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  • Reveling in romance

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    Reveling in Romance

    Song of Solomon 4:1-7

    Martin B. Copenhaver

    Wellesley Congregational Church, Wellesley, Massachusetts

    Nestled in the Bible between the ponderous pronouncements of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah’s ringing calls to repentance is this little book that just won’t behave. The Song of Solomon (also known as the Song of Songs) is an ode to the joys of erotic love. It is so giddy with the intoxicating charms of sensual love that, like young lovers kissing in a public place, it seems not to care who else is around or what they might think of such carrying on. The Song of Solomon is composed of the love songs sung by a man and a woman who can see only each other. But see each other they do. The lovers linger over every inch of each other in voluptuous celebration, savoring all the physical characteristics of the beloved. It is almost enough to get the Bible banned from public libraries. If young adolescents ever happen upon this torrid little book, they might begin to read the Bible with flashlights under the covers at night. It is little wonder, then, that the Song of Solomon almost did not make it into the biblical canon. Elsewhere in the Bible human sexuality is viewed as something that must be carefully governed. But here the cup of love overflows. There is not even any indication in the verses of these love songs that the rapturous lovers are married, although some interpreters have conjectured that they are engaged, just to make an honest man and woman of them. The Song of Solomon doesn’t even have the decency to mention God. Not once. It is one of only two books of the Bible guilty of that omission, the other being the book of Esther. So some interpreters, stuck with a book that could melt a Puritan winter, have tried to make of it an allegory, the most pedantic of all literary forms, just to bring it back in line. Many through the centuries have read it as an allegory for Christ’s love for the church or for the individual Christian. St. Bernard Clairvaux followed this line of interpretation in a series of 86 sermons on the Song of Solomon, a series that covered only two chapters and three verses. Eighty-six sermons can take the joy out of any subject, it seems to me, but I can’t help but wonder if the dear saint protesteth too much. Even after such thorough allegorization, one cannot escape the impression that the author of Song of Solomon actually was doing what he appeared to be doing—namely, celebrating human love with poetry, reveling in romance and sexuality. Those who are aware of the ways our culture can make an idol of romantic love and can even celebrate lust (which is romance’s cruder expression) may be uncomfortable with the Song of Solomon. But in its context as scripture, this book is not permitted to roam through the imagination unchaperoned. This unbridled expression of romantic love is flanked by the likes of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah and surrounded by other scriptural witnesses that, when considered together, remind us that romance is wonderful, but not the only game in town and certainly not the sum total of life. Were it not for the Song of Solomon, readers of the Bible might conclude that we have to choose between a culture that understands only romance and a faith that leaves

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    no room for romance. The presence of the Song of Solomon in the Bible reminds us that we can have God, fidelity, all the higher expressions of love, and still have our romance, too. Encountering these love songs in the pages of the Bible reminds me of the time when, as a teenager, I discovered ardent letters written by my grandparents when they were both in the throes of young love. The discovery corrected and completed my picture of them. They were real people, after all, animated by the kind of impulses and yearnings I knew quite well. These dignified and upright people—who before my discovery I could only imagine going to bed fully clothed—also had a love for one another that was as hungry and tumultuous as the sea. And as their lives demonstrated , passionate love for another person need not eclipse God, but can enlarge a life in ways that make room for God to be manifest—something I might have missed if those letters had remained undiscovered and my picture of my grandparents had remained incomplete. We are often reminded that the Greeks had a number of words for the single English word love. There is the eros of lovers; there is philia, the brotherly love we also associate with friends; there is agape, self-giving love that is unconditional. It is agape that is used to describe God’s love for us, a high and holy love that we are invited to manifest as well, a self-giving love that makes no distinctions, an unconditional love that is our surest experience of grace. From their delineation of different kinds of love, we might assume that the Greeks knew more about love than we do, much as when we hear that the Eskimos have so many different names for snow. We assume that is because they know snow so much better than we do. There are times when it is helpful and appropriate to delineate different kinds of love. But there are other times when we can see that all forms of love spring from the same source. Perhaps that is why love poetry was never purely secular for Israel and why Jewish and Christian interpreters found God looming in the midst of this romantic revelry. So even though God is not mentioned in the Song of Solomon, and even though we should resist making it a strict allegory, the presence of God does seem to pulse through the song’s romantic imagery. The ebullient springs of romantic love can be traced back to their source in God, even if not all lovers are inclined to do so. A few important distinctions need to be made here, particularly between sexual desire, romance, and lust. And, let me say that I recognize that those distinctions are almost certainly easier to maintain in a sermon than in life. The distinctions are important, nonetheless. Sexual desire, in and of itself, is both natural and neutral. It is natural in that we are created with a capacity for sexual desire. It is neutral in that sexual desire is not good or bad in itself. Rather, it all depends on how sexual desire is manifest and expressed. Presbyterian minister and novelist, Frederick Buechner, writes, “Contrary to Mrs. Grundy, sex is not a sin. Contrary to Hugh Hefner, it’s not salvation either. Like nitroglycerin, it can be used either to blow up bridges or heal hearts.” Sexual desire fuels both romance and lust. They have that in common. But, oh, the differences between romantic expressions of desire such as found in Song of Solomon, and the lustful expressions of desire that seems to have an increasing grip on our culture. So let me make a few distinctions here. The focus of romantic sexual desire is on the other person, on that particular person, and delights in that particularity. No other person will do. So the two lovers who sing to one another in

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    the Song of Solomon linger over every characteristic of their beloved. They delight in the particularity of their beloved. By contrast, the focus of lustful sexual desire is not on the other person. The object of one’s lust, who that person is in all his or her particularity, is almost irrelevant. Obviously, in internet pornography, casual hooking up, other forms of sex for sex’s sake, the focus is not on the other person. The late Henry Fairlie, a British journalist and essayist, writes, “Lust is not interested in its partners, but only in the gratification of its own craving…. Lustful people may think that they choose a partner at will for sexual gratification. But they do not really choose. They accept what is available. Lust accepts any partner for a momentary service. It has nothing to give, and so it has nothing to ask.” Here is another difference: romantic desire seeks continuance. You want to be with the beloved always. Separation is restless sorrow. In reunion the world seems complete again. That’s why words like “always” and “forever” quite naturally come to those who love in this way: “I will always love you.” “I am yours forever.” That is also one reason—one reason—why marriage vows include phrases like “until death do us part” or “as long as we both shall live.” Romantic desire seeks continuance. By contrast, lustful desire is fleeting, in the moment. Again, I appreciate the way Henry Fairlie puts it: “Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude. Like all sins, it also makes us solitary.” John Mayer, the popular singer-songwriter, had a hit song a few years back called “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” At first listening you might think that this song is a celebration of the beloved, something like a secular version of Song of Solomon, which conveys a kind of wonder at the physical features of the beloved. But when you listen to that song carefully, it is clear that the view of the body expressed in the title does not convey wonder in the sense of awe. Its view of the other’s body is that it is one’s own personal amusement park. It’s a place to have fun and explore and get excitement, and then, at the end of the day, you are free to leave. One more difference: Romantic desire seeks the good of the beloved. When you are truly in love with another person, you find yourself doing all sorts of things for the other person—giving flowers, taking out the garbage, listening from the depths of your own heart—because you want good things for that person. When they grieve, you grieve. When they rejoice, your heart is gladdened. Your desires and yearnings are inextricably interwoven with those of your beloved. By contrast, lustful desire seeks whatever it can get for the self. Philosophy professor Rebecca Konyndyk De Young writes, “Lust makes sex and sexual pleasure a party for one. Lust makes sexual pleasure all about me. It is a self gratification project… .In a nutshell, lust is the excessive desire for my own sexual pleasure.” Song of Solomon is a reflection of what sexual desire can look like when it does not devolve into lust. It is, in its own way, incredibly romantic. And the presence of God does seem to pulse through the song’s romantic imagery. After all, to be in love with someone is to find your whole being tied up with the beloved, to want to be wherever the beloved is, to want good things for him or her. You can no more forget the one you love than you could forget your own name or forget that you are alive. No one else will do. You want to share yourself, all of yourself, with your beloved, and you want all of him or her in return. Separation is

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    restless sorrow. In reunion the world seems complete again. Those who are caught up in such a love for another can catch a fragmentary glimpse of the love God has for God’s beloved. God loves you that much. God loves each of us as if we were the only one. When I was in grade school, we would celebrate Valentine’s Day in the classroom. We would bring Valentine cards and give them to our classmates. But there was one rule: you had to bring a card for everyone. You couldn’t just bring cards for those you cared about. You couldn’t just bring a card for Carol Porter or Susie Mattis, even if that is what you wanted to do (which I did). You had to bring a card for everyone in the class, even those people you didn’t particularly care for. When God is giving the Valentines, everyone gets one, and each one is treated as if he or she is the special one, as if the object of God’s own heart’s desire. When we love one person that way, that one special person, we catch a glimpse—just a glimpse, but a glimpse—of how God feels about each and every one. And that, I think, is the biggest reason why the Song of Solomon, this passionate ode to romantic love, made it into our Bible.

  • Conversion

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    Conversion

    Isaiah 65:17-25; John 20:1-18

    Mark Ramsey Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Ashe ville, North Carolina

    They say that Social Security in this country has reached the tipping point, that more is going out than is coming in, starting now. They say that the Afghan government is so corrupt that peace and justice will never take hold there. They say that the earthquake last month in Chile demonstrates that the building construction codes in this country in earthquake zones are woefully inadequate, and it’s just a matter of time until Seattle is a pile of rubble with victims numbering in the tens of thousands. They say that off-shore drilling will give a boost to our energy independence. Of course, they also say that it opens the door to almost certain catastrophe. They say that the health care bill is finally going to take care of some of the least and the last in our society…unless what they say is true…and it is Armageddon. They say that after a decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all countries involved are raising a generation of children who have lost a mother or a father, killed in the war, and experts don’t know how these children will cope as they move into young adulthood. They say that thousands of jobs are gone, and they are never coming back. So many days we live in the world of “They.” When Mary got to the tomb early that morning, it was a world with which she was well acquainted. Does God have power over death? Whether we want to admit it or not, I think that’s why you and I are here this morning. We’ve got to know: Does God have power over death? They would say, “Of course not.” And they have plenty of evidence: Rwanda, Bergen-Belsen, Katrina, Haiti, TheGulags, Darfur, crack houses, foreclosed houses, houses of abject pain and abuse. Lots of evidence. Lots of evidence that seems to mock Easter. When Mary Magdalene went to the tomb that morning, she was in the grip of the World of ‘They. ” On seeing the tomb empty, Mary Magdalene exclaims: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have laid him.” Does God have power over death? Please! They must have done it! In Flannery O’Connor’s story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, her character “The Misfit” is a horrible and notorious outlaw who has terrorized and murdered a family after they had an auto accident on a lonely rural road. The Misfit is now holding the grandmother hostage. She is grief stricken and afraid for her own life, and she cries out, “Jesus… Jesus!” The Misfit answers,

    Jesus was the only one who ever raised the dead, and he shouldn’t have done it. He’s thrown everything off balance. If he did what he said, then there’s nothing for you to do but throw everything away and follow him. And, if he DIDN’T—then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you’ve got left the best way you can by killing somebody, or burning down his house, or doing some other meanness to him.

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    Gruesome as it is, The Misfit tells the truth. If Christ is not risen, then Easter faith is a horrible hoax, and nothing makes much sense in our world where things fall apart. Forty years ago, the late writer John Updike wrote a poem, “Seven Stanzas for Easter,” which says in part:

    Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day. And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom. Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.

    Updike warns that we dare not turn Easter into some tame metaphor, a diet of watery nothing that is quickly forgotten and holds no power or substance. The Misfit says that Jesus “done thrown everything off balance,” which I take that he means is bad in a world where we prize balance and stability over almost anything else. But what if.. .the “everything is thrown off balance” thing at Easter is not just an off-balance move, but a conversion of sorts. Oh, I know. Conversion. Nearly a dirty word, conjuring thoughts of people ringing your doorbell with booklets to hand you and fears of being trapped on an airplane next to someone who spends five hours trying to save you. But what if, instead, conversion were the bold and gracious invitation to move from the Land of They to the world of Easter? If we remember that conversion refers to turning around, look closely at Mary Magdalene in John’s account. Mary Magdalene had to be converted from the sincere and well-intended business she had generously undertaken—to take charge in a hope-less memorial act for a dead Jesus. Then, we are told, she looked and “saw” an empty tomb. Did she really see? Notice that there was no reference to God when she tells Peter. She was still firmly seeing the World of They: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb.” “They must have laid him somewhere.” She was weeping outside the tomb as puzzlement is heaped on top of her grief. (The disciples – the men – interestingly get to the tomb, look inside; the text says

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    they “saw and believed”.. .and then they promptly went home. Huh?) Even when Mary Magdalene sees two angels when she finally looks inside the tomb, she is still in the World of They. When asked about what was going on – by angels – she says again that “they” must have done something—not that God had done something.1 And then John says: “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but she did not know it was Jesus… .Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him….” Jesus does not live in the Land of They. He speaks to her: “Mary!” At the sound of his voice—she knows who he is. She turns. She hears. Instantly, she moves from the Land of They.. .to the landscape of Easter! A whole new world opens for her. We need something as powerful as resurrection to take care of the Land of They forever. More than 20 years ago, a book was published called Morning Glory Babies ? It’s the story of a community of Christians in California whose ministry was with babies who had AIDS. It was written in the days when treatment for HIV and AIDS was not close to what it is today. The author writes: “From the media perspective, death is the essence of the story about our children. When finishing a story about a baby girl named Melissa, a television producer asked if his network could have an exclusive on ‘the end of Melissa’s story.’” The founder of this community wrote in frustration: “For me, the only story is that Melissa is beginning to walk, or that she sings duets in an unknown language only babies understand.” That’s the difference between living lives the way they tell us life can be—and living an Easter life. But you know, the Land of They offers us a conventional wisdom that is difficult to ignore. Sometimes, they speak a hard truth, just like that TV producer: A baby is going to die of AIDS. That was the truth. The Land of They can tell the truth about us sometimes. It’s just that they can never capture the whole truth. The world of They lets death and destruction have the final word. Easter brings God into the story – and with it, hope and power and love and meaning. And a baby’s song that is an “Alleluia” all its own! The World of They is a lonely, lonely place. Easter is when we know we’ve found our way home. You don’t have to see God at work in order for God to be at work. You don’t have to leave a tomb convinced that Jesus is raised in order for Jesus to be raised. You don’t even have to leave church on Easter Day feeling like a new person in order for God to be, right now, making you into someone new. Or, as a Muslim friend of mine once said to me, “It seems to me that you Christians spend too much time trying to prove the resurrection.. .and not enough time being the resurrection.” Of course, none of this is easy. To say God is at work, even when others don’t see it, even when you’re not sure you see it, having the courage to leave the Land of They is no easy matter. One of my former seminary professors tells of the time when he was a seminary student himself. He was doing an internship at a church, providing pastoral care to families. One of the families was quite large, and their youngest child, Robert, had cerebral palsy. Whenever he visited the family, the family would often be gathered together in a large group, at the dinner table or in the den, laughing and telling stories . . .but not Robert. He was always on the outside, watching the others. One day, it was just the mom at home with Robert. After some small talk, she

