He said, “No, I got it from my head.” At one point, one of the men said, “So, Martin, in the book you wrote about your wife. How is she? I mean, did she ever go back to that room where she made the banners for worship?”—which is a story I told in the book. He wanted to know how the story ended. Another man asked my co-author, “Lillian, how is your son with diabetes?” We also learned that the prisoners had raised over six thousand dollars for a local food pantry from the 22 cents an hour that they received for doing menial work. They had also earned enough money to provide back-to-school kits—including items like pencils and even backpacks—for each child who visits the prison. I just never would have imagined…. I am not going to draw any grand conclusions from my experience. I don’t know if these men should be in prison. I don’t know if they received justice. I don’t have a well informed understanding of our penal system. I am sure that aspects of prison life are very different from what I experienced in that room. But I can say this: During my visit to Sing Sing, it was this particular question of Jesus that I carried with me, somehow smuggled in through security. And that’s a good thing, because I couldn’t have left the question behind if I tried. Referring to a sinner before him, Jesus asked, “Do you see this woman?” That’s the question that echoed in my ears as we met with the men in the class: “Do you see this man?” Can you clear away the stereotypes and the pre-conceived notions and the condemnations long enough to see this man? After all, the physical walls of the prison are not the only thing preventing you from

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    seeing these men. As the time approached for the class to end, one of the students spoke up and said, “I’m sorry, Pastor Bonnie, but we have only fifteen minutes to go. I want to make sure we get our books signed before it’s too late. Then, if we’ve got some time, we can come back to this discussion.” And at that they all stood up and formed a kind of line. They all wanted their books signed. So I signed each book, with the man’s name and these words, “With every good wish and best blessing, Martin.” And, unlike other times when I have signed books, after I finished writing in each book, I didn’t remain seated. I stood up from the table to shake each man’s hand. I wanted to be able to look each one in the eyes. I wanted, for once, as best as I could, to be able to answer Jesus’ question: “Do you see this man?”

  • Does God intervene?

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    Does God Intervene?

    George Stroup

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    The Death of the God of the Gaps in a World Come of Age Writing from his cell in Tegel Prison in 1944, less than a year before his execution , Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought deeply about the meaning of Christian faith in a world “come of age,” a world that no longer needed what he referred to as “the God hypothesis,” a world in which Christian faith would have to become “religionless.” In such a world God would no longer be found at the edges of human experience or in the “gaps” of human knowledge (that is, in what they do not know), but in the center of life. It is wrong, Bonhoeffer wrote, “to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge…. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants us to realize his presence not in unsolved problems, but in those that are solved.”1 Much has been written about what exactly Bonhoeffer may have meant (and not meant) by “religionless Christianity,” and what he meant (and did not mean) by his claim that in a religionless world, “the church is the church only when it exists for others.”2 Tragically, a prison cell and his martyrdom on April 9, 1945 did not allow him to tell us what he meant, if he did indeed have a fully developed proposal in mind. One thing, however, is clear. Bonhoeffer believed God could no longer be understood as “the God of the gaps,” the deus ex machina, the God who is kept offstage in the wings of the human drama until all is apparently lost and is then suddenly lowered on to the stage, into the fray, to solve an apparently insoluble problem. This is no longer possible in a “world come of age,” Bonhoeffer argued, because God is no longer needed to explain what we once could not but now can, and because God is not to be found in the gaps, on the edges or the boundaries, of human knowledge and experience, “but at the centre, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness.” Why was Bonhoeffer so strongly committed to a “religionless” Christianity and to a faith that no longer relegated God to the margins and gaps of human existence? There are several reasons, but two are particularly important. First, he believed that the “whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the 4religious a priori’ of mankind.” For two hundred years Christian theology attempted to explain “religion” by appealing to an a priori, something in the structure of human existence—such as “a taste for the infinite” or the human capacity for self-transcendence —that would explain why humanity (and not just Christians) are “religiously inclined.” But if this a priori should come to be understood not as a permanent, ontological feature of human being but as “a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression” (as Bonhoeffer thought it had), then religion (including Christianity) would no longer be intelligible, and its defense would be left to “a few ‘last survivors of the age of chivalry’ or a few intellectually dishonest people on whom we can descend as 4religious.’”3 Second, Bonhoeffer worried that in the 44modern” world (He did not know about 44postmodernism.”) God has been 44increasingly pushed out of a world that has come

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    of age, out of the spheres of our knowledge and life” and “relegated to a realm beyond the world of experience.”4 God and religion are no longer located in what we know and experience, not in daily life, but in the “gaps,” in the inexplicable. For a religious faith based on incarnation, on the claim that “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14), God’s banishment from the world and from experience is nothing less than the death of religion and the death of the God of traditional Christian faith. What we need, he proposed, is a “religionless” Christianity, a faith that once again looks for God in what we know and not in what we do not. Bonhoeffer wanted Christian theology to get out of the boundary business. He argued that God is to be found not on the boundaries of life but in its center because he recognized that the history of human knowledge has been one of constant expansion, while the history of Christian theology has been one of constant retreat and constriction . In too much of modern theology the response to new discoveries in science has been to retreat and recircle the wagons. But while Bonhoeffer was thinking his way through these issues in May, 1944, he was sitting in a Nazi prison and had only eleven months left to live. He surely must have known that if the planned attempt to kill Hitler on July 20,1944, failed (as it did), his fate was certain. The excutioner’s gallows awaited him. In an enigmatic but deeply provocative remark, he wrote, “Belief in the resurrection is not the ‘solution’ of the problem of death. God’s ‘beyond’ is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties….God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.”5 But what did Bonhoeffer mean? In what sense is resurrection not “the solution to the problem of death?” And in what sense is God’s “beyond” not that which is beyond our cognitive faculties, but a different kind of “beyond,” one found in the midst of life, in the middle of the village? Bonhoeffer’s reflections raise many important theological questions. By no means did he deny that God has acted and continues to act in human history, but he did reject the notion that God’s activity is to be found only or even primarily at the boundaries of human experience, in the mysteries of birth and in death. But if God is not to be found only in the gaps, if God is not the hypothesis we use to explain what reason cannot, does that mean transcendent, almighty God does not intervene in human history at all—not only at the gaps but in the rest of history as well? What then does Christian faith mean when it affirms that God acts or intervenes in the world?

    The Intervening God of the Bible It certainly seems that the God described in the Bible intervenes in human history. In the Bible not only does God create all that is out of nothing, but God intervenes in human history to create a world, a people, a nation, establishes covenants with them, covenants structured by means of commandments, frees them from bondage in Egypt, feeds them with manna in the wilderness, and leads them into the promised land by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When Israel ignores the commandments of the covenant, God sends prophets to chastise them, and when they ignore the prophets, God sends foreign armies, Assyrians and Babylonians, to punish them, to destroy Jerusalem, and to send them into exile. This same God hears the cries of the people of Israel and leads them out of exile and back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and the temple. In God’s own good time God again intervenes and sends the long

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    promised Messiah to embody God’s grace, love, and mercy in human history and to proclaim the nearness of God’s kingdom in the person of the Messiah. Yet again Israel rejects God’s prophet and kills him. And once again God again intervenes, raises his anointed one to everlasting glory, and sends his Spirit to make the Messiah present and create a church that will witness to what God has done and what God is yet to do—God’s transformation of heaven and earth into a new creation. Surely the God described in this biblical story is a God who intervenes in human affairs. And in this story no “act of God” is more of an “intervention” than the Christian claim that God “raised up” Jesus. That is the “mother lode” of all of God’s interventions and the basis of Christian faith. Why then have so many theologians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries objected to an “interventionist” God? Bonhoeffer was by no means the first theologian to worry about Christianity’s banishment of God to the gaps of human experience. Since the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, theologians in the Christian West have struggled with the challenge of reconciling the God of the biblical story with nature and history as they have come to be described in the modem world, a description that, as Bonhoeffer recognized, has little need of a “God hypothesis.” The problem was clearly stated fifteen years after Bonhoeffer’s death, in 1960, by Langdon Gilkey in an article entitled “Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language.” Gilkey argued that there is a fundamental difference between biblical language about God acting and intervening and the everyday use of these terms to describe human experience. Too often we use terms such as “act” to describe God the same way we use them to describe human action and events in everyday experience. That is, we use them literally and univocally. Even though theologians have long argued that biblical language about God should not be interpreted literally, modem Christians frequently fail to recognize that terms like “act” should not be used to refer to God in the same way we use them to refer to human beings. Rather, such language should be understood analogically. The narrati ves describing the Exodus “event,” Gilkey argued, are “not so much histories of what God actually did and said as parables expressive of the faith the post-Exodus Jews had, namely, belief in a God who was active, did deeds, spoke promises and commands, and so on… .Thus the Bible is a book descriptive not of the acts of God but of Hebrew religion .”6 What we desperately need, Gilkey proposed over fifty years ago, “is a theological ontology that will put intelligible and credible meanings into our analogical categories of divine deeds and of divine self-manifestation through events.”7 He suggested two changes that might move theology in that direction. First, biblical theology must recognize the distinction between univocal and analogical discourse and take cosmology and ontology more seriously than it has. It might do so by identifying what biblical writers meant to say and then by stating “what we believe God actually to have done.” Second, “we must also try to understand what we might mean in systematic theology by the general activity of God.” That is, we must “have some conception of how God acts in ordinary events…,some understanding of the relation of God to general experience.”8 One can imagine that Bonhoeffer might have supported Gilkey’s latter suggestion—clarifying how God acts in ordinary events or, as Bonhoeffer put it, “in the middle of the village” and not in the gaps. Bonhoeffer’s and Gilkey’s concerns about Christian claims that God intervenes in human events are similar, but also different. Bonhoeffer worries that if Christians

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    surrender everyday experience to purely secular description and restrict God’s activity to the inexplicable, they effectively eliminate God from the world; that is, God “diesG ilkey, on the other hand, worries that Christians uncritically assume that they can speak of God “acting ״in the same way that they speak of human beings “acting” because they fail to recognize that the cosmology of the Bible is vastly different from that of modernity and consequently fail to understand that words used univocally to describe human experience can be used only analogically in relation to God. Gilkey is also concerned about the intelligibility of Christian language about God. In their religious lives many modern Christians have no difficulty speaking about God as a supernatural reality who miraculously intervenes in human life. That cosmology, however, often disappears in their Monday through Saturday lives. They assume an altogether different cosmology in their everyday existence. They may never have heard of Ernst Troeltsch, but they make assumptions about reality that reflect Troeltch’s claim that modem people understand history on the basis of the principles of analogy and correlation, principles that assume an interconnectedness between events and that reject the notion of unique or anomalous events, “miracles” that have no relation to events that precede or follow them. When children become ill, Christian parents may indeed pray to God, but the first thing most of them do call a doctor. There is a different cosmology in the world described by the Bible than that reflected in the way many contemporary Christians in the Western world understand and describe their daily experience. A moral dilemma arises when Christians reject the supernatural claims made by other religious faiths, dismissing them as “superstition,” but insist the world make room for their particular miracles. One does not have to agree with Troeltsch’s claim that Christians must adhere to the principles of analogy and correlation in human events or accept the claim that there cannot be anomalous events to agree that it is morally inconsistent to have two sets of rules in religious discourse—one that applies to my faith and that allows appeals to supernatural intervention and a second that applies to all other faiths and that dismisses such appeals as superstition.

    Constructive Proposals In “classical” Christian theology (theology prior to the European Enlightenment ), a frequent model describing God’s activity in the world employed a distinction between first and second causes. Not surprisingly, this distinction was often invoked in discussions of God’s providential activity. “The Christian heart,” wrote John Calvin, “persuaded that all things happen by God’s plan, and that nothing takes place by chance, will ever look to him as the principal cause of things, yet will give attention to the secondary causes in their proper place.”9 Hence, “a godly man will not overlook the secondary causes,” and should anyone suffer loss because of negligence or imprudence, “he will conclude that it came about by the Lord’s will, but also impute it to himself.”10 This distinction between the first or primary cause (God’s will) and secondary causes (probable “laws” of nature) enabled Calvin to affirm the “sovereignty” of divine agency while still acknowledging the reality of natural laws and human agency. The Westminster Confession of Faith, written in the middle of the seventeenth century, follows suite. Although God, as first cause, is the reason “all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily,

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    freely, or contingently.”11 In “modern( ״post-Enlightenment) Western theology, theologians have offered various reinterpretations of God’s agency that have attempted to avoid describing God as a first cause, who exists “above” nature (that is, a “supernatural” God) and who from time to time intervenes in the secondary causes of creation. An “early modern” proposal came from Friedrich Schleiermacher, who rejected distinctions between first and second causes, God’s actuality and potentiality, God’s necessary and free will, and reinterpreted God’s omnipotence on the basis of what he described as a human feeling of absolute or utter dependence. Divine omnipotence, he argued, is not a supplement to natural causes, but can “only be conceived as eternal and omnipresent,” and hence “it is inadmissible to suppose that at any time anything should begin to be through omnipotence; on the contrary, through omnipotence everything is already posited which comes into existence through finite causes, in time and space.”12 Divine omnipotence, therefore, is not to be found outside of or apart from the natural order; rather, “everything is and becomes altogether by means of the natural order, so that each takes place through all and all wholly through the divine omnipotence.” God’s omnipotence, therefore, “presents itself completely and exhaustively in the totality of finite being.”13 A second model for interpreting God’s activity comes from the last third of the twentieth century and bears some striking similarities to Schleiermacher’s. For Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, the word “God” is grounded in “the transcendental experience of our orientation towards the absolute mystery,” and the “concept ‘God’ is not a grasp of God by which a person masters the mystery, but it is letting oneself be grasped by the mystery which is ever present and yet ever distant.”14 The God who is understood as that “which operates and functions as an individual existent alongside other existents, and who would thus as it were be a member of the larger household of all reality”15 does not exist. We know God not “as one individual object alongside others, but only as the term of transcendence.”16 But is not God a person? God is a person, Rahner argues, but not an individual person and not a person in the same sense that humans are; rather, God is “the absolute person who stands in absolute freedom vis-à-vie everything which he establishes as different from himself.”17 Does Rahner’s God intervene in the world? Not if that means “that by his activity he inserts himself as a link in this chain of causes as one cause among them.”18 “God intervenes” can only be understood as “the historical concreteness of the transcendental self-communication of God which is already intrinsic to the concrete world.” It is “always only the becoming historical and becoming concrete of that ‘intervention’ in which God as the transcendental ground of the world has from the outset embedded himself in this world as its self-communicating ground.”19 Does God hear prayers, work signs, and intervene in history? Not if by “intervention” we mean that God is “in principle removed from the causal relationships of the world,” but only when we, on the one hand, “accept this concrete world in all its concereteness,” and, on the other hand, also accept our subjective transcendental relationship to God.20 Rahner’s proposal attempts to demonstrate “how God can really be God and not simply an element of the world, and how, nevertheless, in our religious relationship to the world we are to understand him as not remaining outside the world.”21 In other words Rahner attempts to find God not in what Bonhoeffer described as the “gaps,” but in the center of human life. In response to issues raised by Gilkey, Rahner attempts to

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    describe how Christians can speak of God’s activity without living schizophrenically in two different cosmologies. Rahner’s is only one of many attempts by modern theologians to interpret God’s intervention in the world differently than did Calvin and other classical theologians. A third example is Gordon Kaufmann’s proposal that we think of an “act” of God not as “a miraculous act that God directly causes,” but as a “master act,” “not a new event that suddenly and without adequate prior conditions rips inexplicably into the fabric of existence,” but as that which “gives the world the structure it has and gives natural and historical processes their direction.”22 God’s act, therefore, refers to the “whole complicated and intricate ideological movement of all nature and history” and “provides the context and meaning of all that occurs.”23 A fourth example of recent attempts to reinterpret God’s “intervention” is Austin Farrer’s “paradox of double agency,” in which a single action can be understood to the result of both divine and human agency.24 And yet a final example is Kathryn Tanner’s suggestion that God’s transcendence and immanence be understood “noncontrastively.” Tanner agrees with Rahner that “the dilemma of the ‘immanence’ or 4transcendence’ of God must be overcome without sacrificing either the one or the other concern.”25 Christian speech about a transcendent God who is directly involved in the world will be coherent, therefore, if it observes two rules. First, we should “avoid both a simple univocal attribution of predicates to God and world and a simple contrast of divine and non-divine predicates.” In other words God’s transcendence is neither univocal or simple contrast or equivocal. Second, in talk about God’s creative agency, we should avoid “all suggestions of limitation in scope or manner.”26 If these rules are followed and if God is understood to be “a self-determined transcendence essentially independent of a contrast with the non-divine,” then “God’s transcendence over and against the world and God’s immanent presence within it become non-exclusive possibilities .”27 These various proposals attempt in quite different ways to reconcile God’s transcendence with God’s immanence and divine agency with human freedom. Rarely, however, do they concentrate on that event which, more than any other, is the basis for Christian claims that God does “intervene” in the world—namely, the proclamation of the early church that “this Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Not incarnation, not atonement, but God’s “raising up” of Jesus is the foundational claim of Christian faith. Apart from Easter there is neither incarnation nor atonement. It is striking how infrequently the event of resurrection is discussed in the theological literature we have been reviewing. Interestingly, Schleiermacher argues that “the redeeming efficacy of Christ depends upon the being of God in Him, and faith in Him is grounded upon the impression that such a being of God indwells Him.” The disciples “recognized in Him [Christ] the Son of God without having the faintest premonition of his resurrection and ascension and we too may say the same of ourselves.” For Rahner the resurrection is “the permanent validity of his [Jesus’] person and his cause,” and “faith in his resurrection is an intrinsic element of this resurrection itself.” In words that sound like they could have been written by Rudolf Bultmann, Rahner concludes, “We not only can but must say that Jesus is risen into the faith of his disciples.”28 In both cases Christian language about God’s “raising up” Jesus is redeemed from supernaturalism, but only at the dear cost of anything resembling the New Testament claim that God did it.

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    The Resurrection as God’s Intervention The resurrection seems to be the rock on which many contemporary attempts to reinterpret God’s interventionism founder. Unless contemporary string theory can eventually provide a means for reinterpreting causation in the everyday world and in so doing transform our understanding of reality, it is difficult to imagine how the Christian claim “God raised him up” can be explained in terms that are, to use Rahner ,s words, “already intrinsic to the concrete world.” A recent attempt to do so is Denis Edwards’ How God Acts: Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action. Edwards borrows heavily from Rahner. In a chapter entitled “The Divine Act of Resurrection,” Edwards makes the case for “a noninterventionist view of divine action where God is understood as acting in self-bestowing love, and this act of self-bestowing love takes effect in the whole range of created, secondary causes, including persons, words, and deeds.”29 Hence to claim that God’s activity in raising Jesus is “noninterventionist” means that God is acting in and through created causes, and not from outside of them or “supernaturally.” Such an interpretation of resurrection is important to Edwards because it enables him to argue that evolution can be understood eschatologically as culminating in the healing of creation. Edwards’ argument involves three claims: the resurrection “can be seen as a free act of God that comes from within creation and gives creation its deepest meaning;” it entails an ontological transformation of reality; and, finally, “it is an act of God that finds expression in secondary causes.”30 Edwards’ first point, which sounds somewhat similar to Kaufman’s proposal, is that Jesus’ resurrection is a “unique and objective act of God,” but it is not “an intervention in the universe from without.”31 Resurrection , as Edwards interprets it, is “the self-giving love of God who is present in every ancient oak tree, every ant, and every kangaroo, closer than they are to themselves, as the source of their being and the enabler of their action.”32 Resurrection is simply one part of a single “differentiated act of divine self-bestowal” that begins in creation and culminates in God’s transformation of all things. Resurrection, then, is the meaning of creation. Edwards’ “noninterventionist” interpretation of resurrection means that God acts not from outside of creation but from within it and that human beings experience the effects of Jesus’ resurrection in and through creaturely realities in the world or “secondary causes.” The problem, of course, is whether Jesus’ resurrection—not the effects of his resurrection, but the “resurrection event” itself—can be explained from within the processes of creation. Here Edwards takes a pass. For two reasons he refuses to discuss “the great act by which God raises up and transforms Christ crucified.” First, we do not have direct access to the event (there were no witnesses to what happened inside Jesus’ tomb), and second, this “transcendent act of God is hidden from our sight, and we know it only through its effects on the Christian community .”33 The problem is not simply one of “access,” of not knowing enough or not having enough information. Notice Edwards’ use of the word hidden. One might conclude from what the gospels say about Jesus’ resurrection that even if one had stood outside Jesus’ tomb, one may not have been able to see and understand Jesus’ resurrection. Luke’s story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus comes to mind; “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (24:16). With good reason the response of the three women in Mark’s Gospel to what they experienced in the empty tomb was terror and amazement (16:8).