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    wanted to tell their visitor about something that had happened a few days before. Mom had been sitting in the family room in the late afternoon, and Robert was standing in the darkness down the hall, watching from a distance. Mom felt what she described as a “strange shift in the room,” a turning perhaps, something that caused her to look up from her knitting and down the hallway toward Robert. She said, “I saw Jesus with his arm around Robert’s shoulder.” She looked away, looked again, and there was only Robert. Writing later, that pastoral intern, now seminary professor, says that he doesn’t know to this day what to make of it. But he does know that he and the mother reacted in two completely different ways. He decided to psychoanalyze the event, thinking to himself: “She feels so guilty about her child, she has projected her [perceived] failings through the symbol system of the Christian faith.”3 Now that may not have been wrong. There may indeed have been guilt for the mom; she may have wanted to have a vision. But I wonder if that reaction—the sort of reaction I have all the time to these kinds of things-isn’t just another way that we see the world with the “wisdom” of the Land of They whispering in our ears. The mother sees Jesus. Most of us see a psychological crisis. Mary sees a grave robbing conspiracy. Jesus arrives and calls her by name, causing her to turn, causing a conversion from the “Land of They” to the world of hope and life where Easter possibilities are found around every corner, everywhere we turn. That mother? Did she feel guilty and that’s why she saw Jesus? Maybe she saw Jesus because Jesus was there! After all, because of that moment, she got to work in the community and started several programs for children with disabilities. What if she had written it off, listened to what they tell us?4 The conversion, to turn from the World of They to the world of Easter possibility is never easy, and most always, it seems, serves to throw us off balance. But to stay in the World of They – what they say, and how they tell you to think, and how they suggest you look out at your world? That is no way to live. Even in the hardest times and hardest places, that is no way to live! Will Williamson recently reported: “On two mission trips to Haiti with undergrads, there was widespread agreement that the most disarming thing about the country was the laughter of the children, along with their raucous singing. “How dare they sing when their life expectancy is so horribly short? Was their laughter an escapist respite from the unmitigated tragedy of their lives, or a smart rebuke to our assumption that their lives were trapped in tragedy?”5 As darkness fell upon Port-au-Prince after the earth heaved that night ten weeks ago, people danced in the streets and sang hymns. On CNN, Anderson Cooper was incredulous: “Don’t they know what they are saying about how bad it really is? Willimon concludes: “But what if the grieving women who came to the tomb on Easter morning are right? What if Friday isn’t the end of the story? What if Jesus told the truth—that he really is turning today’s tears into tomorrow’s laughter. “As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing we know that the world doesn’t: we know another story. Listen…in Port-au-Prince they are singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Alleluia!”6 I think our temptation at Easter is to spend too much time trying to prove the resurrection and not enough time being the resurrection. Today, tomorrow, sometime

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    this week they will tell you this or that. They will be so sure how the world works and what is possible and what can be safely mocked. But then you might just catch a glimpse or hear a whisper, and you might find yourself turning, and there is the Risen Christ: Hope in the midst of despair, Love daring to touch pockets of hate, Courage in startling abundance as you face a daunting challenge. And everything is off balance in your life in the best way you can imagine. And theyl They? They…are nowhere to be found!

    Notes 11 am indebted to Martin Marty for his exegesis of this text as found in “Theological Perspective” for the Gospel text for Easter in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, WJK, 2009. 2 Tolbert McCarroll, Morning Glory Babies: Children with AIDS and the Celebration of Life (New York: St. Martins Press), 1990. 3 Thomas G. Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press), 2009. 4 Thanks to the Rev. Ben Dorr for drawing my attention to this story and its context for Easter. 5 William Willimon, “Now Can We Sing?” Christian Century, March 23,2010. 6 Ibid.

  • Preaching to young adults

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    Preaching to Young Adults

    Joanna M.Adams

    Atlanta, Georgia

    A couple of years ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a column written by a young mother in our community. Having decided to end her habit of lazy Sunday brunching, she had set out on a quest to find a church where she, her husband, and their baby could feel at home. The column recounted various missteps in the journey but ended on a note of celebration over having at last found a spiritual home. Sunday brunches had been replaced by wine and wafer meals around the communion table. Faith formation had begun for a heretofore thoroughly secular family. Around the time the piece appeared in the newspaper, I began to meet with a young woman who, along with her formerly Roman Catholic husband, had been visiting the Presbyterian church I served as pastor. She was embarking on a professional career and was expecting their first child. Both husband and wife were realizing that a life made up of work, grocery shopping, and exercising was not enough. They wanted to be grounded in something beyond their busy, but ironically barren world. On the recommendation of a colleague at her office, they had been quietly slipping in and out of worship at our church. A few months into it, she called and asked if she could come by to talk. “Of course,” I said. What I learned in that conversation was revelatory and altered the way I preached, the way our bulletin looked, the assumptions I customarily made about what the young people who come to worship understand and don’t understand. My takeaway learning was that when I stand in the pulpit to preach, I should not assume prior exposure to Scripture, church tradition, or liturgy on the part of those who have gathered to hear a word from the Lord. I met with this young, impressive mom-to-be a number of times and then had the triple privilege of presenting her with her first Bible and of baptizing her and her first baby on the same glorious Sunday morning. I wish stories like these were not exceptions to current trends, but sadly, they are. The majority of young adults today are not leaving behind their bagels and cream cheese to join “the joyful feast of the people of God.” According to a study highlighted in a lead article in USA Today (4/27/10), “Most young adults today don’t pray, don’t worship, and don’t read the Bible.” The headline read: Young Adults less Devoted to Faith. The sub-head read: Survey Shows Steady Drift from Church Life. Three fourths of the 1,200 surveyed agreed that they were “more spiritual than religious.” Thorn Rainer, president of Life Way Christian Resources, says that of those who call themselves Christian, only 15 percent claim to be “deeply committed.” How shall we who preach reach members of Generation X (those born in the 1960’s and the 1970’s) and members of Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation or the iPod Generation (those born from the mid 1970’s to the early 2,000’s) with the Good News? How can we help them grow in their knowledge and love of God? How can we inspire young adults who have been steeped in the cultural message that “It’s all About you” to follow a Savior who said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life

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    for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what does it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:34-36) How shall we speak to Facebook devotees about the One who “set his face to go to Jerusalem” where he would be mocked, scorned, crucified? (Luke 9:51) The first thing we who preach must do is not dumb down the gospel or its demands, reducing the good news to a bland, pleasant drink, palatable to all. Don’t water down the message! One of the reasons mainline Protestant churches have lost the majority of the younger generations is not that we asked too much, but that we asked too little. No sacrifice required. No commitment necessary. No, we should not have shoved doctrines down the throats of young people, but we should have said, “This faith journey is the most important journey you will ever take. Questions are welcome, even essential. Nevertheless, here is a foundation of values and spiritual realities upon which you can build your life, your family life, your vocational life. Here is a way to discern what really matters in the grand scheme of things. Center your life on God, the transcendent, Holy One of Israel, Creator of heaven and earth, Author of salvation. Let Jesus, God’s only son, be your role model for how to live and how to die. Love your neighbor. Love your enemies too. Yes, it all sounds radical, but this is the path to the deepest joy and meaning human existence has to offer.” I am haunted by a story I once heard about a preacher who ended his sermon by saying, “Then again, what do I know?” May those who bear the responsibility and the privilege of proclaiming God’s word never offer dull, in-house platitudes. Young adults who come to church in our time have chosen to come. They want and need sermons that help them see what God is up to in the world and where they can hook in. They want help from the scriptures of the Christian tradition in grappling with the great issues of their personal lives, but also with the great issues of culture and society. Young adults want and need a message of substance. Let’s offer that message as best we can, trusting that, in addition to the congregation, the Holy Spirit has also shown up to do the heavy lifting. The second thing that is called for is taking into account the lack of background knowledge and experience with the Christian faith, as well as negative knowledge and experience with the Christian faith. Many young adults have been put off by the mean spirited rhetoric and irrelevance of the message they have heard from many quarters about what Christianity stands for in our time. The majority of them stay away from the church in droves. Thank God for those who do come. Some are just exploring. Many, if not most, have no interest in ecclesiastical or theological arguments . They come hungry to learn and eager to be taught, but they are decidedly not eager either for in-crowd issues or sermons that leave them asking, “So…?” Recently, I sat next to a young minister at a city wide pastors’ luncheon. He was in his second year as pastor of a congregation he and a few dedicated church planters had started. Because he was exceptionally appealing and extroverted, I assumed he was attracting the young adults, both singles and families, through his personal charisma. When I asked him what he thought was drawing people, he answered simply, “I teach. They learn. Nobody can seem to get enough of it.” I think of another young preacher I know whose congregation is mostly made up of people between the ages of 20 -35. His sermons meet people where they are. His illustrations come from the world in which his congregants live and work. A long process of discernment through prayer and study must take place before professions

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    of faith are allowed. His way of preaching balances didactic moments with relevant illustrations. The teaching is designed to open people up to new possibilities, to fresh ways of thinking. People walk away wanting to know more. They are asking themselves, “How can I practice this faith that is growing in my heart? How can my mostly crazy life actually glorify God?” Thirdly, we who preach to young adults must never feel self-conscious about not being young adults ourselves ! In my denomination, only seven percent of our pastors are 40 or younger, so all of us who are older need to be aware that we are perfectly capable of offering substantive messages, not just to the members of the Boomer and Centrum Silver Generations, but to the young adults who have made the radical choice to follow Christ in this complicated, everything-is-up-for-grabs age. All the congregations I served in the latter years of parish ministry grew in number, mostly due to the commitment and participation of adults much younger than myself. The reason that happened is that young adults want substance in the sermons they hear, and I tried to offer it. In my sermon preparation, I would try to ask of the text the questions I thought they might be asking. I did a lot of listening to them in various settings. I respected where they were. I knew they could spot a phony at 50 feet, so I tried to go to the scriptures with their concerns and questions in mind and come back with honest answers. Truth be known, people of every age respond with gratitude when they can sense that the message they are hearing is being preached with genuine humility before the awesomeness of the task and with contagious conviction about the power of words, the power of the Word to comfort, heal, and transform, through the power of the Holy Spirit. When I come to the end of a sermon, I want something to have happened to those who have been present and to me. I want us to have had an encounter with the living God whom alone we worship and serve. I want the Word of God to have come alive in what I am preaching and teaching. I want that new life to take root in the lives of those who have heard the sermon. I think of two young adults I knew years ago who volunteered together at a night shelter in our church. They began to date, and then they fell in love. They married. Before long a son was born and later a daughter. They remained steadfastly committed to the shelter and to its guests during those hectic, stressful, rapidly passing years. One year when the children were little, they became particularly concerned about one of the guests. He had had pneumonia twice that winter and was constantly engaged in a battle with alcoholism, When he got sick again, my young friends invited the man to their house to live with them and their two little ones until he got better. It seemed way too risky to me. “Why?” I asked. “We think Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” This is what I mean about the power of words, the power of the Word. I have learned to trust the message we preach. Some say that ours is the Age of the Image—the Nike swoosh, the apple with one bite missing, the empty pair of sequined gloves. We can visualize them instantly in our minds. I am all for including various ways of communicating the reality of God in worship. I know of a young minister who very effectively shows a clip from a movie to illustrate a point in her sermons. During Lent one year, members of the congregation, most of whom are sophisticated city dwellers beginning their careers, played the roles of various people in the Biblical stories of Jesus’journey to Jerusalem and the events that occurred upon his arrival. In dramatic fashion, they embodied the