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    If “God raised up Jesus ״means that God acted to bring the crucified, dead, and buried Jesus to life—and not only to life but to eternal life, to life set free from the bonds and sting of death, to what Paul describes as “imperishability”—then that “act” cannot be described in terms of any set of secondary causes. If “God raised up Jesus” means that Jesus was not simply resuscitated, but “raised from the dead,” Edwards cannot describe this great act of God because it cannot be described as something that occurred in and through natural causes. Some events of transformation can be understood from within history and nature. This one cannot because it is the first fruits of the transformation of all things and “all things” cannot transform themselves.

    Notes 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison: The Enlarged Edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 311. 2 Ibid., 382. 3 Ibid., 280. 4 Ibid., 341. 5 Ibid., 382. 6 Langdon Gilkey, “Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language” in The Journal of R e lig io n i01.41 (1961), 197. 7 Ibid. 203. 8 Ibid., 204-5. 9 John Calvin, Institutes o f the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, I960), 2 Vols., I: 218 (1 ,17, 6). 10 Ibid., 1:221-2 (1,17,9). 11 “The Westminster Confession of Faith” in Book o f Confessions: Study Edition (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1996), 179 (6.025). 12 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith. Eds. H.R. Mackintosh and S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1928), 212 (#54.1), italics mine. 13 Ibid., 213 (#54.2). 14 Karl Rahner, Foundations o f Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea o f Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: The Seabury Press, A Crossword Book, 1978), 54. 15 Ibid., 63. 16 Ibid., 64. 17 Ibid., 73. 18 Ibid., 86. 19 Ibid., 87. 20 Ibid., 88. 21 Ibid., 87. 22 Gordon D. Kaufman, “On the Meaning of 4Act of God,’” in God the Problem (Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1972), 137-8. 23 Ibid., 137. 24 For example, see Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson, eds., Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990) and Thomas F. Tracy, ed. The God Who Acts: Philosophical and Theological Explorations. (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). 25 Rahner, Foundations, 87. 26 Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988), 47. 27 Ibid., 79. 28 Rahner, Foundations, 267-8. 29 Denis Edwards, How God Acts: Creation, Redemption, and Special Divine Action (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 91. 30 Ibid., 92. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 93. 33 Ibid., 100.

  • Preaching the Lenten lectionary

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    Preaching the Lenten Lectionary

    Tom Are, Jr

    .

    Village Presbyterian Church, Prairie Village, Kansas

    Sometimes I wonder if while we weren’t looking, the church turned into Vegas . Like the commercial says, too often what happens in church stays in church. What we may need most in Lent is the blessing and the challenge to live our faith once we leave worship .

    – 1:9 First Sunday of Lent: Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 15 Jesus was baptized and the Spirit descended upon him “like a dove.” We may be tempted to sing, “There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place,” but Jesus is not likely to sing with us. This Spirit “drove him out into the wilderness.” The Greek word translated “drove out” is ekballo. It is more frequently translated “cast out” and is the verb that describes Jesus’ actions against demons: he casts them out . The wilderness into which Jesus is cast is not a particular zip code; it is a spiritual condition. Mark intends us to remember the other wilderness stories. The wilderness is a testing place. With Pharaoh in the rear view mirror, God’s children danced and sang and praised God—for a little while. Then the realities of the wilderness sank in. Yes, it is true that they complained because they didn’t like the menu (Numbers 11 ,) but their first complaints were of a different nature: they had no food (Exodus 16 .) Then they had no water (Ex 17). Life was at risk! In the wilderness, they were dependent on God for life. Wilderness is not a particular place. The wilderness is anyplace where the teaching of Jesus seems foolish and other voices seem reasonable . Wilderness is anyplace where we must decide if God can be trusted with our lives . In an odd detail, Mark tells us that in this wilderness Jesus was with the wild beasts. Some see the beasts as signs of the evil in the wilderness.1 Others understand the wild beasts to illustrate the loneliness of Jesus in temptation.2 But Mark does not say the wild beasts surrounded Jesus or came after Jesus, but that Jesus was with the wild beasts. Perhaps Mark has Isaiah in the back of his mind: “The wolf shall live 3 (. 6-9 : The leopard shall lie down with the kid” (Is. l l יwith the lamb The wild beasts are signs of transformation. In this text we see a model of Jesus ’ entire ministry: he moves into the wilderness (Satan’s domain) and brings glimpses of the kingdom. Spiritual discipline calls us to pay attention, to look for the signs of new life in the wilderness. There is no wilderness devoid of the wild beasts. Keep your eyes open .

    Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 17:1-7; Psalm 22:23-31; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38 Things are sailing along quite nicely. For eight chapters Jesus has been casting out demons, healing the sick, walking on water, calming the storm, and feeding the masses. Jesus demonstrates that he has the power to do anything he wants to do . This is, seemingly, what Peter means when he says, “You are the Messiah.” So, the – disciples can hardly be blamed for being stunned when Jesus, for the first time, men

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    tions the cross. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering.” Suffering is one of the reasons many in our culture question the reality of God. Contemporary agnostics like Richard Dawkins4 or Bart Ehrman5 among others, point to innocent suffering as the reason belief in God is unreasonable, if not impossible. Over against this “wisdom,” Jesus makes some astonishing promises. As was true for John the Baptist, Jesus also must undergo great suffering. Not only this, but any who choose to follow Jesus will know suffering themselves. Following Jesus will not make our lives more comfortable. Two things need to be said about this great suffering. First of all, the suffering of which Jesus speaks is chosen. Secondly, the suffering itself is never the point. Jesus does not choose to suffer, nor does he call his disciples to suffer. Suffering is the result, the consequence of faithful love. Frederick Buechner describes this kind of suffering love:

    To love another, as you love a child, is to become vulnerable in a whole new way. It is no longer only through what happens to yourself that the world can hurt you, but through what happens to the one you love also and greatly more hurtingly. When it comes to your own hurt, there are always things you can do. You can put up a brave front, for one, and behind that front, if you are lucky, if you persist, you can become a little brave inside yourself. You can become strong in the broken places, as Hemingway said. You can become philosophical, recognizing how much of your troubles you have brought down on your own head and resolving to do better by yourself in the future…. But when it comes to the hurt of a child you love, you are all but helpless. The child makes terrible mistakes, and there is very little you can do to ease his pain, especially when you are so often a part of his pain, as the child is a part of yours. There is no way to make him strong with such strengths as you may have found through your own hurts, or wise enough through such wisdom, and even if there were, it would be the wrong way because it would be your way and not his. The child’s pain becomes your pain, and as the innocent bystander, maybe it is even a worse pain for you, and in the long run even the bravest front is not much use.6

    In Jesus Christ God became vulnerable to the whole world, loving all as God’s own children. Those who follow Christ will also undergo such suffering. Such love will not make our lives more comfortable, but it will make us human.

    Third Sunday of Lent: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22 “How are you doing?” “Fine, thanks. Busy, really busy.” How many times have you heard that in the last week? One of the moments of Jesus’ ministry to be included in all four Gospels is the cleansing of the temple. The first task of the preacher may be to silence the synoptic voices for a moment. In the synoptic, Jesus cleanses the temple because it has become a “den of robbers.” There is no reference to unjust business practices in John. They are just busy.

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    It was the Passover of the Jews. It was a holy time. Think Easter with the lilies and the trumpets. Think Maundy Thursday with the words whispered again, “My body broken for you.” Passover was holy time. A few years ago as we gathered for our late Christmas Eve worship service, we sang, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” While processing the Christ Candle into the sanctuary we read, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus….” While this was happening a gentleman near the front took out of his coat pocket two small jewelry boxes. He handed one to his wife and the other to his daughter. “For to you is born this day a savior….” Earrings and bracelets that had been worn to worship were swapped for these new gifts. Smiles were abundant. A discrete kiss on the cheek displayed gratitude. “Come let us see this thing the Lord has made known to us,” the shepherds said. But neither the gentleman near the front nor his family had a chance to see the holy that night. Jesus entered the temple, the holy place at the holy time, and everyone was busy buying and selling and changing money. It wasn’t dishonest, just mundane. They were doing everything necessary to prepare for the perfect holiday, but they failed to see the presence of God right in front of them. They were captured by the business of life. Or better said, the busyness of life. The synoptics speak of God’s ultimate work of redemption (the Kingdom of God) in chronological terms: the fulfillment of the kingdom is ahead of us. But John speaks of God’s glory as above us, if you will, all the time. It is always possible to push through the “thin places” and experience God’s glory. Jesus cleanses the temple so that everything that distracts us from God’s presence might be removed. When our kids were young, we moved to a new city. Our neighborhood brought a new experience for the children: the Ice Cream Truck. You know the kind. They are run down, panel trucks with stickers plastered on them of ice cream cones and popsicles of every color. They announce their presence through some monotonous tune like “It’s a Small World.” The music rings out over the afternoon breezes and causes every child to stop whatever he or she is doing and run to Mom or Dad to plead for $2.50 before the truck gets away. When we first moved to town, my son heard the music and asked, “Dad, what is that?” I don’t why I said what I said, really I don’t. I don’t think it was the daily $2.50 or even the knowledge that supper would be ruined for the summer. “Nathan, that’s a music truck, son.” Technically this was true: the truck never comes without the music. “Why is that, Dad?” “Well, I guess he knows how much children like music.” “Cool. This is a great neighborhood,” Nathan said. For days the music truck passed through the neighborhood bringing joy to my children’s ears. But one day the truck stopped right in front of our house, with a gaggle of kids purchasing snow cones and double dipper delight. Nathan spotted the activity, investigated, and returned to report. “Dad, you won’t believe it. I’ve got great news. The music truck has ice cream.” “Really?” I said. “Yeah, Dad, I think it’s been there all along, and we missed it.” “So, how are you doing?” “Fine, busy though. Really busy.” Lent is holy time. That barrier between the mundane and the glorious is so thin. The truth is it’s that way all the time; it would be a shame to miss it.

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    Fourth Sunday of Lent: Numbers 21:4-9; Ps 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 John 3 is a text about salvation. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Often when the preacher talks about “beliefs, ״she has to do so in a way that ignores all the talk in this text about “deeds.” In the church of my childhood, I was taught very well that we are saved by grace, not by works. There is nothing we can do to contribute to our own salvation. We only need to believe in Jesus. But belief and deeds are joined at the hip in this text. Those in the darkness do evil deeds; those in the light perform deeds done in God. What exactly does it mean to “believe”? The wordpisteuo includes in its meaning not only “to be convinced o f’ but also “to trust.” There is a difference. What you are convinced of you “agree with.” It’s an intellectual thing. What you trust shows up not just in your thoughts, but in your living. Several years ago, our family took a trip to the Grand Canyon. The views were breath-taking. But I was surprised by one thing. There are no guard rails at the Grand Canyon. You can walk right up to the edge, hang your toes over, and look hundreds of feet straight down, if you are so inclined. It turns out, I am not so inclined. I stepped back. It’s part of my belief system. I do not understand gravity, but I have full confidence in gravity. My trust in gravity shows up in how I live. That’s pisteuo. Belief in Jesus Christ shows up in how we live. So, belief in Jesus, sooner or later, is a conversation about deeds. When the church talks about “belief,” we tend to think of doctrine. But here “belief’ is not first a call to doctrine. It is first a call to hope. It is first a call to trust. I read about J. Matthew Sleeth.7 He is a medical doctor who served as Chief of Staff at a New England hospital. About ten years ago he and his wife Nancy escaped the gray days of New England and sought a vacation in the sands of Florida. There sitting on the porch watching the evening surf, his wife Nancy asked him, “What is the greatest problem facing the world?” Do you have those kinds of conversations on vacation? What would you say? Poverty? War? After some thought, Sleeth said, “The earth is dying.” She asked, “Then what are we going to do about it?” Sleeth found in Jesus Christ a calling and a grace that empowered him to face environmental destruction with courage to do something about it. Because of his belief in Jesus, he has committed himself to a changed lifestyle and to inspire others to do the same. His belief in Jesus shows up in deeds. A conversation about belief in Jesus, sooner or later, becomes a conversation not simply about what we think, but about what we do. So when the preacher comes to this text to preach about belief in Jesus, she will want to remind the gathered community that those in the light perform deeds done in God.

    Fifth Sunday of Lent: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12 or Ps 199:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33 After insisting again and again, “The hour has not yet come,” some Greeks show up and change everything. Jesus announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus was sent into the world because God so loved the world. The problem with loving the world is you never get a chance to…, not really. It’s too big. It’s too burdensome. It is too confusing to know how to love it all. That’s why

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    Jesus waited for the Greeks. We can tell Jesus is waiting for something. Something important will happen when “my hour” arrives, but not yet. He lives as a man with his eye focused over the fence. He’s always scanning the horizon. He’s checking his watch. The one who came to be the “light for all people” knew that most people were beyond the circle of the synagogue. The world was out there waiting to be loved and redeemed. But Jesus had to wait. Finally he hears that “some Greeks” wanted to see him. We don’t know who or how many there were. We can’t even be sure what it is they thought they wanted. Yet Jesus found their presence enough to change all the plans for the day. The “world” out there finally had a face. So Jesus scrambles to find the key to open the gate, to open the doors, to open the way for them to come in. That’s the way loving the world is. We never really love the world in the abstract. We have to love the world a face or two at a time. I have heard the story of Lisa Martin’s High School graduation. It was a graduation like most. The graduates ascended the stairs to the stage, received their diplomas, and then descended the stairs on the other side of the stage. The gym was filled with people and cameras. When Lisa graduated it was a high point in what had been a tragic year for her. After fighting it all year long, Lisa’s mother died of cancer three weeks before graduation. Lisa got her diploma, crossed the stage, and as she stood at the top of the steps, she searched the crowd. She made eye contact with her father. Over his head he held a picture of Lisa’s mother. She had to be there, or it just wasn’t graduation. Love turns the crowd into those who have faces and names. We love the world not in abstract, but by name. Is it too much to think that Jesus walked through his ministry with one eye focused over the fence? That he constantly parted the curtains to scan the horizon? That he paced at the end of the driveway? Is it too much to think he came not simply because God so loved the world, but because God loves us by face and name? We know we can’t be who we are created to be without him. Is it too much to believe that he won’t be who he is sent to be without us?

    Passion/Palm Sunday : Mark 11:1-11 or John 12:12-16, Psalm 118:1-2,19-29; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47 or Mark 15:1-39 (40-47) Mrs. McIntyre inherited a run-down farm somewhere in the rural south. She has a few African American workers whom she calls by other designation. At least this is the way Flannery O’Connor describes it in her short story, “The Displaced Person .” The displaced person is Mr. Guizac, a war refugee from Poland. Mr. Guizac knows his way around a farm, can fix anything, grow anything, and he works like a machine. But he doesn’t know anything about southern racism. He crosses the line by treating blacks and whites as people. Even though Mr. Guizac is the best help she has ever had, Mrs. McIntyre determines she must get rid of him. She “has no other choice.” She knows he has nowhere else to go—he is a war refugee. “It is not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has nowhere to go….I don’t find myself responsible for all the extra people in the world.”8 It’s a tragedy, she admits. But what can she do; she’s not responsible. Palm Sunday begins with the “extra people” mostly. The ordinary people and

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    the broken people, the people no one claims any responsibility for. It is these who show up for the parade. This parade attracted anyone who would have reason to celebrate a new king. They danced and they sang. They lifted their babies in the air. They paved the way with palm branches. Fathers looked deep into their sons’ eyes and said, “You remember this day. You are witnessing history. We are saved. We are free. Hosanna.” We have seen that kind of Palm Sunday freedom recently. The Arab Spring began in Egypt. “Extra people” gathered. Mubarak stepped down. The people paraded through the streets. They held their babies in the air. Mothers looked deep into the eyes of their daughters and said, “Remember this day. Today we are free.” I suppose there has never been a place on earth or a time in history when there has been more talk of freedom than in America. In America, freedom is precious. But what do we mean when we say we are free? It seems that freedom is less a word with content and is more an incantation. In our early days as a nation, Patrick Henry, cried out, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Apart from liberty, he said, we were left in “slavery.”9 Given the social realities of the day, it was an ironic way to say it. The irony was not lost on Abigail Adams. In letters written to her husband John Adams during the meeting of the Continental Congress, she wrote, “It always seemed a most iniquitous scheme to me—[to] fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”10 She was, of course, speaking of slavery. Sixty years later, Frederick Douglas asked, “What to the American Slave is your Fourth of July?” His response? “It is a day that reveals the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim… .Your celebration is a s h a m 1 Freedom is complex and at times illusive. Our understanding of freedom has evolved over time. FDR provided different content to the meaning of freedom. “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” He said Americans would stand for the freedom of speech, the freedom to worship, freedom from want and fear… everywhere in the world. Holy week is a lesson on freedom. Jesus was riding on Zechariah’s donkey. They knew the promise of the old prophet and so did he. He was the new king who had come to set them free. They paved his way with palm branches. They sang the songs of salvation. They looked deep into the eyes of their children and said, “Remember this day. We are free. Hosanna!” Admittedly, they were a bit confused about the freedom he would bring; but they were not wrong that he had come to free them, to free us all. For the past decade, our nation has been at war. We have wandered a long way from who we were during WWII. In those days everyone claimed responsibility to sacrifice for freedom. But not today. Today sacrifice is delegated to the soldiers, and it is the citizen’s job to shop. It appears that the modern American understanding of freedom is to be free from sacrifice. I am free because I am free to do and be and get and have anything I want. This understanding of freedom is fundamentally flawed because it is freedom without responsibility. It is an immature freedom. Like that of Mrs. McIntyre, this is a freedom rooted in the certainty of what is not my responsibility. Jesus provides a richer understanding of freedom. This parade does not lead

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    to a crown, but to a crown of thorns. He is riding headlong into the shadow of the cross. Mrs. McIntyre’s said, “It is not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has nowhere to go,” “I don’t find myself responsible for all the extra people in the world.” She was talking to a priest—an odd relationship as she had no interest in things religious. But the priest persisted: “When God sent his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord.. .as a Redeemer to mankind, He….” “Father Flynn!”… “As far as I’m concerned Christ was just another [displaced person.] I’m going to let that man go,” she said. “I don’t have any obligation to him.” It is hard to tell if she means she has no obligation to Mr. Guizac or to Jesus. It doesn’t matter; either way she lets go of them both. It’s not Mrs. McIntyre, but Jesus who is free. Jesus is free because he rode into Jerusalem to break bread. He is free because he rode into Jerusalem to pray through the mid-night hour. He is free because he spoke truth to power, because he took up his cross and shed the blood of the new covenant. When you look deeply into the eyes of your children, tell them He rode into Jerusalem to instruct us that until we know our responsibilities, particularly to the extra people, we will never be free.

    Notes 1 Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta : John Knox Press, 1983), 37. 2 E. T. Thompson, The Gospel According to Mark (Atlanta: John Knox Press,1954), 38. 3 Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: The Anchor Bible (Yale and London: Doubleday, 2000), 169-170. 4 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston,New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006). 5 Bart D. Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why we Suffer (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). 6 Frederick Buechner, Now and Then (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 54-55. 7 J. Matthew Sleeth, M.D. “The Power of a Green God,” The Green Bible (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 1-17. 8 Flannery O’Connor, “The Displaced Person, ״Flannery O ’Connor: The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 226,229. 9 Patrick Henry, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death!” Lend me your ears: Great Speeches in History, rev. ed., ed. William Safire (New York-London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997) , 86. 10 David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster,2001), 104. 11 Frederick Douglass, “What to the American Slave Is Your Fourth of July,” Speeches that Changed the World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 227.

  • Two voices

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    Two Voices

    Psalm

    Kristy Roberts Färber Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, North Carolina

    My earliest memories of music come from the old jukebox my parents bought when I was young. Sitting in our basement ree room, my brothers and I would fight over who got to choose the next song, as we listened to the jukebox switch out one record for another . Most of the jukebox songs I knew were from the 1950s and ‘60s, when 45s, the smaller records, were popular. I loved Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Pressley, Ray Charles , and the Beatles, though my brothers were always on the hunt for any newer music they could find on records, so we did have the occasional Aerosmith or Styx record in the mix . by Aretha Franklin, J6 on the jukebox. She ,״My all time favorite was “Respect sang with so much energy and passion that I couldn’t resist playing it daily. Later in life I learned that Aretha Franklin did not originally write “Respect” but that it was actually recorded a couple of years earlier by Otis Redding. I was familiar with Otis from my parent’s jukebox as well, having regularly played his mellow song, “Sittin ’ on the Dock of the Bay,” C3, throughout the summer months. I tried to imagine Red – ding as the original author of the song, but, even today, I have a hard time listening to his version of “Respect.” Something is missing for me when I hear it from his voice rather than from Franklin’s cover of the song . Otis Redding wrote the song as a man’s plea for respect from a specific woman . But Aretha Franklin…when Franklin’s version of the song came out, it became a voice for women everywhere, a rallying cry for the growing women’s liberation movement. It has a different power, a different message with the same words. Her rendition of the song was even used in rallies during the civil rights movement.1 I think it’s pretty natural to hear things differently coming from different voices. It’s how cover bands get creative and how Shakespeare becomes modern. The way we hear a song or a story is dependant on the voice singing or telling the story .

    a song of Ascents, a song of David י 131 Psalm 1O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me . 2But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me . 3O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore .