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    biblical story. But film clips and drama cannot carry all the weight. The right word, the loving word, the word that bears the weight of truth, the word that challenges, the word that questions, the word that cuts through the nonsense, the word that lifts the sagging spirit, the word that teaches how to live and how to die: the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ is now, through the grace of God, found in the Biblical word that bears to him. When we preach, time and distance become irrelevant, our words become a means of grace, through the power of God. When I become anxious about the effectiveness of my preaching to young adults, I remember that Jesus was himself a young adult as he went about his ministry in Galilee. Likely, many of his followers were young as well, identified, as they were by who their parents were (i.e.”sons of Zebedee”). They were physically active (fishing all night, for example) and remarkably open to hearing the ancient promises of redemption expressed in ways they had never heard before. To be sure, there was some resistance. The “downward mobility of which Jesus spoke and which he lived out as he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8) was not easy for anyone to take; many, by following his way, were transformed themselves and became ambassadors to all the world of God’s transforming love in Jesus Christ. Today, I sense a growing resonance among young adults with Christ’s call to an alternative lifestyle. Yes, self absorption is a temptation for them and for all us who live in a consumer driven, it’s- all- about- me culture, but more and more, young adults are realizing that a life focused only on self is a dead end life. Many are worried about getting and keeping jobs, but they also realize that there is more to life than having all the stuff you want. Young adults are more likely than ever to reexamine the meaning of success and to reset personal priorities in light ofthat reexamination. Some decide to forego a big pay check for an occupation that pays off in other ways, such as job satisfaction or in helping others. Not long ago, I sat with a creative young businessman who was doing fine financially but was frustrated because he genuinely wanted to use his particular skill set to make a contribution to society. “I listened to you enough in the pulpit, Joanna, to know I am supposed to do more than live for myself alone.” I hear that kind of thing a lot these days. I am working with a new grassroots non-profit effort in our community. Our mission is to serve as a good neighbor to all with whom we share community, especially those who are experiencing poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Our new director, a young man with a great vision, took a 50 percent pay cut in order to do this work. “How are you going to live?” I asked. “For years, I have saved for just such a chance as this. I grow my own vegetables, and I have talked to my dentist who is willing to help me out for free if I need it.” Without doubt, a lifetime of listening to the teachings of Jesus has made all the difference in the world to him. In a recent column, “The Gospel of Wealth,”1 David Brooks wrote, “In the coming years of slow growth, people are bound to establish new norms and seek non economic ways to find meaning.” I can think of no more appropriate place to help with the “recalibration effort” than the pulpits of Christian churches. As society moves away from the notion that bigger is better and the biggest is the best of all, the visions of the prophets and the teachings of Jesus can provide the moral framework on which to build a new world view, a different definition of personal fulfillment. Preachers

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    who are only interested in building super-sized congregations will not be particularly useful, but preachers who preach the Jesus of the Bible will play an indispensable role in debunking the idea that having lots of material stuff is the way to happiness. It is not and never has been. Neither is having lots of money. According to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Beyond household income of $75,000 a year, money does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness, or stress.” Having no money can [certainly]be the cause of unhappiness, but “the benefits of having a high income are ambiguous.”2 How regularly do preachers address these matters? Not often enough. What a great opportunity the present economic situation offers to proclaim the Christian message with renewed vigor. As theologian Douglas John Hall puts it, “Instead of retreating into the theological and ethical systems that insulate us from the moral dilemmas [of our time] we .. .must learn how to go to our scriptures and traditions as bearers and representatives of those dilemmas.”3 How would Jesus speak to members of these younger generations, to young singles, to young parents? Undoubtedly, many of them do not and will never come to Sunday morning worship , but that is not a problem. It is simply a challenge. Jesus did not limit his sharing of the good news to 22 minutes on a weekend morning. From the beginning, he was where the people were. After a while, they began to come to where he was. Now is the time for creative, out-of-the-box approaches to the communication of “the timeless and the timely message of the Bible.” According to preacher Peter Gomes, “The reading and hearing of Scripture are for Christians in each generation a Pentecostal experience.” The Bible’s dynamic capacity to speak to people in every age “is attributable directly to the power of the Holy Spirit, the agent of Pentecost….”4 There are occasions for speaking to young adults beyond Sunday morning worship . How about a Theology on Tap gathering by men to hear the Word informally taught and preached? How about a Saturday retreat for young professionals, for stay at home moms, for singles? For couples? There are many occasions in addition to Sunday morning to preach/teach the Word. Sometimes, in a wedding homily, I will urge the couple standing before me to allow a single man who lived thousands of years ago to be their role model for how to live as husband and wife. “Imitate the way of Jesus,” I say, “his way of not living for himself alone, but with understanding of the other, with concern for friend and stranger alike, with compassion for the suffering, with forgiveness always at the ready and reconciliation as the goal in every human estrangement. Build your house upon the rock that is the reality of the realm of God, and your house will be able to withstand the stormy times when they come.” More than few of the young couples I have married have looked back at me as I spoke words like these, wishing that I would hurry up and move on to the vows and the kiss, but many have listened, realizing at least for one moment that their future depended on their receiving the gift of spiritual guidance for the road ahead. What follows are two sermon suggestions based on lectionary texts for the Season after Pentecost, with subjects that might be especially clarifying to young adults:

    I. The 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B: II Samuel ll:26-12:13a, “Does Character matter?” If there is a story that better illustrates the consequences of overreaching greed, I would like to see it. As the economy continues to reel from the excesses of those

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    interested in short term reward with callous disregard for the long term dangers, the story of David’s betrayal of Uriah and Bathsheba, his eagerness to protect his reputation , his condemnation by the prophet Nathan can serve as spectacles with which to see more clearly many of the moral predicaments of today. Ethical behavior: is it still the glue that holds an individual together? Is it the glue that maintains order in our society, keeping us in right relationships with the material world, with one another, and with God? Are there timeless moral parameters in place beyond which people ought not to go, lest they drown in a sea of self-deceit and destruction? People come to worship because they need help in keeping straight whose world it is we live in and to whom they are answerable for the way they live. People need to be reminded that actions have repercussions which even divine forgiveness does not wipe away. The prophet Nathan puts it starkly: “The sword will never depart from your house.” The text is rich with preaching possibilities.

    II. The 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Matthew 25:14-30, “The Parable of the Talents ” This parable, which is both about money and not about money, offers help for people trying to keep their balance in uncertain times. The help comes in the form of a kick in the pants. One simply cannot live one’s life based on fear and dread and expect anything other than to lose the joy and meaning of life. When your sole concern is whether you are going to be all right, then you have signed off from the life God intends you to live. The credo of the one talent man was, “Hold on to what you’ve got.” That is no way to live, the parable says. Take what you have been given and use it! As far as the mission of the church is concerned, the learning is that the light of Christ should not be put under a bushel. Take risks for the sake of the world God loves and intends to save! The same mandate applies also to individuals. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the great preachers of the twentieth century wrote,

    Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens , faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable—and, most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith rejoices in its God.

    Oh, you young and gifted ones out there, use the gifts you’ve got. If you find yourself becoming disheartened, remember this: in times of great testing, we become our best selves, to the glory of God.

    Notes 1 David Brooks, “The Gospel of Wealth ” The New York Times, September 9,2010. 2 The New York Times, September 12,2010. 3. Douglas John Hall, “An Awkward Church,” Theology and Worship Occasional Paper, No. 5, PCUSA. 4 Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1996), 20-21.

  • ‘Can anything good come out of the church?’

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    “Can Anything Good Come Out of the Church?”

    John 1:35-51

    Scott Black Johnston

    Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, New York

    The Church is changing. Christianity is changing. This past Friday, in an e-mail to the congregation, I talked about The Great Emergence, a book by Phyllis Tickle. In it, Tickle argues that Christianity is in a constant state of change. Most of the time, it is difficult to see this transformation. Yet, like the annual metamorphosis from winter into spring, it is happening. One day all is snow and ice, then gradually the temperature warms, daffodils poke their tendrils through the frost, leaves unfurl, flowers bloom, and spring arrives. In the same way, the Church of Jesus Christ is also constantly unfurling, gradually changing. In addition to this slow and steady change, Tickle argues that every 500 years or so, our faith goes through a more massive transformation. The last of these massive changes happened in the 1500s. In 1517, Martin Luther wrote 95 theses and nailed this list of objections to the door of the church in Wittenberg , Germany. Luther, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers raised questions about the established Church’s theology, its worship, its standards of rationality, even its hierarchical leadership. Declaring that every individual was responsible for his or her own faith before God (They used the phrase “a priesthood of all believers.”), these reformers pursued a vision of Christianity grounded in democratic principles. In the centuries that followed, this new way of being the Church spread throughout Western Europe, to North America and beyond. Any way you look at it, the Reformation represented a massive change for the Christian faith, and ripple effects from that movement influenced everything from this country’s Constitution to the development of modern economic theory. I mention this history because, according to Tickle, we are now on the cusp of another cataclysmic change in the faith—another shift equal in magnitude to the Protestant Reformation. What signs indicate that we are in for such huge change? Well, let’s consider a few challenging facts. In this country, the classic mainline Protestant denominations (the Episcopalians, the United Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Lutherans) have been losing members and status for at least two decades. In the last two years, even the Southern Baptists have recorded losses. Across the country, surveys report that the number of young people who profess “no involvement with any religion” is on the rise. The fallout from this decline in membership presents its own set of challenges. In many corners of the United States, Protestant denominations, which went on a great church-building spree in the 1950s, are now struggling to care for facilities that cannot be supported by dwindling congregations. In the Presbytery of New York City, there are 100 churches spread out among the five boroughs. Sixty of these congregations cannot afford to hire a full-time clergy person. These are sobering numbers. Still, it would be wrong to conclude that Christianity is simply in decline. It’s not. In Asia, South America, and Africa, the church is growing at a sprinter’s pace. There are now twice as many Presbyterians in Kenya as there are in the United States. In

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    1950, a list of the world’s countries with the largest Christian populations included Great Britain, France, and Italy. Today, those countries have been supplanted by Brazil, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. In 40 years, says sociologist Phillip Jenkins, only one-fifth of the world’s Christians will be white. By 2050, Christianity’s center of gravity will have moved from the northern hemisphere to the south. Cleary, tectonic shifts and rapid growth characterize global Christianity. So, what’s the deal here at home? Why are American churches suffering? I have heard more answers to this question than there are pigeons in Central Park. Some make sense. Some do not. Here are a few of the most common. American Christianity is suffering:

    because scandals have undercut the Church’s authority and its message; because, in the 1980s, the Church got involved with politics and has never recovered from this unholy alliance; because we are a society more interested in self-help psychology than in a selfsacrificing Messiah; because we have stagnant worship and dull music; because we switched to contemporary music with vapid theology; because our culture’s prosperity makes us less able to identify with the poor and downtrodden, who are the heart of Jesus’ message; because we left Grandma behind.

    Let me clarify that last comment. According to sociologists like Tickle, America is no longer made up of multigenerational households the way it was 50 years ago. What does North America’s declining faith have to do with the loss of Grandma? In the farmhouse where my mother grew up, across the river in Bergen County, four generations shared a roof. While the middle generations would work the fields, tend to the vegetable stand, and drive the fresh produce into Manhattan, the older generations would watch over the young. In addition to other bits of worldly wisdom, these aunts and grandparents and cousins would pass along the stories of the faith and the habits of daily prayer to the children in their care. As nuclear, non-extended families became the norm in this country, as grandparents were placed in retirement centers, this crucial mode for passing tradition from one generation to another was lost. Parents began looking to a new-fangled thing, the Sunday School, to transmit faith to their children. Sunday School teachers did their best, but they were no substitute for sitting at Grandma’s knee. Others suggest that it’s not really the loss of Grandma. Rather, they argue that American Christianity has declined in recent years because the wider culture has grown increasingly skeptical. Maybe that’s true. Although, I doubt it. The Church has always had its skeptics. In fact, at its best, the Church loves its skeptics. Today’s Scripture reading begins when John the Baptist is standing near a road. Seeing Jesus walking by, John extends an index finger and points. “Look,” he says, “there goes the Lamb of God.” Immediately, two of John’s own followers take off after Jesus. The new rabbi is beginning to collect disciples. One of these new followers, Philip, is so excited that he goes and finds his friend, Nathanael, and, in a rush tells him that he has stumbled upon the Messiah. “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael

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    scoffs at his buddy’s claim. “Are you kidding? Nazareth, that podunk village, that’s where you think God is going to begin bringing salvation to the world?” Philip’s response to his friend is not defensive. Rather than debate Nathanael, he offers a simple invitation. “Come and see. I know…. It’s hard to believe that God would want to get involved in this broken down, messy world. It’s doubly hard to believe that God would choose the dusty backwaters of Nazareth. Still, there’s something beautiful, something true, in how this man speaks. I can’t explain it. All I ask is that you come and see.” Nodding at Philip, Nathanael decides to do just that, bringing us to the central moment in today’s text. How will Jesus respond? When Jesus sees Nathanael coming , will he condemn the man? Will he chastise him for airing his doubts? No. Jesus greets the skeptic with these words: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” The contemporary Church could learn a lot from the way our Lord responds to Nathanael. Skeptics have always been a part of our faith. Jesus went out of his way to make them feel welcome. So, what else could explain the malaise affecting American Christianity? Some say the difference between a northern hemisphere that is less religious and a southern hemisphere that is more religious is our access to entertainment. It is difficult, they contend, for churches to compete with the movies, the video games, the television shows, the countless internet sites that clamor for our attention and do it with such style. I read the other day that the production budget for one episode of the popular television program Glee runs around $5 million. In making a 44-minute program (‘Gotta leave space for commercials), each episode can command the same amount of resources that it takes to run this church, with its various programs and ministries and outreach, for an entire year. How can we hope to compete with that? Others take a different angle, suggesting that our North American senses have been so dulled by glitzy lights and constant appeals to our baser instincts that we are no longer able to recognize beauty and truth. A year ago, a man entered a metro station in Washington, D.C. and began to play the violin; it was a cold January morning . He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, about a thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by before anyone even seemed to notice that there was a musician playing. A few more minutes passed before the violinist received his first tip: a woman threw a dollar into his case and walked away. Most people did not even look up. The person who paid the most attention was a three-year old boy. His mother pulled. The boy dragged his feet. He was determined to listen. Finally, with his mother tugging him along, the child departed—looking back all the time at the violinist. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only six people paused to listen. When he finished and silence took over, no one noticed. No one applauded. No one knew that this man, who had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written for the violin, was Joshua Bell, one of the most accomplished musicians in the world. Some see this experiment (conducted by the Washington Post) to be an indication that we have lost our ability to sift the true and the beautiful out of the static around us. They may be right. Maybe this is the primary problem affecting the Church today . Maybe. Although, I have to confess, I think we are better than that. Or, more accurately, I think God is better than that. This past Friday, my wife Amy and I went to see The King’s Speech. The movie is

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    about King George VI—the monarch of Great Britain during World War II who suffered with a terrible stutter. The movie follows George as he seeks therapy from various individuals and finally from one man, Lionel Logue. At the end of the movie, Logue accompanies the King into a sound studio where he must make the most important speech of his life—a speech explaining why Britain is declaring war on Germany. There are a great many tensions that come to a head at this point in the film, but one of the most powerful is the comparison drawn between the stuttering King and the eloquent Führer. While Hitler’s speeches are fluid, fiery, and emotional, George’s public addresses are sputtering, emotionally flat, and full of awkward pauses. The contrast is stark and painful. So, of course, as the King began to make this crucial radio speech to his people, I found myself rooting for him to nail it. Surely, I thought, that is where the movie is going. He has done all this hard work, and now, during this dark hour, he will shine. He will be as eloquent as the forces arrayed against him and his brave countrymen. Then he began to speak. He wasn’t eloquent. Not at all. The awkward pauses were still there. There was no fiery emotion. Yes, he was understandable, that was an improvement; but I was looking for more. Come on, George. Nail this. Still, the King droned on. And as he did, I gradually became less conscious of his halting delivery and focused more and more on his words. The King’s words called people to stand up to an evil that was threatening the entire world. The King’s words called people to a time of great sacrifice. The King’s words pointed beyond himself, beckoning people to embrace a higher purpose than they had ever before known. The King’s faltering words rang with truth. The Church, my friends, is a cracked vessel. It is, as the old hymn goes, “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” It is presided over by imperfect, bumbling servants. Compared to the sophisticated world around us, we mumble and sputter in our attempts to get our message out. What keeps us going—though many have counted us out, through centuries of change, through transformations big and small, through the thicket made by our own mistakes—is our attempt to point beyond ourselves to another. “Look, there goes the Lamb of God.” “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” asks Nathanael. “Can any good come out of the Church?” ask many North Americans. Perhaps the most faithful response we can give in this (and any) age is the invitation that Philip spoke to Nathanael so long ago, “Come and see.”