    This text is one part of a group of psalms known as the “Songs of Ascent.” As the Israelites journeyed to the great worship festivals in Jerusalem, scholars believe they sang Psalms 120-134.2 On their way to the highest city in Israel, those making the pilgrimage had a long uphill hike in order to worship God, and these songs served , in a sense, as their road trip mix, the music set aside for their travels. They knew these songs by heart and sang them as part of their preparation for worship. Eugene

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    Peterson, in his commentary on the psalms of ascent, writes that “the ascent was not only literal, it was also a metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God.”3 These psalms played a role in preparing and modeling such a life. This particular psalm is frequently thought of as a prayer to humble one’s heart.4 As one commentator writes, the psalm speaks an important word to those who internally struggle with arrogance, pride, and the need for recognition and honor5 The words of this psalm have long been understood as the voice of someone powerful seeking to walk humbly with God. There is no shortage of commentary throughout scripture warning against the evils of pride, especially when it comes hand in hand with power. Pride causes the downfall of kings and rulers and is called a disgrace in the book of Proverbs.6 During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther claimed that pride was the primary sin causing people to turn away from God.7 Where, I wonder, does pride cross the line to be destructive to our faith? In elementary school choir, I remember learning the song “I’m Proud to Be an American.” Is that pride dangerous? What about the bumper stickers I’ve seen this week that say, “My Kid is an Honors Student” or “Proud UNC Alumni,” “Gay Pride” or “Asheville Pride”? Is this the kind of pride that Luther warns will turn us away from God? Maybe, in order to understand the sort of pride a biblical author might warn against, we should consider the story of the psalm’s author. Almost half of the psalms in scripture, including this one, are attributed to David, a powerful king of Israel and an accomplished warrior, musician, and poet. Well known for defeating the giant, Goliath, as a boy, David is often remembered as one of the more righteous kings in Israel’s history, and yet David’s story is sprinkled with abuses of power and incredible mistakes. After having an affair with Bathsheba while her husband, Uriah, is out fighting a battle, Bathsheba learns that she is pregnant with David’s child. Rather than dealing with the brutal consequences of his affair, David arranges for Uriah to be “accidentally” killed in battle, leaving Bathsheba free to be with David. David is a man who has learned all about the destructive power of pride, but here, in Psalm 131, we find his song of humility. In the face of God and community, he tells God that he has quieted his soul; he likens himself to an infant being carried by its mother, and his eyes are lowered in reverence. Now, over the past half century, new scholarship has suggested that the author of this psalm was not David, but a woman, or at least an author quoting a woman.8 Reading the psalm again, the words take on a whole new set of emotions and meaning coming from an Israelite woman on a journey to worship God. She would not have been a liturgical leader in their worship experience, but rather a surprising voice singing out in prayer.

    Psalm 131 – Voice of woman 1O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. 2But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. 3O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore. To speak out with prayers and words of hope for the whole community would

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    have been an unusual thing coming from a woman. Unlike David, the words, “I do not occupy myself with things too great for me,” coming from her mouth would not have been spoken as a rebuke of her more typically ambitious self, but rather would have signified a courageous choice to let her voice be heard.9 She almost apologizes for speaking, both to God and her community, and yet something compels her and does not allow her to remain silent. Chances are good that pride is not something that this woman deals with on a day-to-day basis. She knows God’s love and compares her soul to a deeply cared-for child, quite possibly to a child that she carries with her on her journey ascending to worship in Jerusalem. She shares a message with the community of worshippers, encouraging them to hold onto eternal hope in the Lord. No, pride is most likely not her greatest temptation. It is possible that her temptation here would have been to keep silent when she had a word of hope for the community. Feminist and womanist theologians have emphasized how, for the meek or powerless , pride is not the dangerous temptation that it may be for the powerful. Rather than pride, what this woman may have dealt with was a sin much less frequently talked about. The sin of shameful self-diminishing or self-belittling. It is the sin not of trying to take the place of God, but of failing to claim ones identity as a child of God or believing the lie that the words God has given are not worth speaking.10 In her voice, the message may not be about humbling oneself, but rather a message of courageously stepping into one’s identity as a child of God and a voice of God’s hope. Psalms are rarely preached on Sunday mornings. This may be for a number of reasons, but primarily, I think it’s because they are messy and very human. Walter Bruggeman writes, “The Psalms are the voice of our own common humanity – gathered over a long period of time.”11 Our common humanity is not all that tidy. The Psalms are not the place to go when trying to learn theology. They are prayers and songs of people on a journey with God. At a conference I attended in November, I had the chance to visit with a pastor whom I greatly respect. He shared how, over the past year, he’s found it difficult to come up with words in his own prayer life. By the end of the day, or even at the start of his day, he feels at a loss for words. At the same time, he still desires to be in communion with God and has been able to do so with the help of the psalms. Rather than coming up with his own prayers, he’s been praying through the psalms. He can’t find his own life story detailed in the psalms and, at times, there are places where he feels disconnected from some of the words or images, but as he has read and prayed through this old prayer book, he’s found his deepest emotions wrapped up in the words of the writers. The gift of the Psalms is the gift of a community of people to pray with, God’s people who have lived for thousands of years using these same words to express 44common elation, shared grief, and communal rage.”12 We are invited to pray these words among and with the authors and with our community 44to express our solidarity in this anguished, joyous human pilgrimage.”13 The voice of the one who wrote any individual psalm might be less important than the fact that each psalm has been incorporated into a larger prayer book – a book that generations of God’s people have used to express their own deepest emotions, their joy and pain, their fear and their frustrations. We don’t need to know the real story of the author who wrote Psalm 131—it

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    may, in fact, get in the way of our ability to speak our own voices into the prayer. We might attribute it to David, allowing it to be for us a reminder of our call to walk humbly with God. Or, if we attribute it to a common woman on her journey to the temple, the Psalm may be a prayer of encouragement to speak hope in an unexpected place, even if we are not sure our voice might be heard. Of course, it may also be something else entirely. Let me end with a final thought from Walter Bruggemann, who wrote a book on praying the psalms. He writes,

    The collection of the Psalter is not for those whose life is one of uninterrupted continuity and equilibrium. Such people should stay safely in the Book of Proverbs, which reflects on the continuities of life….

    The Psalms are an assurance to us that when we pray and worship, we are not expected to censure or deny the deepness of our own human pilgrimage.

    Rather, we are expected to submit it openly and trustingly [and we will eventually] discover that we pray a prayer along with our brothers and sisters in very different circumstances.14

    Notes 1. Ray Fitzgerald, “Aretha Gets Respect,” Spinningsoul.com, 2/14/11. 2. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000), 18. 3. Peterson, 18. 4. Bruce Metzger and Roland Murphy, eds., The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 788. 5. Artur Weiser, Psalms: The Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1962), 777. 6. 2 Chronicles 26:16, downfall of King Uzziah, Proverbs 11:2. 7. Hill, Lippy, and Wilson, Encyclopedia of Religion in the South (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 729. 8. Ellen Blue, “Theological Perspective for Psalm Text for the Eighth Sunday after Epiphany,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett, 392. 9 .1 am indebted to Feasting on the Word, Year A, for these exegetical insights. 10. Hill, Lippy, and Wilson, 729. 11. Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms (Winona: Saint Mary’s Press, 1986), 15. 12. Brueggemann, 16. 13.Ibid. 14. Brueggemann, 23-24.

  • Open-minded preaching: sharing a word with the ‘spiritual, but not religious’

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    Open-Minded Preaching: Sharing a Word with the

    ‘Spiritual, but not Religious ’

    Adam J. Copeland

    Fargo, North Dakota

    One day, after several decades of ministry, I will look back at passages from my old sermons and blog entries and wonder, “What was I thinking?” I anticipate this future moment with expectant curiosity rather than fear. Wise pastoral ministry, after all, involves a constant réévaluation of one’s cultural context. It is healthy to anticipate gradual change over a career. As a cradle Presbyterian this approach to change makes sense. After all, I have heard that Latin phrase quoted dozens of times: ecclesia reformata semper reformandum , “the church reformed, and always being reformed.” But even though I have embraced a vision of reform, and though I was aware that my ministry would reform as well, I did not expect to be reevaluating significant areas of ministry while in my late twenties. Ministry with those who refer to themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” has changed my understanding of the Church, my analysis of culture, and my approach to preaching.

    My Evolving Understanding of the “Spiritual, but not Religious ” Begins I grew up participating in a strong youth ministry program in which faith was nurtured, not spoon-fed. Along with the vast majority of those in my confirmation class, I took seriously the task of writing a personal statement of faith and presenting it to the church elders. Later, I attended a church-related college and majored in religion. Positive experiences in the church, and a sense of call to congregational leadership, led me to seminary. Along the way I picked up a suspicion of those who called themselves “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR). I was formed by communities that identified themselves (sometimes verbalized, but many times not) over and against these SBNR types. My communities would say, “We go to church, give to the stewardship campaign, and have a real community as opposed to those ‘spiritual but not religious’ fellows.” Or perhaps, “Who do they think they are, inventing their own religion as if they were the center of the universe?” Jeremiads against “Sheilaism,” the personal religion constructed by a woman named Sheila, were commonplace.1 Some of these critiques were more even-handed than others, but they all carried with them a chastising tone. At conference presentations , from pulpits, and in seminary classrooms—places where kindness and respect were supposed to be modeled—I encountered bitter righteous indignation towards the SBNR. This unease affected me, and I too became suspicious of the “poor, wandering, deluded” SBNR. But something happened on the way to the pulpit. Over a fairly short time, my perspective on the SBNR evolved from a critical skepticism to a sympathetic understanding , even respect, for their searching. It is difficult to pinpoint this change in my perspective, for it occurred while I was reading plenty of emergent church leaders,

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    experimenting with the latest social media technologies, and serving as pastor in a small rural congregation. What is clear, however, is that relationships with non-church – attending peers supported my new, less judgmental viewpoint . Perhaps it is not a coincidence, then, that Carol Howard Merritt begins a sec – tion, “Spiritual, Not Religious” in her book Tribal Church with a story of a personal relationship as well. Merritt, a Presbyterian pastor, writes of a time when she met a young couple to discuss their upcoming marriage at the church. The couple had met online, and the bride had grown up Presbyterian. The groom, however, had a confes – sion to make. He was spiritual, not religious. Instead of criticizing, Merritt listened . Merritt writes that she understands many young adults have

    a vague view of religion that we discern from the public forum: evangelists on the television defending prayer in school, wanting the ten commandments on the walls of our courthouses, and promoting intelligent design: picketers in front of abortion clinics yelling out “murder” to a scared teenage girl , and fanatics outside the funerals of homosexual college students holding 2 ”. signs that read “God Hates Gays

    Indeed, I fear this perception of Protestantism is an easy stereotype for many SBNR folks to gather about the faith—it’s anti-intellectual, judgmental, and certainly not open to those with uncertain beliefs . While I find this view seriously lacking, I also hesitate to rally for an unflinching assessment of what many of our congregations do look like from the outside looking in. I owe much of my faith journey to the mainline church, but like any institution , it too has its flaws—many perhaps more easily diagnosed from a distance. Merritt calls for a halt to judging the SBNR as they form opinions of the church. She writes , “ When a young person explains that she is more spiritual than religious, she wants to take a step back from the intolerance and hypocrisy of modem institutions and emphasize orthopraxis over orthodoxy; in other words, younger generations are much 3 ”. more interested in right practice than right belief I now lead a Lutheran outreach to emerging adults in their twenties and thirties . We particularly seek to connect with those who feel unwelcome in many established congregations. As I meet with twenty-to-thirty-somethings and hear their stories of faith and experience with the church, almost to a person they self-identify as “spiri – tuai, but not religious.” Hearing their stories has broadened my understanding of the SBNR identity and continued my evolution away from the snide characterizations of my past. Briefly, here are some of the stories I have heard .

    Share their Stories ״ The Evolution Continues as the (< Spiritual, but not Religious The name of one SBNR woman kept coming into conversations around town . Active volunteer with several non-profits, working fulltime for another social organi - zation, and participating in prayer retreats at a local convent, this young person could teach me a lot. She did . She told me that from a young age, she realized she was attracted to women . This understanding of her sexuality was so essential to her life that, initially, it did not strike her as possibly problematic for her church family. But it was. Gradually , her pastor and other congregational leaders made clear her homosexuality was not

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    acceptable in their congregation. Even so, she managed to participate actively at the church through high school by singing in youth choirs and being confirmed. Her faith was and is integral to her life, but her experience with church through high school left her deeply suspicious of organized religion. Now she has found a place where she feels fully accepted: the gay and lesbian community. In her time between work and volunteering—the little that exists—she performs as a burlesque dancer at local pubs and clubs. When I asked about these performances, a twinkle came into her eye. Clearly they are a huge source of life and freedom for her. Intrigued, I wondered where her deep love for burlesque performance and singing came from. “Oh, there’s no question, ״she said; “it all goes back to my Lutheran youth choir days!” A man I met grew up in a conservative denomination, attended a Bible college of that denomination, and had hoped to become a youth pastor. But as his studies progressed, he found the claims of the Bible college faculty less and less convincing . He read more progressive scholars on his own and streamed YouTube videos of sermons and lectures. Eventually, his personal beliefs conflicted too much with what he was learning in school. He graduated, but did not pursue professional ministry. He continues to read widely, often discussing his faith with his wife, but they do not attend a church on any regular basis. They hope to move to a new town in a year or two and may look again for a congregation there. Now, however, he associates more with the SBNR crowd. Or take a young woman I met in a coffee shop. She also grew up Lutheran, but after moving to a larger town has not been able to find a congregation in which she feels welcome. When she visits, she finds few young adults, and her fashion sense makes her stick out. She feels a sense of serenity about living where she does, certain that God has brought her to this place “for a reason.” But the reason, she senses, has more to do with finding a spouse than finding a congregation. She desperately seeks community, but can only find what feels like other people’s communities in established congregations. She still identifies as Lutheran, but told me, “I guess I’m less religious and more spiritual at the moment. I just can’t find a church where I fit in.” I have summarized these persons’ stories because they are the real SBNR. Like Merritt understood the couple with whom she met, we should not assume they have selfish motives or feel superior towards the spiritual and religious. In fact, though I am a pastor, I share a vast many values with them. If I had not been formed by a 10ving congregation that welcomed my questions, struggles, and peculiarities, I easily could have found myself in my late twenties writing from the other side of the SBNR divide. Surely there are SBNR folks with particularly offensive notions of organized religion, those who approach anything connected to the church with disdain, but in my experience, these folks are much less common than those who use the phrase to put words to deeply felt and difficult search for God. Due to the nature of my ministry, those SBNR types I meet tend to be in their twenties, thirties, and forties. I suppose older folks who identify as SBNR could be a totally different breed, but even so, I would want to approach them with a posture of openness, humility, and respect, leaving the snide tone aside.

    An Approach to Preaching with the “Spiritual, but not Religious ” For most pastors, addressing the question of preaching to SBNR folk is more a

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    hypothetical question than a weekly struggle for at least two reasons. First, those who identify as SBNR are unlikely to attend worship and hear much preaching. Often, they have become skeptical of loud Christian claims presented as fact without the benefit of two-way conversation. The very nature of traditional preaching is somewhat offputting , so it is unlikely they would seek it out. Second, a congregation consisting entirely of the SBNR would be a very unique congregation indeed. So constructing sermons particularly appropriate for the SBNR must be done in a similar way to sermons for parents or the elderly or any specific demographic found in a congregation. That said, the approaches do cross over, and it is not as if a sermon preached with the SBNR in mind would be inappropriate for those more commonly found in the church. As a preacher fashions sermons considering the SBNR, first she must tackle the question of authority. For most SBNR folk (and postmoderns in general), the notion of authority has moved away from the idea of one all-wise leader serving as the lone expert, dolling out truth to a more communal notion. In The Hospitality of God, Mary Gray-Reeves and Michael Perham present a study of 14 emerging churches relating to the Anglican tradition. One similarity they note in worship practices—from California to England—is a new notion of authority. Put succinctly, they sum up: “Authority is a conversation.”4 The congregations about which Gray-Reeves and Perham report employ a range of preaching methods including “sermons preached by laity, sermons responded to in conversation during a feedback time, or individuals creating their own reflections by participating in Open Space.5 ״ The authors suggest, and my experience corroborates, that many SBNR folks have no expectation that a church institution—whether it be a denomination, congregation, or representative thereof—expect to wield authority over the beliefs of individuals. This is not to say that for SBNR persons all authority evaporates; rather authority is gained through relationships, conversation, and collaborative discovery. With this understanding of authority in mind, preachers should approach preaching as a collaborative task. Exegesis might be done with members of the congregation , and at the least with other pastors. Preachers should not shy away from making strong claims (or personal confessions of faith), but they should do so while also acknowledging different viewpoints and welcoming further conversation. Lucy Rose addresses this new conversational authority in Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church. Rose writes, “A sermon’s content is a proposal offered to the community of faith for their additions, corrections, or counterproposals .”6 This humble, communal approach to preaching would be welcomed by the SBNR. For Rose, a preacher^ task is to search for meanings. She writes,

    This meaning is then submitted to the community of faith through the sermon for their answering meanings. One meaning finds multiple meanings , one experience of grace funds multiple experiences of grace, one proposed articulation of the gospel funds multiple articulations of the gospel, through the Spirit that prods and prompts the hearts and minds of the congregation.7

    Authority ultimately is communal, conversational, a shared process. Another area preachers must consider has to do with the acceptance of questions.

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    My experience working with SBNR persons of Generation X and Y shows that they often seek a faith community open to their questions, and they find it difficult to be members of faith communities that lack opportunities for open questioning. Such questions may be of many types, including, “What does the Bible say about suchand -such?” “Why does the church not welcome gays and lesbians?” “What should I believe about my co-workers from vastly different faith traditions?” Persons come to a faith community seeking more a place to ask these questions than a place to receive pat answers. If authority is conversation, the answers may come through time in the community, but there is no hurry. Preachers, then, can style their sermons as open to questions. In fact, they might even preach sermons on questions that specifically leave the answers open and emphasize the faithful process of question-asking. Once I heard a preacher use an extreme version of this approach, preaching a sermon with three different takes on the scripture passage. The preacher described each of three approaches to the passage as helpful, but also lacking in some sense. The conclusion of the sermon, to the dismay of many hearers, did not claim one interpretation as better than the others. No one way was deemed “right.” Instead, the preacher held up her hands and said, “I’m not sure which of these approaches is best. What do you think?” While the lack of even a proposal, as Lucy Rose calls for, might be off-putting to many hearers, I expect plenty of SBNR questioners would appreciate the preacher’s honesty and openness to claiming that some questions are best to be continually wrestled with. Another approach preachers may employ calls for a careful consideration of traditional theological doctrines. While most preachers may be fairly settled in their beliefs (presumably after being taught in seminary not to stray into heresy), the act of preachers claiming the tension—even “playing with” heretical ideas—may help the SBNR in their search for faith. Let me be clear: I am not claiming that preachers should become heretical to attract the SBNR. Rather, I suggest that many SBNR persons are asking the same types of questions that the church has struggled with for centuries. So, for example, a preacher might consider in a sermon the idea that the New Testament’s message replaced and made irrelevant the Old Testament, and then go on to explain why that approach fails to fully satisfy or make sense. The questions SBNR folks may be asking are not necessarily new. Preachers who model how to consider such questions (even those deemed heretical) with an openness and lack of fear, show all—SBNR and familiar members alike—that the community of faith has considered such questions for centuries and welcomes other sojourners concerned with important points of doctrine. An additional benefit of claiming the tension of important theological concerns is that many SBNR simply do not know what the church teaches. Through the media and even in personal interactions with certain believers, the SBNR may encounter very few Christians who are open, say, to considering the differences between the gospel writers or examining if there’s a scriptural basis for God changing God’s mind. The post-modern world in which most SBNR relate tends to steer clear of stark black and white distinctions, instead examining and living in the tension of difficult questions and re-considerable conclusions. Preachers who show a willingness to claim this tension and consider settled doctrine will connect positively to the SBNR. The point is not to preach heresy, but that in considering the thought process behind some heretical claims, preachers will connect to those currently concerned with such questions.8

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    Finally, a word on apologetics. While some preachers may feel it necessary to approach the SBNR with brilliantly reasoned arguments for God’s existence and the import of responding to that reality within a specific faith tradition, this instinct should be resisted. Successful persuasion with the SBNR comes through relationship and conversation. Brian McLaren explains, “The dominant thing we have to prove to spiritually-seeking non-Christians in a postmodern world is not that Christianity is true. We have to prove that it is good and beautiful. And if they are convinced it is good and beautiful, they will be open to it being true.”9 Perhaps it was always this way, but it certainly is the case today: actions convince better than words. Showing and listening is often more effective than telling. If Christians —preachers included—live out their faith with a joyful, humble, Spirit-seeking approach, then the SBNR will take note. That is not to say we should cease sharing the good news, but that we do so because it is the joyful confession of our lives rather than because it convinces every SBNR to fall in line. Ultimately, there is no quick fix to effective preaching for the SBNR. Adding PowerPoint slides and movie clips to traditional sermons will not entice SBNR persons any more than bolding “welcome” on a church’s old sign out front. Instead, preaching to SBNR folks requires a new posture, one best formed out of relationships with self-identifying “spiritual, not religious” friends, neighbors, even provocateurs. These relationships built on love, patience, and a search for mutual understanding should lay the groundwork for preachers seeking to reach out to the SBNR. Then, after sharing a word (or many) with the SBNR, a preacher can, in humility and faith, share the word with all God’s children.