  • Beyond survival: Easter preaching when the church is in survival mode

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    Against Your Absence

    Walter Brueggemann

    Cincinnati, Ohio

    All power, honor, glory be to you!

    You…sometimes hidden, silent, absent, unresponsive.

    We are so privileged that we seldom sense you

    hidden, silent, absent, unresponsive.

    But we know people who do,

    we think of places where you do not appear.

    We imagine you defeated,

    weak,

    held captive.

    And we wait a day,

    two days,

    until the third day.

    And then, most often then,

    quite reliably then,

    you appear then in your full glory. This day we pray against your absence, silence, and hiddenness. Come with full power into deathly places, and we will praise you deep and full. Amen.

    On reading I Samuel 5/February 2001

    Used by permission: Prayers for a Privileged People, Walter Brueggemann, Abingdon Press, 2008.

    Beyond Survival: Easter Preaching when the Church Is in Survival Mode

    Mark Neleson Georgetown Christian Reformed Church, Hudsonville, Michigan

    As I write this, my family is halfway through a six-month trial (in both senses) of a cable television subscription. The offer of free hookup and the “half-price for half-a-year” was too good to pass up; particularly given that I am told that all my kids’ friends have some kind of specialized TV that comes by cable, dish, or fiber optics. One of my discoveries along the way is to observe that much of the programming one finds these days is devoted to themes about survival. Recently, I lamented this in the presence of my 12 year old. While he did not understand what I meant by apocalyptic television, he could relate when I reframed my observation to terminol-

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    ogy that relates to survival. He then proceeded to rattled off the title of a half-dozen shows without even thinking about it. Survivor, Dual-Survival, Man versus Wild, Man-Woman-Wild y Beyond Survival, Survivormany and The Colony are a handful of representatives of the genre that came to his mind. In each of these programs, participants willingly submit themselves to a specified setting with limited resources and less than favorable conditions. Armed with only their ingenuity and emerging showmanship, they neatly overcome a sometimes raw and unbridled creation. They live off the land, adapt to hostile weather conditions, fend off would-be threats – both human and animal – and do so from multiple camera angles in sixty minutes or less. In my formative years, television’s curriculum included MASH—di TV show that modeled quick wit and good writing in a chaotic context. It included Gilligan’s Island— where attempts to create a new life and new community after the shipwreck are filled with hilarity; Bewitched— in an age of gender inequality, it is foolish not to recognize women’s power; Cheers—in a lonely world you can make places of belonging where everyone knows your name. Intriguingly, none of these shows promoted the setting for their storylines. MASH did not advocate for war, Gilligan’s Island did not campaign for more three-hour pleasure cruises in the South Pacific, Bewitched did not promote the magic arts, and Cheers was not a show about drinking (or not drinking). Each one of these programs was in some way reflective of the time, the concerns, and the cultural milieu in which they were embedded.

    Survival Fits If we pay attention to multiple forms of media today, it would seem that the presumed context undergirding news, marketing, and entertainment is survival. Popular news magazines frequently use the word survival to speak of everything from wise investing to car safety. Perhaps this is the shape of the United States’ post-traumatic world after 9-11. Threats abound. In such a dangerous world we find a new language that seems to either over or understate the reality at hand, with the result that parents and families work double-time during an “economic downturn.” “Helicopter parents” are hyper-vigilant to ensure the safety of their children. Not long ago, the values of safety and security were enough in vogue that consumers would pay premiums for them. In the wake of recent Transportation Security Administration pat downs at airports, many are beginning to recognize the absurdity of our quests for absolute security at any cost.

    Words Make Worlds So today we find ourselves in an era where the premium is survival. Our language is instructive. Often, our vocabulary leans in either revealing or concealing ways. Sometimes our words and our tone expose our despair. “It is what it is” is a despondent way of saying that this situation is unalterable and unchanging, so “deal with it.” At other times, our words are a hyperbolic expression of restless anxiety. So airports are on “orange alert”~a condition that offers few instructions; communities are hyper-vigilant about the appearances of mosques and practitioners of Islam; and the perceived threats to Second Amendment freedoms increases handgun and ammunition purchases under a President who is a Democrat. In a state of survival, we are also prone to minimize our pain and our losses in ways that euphemize, so

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    that the hard realities are less potent. We use words like downsize and outsource to speak of business decisions that cut deeply. Even our words about death are softened by speaking of “passing away” and “transitioned.” Regardless of our coping strategy, we often find ways of either denying the reality in front of us, or we distance ourselves from our feelings of fear and anxiety. When we do this, our pain, grief, and loss come out sideways with expressions of management and control. Unknowingly, the world that we are fighting to maintain is one that is passing away that something new might be born. To struggle to hold on and to survive may mean that we are working out of an energy that is not in step with the yielding fidelity of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, survival energy may very well be the context out of which our communities of faith are most familiar.

    There is something to be said Into such worlds the preacher must speak. More significantly, the preacher must first be able to see, imagine, and live in a different kind of world before s/he is able to speak. The question is: How do we do that-particularly when the church itself is in survival mode? The first thing preachers must acknowledge, at least to ourselves, is that we ourselves might be living in survival mode. Most of us were not trained or prepared for the church-world we have inherited. Because of this, preachers are not any less prone to experiencing loss or vulnerability than anyone else. The truth is, if we have a healthy self-understanding, we will see ourselves first as persons, then as pastors. Doing so in our profession is hard work, particularly in a job with few natural boundaries and where our identities are quickly woven together with our occupation. While pastors may not normally be known to use competitive language to describe other congregations, what does a parish pastor say (and feel) when the local megachurch is inhaling your membership? As one of my colleagues describes his own empty pew phenomenon, “I am not sure what has changed, but I am looking at a whole lot more wood these days.” A wisdom nugget some of us were offered in seminary was, “Don’t count nickels or noses.” Yet, it is hard not to notice when both seem like endangered species. In the last decade, communities of faith have witnessed reductions of all kinds: budgets, staffing, memberships, programs, attention spans, and in some cases, reduced pay. Each one of these phenomena is not only a loss for the congregation, but each one of these things is a disappointment and a grief for the pastor. As Heifitz and Linsky have observed, “People do not resist change, people resist loss.”1 If a pastor is living in survival mode, should we expect congregations to live any differently? The second thing preachers must recognize is that pastors need the same things that congregations need: a safe place in which the deep truths of grief, loss, and disappointment can be spoken in honest ways. Too often in us as well as in the church, these fragile and vulnerable pains are handled harshly and with judgment. Transformation is not possible when these sacred hurts are handled roughly. Yet, when they are held gently with care and compassion, our griefs become shared in ways that enfranchise and validate them. This kind of relational articulation moves us past denial and through the apparent immutability of our pain and into something very different. Churches and pastors willing to yield to, listen to, and articulate their pain, loss, and grief can find new freedom and energy when these losses are held

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    safely and gently in tender vulnerability. The power of their hurt no longer holds them captive or captivates them by drawing their attention’s best energies into defense strategies. A third thing preachers must recognize is that more than ever, the church’s preachers, pastors, and poets need to pause, reflect, practice Sabbath, and be aware of the unique way in which Christ lives in each one of us. Clergy need to be aware of their own emotional experience, including their losses and how these impact their functioning as pastors. Second, they need to be tuned into the hurts and disappointments unique to their community of faith. Unfortunately, the responses of denial and despair to the rapid changes in culture and church feed a survival mindset. Pastors’ best resources for helping a community deal with these shifts are the learnings that have come to them as they have dealt with their own losses. Generally, for clergy and congregations alike, what is generally at stake is a familiar way of life that is slipping through our fingers. This is unsettling for everyone. Often, our coping strategies have much to do with our attempts at preserving a way of life that is congruent with the way things have been. This is true of both clergy and congregations. We squander much energy as we fortify ourselves against realities that are painful. Ironically, the Gospel has never been about survival, and self-preservation is never Christ’s objective. To move out of survival mode, we need fidelity and courage to be good stewards and caretakers of our losses. And we need safe, gentle, and compassionate places to articulate our woundedness. The truth spoken and experienced with trust, mutuality, and emotional safety is a truth that can set us free.

    Beyond Survival: A Theology for the Season of Easter This Easter Season, lectionary preachers will find multiple texts laden with movements through world-altering loss that can take us out of survival mode. I would propose that the preacher read the texts from Resurrection Sunday through Ascension Day and Pentecost through a lens that is offered both in the Resurrection and Ascension texts. We find disciples who are filled with astonishment, confusion, disorientation, and loss. This is nothing new in the gospels, but is something that is amplified in resurrection and ascension. The world of the disciples is one of misunderstanding and confusion. This year, rather than reading the texts with a condescending view of the disciples as insipid and obtuse, we might instead read the texts empathizing with their stupor as we try to navigate our own world that has changed in ways that are beyond us. To the disciples’ credit, they did not understand Jesus’ mission or what it meant to be Messiah any more than we do. Jesus did not come with muscle or militancy, but overcame the world with self-giving love. He was not what they expected or what they would have chosen. One question we might ask is: “Can we imagine their disappointment?” “Has the Jesus we have met in our experience been someone who did not deliver in the way we had hoped?” Not only does the Christ of our texts disappoint with his innocuous political theory, but to our astonishment, this same Jesus is executed. The disciples lost a beloved friend and a cherished Rabbi. Not only did they need to reckon with the loss of a person, but perhaps more importantly, they had to contend with the loss of their

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    dreams. It is no wonder that the texts report disciples who are filled with confusion in the face of resurrection. The narrative of the mission, death, and resurrection of Jesus seems to be one that proclaims God’s surprising lack of predictability. Just when you thought you had settled into a new reality, the God in the text seems to take away that reality and replace it with a new one. The preacher might imagine the disciples’ exasperation with all of this change: “Now what?” or “What next?” When we do, we hear the voice of our own questions and wonderings in the face of realities that are new and foreign to us. The church today has much in common with the identity and context questions of the first century church. The bewilderment, loss, and difficulty of orienting themselves to their new reality that now includes resurrection is most pronounced in Acts 1. Just about the time the disciples are putting all of this together, just about the time in which they are getting a handle on things~and a handle on him-ht is “taken away” or “taken up.” This is the language that is used in verses 2,9, and 11 ; it is also the language of the final verses of Luke. Preachers might legitimately wonder with their congregations if this is an exploration of what it felt like as much as a description of what happened. He was taken from us. Not just in the Messiah we hoped for, not just in death, but now he is taken up and taken away in Ascension. Now we find ourselves alone, abandoned, and in a world for which we do not feel equipped, not unlike the world in which the church now finds itself. The first chapter of Acts features an early band of followers who must deal with a Jesus who is “taken” from them. This beginning is so very different from the grand ending of his Gospel. In Luke, the resurrection and ascension culminate the story he writes. In that narrative, resurrection and ascension are glory events that are seemingly compressed into the same day. The gospel concludes with the disciples in a state of rejoicing and worshipping in the temple. Not so in Acts. In Acts, Jesus’ “exodus” by means of the Ascension appears to be yet another necessary loss for the first century church. We might legitimately wonder what happens to Luke or to his congregation for the Acts narrative to begin so differently. The disciples are bewildered again, and they are expecting the Kingdom of God. Perhaps what is needed is at least 40 days time to process, grow, and take time to embrace a new understanding of Jesus given his being taken away and taken up.

    Articulated emptiness gives way to a new fullness In the church’s emptiness-its community that forms around its shared isolation, vulnerability, loss, and confusion—it finds itself as a community of prayer and waiting , watching, and listening. It is that “place” that makes it ready for the coming of the Spirit. The Spirit that hovers over creation’s turbulent chaos hovers over and through the book of Luke. It is the Spirit that opens the elderly and barren wombs, it is the Spirit that brings about the Incarnation, and it is the Spirit that falls and then ascends at Christ’s baptism. In Luke’s sequel it is no different. In the face of hopeless barrenness when survival is impossible, it is the Spirit that brings about a Second Incarnation as it takes on the flesh and body of the church. In the gospel of Luke, God is with us. In Acts, God is in us. It is unlikely that such a move is possible without the disciples’ negotiation of a new kind of trusting relationship with God given Christ’s absence. To be sure, in order for a healthy community to emerge, the loss of the Christ that

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    the early church would have preferred would have needed to be articulated in ways that were honest and pain-filled. Instead of investing energy in survival, it would appear that the first century community invested in a narrative of articulated testimony of what faith can look like apart from the physical presence of Christ. Perhaps they realized that there can be no resurrection where there is no death. Well-acquainted with grief and loss and the failure of survival strategies to work in any lasting or lifegiving way, the church’s wounds of loss, abandonment, abuse, and persecution-like the physical Body of Christ-now become places that reveal the glory of God that shows up in vulnerability. Devoting energy to survival strategies may very well rob the church from experiencing resurrection in all of these places. When the church devotes itself to “praise” that is not grounded in the relational process of the messiness of anger, disappointment, and pain, it is denying the very reality that leads to its transformation. Without a crucifixion, there is no resurrection.

    Abundant life practices To thrive in abundant life may mean to put into place practices that run contrary to survival instincts. This may begin with the preacher becoming more painfully self-aware of some of the places in which s/he has been led without fully processing personal disappointments and loss. This is difficult. It is hard for clergy to make personal time to practice dying and rising in life-giving ways. When we do however, we become a valuable serum for our communities. Instead of protectively fortifying ourselves from our wounds in the hope of surviving parish life, we can embrace and befriend them as valuable resources for ministry. This happens when we have had the heavens of our own world torn apart, only to realize that it is God who is breaking through in order that God’s own brokenness might begin transforming God’s damaged creation. Such engagement is risky, but the fruit that comes from these painful intersections is restorative and healing that inevitably metastasizes. Resisting survival tendencies will mean putting practices into place that are not only counter-cultural, but counter-intuitive. In an age of self-protectiveness and relational defensiveness, communities of faith may find themselves wanting to take more risks in hospitality. Instead of stinginess and hoarding of ministries and resources, churches may wish to find ways of broader resource-sharing. If we truly believe that God is rich in mercy and resources, we may find ourselves less preoccupied with measuring personal prosperity and more prone to looking for communal abundance. If clergy practice being whole persons before being professional pastors , congregation members may feel more free in the spectrum of their emotions that go with their humanity. Where there is safety and room for honest articulation of our whole human experience, community and relationships grow. Such a posture enables us to invest more in learning from others than in devoting ourselves to focus on what we have to offer. In this kind of communal relationship, we recognize that programs, ideas, and vision initiatives have their place, but these things can disrupt the more important work of forming lasting bonds. In survivor-mode, we are prone to seeking control rather than community and companionship; this too disrupts deeper relationship. Preaching that moves beyond survival mode seeks to explore, not to explain. It also validates and speaks needs and hurts that the congregation cannot always articulate on its own. This means communities need to find multiple expressions for their emotional vocabulary. Art, music, seasons and places of grieving, and

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    a receptive hospitality to another’s hurt all contribute to a communal life that is much richer and deeper than the superficiality of survival. Survival is about desperation, instincts, and adrenaline. To move beyond survival is to practice yielding attenti veness , imagination, and grace.

    Easter Season text trajectories devoted to something more than survival During the season of Easter, preachers will find texts where God shakes the world we had and replaces it with a new one. What follows is a number of texts from the Revised Common Lectionary that engage disappointment, loss, articulation of pain, and the disappearance of a world we thought would be ours. The texts are selected. What follows are homiletical themes and trajectories that the preacher might consider to move beyond a survival mindset.

    Day Selected texts World-losing, Kingdom-gaining aphorisms Resurrection Sunday John 20:1-18

    Acts 10:34-43

    Col 3:1-4 Astonishment and confusion in a world where not even death is reliable. Anew world must be embraced.

    Greeks as well as Jews are of interest to God.

    You have died and your life is now hidden in Christ. Easter 2 John 20:19-31 The resurrected Christ speaks peace into a room of disciples locked in fear. The resurrected Body of Christ has wounds. Perhaps the church’s woundedness is where its glory is best evident. The Body’s weakness and places of injuries reveal the power of God for an alternative.

    Easter 3 Psalm 116

    Luke 24:13-35 I articulated my weakness and needs and God responded by giving me something else.

    To our great surprise, Christ companions us along the way when we tell the story of our loss and together break the bread.

    Easter 4 Acts 2:42-47

    I Peter 2:19-25 Generous sharing is an antidote to anxious holding on.

    Patiently endure rather than retaliate in the face of unfair suffering at the hands of others.

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    Easter 5 Acts 7:55-60

    Psalm 31

    John 14:1-14 The apostle Stephen envisions an abundant life that was beyond survival.

    Threats abound. O God, be my secure base where I can experience rescue and deliverance from my enemies.

    “Do not let your hearts live in a state of trouble but trust me.”

    Easter 6 1 Peter 3:13-22 In this world, do not be surprised if you suffer for doing good. Respond to accusers with gentleness and reverence as part of your witness. Ascension Acts 1:1-11 Christ is “taken” from them; this is good news for Christ, but now what are we to do? Pentecost Acts 2 The Second Incarnation; The Body of Christ in the world is raised and empowered from despair to mission.

    Notes 1 Ron Heifitz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line; Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 11.

  • Love with its work clothes on

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    Love with Its Work Clothes on

    1 Corinthians 13

    Martin B. Copenhaver Wellesley Congregational Church (UCC), Wellesley, Massachusetts

    This passage from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth is one of the most beloved passages in all of scripture. It is a particular favorite at wedding ceremonies. Even brides and grooms who are relatively unfamiliar with scripture often request it, sometimes by saying things like, “We’d like to include that love passage. How does that go?” And it is a beautiful hymn to love. Paul, whose writing often can be dense and opaque, here soars to rarefied heights of lyricism, made all the more remarkable by the fact that he dictated his letters. (Amazing! I picture Paul’s secretary stringing pearls together as they drop from his mouth.) So what better words to spin around a couple as they make vows of love? What could be more appropriate than this beautiful tribute to the enduring power of love? It is interesting to note, however, that the setting of this passage in Paul’s letter is quite different from the setting in which we usually place it. Paul here is not talking about love in marriage, although what he writes can be applied to such relationships. Rather, what Paul is addressing here is love in the church. What is more, he is not addressing the Corinthians on a special occasion when everyone is aglow, reveling in the bonds of Christian fellowship—say, just after they have sung a harmonious version of “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.” Rather, Paul speaks this way about love in a letter addressed to people who are at each other’s throats. Instead of picturing people all aglow on a joyful occasion, picture these words addressed to people who are in a white heat of conflict. Paul is not addressing two people who are choosing to be bound to one another; he is addressing a community of people who have found that the tie binds, indeed. It binds and chaffs. Here is a bit of background: individual members of the Corinthian church were parading their spirituality, comparing themselves to one another and boasting of their superior spiritual gifts, in a classic “mine is better than yours is” kind of confrontation. Paul responded by saying that there are many gifts, people have different gifts, and each gift is valuable because it can be used to benefit the community of faith. We are like different members of the same body, the body of Christ. We have different gifts. Some have the gift of wisdom, others the gift of discernment , still others the gift of faith. Of all the spiritual gifts, there is only one that is promised to all. Not everyone is expected to have the gift of wisdom or discernment or even faith. There is only one gift of the Spirit that is promised to all, and it is the only gift that is in some way required of all. And that is love. That is the only spiritual gift that is given to everyone. And it is the only spiritual gift that we are all called upon to exhibit. Love is a gift of the Spirit that is promised to all because the very nature of God is love. Love is not just an attribute of God, but God’s very essence. We are promised the gift of love because God does not withhold God’s own self from us. If God’s gift of love is promised to all, so too all are called to reflect that gift of love. Indeed, the life of a community—if it is a community of two in marriage or a

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    community of many in a church—depends upon love for its very existence. A marriage can survive where only one has wisdom or courage, but a marriage cannot long survive where only one has love. Likewise, a church can get along just fine where only some are particularly gifted with faith or the ability to heal. But a church cannot long survive, and certainly cannot fulfill its calling, if only some exhibit the gift of love. Love is the gift that is promised to all, and it is the gift that is required of all. But how can one speak of “requiring” love? We cannot make ourselves feel a certain way about another person, because we cannot feel on command. And if we happen to feel lovingly toward someone at one moment, there is no guarantee that we will feel that same way about the person at another time. George S. Kaufman told Irving Berlin that the lyrics of his song “Always” were unrealistic. Instead of “I’ll be loving you, always,” Kaufman suggested, “I’ll be loving you, Thursday.” So how can we be required to exhibit the spiritual gift of love, when love is fickle and so clearly out of our control, not subject to the command of another or our own will? Because the love that Paul commends here is a particular kind of love. It isn’t the kind of love that we would recognize from the ways in which the word is commonly used, in popular songs and on greeting cards. This is not romantic love we’re talking about here or even brotherly-sisterly love, but the kind of love God exhibits. The love that Paul commends here is not an emotion, but a form of life that is characterized by self-giving—that is, a Christ-shaped life. This explains the otherwise strange fact that Paul can go on at length about the gift of love and never once speak of it as an emotion. Instead, here love is described as a way of being and acting. And that way of acting is not soft, sentimental, or in any way mushy. Rather, the love that Paul praises is strong enough and resilient enough that it does not need to assert itself, but rather is free to give of itself. Since such love is a form of life, a cruciform way of life, it is most appropriate to ask not “What does it feel like?” but rather “What does it look like?” That is, it is characterized by actions rather than emotions. What does this love look like? According to Paul, it sure doesn’t look like jealousy or boasting or arrogance, rudeness ,or resentment. It looks an awful lot like patience, like kindness, like endurance. Notice that in the marriage ceremony, we do not ask the bride and groom, “Do you love one another?” Rather, we ask, ” Will you love one another?” If the love we ask them to affirm were an emotion, we might expect the response, “How do I know if I’m going to love him? This is only Thursday!” But, here, as elsewhere, the Gospel seems remarkably uninterested in how we feel and is keenly interested in how we act. So when we ask the question, “Will you love this man? Will you love this woman?” we are not asking the couple to predict how they will feel. Rather, we are asking them to promise to act in a certain way. Will you act in a loving manner, no matter how you feel? Will you put aside boasting and arrogance and rudeness and practice instead acts of patience and kindness—not because you are feeling particularly loving , but perhaps in spite of how you feel in that moment? My father, drawing on his work as a minister, used to say, “I have concluded that there is one thing necessary for a marriage to succeed. Just one thing.” When I was younger, I used to dislike it when he would make sweeping statements like that. One thing? It can’t be as simple as one thing. And when I wouldn’t ask him what that one thing is, he would tell me anyway: “Emotional maturity,” he would say. “Both parties need to be emotionally mature. That’s the one thing necessary.” When I was

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    younger, I always found that entirely unsatisfying. What about compatibility? What about an ability to communicate? But now, many years later—now that I am about the age my father was when he would make statements like that—I think he was right. For a marriage to succeed, having compatible values helps. The ability to communicate is important. We could extend the list, but checking off everything on the completed list will not assure a successful marriage if the two parties lack emotional maturity. It takes adults, or people willing to become adults, or at least act like adults, for a marriage to succeed. And the same is true of other relationships as well. And what does “emotional maturity” look like? Well, it sure doesn’t look like jealousy or boasting or arrogance or rudeness or resentment. It looks an awful lot like patience, like kindness, like endurance. In other words, what my father called emotional maturity looks like Paul’s description of love—not an emotion, but a way of acting. It is love with its work clothes on. Consider that word “endure.” In the kind of love we are talking about here, endurance is promised and required as well. I really like the story about a couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary with a quiet dinner for two. The wife picks up her champagne glass, looks her beloved in the eyes, and says, “In spite of everything.” Saint Valentine would not approve, but Saint Paul would understand. After all, it was Paul who wrote, “Love bears all things… endures all things,” which is another way of saying that love endures because it puts up with a lot. And, again, that is not just true in marriage or other relationships between partners . It’s true in any relationship. A while back I was talking with someone who was reflecting on the challenge of relating on an ongoing basis with someone who is particularly difficult. She said, “It’s an endurance test. That’s what it is—it’s an endurance test.” Later I thought, “What a great description.” After all, “to endure” means two different things—to put up with a lot and to last. Two different meanings, and yet, in loving relationships, those two meanings are inextricably related. Love endures all things. That kind of enduring love does not come naturally to us. If you need any verification ofthat statement, try substituting your name for the word “love” in this passage: “Martin is patient and kind; Martin is not jealous or boastful; Martin is not arrogant or rude. Martin does not insist on his own way….” (Well, let’s just leave it at that, shall we? I think you get the idea. If you want a humbling experience, you can try that when you get home, using your own name.) And let me show you what I mean when I say that the love Paul describes here is a Christ-shaped love. Try substituting the name of Jesus for love in that passage and listen to how it sounds: “Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus is not jealous or boastful ; Jesus is not arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way; Jesus is not irritable or resentful; Jesus does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.” Now that substitution is quite different, isn’t it? Different and fitting. But the love of which Paul speaks, unlike romantic love, or a mother’s love for her children, does not come naturally to us. It is so clearly beyond us that we can only receive it as a gift from the one who knows how to love in this way, a gift from the one whose very nature is love. How we pass along that gift in our own lives is bound to be on a very human

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    scale. We will almost certainly express perfect love imperfectly. After all, as Paul puts it, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” That is, there will come a time when we will see one another as Christ sees us, face to face, with the kind of clarity that love permits. There will come a time, Paul affirms, when we will love one another in such a way, and it will come as naturally to us as it did to Christ. And in the meantime, there is plenty to do, certainly enough to keep us very busy, as we act out the love that we cannot yet fully claim as our own. It is always a good time to put on love’s work clothes.