    Notes 1. Robert Bellah and Richard Madsen, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 235. 2. Carol Howard Merritt, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation (Herndan, VA: The Alban Institute, 2007), 72. 3. Ibid. 4. Mary Gray-Ree ves and Michael Perham, The Hospitality of God: Emerging Worship for a Missional Church (New York: Seabury Books, 2011), 26-33. 5. Ibid., 29. 6. Lucy Atkinson Rose, Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 5. 7. Ibid. 8. While preachers might consider a sermon series on “The Appealing Heresies of the Faith,” it would be better to take a different approach, finding a sermon series title more inviting of conversation. Perhaps a welcoming sermon series would be entitled: “Age-Old Questions Pondered Anew.״ 9. Michael Duduit, “Preaching to Post Modems: An Interview with Brian McLarene,” http://preaching .com/resources/articles/11565751/ (accessed October 1,2011).

  • Preaching the Advent texts

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    Preaching the Advent Texts

    Mary Ann McKibben Dana

    Idyl wood Presbyterian Church, Falls Church, Virginia

    This year we find ourselves in one of those Advent seasons that does not begin Thanksgiving weekend. Instead, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is Reign of Christ/ Christ the King Sunday. This timing gives us ample opportunity to stretch out into the season rather than trying to pull off the First Sunday of Advent with a skeleton crew of folks. The changeover of paraments, the Advent wreath, the beaming church members lighting the candle of hope—all of this will happen on December 2 rather than in the post-turkey hangover of late November. Many people I know lament the loss of Thanksgiving as a holiday in its own right; instead it has become the opening act for the December headliner. What might it mean to luxuriate in the practice of giving thanks? How might a Sunday service focused on gratitude frame the season of Advent and provide a corrective to the acquisitiveness that can creep in despite our best intentions to observe a simple and frugal Christmas? The more traditional liturgical route, of course, is to highlight Christ the King/Reign of Christ that Sunday. Thanksgiving’s panoply of comfort foods is a fond memory or still languishing as leftovers in the fridge. Black Friday has come and gone, and it’s either been an occasion for good-natured early morning fellowship with family and friends or for shaking one’s head at the thrown elbows and the trampled shoppers. Or it’s been both. It would be interesting to explore what the kingdom of God means even in the afterglow of these experiences. What kind of kingdom has Christ inaugurated? In what way is that kingdom come; in what way does it remain unfulfilled? For what do we hunger, even as we gorge ourselves on food and good deals? My friend Joe Clifford likes to say to the congregation he serves on Reign of Christ Sunday, “Grace and peace in the name of Jesus Christ, the leader of the free world.” What does it mean for us to be citizens of Christ’s “free world,” and in what ways are we still captive? The extra week gives us time to ask these questions. But there is a distinct liturgical disadvantage to the lateness of the Advent season. Those of us who hold off on singing Christmas carols in worship already have our work cut out for us; we are out of phase with the shopping malls and pop radio stations. Many of us let the lesser known carols in the canon slip through by the Fourth Sunday in Advent, but this year, people will be clamoring for the goods by Advent 2 or 3, and we will be holding off the Christmas carols with a whip and a chair. It is probably worthwhile to name this tension. As followers of Jesus, we are misfits in time; we would do well to acknowledge it. While the cultural countdown ticks toward the arrival of Baby Jesus (or maybe just Santa Claus), we have our sights set on the Second Coming. As people chuckle once again over the Mayan’s supposed prophecy that the world will end soon, we Christians must shrug our shoulders and admit that we, too, have some wacky ideas about the final fulfillment of human history . Advent is about preparation for that fulfillment, as well as readiness for the Christ

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    child to be bom in our hearts once again. And yet Christmas does not wait until December 24. It insists on arriving during the getting ready, whether in the form of Christmas cards in our mailboxes or the youth group caroling event. But that’s reality, isn’t it? Our lives are not so neatly partitioned into preparation and fulfillment, training and doing. During the pastoral internship, the seminary student ends up becoming someone’s pastor, ready or not. Or we arrive in our first calls ready for action, yet also realizing how much we still need to learn. We let our kids go (to kindergarten, to college) before they seem “ready.” The readiness is in the doing. Life is one big mess of on-the-job training. So perhaps it is OK to sing “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus” and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” in the same service of worship.

    First Sunday of Advent – Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3:913 , Luke 21:25-36 Some pastors like to lead off on Advent 1 with a hearty “Happy New Year!” Such a greeting serves as a reminder that the liturgical cycle begins anew a good month before the secular calendar rolls over and people vow to quit smoking and return to the gym. We bid adieu to the Gospel of Mark and say hello to Luke’s rock-’em-sock- ’em message of liberation and economic justice. Even if you don’t wish the congregation a happy new year, there is a whiff of newness in the first Sunday of Advent: a new heaven and new earth, that is. The focus of the lectionary texts is relentlessly future-oriented. Jeremiah promises a devastated people that “justice and righteousness” will prevail, even in the wake of a ransacked Jerusalem. The psalmist implores God to be a teacher, instructor, and guide on the right path: God is a God who is taking us somewhere. This path toward wholeness is Paul’s preoccupation too, as he prays that “our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you” ( 1 Thess .3:11). And Luke, of course, paints a vivid picture of God’s eschatological work coming to fruition. We will see it on the cosmic level (sun, moon, and stars) and in a personal way. (There will be fear and trembling over the things to come.) At least two threads tie these texts together, and each might provide a direction for preaching. One thread is the emphasis on God’s salvific word. The restoration that Jeremiah foretells has a name: “the Lord is our righteousness.” And Jesus, too, promises in Luke that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” These verses call to mind the classic prayer for illumination: “Amid all the changing words of our generation, speak your eternal word that does not change.” The Word has become flesh and dwells among us. The Word will become flesh again. Preachers might spend some time exploring the power of divine utterance in a world of cheap talk. By the first Sunday of Advent, the so-called War on Christmas will be going full tilt, as pundits wring their hands over the rise of “Happy Holidays” over “Merry Christmas.” Such rhetoric is as inevitable as it is pointless. There is a brash cynicism in referring to a store’s policy for greeting customers as an act of “war,” particularly when there are actual non-metaphorical wars being waged all over the globe, some in places we haven’t even heard of. Set aside the overheated rhetoric of cable news pundits, and there are still plenty of words filling our December, ripe for critical engagement. The rum-pum-pum-pums of the Little Drummer Boy rap on our skulls; invitations to rock around the Christmas tree come fast and furious over PA systems in shopping malls across the country. And of course, there is the unremitting language of marketing, the constant urging

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    to communicate sentiment through the purchase of stuff. “Tell her you love her with a diamond.” “Say ‘Seasons Greetings’ with a gift card from The Home Depot.” Yes, our stuff does speak volumes about us, like it or not. But these messages will pass away. All things will pass away, except for the word of God. In addition to the words, we have the signs. Both Jeremiah and Luke lift up the image of green growing things as a harbinger of God’s reign come to earth: Jeremiah, like Isaiah, lifts up the “righteous branch” that will spring up. And Luke’s Jesus invites his listeners to consider the fig tree, whose leaves will be a sign of summer fulfillment. My friend and colleague Ellen Crawford True tells the story of a tornado that powered through her town, requiring one of the church’s large majestic trees to be cut down. The congregation decided to turn over the tree’s trunk to a sculpture artist who would carve a nativity scene from the wood. This is the good news of Advent: even the thing that is cut down can be transformed into a bearer of new life, through Christ for whom we wait and in whom we trust. Another spin on God’s leafy hope comes from the Pixar movie masterpiece Wall-E. The story takes place in a distant (or not-so-distant) future in which we have consumed so much stuff that the planet is no longer able to sustain us. The environment spoiled, the creation ruined, we head to outer space on huge pleasure cruisers. Wall-E is a robot whose mission is to crush the trash left on earth. He smashes all of our discarded junk into small cubes that he stacks into towering skyscrapers that reach up into the smoggy brown atmosphere. One day another robot shows up named Eve. Wall-E isn’t sure what she’s up to, but they strike up a friendship. Wall-E takes Eve back to his bunker, where he has collected various odds and ends that he has found to be of interest—a toy, a string of Christmas lights, a spork. And when he shows Eve an old boot with something inside it, everything changes. Inside the boot is a small sprout. It’s just a tiny shoot, really, with one puny leaf on it, but it’s alive, and it’s growing. We find out that Eve is a probe, sent to Earth to look for signs of life. Her mission is to collect specimens and take them back to the ship. The thought is that if just one plant can grow, then maybe Earth can sustain life again. Then the people can come back and start rebuilding their world. The branch springing up from a discarded boot is a paltry sign compared with mountains of discarded stuff. But it is sign enough. Eve’s task is our task on the first Sunday of Advent. In a world piled with things, we are called to sleuth around for signs of life—real life, green life, steeped in spiritual chlorophyll and giving off oxygen, the ruach without which we perish. We could find worse guides for the task than Jeremiah, Luke, Paul, and the psalmist.