  • The gardener

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    The Gardener

    Luke 12:54-56; 13:1-9

    Pete Peery

    Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, North Carolina

    Those Galileans Pilate slaughtered as they made their sacrifices at the Temple — those Jerusalemites upon whom that Tower of Siloam fell — they had it coming, didn’t they? They must have been terrible sinners. That is why they perished, isn’t it? That is what Jesus sensed some in the crowd listening to him were thinking. Such a primitive, unsophisticated way to think, we may say. Yet, what did we hear Pat Robertson say right after the terrible earthquake in Haiti? He said that the devastation in Port-au-Prince happened because 200 years ago Haitians, led by those who revived the indigenous practices of voodoo, revolted against the gift of Western Christian culture imposed on Haiti by colonial rulers from France. Right-wing religious nonsense, we say in response to Pat Robertson. Nonsense we would never affirm. Yet, in our own culture as we have endured this Great Recession, what do we murmur about those people who were living on credit, who wanted their own homes yet could not handle a conventional mortgage? We who have qualified for conventional mortgages, what do we say? Do we say they weren’t disciplined enough to live within their means? They assumed their incomes would grow and their house values would grow, so that when their mortgages were adjusted, they could easily handle the increased payments or sell their houses for a profit, didn’t they? What do we say? Is it, “They had it coming”? And our automobile executives who bet their companies on the huge profit margins of big SUV’s, whose sales were dependent on easy money and cheap gas rather than investing in developing more efficient cars, what do we say about them? They had it coming, didn’t they? How often as we look at others whose lives are being ruined do we come to the conclusion, that unlike us, they had it coming to them? It may be tragic. But they should have known. Jesus won’t go there. In fact, Jesus declares we may end up more like these people than we might imagine. For those Galileans Pilate slaughtered and the Jerusalemites trapped by that falling tower, Jesus declares, rather than being ones who had done something to bring on the disaster, were instead people caught by a cataclysmic change, be it the fickle rage of a tyrant or the shift in the plates of the earth. Cataclysmic change, that is what Jesus had been talking about to this crowd. Just before some in that crowd started telling him about the awful fate of those Galileans, Jesus had been telling them that the world as they knew it was coming to an end. God’s reign, which would upend the reign of every other regime, was breaking in like a thief in the night. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,” Jesus warned. So, Jesus was saying to them that it is useless to wonder about how those

    This sermon was preached March 4, 2010 at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC.

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    other people messed up and had it coming to them. Instead, it’s time to think about your own lives. Thinking about our own lives, that is something an old farmer suggested to his neighbors and friends when they sensed cataclysmic change was about to break in on them. The story of this farmer comes from someone who grew up in a particular country church down in Georgia. It was back during an evening service on a Sunday in October, 1938. The preacher was holding forth when a member named Sam burst into the service trembling with fear and excitement. Gasping for breath, he interrupted the preacher, shouting, “Martians are attacking the earth in spaceships! Some of ’em have already landed in New Jersey!” In the face of the stunned and starring eyes of the congregation, Sam stammered, “I s-s-swear. I h-h-heard it on the radio.” Of course, what S am had heard was that infamous broadcast of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater radio production of the War of the Worlds. But no one in that room knew that at the time. The preacher, not having a backup sermon in his hip pocket on interplanetary invasion, stood mute before his people. That is when the old farmer got up, gripped the pew in front of him and said, “I ‘speck what Sam says ain’t completely true. But if it is true, we’re in the right place here in church. So let’s go on with the meetin’.” Indeed, in that farmer’s mind, if the end of the world as he knew it was at hand, it would be better to be in church praising God than out in the pasture shooting buckshot at the sky. The way Jesus tells it, those in the crowd around him, which includes you and me this day, were not nearly as savvy as that old farmer in being alert to the signs of the times, and in light of those signs, in choosing what matters and what doesn’t matter. As one interpreter of this text points out, Jesus implies, “Most of us are better at meteorology than at theology.” “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘it is going to rain’ and so it happens You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” Cataclysmic change is coming. God’s reign is breaking in, Jesus has been saying. The way of orienting life as it has been in the old regime will no longer work. The commands of that old regime are null and void. The commands of the new regime —God’s regime — are now in place. Another biblical scholar notes that we don’t have the choice of living under commands or living free from commands. We only have the choice of whose commands we are to live under. And as God’s reign breaks in, Jesus urges us to turn around and live now under God’s commands. “Sell your possessions, and give alms,” he says. “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you . . . . Do good , and lend, expecting nothing in return. . . . Be merciful . . . . Do not judge . . . . Forgive . . . . Give . . . .” Those are not quite the commands for living the good life according to the rules of the game in the regime of this present age, are they? Yet, because God’s reign is coming, Jesus is saying, if you do not turn around, if you do not change your whole way of thinking, your whole orientation in life, if you do not let go of the way of living by the rules of the old regime and chose to live by the ways of God’s regime,

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    your lives will be ruined. You will miss out on life. The issue is not that those Galileans or those folk in Jerusalem got what was coming to them. The issue is you and me. Indeed, if those Galileans had known that Pilate was going to strike out at worshipers at the Temple that day, if those folk in Jerusalem had known that the Tower was about to fall, they would have chosen to turn around and live that day in a different way! If those folk in Port-au-Prince had known what was coming, they may have chosen to turn around and fled the city for the safety of the countryside. If those adjustable rate mortgage holders had known the economy was going to crash and that their incomes would not grow, but shrink, and that there would be no market for their houses, they may have chosen to turn around and not taken on such debt, but rented instead. “What is wrong with you?” Jesus is saying. “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘it is going to rain,’ and so it happens. . . . You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” Perhaps those Galileans, caught in the cataclysmic change in Pilate’s mood, or those Jerusalemites, crushed in the sudden shift in the plates of the earth, were given no sign of the coming change. But Jesus is telling that crowd — and us — that the sign of the shifting of the age is clearly present for us. So what then is the sign that regime change is about to happen, that the old way of living under the old standards of life will lead to ruin, that for life to be full and fruitful, a whole new orientation of living is essential? Jesus tells us. That sign is that gardener tending that fruitless fig tree. That sign is that gardener who pleads with the vineyard owner to spare the tree for one more year. That sign is that gardener who is determined to disturb that tree, to dig around its roots, to put manure, compost, around it. “You know how to watch for changes in the weather,” Jesus says. “Why can’t you notice the sign that a change in regimes is happening?” “I’m here, tending you, digging at you, disturbing your roots.” “I’m here, pouring out myself for you, yes, even to the point of being killed, becoming compost, for the sake of nurturing life, fruitful life in you.” Even though we have been sterile creatures, living for ourselves as this present age continues to tell us to do. Even though we have been sucking up the nutrients of the earth to satisfy our insatiable hungers and have given little back. Even though any wise vineyard owner would cut us down, Jesus has not given up on us. Instead, he continues to mess with our lives so that we will bear fruit and not endure ruin when regime change happens, when God’s reign breaks in. A renowned pastoral theologian used to tell about the state mental hospital where truly hopeless cases were relegated to a back ward. Psychiatrists and other medical staff avoided this ward, making only the bare minimum of calls and writing off the patients there as unsalvageable. Then a women’s group from a local church began, as a matter of sheer care and compassion, to visit patients in the hospital. No one bothered to tell these women that the patients in the back ward were hopeless, so they visited them as well. They brought them flowers, fresh baked cookies, prayer, cheerfulness, mercy. Soon, some of the patients began to respond, a few of them even becoming healthy enough to move to other wards. At one level it was merely a church group doing what church groups do. At a deeper level, was it a sign of the shift of time, the inbreaking of God’s regime?

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    Do you sense that the Crucified and Risen Jesus is still messing with you? Do you notice that the Body of Christ, yes, even this expression of it here, has not given up on you even as most of the time you spend your energy on taking care of “Number One” — yourself? At this table is the Risen Christ still providing a place for you, welcoming you here as a child at home? Is he still feeding you with finest wheat, with the bread of life? Is he still troubling you with his word, a word that calls into question your whole way of living? Is he still pouring himself out for you, dying for you, becoming compost for you so that you might become fruitful? “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees …,” John the Baptist declared to the fruitless people all around him. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” “No!” says Jesus. “The Spirit of the Lord… has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. . . to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” “Let’s give this hopeless case one more year.” Over and over again Jesus makes that plea for us as he pours himself out to stir us to fruitful life. That patient, attentive Gardener. His presence — right here in the Church —the Body of Christ in this world, is the sign that cataclysmic change is breaking in, that God’s reign is at hand. So why are we still spending money and labor and life on that which is not bread, on that which does not satisfy? Can we not interpret the signs of the time? Repent — turn around — change your whole orientation in living. For the Kingdom of God is at hand.

    Notes 1 Luke 12:35.

    2 Told by Thomas G. Long, “Breaking and Entering,” The Christian Century (March 7,2001): 11.

    3 Ibid.

    4 Luke 12:54-56.

    5 Walter Brueggemann, “Countering Pharaoh’s Production-Consumption Society Today,” livingthequestions .com, LLC, 2006, Session 1. 6 Luke 12:33-34.

    7 Luke 6:27-38.

    8 Thomas G. Long, “Breaking and Entering,” The Christian Century (March 7,2001): 11.

    9 Luke 3:9.

    1 0 Luke 4:18-19.

  • The wonder of it all: faith, creation, and wisdom

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    The Wonder of It All: Faith, Creation, and Wisdom

    William P. Brown

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders . Henry Thoreau1

    The German-born British astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822) had sound advice for his son John, who was struggling to discern what to do with his life in Cambridge:

    A clergyman … has time for the attainment of the more elegant branches of literature, for poetry, for music, for drawing, for natural history … for mathematics, for astronomy, for metaphysics, and for being an author upon any one subject in which . . . [he is] qualified to excel.2

    There was a day when pastors had the time and opportunity to excel in the “more elegant branches” of study, including the scientific. (Note that no mention is made of theology!) It is hard to imagine that the ordained ministry was once considered a calling that allowed one to pursue other branches of learning, including the natural sciences. How strange that seems in our current cultural climate, which holds faith and science either at arm’s length or against each other’s throat. Not so in the past. John Wesley himself found the study of science (a.k.a. “natural philosophy”) to be edifying for ministry. He chided young pastors with the following words:

    Do I understand natural philosophy? If I have not gone deep therein, have I digested the general grounds of it? Have I mastered Gravesande, Keill, Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, with his “Theory of Light and Colours”? . .. If I have not gone thus far, if I am such a novice still, what have I been about ever since I came from school?3

    Such an admonishment seems to come from another world and time, for another world and time. Would that pastors today had the leisure to study the natural world, to understand something of God’s wondrous creation through the lens of science, let alone their own eyes! The only person I know who tried to do this while serving as pastor suffered a rather limited tenure in his first and only call to a congregation.4 (He also happens to be a contributor to this journal issue.) Largely unrecognized by both the “new atheists” and today’s fundamentalists is the fact that many scientific discoveries of the past were made by persons of deep faith; they were driven by the desire to know the secrets of nature and, no less, the mind of God. Even Charles Darwin was considering the ministry as he boarded the H.M.S. Beagle to begin a journey that would point him in another vocational direction .

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    To state the obvious, continuing education for pastors today is largely devoted to church growth and conflict resolution, to lectionary preaching and crisis counseling . And for good reason. One would be hard pressed to find classes that taught evolutionary biology to pastors, or cosmology to Christian educators, or ecology to elders. Quantum mechanics for seminarians? How absurd! What have they to do with building up the body of Christ? There was a time when leaders and teachers of the church were avidly keeping up with the latest scientific discovery.. .or making their own. Richard Holmes, in his magisterial work, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, documents the so-called second scientific revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which the scientific method and the poetic imagination briefly converged. Here was a time when scientists reveled in poetry and spirituality, and poets were enamored with the discoveries of science. It was a time in which even pastors explored nature through the ever-sharpening lens of science. That age now seems irretrievably lost: fundamentalists, both religious and scientific, have monopolized the dialogue, effectively destroying it.

    Lost in Wonder It is worth noting that while leisure provided the means, it was not the driving force for theological inquiry of the natural world in that bygone era. It was wonder. In the famous hymn of Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” the final verse concludes with the arresting phrase “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” My guess is that Wesley saw “wonder, love, and praise” as an interconnected whole. Today, however, losing wonder seems more the norm, and with it love and praise. The discourse of wonder has become riddled with the rhetoric of adversity. In this age of culture wars, political incivility, racial and religious strife, economic malaise, not to mention the “the long emergency” that is now upon us,5 fear and fatigue have all but displaced love and wonder. What constitutes a bona fide experience of wonder? Something that takes your breath away and at the same time compels you to cry out in joy: a mixture of fear and fascination. Such is its paradox: wonder instills a reverent, if not fearful, receptivity toward the world and God even as it quickens the eros of inquiry, a love of knowing God and the world.6 In the throe of wonder, epistemological barriers break down, and an awareness of deep connectedness emerges. Wonder, as certain ethicists have argued, is also fundamental to moral formation. Such is its power: wonder engenders wondering, which can lead to wisdom. Postmodern philosopher Jerome Miller illustrates the phenomenology of wonder by describing the archetypal childhood experience of standing before a door that leads into a secret room. The child pauses while considering whether to flee or to turn the latch. In fear, the child turns back. In awe, the child is mesmerized, lingering at the door, frozen in contemplation. In wonder, the child ventures to reach out and gingerly grasp the latch to pass through the threshold and behold what lies on the other side.7 Wunder, in other words, has its Wanderlust. The movement from fear to enchantment, from awe to joy, marks wonder’s journey toward the unknown, an unknown that ultimately attracts rather than repels. Wonder prompts an awareness

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    of worlds beyond one’s own; it is an awakening of sorts. Theologically, wonder of­ fers an intimation of holiness. 8 “I’m a scientist,” Barbara Kingsolver declares, “who

    thinks it wise to enter the doors of creation not with a lion tamer’s whip and chair, but with the reverence humankind has traditionally summoned for entering places of worship: a temple, a mosque, or a cathedral. A sacred grove, as ancient as time.” Karl Barth once said, “The miracle is not that there is a God. The miracle is that there is a world.” 10 God could have easily chosen not to create a world. Nowhere

    does the Bible say that God was in need of a world, that God was somehow lonely and created a world to assuage an acute case of divine solitude. Why God created a world is itself a mystery. The world itself is a wonder: it will always be more than what we make of it or know of it. 11 Marvelously “weird” is how physicist Brian

    Greene describes the world according to science. 12 Biologist Ursula Goodenough

    talks of the “sacred depths of nature.” 13 “Too wonderful” is what the biblical sage

    says about creation (Proverbs 30:18-19). The psalmist trembles in awe before the vastness of the universe (Psalm 8:3-4). What do they all have in common? I wonder. Though separated by over two and a half millennia, the authors of ancient Scripture and the scientists of today find themselves caught up in a world of abiding wonder, of mystery and awe. Howard Smith, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for As­ trophysics and a practicing Jew, said this, “I’m religious not because I’m ignorant. I’m religious because I’m in awe.” 14 Awe or wonder. That, I believe, is what most

    strongly links science and faith. Wonder is built into our very nature. The capacity to wonder may very well be “the hallmark of our species,” according to Melvin Konner, bioanthropologist at Emory University. 15 Perhaps, then, Homo sapiens, or the “wise human,” is too

    self-congratulatory a classification for us. But there is no doubt that we are Homo admirons (the “wondering human”). Not only do we have χ and y chromosomes to determine our genders, but we also have what could be called the “why chromosome” to determine our humanity, the capacity to marvel over the fact that something exists at all, rather than nothing. The wonder of it all prompts one—anyone—to wonder about it all. Wonder is what drives the best of science; it is also, I’m convinced, what brings out the best in faith. “Everyone is naturally born a scientist,” admits astrobiologist Chris Impey. 16 And we can no more deny that of our ancestors in the

    faith than we can deny that of ourselves. Together, the ancient cosmogonist of the book of Genesis and the modern cosmologist of the Big Bang, the biblical sage and the urbane biologist, form what I call a “cohort of wonder.” Sadly, the cohort is dissolving. Is science really hell-bent on eroding humanity’s nobility and eliminating all sense of mystery? Not the science I know. Is religion simply an excuse to wallow in human pretension? Not the faith I know. What if invoking God was a way of acknowledging the wondrous intelligibility of creation? What if science informed and enabled persons of faith to become more trustworthy “stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 4:1)? The faith I know does not keep believers on a leash to prevent them from broadening their awareness of the world. Barbara Brown Taylor puts it well: “[F]aith in an incarnational God will not allow us to ignore the physical world, nor any of its nuances.” 17 I would press this observation

    even further. Faith in an incarnational God calls us to know and honor the physical, fleshy world, whose “nuances” are its wondrous workings: its delicate balances and indomitable dynamics, its life-sustaining regularities and surprising anomalies, its

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    remarkable intelligibility and bewildering complexity, its order and its chaos. Such is the World made flesh, and faith in the Word made flesh acknowledges that the very forces that produced me also produced microbes, bees, and manatees. We are all linked together by the common thread of life, DNA, or as Genesis 2 puts it: the “dust of the ground,” the adamah. Whatever name you give it, the biologist’s dictum remains correct: “I link, therefore I am.” Science has shown just how wondrously interconnected all creation is. As much as we cannot ignore the incarnate God, we cannot dismiss the incarnate world revealed by science. Theologically, there is no other option: faith in such a God calls people of faith to understand and honor creation, the world that God has not only deemed “very good” (Genesis 1:31) but also saw fit to inhabit (John 1:10-14). In Christ the God in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) has all to do with the world in which we live and move and have our being. The Word made flesh is intimately bound to the World made flesh. And that world—our world, God’s world—is a world of wonder.

    Wonder and Wisdom Wonder wears many faces. There is what philosopher Sam Keen calls the primal sense of wonder, which marvels at the fact that “the very existence of the world seems strange and miraculous, as if its very being were a triumph over nothingness.”18 But there is also the kind of wonder that arises from a particular encounter with something or someone that captivates our attention and stirs our imagination: a stand of giant redwoods, a baby’s first smile, the rosy-fingered dawn. Such wonders are not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be pondered and enjoyed. Such wonder does not elicit fear or terror, but joy and discernment; it is something to get lost in. The great Catholic biblical scholar Roland Murphy was once asked of his favorite passage in the Bible. He was quick to draw from Proverbs, itself a book of wonder and wisdom.

    Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a young woman.19 (30:18-19)

    According to this numerical proverb, there is nothing like ships, snakes, and sex to prompt a sense of wonder. Certain things are wonderful, indeed “too wonderful,” the ancient sage admits, because they propel us headlong into the realm of the unknown, to the very limits of human understanding. And yet the experience of wonder also awakens within us the desire to know, to inquire and understand. To marvel at the “way of the eagle in the sky” and that of “the snake on a rock” awakens within us the desire to know more about the eagle (or vulture—same word in Hebrew) and the snake, their habits and habitats, their means of motion. The image may also prompt one to wonder what it is like to glide, nearly motionless, upon updrafts of warm air, scanning the landscape with near telescopic vision, or to slither silently upon the smooth surface of a rock under the warm sun. Wonder is both an enlivening response to something new or unexpected and a

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    motivating force for ongoing inquiry. While wonder is a deeply felt emotion that involves “higher-order” cognitive activity, intimations of wonder can also be found in nonhuman species, particularly in primates, as evidenced in their curiosity, explorative behavior, and what appears to be contemplation before certain kinds of novelty, such as sunsets and, yes, snakes!20 Wonder is what unites the empiricist and the “contemplator ,” the scientist and the believer, children and adults.21 It may also prove to be a profound link to our evolutionary cousins. As children, we were born into wonder. Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, beautifully states,

    A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement . It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.22

    I submit that the crisis of creation—its abuse and degradation—stems in part from a crisis of wonder, of wonder about God’s good creation, of wonder about God in creation. We should be “lost in wonder,” as the hymn says, not losing wonder. Wonder, moreover, cultivates wisdom. It is the soil in which wisdom grows and flourishes.23 Without wonder, wisdom withers; its journey is cut short. It is high time to plant seeds of wonder in a climate that is far too polarized. It is high time that we, like the sages and psalmists of old, like the clergy of a time now lost, “go wild” and learn something about God’s creation in all its extravagant, intricate, brutal, wondrous beauty, its life-sustaining ways and its fragile resilience, its ecology as well as its ontology. Only then may the wonder of an incarnational faith be fully recovered. It is high time, in other words, that we find out what in the world God has gotten herself into. And it is also high time that we find out about the mess we have gotten ourselves into. It’s time to venture forth as trustworthy and responsible “stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2), to reach out and turn the latch that opens the door into a world of wonder and awe, of joy and justice, of captivation and creation care, knowing that Christ stands on the other side, saying, “Behold! I stand at the door and knock; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Revelation 3:20). Let the feast of wonder begin.

    Notes 1 Henry David Thoreau, The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings, ed. Bradley P. Dean (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), xvii. 2 Quoted in Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How The Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 388. 3 Quoted in Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 51-52. 4 Christopher J. Preston, Saving Creation: Nature and Faith in the Life of Holmes Rolston HI (San

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    Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2009), 55-85. 5 That is, a time plagued with mounting ecological stress. See James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), esp. 147-234. 6 The felicitous phrase “eros of inquiry” comes from Jerome A. Miller, In the Throe of Wonder: Intima­ tions of the Sacred in a Post-Modern World (New York: SUNY, 1992), 16 md passim. 7 Ibid., 33-36. 8 As Rudolf Otto famously described holiness as mysterium tremendum, which includes an element of fascination. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey [New York: Oxford University Press, 1958], esp. 12-40. 9 Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder: Essays (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 108. 10 Quoted in Elizabeth Achtemeier, Nature, Godt and Pulpit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 40. 11 The following discussion is drawn in part from William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4-7. 12 Brian R. Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 11. 13 Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 14 Quoted in the conference “Re-Envisioning the Science and Religion Dialogue” (16 June 2010) of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) of AAAS accessed at http://www.aaas.org/spp/ dser/02 Events/Lectures/2010/welcome/welcome .shtml. 15 Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit (2 nd ed.; New York:

    Henry Holt, 2002), 488. 16 Chris Impey, The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe (New York: Random House, 2007), 10. 17 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 2000), 15. 18 Sam Keen, Apology for Wonder (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 22. 19 Adapted from the NRSV, which lamentably translates the last two words as “girl” (Hebrew (almah).

    20 See James B. Harrod, “Appendices for Chimpanzee Spirituality: A Concise Synthesis of the Lit­ erature,” posted December 26, 2009 at http://www.originsnet.org/chimpspiritdatabase.pdf. especially pp 8-9. See also the blog entry by Marc Bekoff, “Do Animals Have Spiritual Experiences? Yes, They Do,” Psychology Today (30 November, 2009) at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions /200911/do-animals-have-spiritual-experiences-yes-they-do. See also Jane Goodall, “Primate Spirituality,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, ed. Β. Taylor (New York: Thoemmes Con­ tinuum, 2005), 1303-1306. 21 Konner, The Tangled Wing, 486. 22 Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 54. 23 Ibid., 56.

  • Preaching on the wonder of creation

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    Preaching on the Wonder of Creation

    Holmes Rolston, III

    Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado

    A sermon on the wonders of creation? “But I don’t know if I believe in creation any more, since I’ve been studying evolution in school.” “Well, you do still think that Earth is a wonderland, don’t you? Is there anything you have learned in your biology class that has talked you out of that?” The college student home for Easter puzzles a moment. “Not really. You know, I was wondering during the last lecture before I left. Wow! How is it that DNA has generated such a wealth of biodiversity on Earth?” Nature on Earth has spun quite a story, going from zero through several billion species, evolving microbes into persons. M. J. Benton concludes: “Analysis of the fossil record of microbes, algae, fungi, protists, plants, and animals shows that the diversity of both marine and continental life increased exponentially since the end of the Precambrian.”1 Andrew H. Knoll celebrates “Earth’s immense evolutionary epic”: “The scientific account of life’s long history abounds in both narrative verve and mystery.”2

    1. Wonderland Earth The Genesis account is a kind of parable of a good earth, a garden earth abounding in creative genesis. Abiologist realizes that prescientific peoples expressed themselves in such stories. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1, NRS V). This Wind of God inspires the animated Earth, and “the earth produces of itself (Mark 4:28; Greek: “automatically”). The Earth arising from a formless void, inspired by a command to bring forth living creatures, generated in the seas, filling the land, multiplying and filling the Earth, eventuating in the appearance of humans, made of dust and yet remarkably special-all this is rather congenial with the evolutionary genesis. Right at the beginning of the Bible, right at the creation, God is interested in sun, moon, stars, birds, fish, animals—before humans are even on earth. The days of creation are a series of divine imperatives, not so much fiats as commissions: “Let the earth put forth vegetation.” “Let the earth bring forth living things according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:11,24). And that is what happened. The Hebrews could already see that on their landscapes, but scientific natural history has greatly enlarged this extravaganza of life, always wonderful even when (by human standards) it is sometimes weird. There are organisms called vestimentiferans that live at the bottom of the ocean, drawing their life energy not from the sun but from thermal vents. Ptillid beetles, about the size of a period on this page, have six legs, wings, a nervous system, a digestive tract, reproductive organs. Whales have hearts large enough to drive small cars inside them. There are more organisms living in your body than there are persons living on Earth. By recent estimates, there may be more forms of life living underground than above. There are wonders in the skies above, and science opens those up, far exceed-

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    ing anything that the biblical authors could have imagined. Europa, Jupiter’s largest moon, is in a gravitational tug of war of incredible dimensions, pulled in different directions by Jupiter and by the planet’s other moons. This flexes the brittle outer surface into a criss-cross of dynamically changing straight and curved ridges, valleys , cracks, with bands of ice, generating heat that may melt lakes or oceans below. Saturn’s little satellite Enceladus has so little gravity and orbits so deeply in Saturn’s powerful gravity that there results a huge plume of ice-laden water that spouts from an overheated south pole region. Both these moons are like no place else in our solar system, perhaps like no place else in the universe. The principal wonder of our solar system, indeed the principal wonder of our universe, so far as we know, is this wonderland Earth. A good planet is hard to find. Earth is something of an anomaly. Earth has a rather good star, the sun, which is stable, solitary, and situated about 28,000 light years from the center of our galaxy, in a relatively quiet part of the galaxy, about halfway between the quite active middle and the active outer parts of the galaxy. Deadly radiation from supernovae explosions or bursts of intense X-ray and ultraviolet radiation are unlikely. The solar neighborhood does have a relatively high abundance of the heavier elements produced from supernovae, all those heavier than hydrogen and helium. Located at a felicitous distance from the sun, Earth has huge amounts of liquid water, seven oceans covering about three-quarters of its surface. Aqua would have been a better name than Earth. On Earth there is atmosphere, a suitable mix of elements, compounds, minerals, and an ample supply of energy. Radioactivity deep within the Earth produces enough heat to keep the tectonic plates of its crust constantly mobile in counteraction with erosional forces, and the interplay of such forces generates and regenerates landscapes and seas—mountains, canyons, rivers, plains, islands, volcanoes, estuaries, continental shelves. Earth’s moon produces tides, significant in the evolution of life. “It appears that Earth got it just right,” conclude Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee.3 All this results in an anomalous, fortuitously good location—though cosmologists and biologists still find it hard to say whether the Earth is lucky, likely, or inevitable. William C. Berger does call Earth a “perfect planet.” “I believe we can all agree that we live on a glorious planet, and that our intellectual achievements have been quite amazing.”4 Stephen Jay Gould finds Earth the scene of “wonderful life.”5

    2. Beasts and Swarming Things Biblical faith has the conviction that species originate in God’s wish. God ordered earth to “bring forth swarms of living creatures” (Genesis 1:20). “Swarms” is the Hebrew word for biodiversity! Adam’s first job was, we might say, a taxonomy project, naming the animals. Let the earth bring forth biodiversity. Bible writers are principally concerned with the culture that Israel established on their promised land, but they regularly appreciate the wild nature that surrounds them on their landscape.

    Praise the Lord from the earth you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! (Psalm 148:7-9)

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    Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunder­ bolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man; to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass? (Job 38:25-27)

    God not only sends rain on the just and the unjust; God sends rain to satisfy wildlands . God not only blesses humans; God blesses the desolate wastes. These fierce landscapes, sometimes supposed to be ungodly places, are godly after all. Under God, wild asses, eagles, goats, lions, badgers (conies) are born free.