    Second Sunday of Advent – Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79, Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6 “I don’t want to hear another sermon where we make snide comments about John’s clothing or diet,” my friend and colleague Anna Pinckney Straight has written. “John had a job to do and a word to share, and we should let him share it with us, too. And we should do it without managing or minimizing or contextualizing his message.”1 Unlike Mark, the pericope from Luke does not get into John’s dietary or sartorial choices, but such details cling to our memories nonetheless. And Anna is right. Sermons about John the Baptist can reduce the prophet to a carnival sideshow. He is

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    so… unfestive. So Grinchy. But the message of repentance is vital, and it jostles us, right in the line at the Apple Store. Luke goes to pains to locate John in a particular time and place: the time of Tiberius , in the region of Pilate, Herod, and so forth. We can almost see Google Earth panning down, down, down through these geographical layers to the shores of the Jordan River. But the picture backs out again, because John does not stay on the riverbank. He goes into “all the region” with his message. The particular becomes universal as he speaks even to us, two thousand years later. The Second Sunday’s call to repentance gives us a glimpse into the Lentishness of Advent, but such a move needs some unpacking. Several years ago I attended a study trip with seminary classmates at the World Council of Churches. We spent a few days in Munich before reporting to Geneva for the course. The museum there had a display of Christmas related artifacts, and we were fascinated by a bearded goat-like creature that appeared to be preying on small children. Without a working knowledge of German to read the accompanying placards, we could only assume that the goatman was Santa’s evil twin. We weren’t too far off. Krampus is a figure from Germanic folklore who follows Saint Nicholas around in December. Whereas Nicholas provides treats to good children, Krampus is on the lookout for naughty children so he can punish them. In the case of especially wicked children, the story goes that Krampus stuffs them into a knapsack and takes them back to his lair to have them for Christmas dinner. Sadly, modern Christians too often see John’s call to repentance in a similarly grotesque light. We try to fit John’s camel-hair costume with goat horns, Krampusstyle . But repentance during Advent is not about adopting a self-flagellating posture. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write in their book about Advent that repentance means to “go beyond the mind that you have.”2 Advent repentance asks us to consider the ways we have become captive to outmoded ways of thinking. How does the incarnation of God in Christ confront the status quo? How does God’s trajectory toward redemption make a difference in the here and now? These questions are not simply mental exercises. They impact the ways we live in the meantime: who we love and how; what we buy; how we spend our time. Craig Barnes has described the rule of St. Benedict in a way that illustrates this everyday decision making. Benedict wrote that when the community welcomes a new novice, they take the person’s street clothes and dress the newcomer in the novice’s robe. But they hang the person’s street clothes in an unlocked closet, so that each morning the person has to make a decision anew: What identity will I put on? Who will I be? Whom will I serve?2. This kind of repentance is life-giving and joyful. (Maybe all repentance is ultimately this way, even the Lenten kind.) Paul’s letter to the Philippians is soaked in thanks and praise even as it acknowledges God’s work as still in progress: “The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion” (1:6). And in Luke, Zechariah sings praises for his long-desired son, who will “give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins” (1:77). It is worth noting that Zechariah and Elizabeth were members of the upper class, elites of their time. The message of John (and later Jesus) is not solely for the down-and-out, though surely it is that. It is also a message of light for anyone who sits “in darkness and in the shadow of death” (1:79). It is for those who hum in the checkout aisle of Trader

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    Joe’s and those who can’t stomach the holly-jolliness. It is for those who have crossed everything off the list and those who are trying to make it through another Christmas season without steady work. It is for the parents contorting their faces to get their kids to smile on Santa’s lap and for people grimacing in pain at yet another failed fertility treatment.

    Third Sunday of Advent – Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18 Every year in mid-December, I find an afternoon when I can be alone in the house. I go through my children’s toys and books, sorting them into piles: donate, give to friends, recycle, and throw away. The sorting is essential, otherwise we will be overrun with stuff on Christmas morning. Fellow parents laugh in recognition as I describe this “toy rapture,” in which items mysteriously disappear from our family room, usually without the kids even noticing. Someday, I pray, my children will have the maturity and temperament to help me with this task. I imagine them boxing up a carton of treasures, reminiscing and chattering about the unknown children who will receive these items. But they do not have that temperament. In talking to other parents, I know my kids are not unusual. Every plastic Happy Meal toy is priceless; every board book, long forgotten, was once beloved and is thus suffused with meaning. Some of these precious items stay, but many must go to make space for new items that will come to them at Christmas. So I do this culling work on their behalf, and I remember that Meister Eckhart said that the spiritual life is a process of subtraction even when one is in elementary school. There’s a lot of good news on the Third Sunday of Advent. Zephaniah promises a bounty of goodness for “daughter Jerusalem” (3:14). God will provide a homecoming , victory, gladness, and love. Paul chimes in from the pages of Philippians, urging the people to “rejoice in the Lord always” (4:4). But it’s helpful to wonder with our congregations what must be released to make space for a joy that is so plump and full? Paul’s word for “rejoice” in Greek also means “farewell.” What do we need to say goodbye to in order to say hello to the love of God incarnate in Christ? Meanwhile, John the Baptizer continues to hammer us with the message of repentance. Taken together, these passages urge us to practice what poet Macrina Wiederkehr has called the “sacrament of letting go.” Over the years I’ve noticed that it’s this week, the third week of Advent, when people start throwing Christmas traditions overboard. I’m not getting a tree, a person who lives alone might say. Another puts her foot down: I’m not setting foot in another mall. If I can’t get it online, I don’t need to buy it. In the age of Facebook, I’ve jettisoned Christmas cards several years in a row and never looked back. Somehow, through some miracle, there’s still a baby in the manger come Christmas Eve. More and more people are embracing simplicity in Advent—letting go of a few of the “shoulds” to allow for more time for quiet, for family and friends, and for God. It’s a practical decision; there’s only so much time, so something has to give. But perhaps this letting go, too, is a form of repentance. John seems to think so. His listeners ask him again and again, “What should we do?” His answers—share one’s coat, collect only the taxes that are lawful, be satisfied—speak of modesty and simplicity . His instructions are an embodiment of Eckhart’s notion of “subtraction.” And he ends with a reminder that, as important as these instructions might be, the most

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    important action will be God’s initiative. Christ will baptize, winnow, clear, gather, and yes, bum the chaff of all that must be let go. Today’s texts and their emphasis on subtraction give us permission to start talking about the baby. This is how the God of the universe comes, in a stunning display of frailty and downward mobility. As pastor and writer Debbie Blue puts it, “God doesn’t come to the world looking big and self-sufficient and simple and coherent, like an answer or a moral absolute, but looking weak and hungry, totally dependent on his mother. That’s what babies are like. They can’t propel themselves. They can’t even focus their eyes. Helpless is not a bad word for what a baby is. God comes into the world as a baby. That is a subversion of how we might expect the almighty to come.”4

    Fourth Sunday of Advent – Micah 5:2-5a, Luke l:46b-55, Psalm 80:1-7, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45, (46-55) The subversion continues on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, when Micah makes the striking announcement that the ruler of Israel will come from one of the “little clans of Judah” (5:2). The redeemer will “feed his flock in the strength of the Lord” (5:4). As if in response, the psalm picks up on the shepherd imagery and bellows out a plaintive We’re ready; bring it on: “Stir up your might, and come to save us!” (80:2). We began our Advent journey with a look at the power of utterance, and as striking as Micah and the psalm may be, it is Luke whose words truly soar—or perhaps we should say sing. The Fourth Sunday of Advent gives us Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s words of blessing, and Mary’s song proclaiming the topsy-turvy kingdom of God. After Mary’s visit from the angel, she sets out “with haste” for Elizabeth’s house. Something compels her to go quickly, eagerly. Perhaps it’s to share this moment with Elizabeth, to shower her with congratulations, to marvel at the holy bizarreness of it all. Perhaps in the precariousness of Mary’s own situation, she figured it would do her good to focus on someone else for a while. Whatever the motivation, Mary arrives, and the words of greeting are barely out of her mouth before Elizabeth is shouting with utter delight, saying, “Blessed are you among women! Blessed is the child that you carry. Blessed are you, who believed.” I wrote about this passage in this journal many years ago. I said then, and believe now, that Elizabeth’s blessings are more than declarations. They are not simply descriptive . Elizabeth’s blessings call Mary into being as a mother and the theotokos. After all, Elizabeth’s words are a gift of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which, it has already been told, empower Mary to conceive and carry this child in the first place. The words matter. The blessing matters. How can we believe otherwise and worship a God who spoke the world into being? And Mary responds to the blessing with a song, which is an improvisation of the song Hannah sang after the birth of her son Samuel. But it is not a sweet lullaby. It is a battle cry, bold and defiant. Mary sings for the weak and the lowly, the poor and the hungry. Every hurting son is now her son; every hungry daughter is now her daughter. Before, they were simply among her; now, they dwell within her. And the song erupts from that place deep down where she carries them, where she bears them in her own body.

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    My friend and colleague Michael Kirby tells me that several years ago, someone began stealing the baby Jesuses from outdoor manger scenes in his Chicago neighborhood . It turned out to be a prank, and the figurines were later found in a woman’s yard, 32 of them, sorted by size and type. Unfortunately, many people coming to claim their figures tried to walk away with a “nicer” Jesus than the one they’d had. “They were trading up,” he said. “Everybody wanted the freshly painted, unfaded baby.” Mary would not approve of such cheap attempts at an upgrade. “[God] has lifted up the lowly,” she sings. God has looked with favor upon the dingy, the faded, the forlorn, and discarded figures of this world. “All generations will call me blessed,” Mary sings. “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Other translations say, “My soul glorifies, exalts, praises the Lord,” but this is the Magnificat, after all. Mary’s life magnifies God. Like a magnifying glass, Mary magnifies—makes larger—the mighty acts of God. Through her, we see who God is. Her life and her faithfulness bring God’s gracious intentions for the world into focus—into sharper detail. This, finally, is our call in Advent. It’s all well and good to glorify God, to exalt God, to sing God’s praises, and many of our churches excel in these tasks, especially during this season. But Mary urges us not to stop with praise. How are our lives magnifying God? When people look through us, through the lens of our lives and our Advent ministrations… what do they see?

    Notes 1 From a paper written for The Well lectionary group, February 2012. 2 Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Kindle Edition, Location 3322. 3 Craig Barnes, from an address to the Festival of Homiletics, 2010. 4 Debbie Blue, From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again (Kindle Location 1080).