    Who has let the wild ass go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass, to whom I have given the steppe for his home, and the salt land for his dwelling place? He scorns the tumult of the city; he hears not the shouts of the driver. He ranges the mountain as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing. (Job 39:5-8)

    Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home in the fastness of the rocky crag. Thence he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it afar. His young ones suck up blood; and where the slain are, there is he…. Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it. (Job 39:26-40.2)

    The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the badgers…. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God… .0 Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy creatures. (Psalm 104:18-24)

    The Bible writers know quite a menagerie: In wilderness deserts are “fiery serpents and scorpions” (Deuteronomy 8:15; Numbers 21:6), “jackals,” “hyenas,” “owls,” “kites,” “ravens,” “porcupines,” “ostriches, “wild goats (satyrs),” “wild beasts” (Isaiah 34). That includes those “creeping things” for which God is praised (Psalm 148:7-9). Here we might recall the biologist J.Β .S. Haidane’s famous remark (perhaps apocryphal) when asked by theologians what he had learned about the Creator from studying creation in biology, that God had “an inordinate fondness for beetles .” 6 Nor

    does God forget the flora: “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly; the cedars of Lebanon which he planted” (Psalm 104:16). We know that biodiversity today much better than did they, but we may well sup­ pose that Bible writers would only have rejoiced in this fuller creation. There are so many species on Earth that scientists in fact do not know how many. Not long ago, we thought there were about three million, with about half these identified, 4100 spe­ cies of mammals, 8700 birds, 8300 reptiles, 3,000 amphibians, 23,000 fishes, 800,000 insects, over 300,000 green plants and fungi, and many thousands of protozoans. Over recent decades, estimates have been pushed steadily upward, owing to new discoveries and better taxonomy. Now estimates range from ten to a hundred million. Many of these unknowns are invertebrates, but we are still enlarging the array of vertebrates,

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    as well as plants. In 2002 biologists in New Guinea Foja Mountains found over forty new species, including several new birds and a new echidna. Systematists all agree that there are more species which scientists have yet to describe than those already described. If diversity of life is any indicator, this is more of a wonderland Earth than we ever thought before.

    3. Land of Promise, Planet with Promise Loving the land is a central theme of the Hebrew Bible. Biblical faith is from the start a landed faith. Israel is given their “promised land” — “a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8; Deuteronomy 27:3). The land is watched over by God’s care (Deuteronomy 11:11-12). Walter Brueggemann takes “land as a prism for biblical faith.” “Land is a central, if not the central theme of biblical faith.”7 “The land” is both geographical and symbolic. Yearning for a sense of place is a perennial human longing, of belonging to a community emplaced on landscape; and Israel’s sense of living on a land given by God, of human placement on the earth, can yet speak to the landlessness, and lostness, of modern persons. All peoples need a sense of “my country,” of their social communities in place on a sustaining landscape they possess in care and in love. Israel’s promised land is their corner of a larger garden earth on which humankind (symbolized in Adam and Eve) have been placed, in primordial time. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). By this account humans are “Earth-gardeners.” The apex of the creation is man and woman, made of mud, made in the image of God, incarnate and set on their garden earth. Humans prove to be the great challenge to God, the contentious creature, but the world, and their promised land, is habitat not only for humans but for the myriads of creatures—from “great sea monsters” to “birds,” “beasts,” and “creeping things”—which, repeatedly, God finds “good” and bids them to “be fruitful and multiply and fill” the waters, the earth, the skies (Genesis 1:20-22). The fauna is included within the Hebrew covenant. The covenant renewed in the days of Noah- -after a natural disaster with divine provision for saving the wild creatures-is quite specific about this:

    Behold I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you. (Genesis 9:5)

    God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:12-13)

    “Keep them alive with you” (Genesis 6:19). That certainly sounds like God loves wild nature. To use modern terms, the covenant was both ecumenical and ecological . In theocratic Israel, animals belonged to God, as indeed did all property. “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine” (Psalm 50:10-11). The flood story, in fact, seems by our contemporary standards, a little inhumane: God drowns the

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    human world, but saves the beasts. That aside, God seems much concerned that the biological wonders of the Promised Land continue. Both Judaism and Christianity, emerging from Judaism, became more universalist and less land-based. In the Diaspora, the Jews were a people without a country; and, though this was widely regarded as tragic, Judaism remains a faith that transcends residence in Palestine. Christianity has often been regarded as more spiritual and less material, more universal and less provincial than its parental Judaism. Both these movements out of a geographically particular promised land, which are sometimes thought to make the land irrelevant to faith, can as well make every people residents of a divinely given landscape. In that sense, these faiths may have been mistaken when they became uprooted from encounters with the land. Rather, Christians and Jews ought to have re-rooted in whatever the landscapes of their residence. In this sense, the Jewish vision of a promised land is inclusive, not exclusive. The American landscape with its purple mountains’ majesties, fruited plains, its fauna and flora from sea to shining sea is divinely created, no less than Canaan from the Negev to Mount Hermon. John Muir, recalling the Psalmist, sings: “The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted.”8 Landscapes around the globe, east and west, north and south, on six continents (though not the seventh, which has its own distinctive wonders) have proved homelands that peoples can come to cherish and on which they can flourish. Viewing Earthrise from the moon, the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, was entranced:

    Suddenly from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth … home.

    Mitchell continued, “My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.”9 The astronaut Michael Collins recalled being earthstruck: “Earth is to be treasured and nurtured, something precious that must endure.”10 The evolution of rocks into dirt into fauna and flora is one of the great surprises of natural history, one of the rarest events in the astronomical universe. Earth is all dirt, we humans too arise up from the humus, and we find revealed what dirt can do when it is self-organizing under suitable conditions. This is pretty spectacular dirt. Really, the story is little short of a series of “miracles,” wondrous, fortuitous events, unfolding of potential; and when Earth’s most complex product, Homo sapiens, becomes intelligent enough to reflect over this cosmic wonderland, everyone is left stuttering about the mixtures of accident and necessity out of which we have evolved. For some the black mystery will be numinous and signal transcendence; for some the mystery may be impenetrable. Perhaps we do not have to have all the cosmological answers. Meanwhile, nobody has much doubt that this is a precious place, a pearl in a sea of black mystery. Even Edward O. Wilson, a secular humanist, ever insistent that he can find no divinity in, with, or under nature, still exclaims: “The biospheric membrane that covers the Earth, and you and me, …is the miracle we have been given.”11

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    We can, if we insist on being human-centered, say that it is all valueless except as our human resource. God gave us a promised land, this Earth, to drip milk and honey into our mouths. But we will not be valuing Earth objectively until we appreciate this marvelous natural history. This really is a superb planet. Ancient Palestine was a promised land. Today and for the century hence, the call is to see Earth as a planet with promise, destined for abundant life.

    4. Nature as Grace: The Awe-full Sublime Nature encountered in awe, wildlands, like sea and sky, invite transcending the human world and experiencing a comprehensive, embracing realm. Forests can serve as a more provocative, perennial signature of time and eternity than many of the traditional , often outworn, symbols devised by the churches. Mountaintop experiences, the wind in the pines, a howling storm, a quiet snowfall in wintry woods, solitude in a grove of towering spruce, an overflight of honking geese—these generate “a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused … a motion and spirit that impels … and rolls through all things. Therefore I am still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains.”12 One place biology and religion have increasingly joined in recent years is in admiration for this marvelous planet that we inhabit. That respect sooner or later passes over to a reverence. No other species can be either responsible for or religious toward this planet, but Homo sapiens reaches a responsibility that assumes spiritual dimensions. In a planetary, environmental age, spirituality requires combining nature and grace at new levels of insight and intensity. Nature is grace, whatever more grace may also be. Nature is sometimes said to be indifferent to life, and the evolutionary processes may be said to be blind. But that cannot be the whole truth on an Earth that has been speciating for three and a half billion years, going from zero to some ten or more million species today, passing through a billion (or more) species en route. The geophysical laws, the evolutionary and ecological history, the creativity within the natural system we inherit, and the values these generate, are, at least phenomenally, the ground of our being, not just the ground under our feet. Theologians may wish to demur that noumenally, God is the ground of being, but “ground” is an earthy enough word to symbolize this dimension of Awe-full depth where nature becomes charged with the numinous. When Earth is encountered as archetype, as spontaneously self-organizing, as generator of life, not merely as resource, but as Source of being, the natural world starts to become a sacrament of something beyond. The deep woods has a way of spontaneously reenchanting itself. Forests are not haunted, but that does not mean that there is nothing haunting about forests. Perhaps the supernatural is gone, but here the natural can be supercharged with mystery. Science removes the little mysteries (how acorns make oaks which make acorns) to replace them with bigger ones (how and why the acorn-oak-acorn loop got established in the first place). Thanks to the biochemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, botanists, ecologists, forest scientists, we know how this green world works. But is this an account that de-mystifies what is going on? Moses thought that the burning bush, not consumed, was quite a miracle. We hardly believe any more in that sort of supernatural miracle; science has made such stories incredible. What has it left instead? Forests perpetu-

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    ally perishing, perpetually renewed for millennia. A self-organizing photosynthesis driving a life synthesis that has burned for a billion years, life as a strange fire that outlasts the sticks that feed it. This is, one could say, rather spirited behavior on the part of secular matter, “spirited ” in the animated sense, in the root sense of a “breath” or “wind” that energizes this mysterious, vital metabolism. These bushes in the Sinai desert, these cedars of Lebanon, these forests across America, the best God ever planted-all such woody flora are hardly phenomena less marvelous even if we no longer want to say that this is miraculous. Indeed, in the original sense of “miracle”-a wondrous event, without regard to the question whether natural or supernatural-the phenomenon of photosynthesis with the continuing floral life it supports is the secular equivalent of the burning bush. The bush that Moses watched was an individual in a species line that had perpetuated itself for millennia, coping by the coding in its DNA, fueled by the sun, using cytochrome c molecules several billion years old, and surviving without being consumed. Loren Eiseley, surveying evolutionary history, exclaims, “Nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness.”13 Ernst Mayr, one of the most celebrated biologists of the last century, impressed by the creativity in natural history, says, “Virtually all biologists are religious, in the deeper sense of this word, even though it may be a religion without revelation….The unknown and maybe unknowable instills in us a sense of humility and awe.”14 The sublime is never really far from the religious, since the sublime takes us to the limits of our understanding, and we stand in awe at the given, the gift that is nature. Let’s continue the conversation with which we began: “You do think Earth is a wonderland, don’t you?” “Yes, indeed, generating teeming billions of creatures!” “And how many of those billions of creatures can wonder at the wonderland Earth they inhabit?” “Well, I suppose those of only one kind: Homo sapiens, the wise species .” There is no wonder present apart from the human coming, since we do not believe that Rhododendron shrubs or foxes have the capacity for such wonder. Still, that at which we wonder is out there; we can see it. “If that’s true, if only one species can see what is wonderful out there, then that one ought to, don’t you think?” Earth, a wonderland, does have a remarkable scribe who can record the beauty, the fascination, and the mystery. That is beginning to sound like an imperative to preach the wonders of creation.

    Notes 1. M. J. Benton, “Diversification and Extinction in the History of Life,” Science 268 (7 April 1995): 52-58. 2. Andrew H. Knoll, Andrew H., Life on a Young Planet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), xi. 3. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus; Springer-Verlag, 2000), 265. 4. William C. Berger, Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 3. 5. Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York: Norton , 1989). 6. Recalled in G. Evelyn Hutchinson, “Homage to Santa Rosalia, or Why Are There so Many Kinds of Animals,” American Naturalist 93 (1959): 145-159. 7. Walter Brueggemann, The Land (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 3.

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    8. John Muir, Our National Parks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), 331; Psalm 104.16. 9. Edgar Mitchell, quoted in Kevin W. Kelley, ed., The Home Planet (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988), 42-45. 10. Michael Collins, “Foreword,” in Roy A. Gallant, Our Universe (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1980), 6. 11. Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 21. 12. William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798). 13. Loren Eiseley, The Firmament of Time (New York: Atheneum, 1960), 171. 14. Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Un iversity Press, Belnap Press, 1982), 81.

  • Loving God with all our minds: a reminder for preachers

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    Loving God with All Our Minds:

    A Reminder for Preachers

    Robert E. Dunham

    University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

    Passion Disconnected from Mindfulness Recently, while flipping through the pages of some old magazines I was tossing in the recycling bin, I happened upon one of those memorable advertisements from the United Negro College Fund and its reminder that “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The ad, of course, was encouraging support for its vital educational work, but I saw it as apt commentary on a disturbing sign of our times – the mindlessness and absence of rational thought that characterize so many public utterances, political speeches, and even ecclesiastical language in this land. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is more heat to discern than light. Across the country, meetings of city councils and school boards and town meetings have become ideological contests in which the aim appears to be to see which side can make the most noise. Civil discourse and mutual respect have yielded the floor to uncivil discord and personal attacks. The mainstream media seem to have ceded the day to such irrationality. I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to leave room at the end of online news reports for public comments, but I suspect they did not foresee the torrent of vehemence, passion, and mind-numbing vitriol the practice would unleash. Even religious communities and assemblies, founded in love and grace and mindfulness, have no immunity to such irrational behavior. Consider the extreme, irrational language of some church leaders in recent years in statements on everything from Islam to human sexuality. Bertrand Russell was right when he observed that “more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths,”1 but my guess is that even Russell would have been appalled by the current fashion in our day. Passion disconnected from mindfulness and reason has never served the human family well. In these days we need the challenging reminder of John Calvin’s understated observation that “the tongue without the mind must be highly displeasing to God.”2 The Church of Jesus Christ has no small stake in turning the present tide; indeed, thoughtful, mindful Christianity can still be a force for redemption, for healing the breaches that divide people, for restoring civility and understanding to our speech and our encounters with those who think differently than we do. We find our moorings as Christians in the old Hebrew understanding that the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10), which is to say that true wisdom begins with a sense of mystery and awe in the presence of God. The writer of Deuteronomy framed such awe in terms of the affirmation and command which lies at the heart of the Hebrew Torah and at the center of our faith as well: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). The three synoptic gospels each remember that when Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he cited that same Shema with a notable expansion: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with

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    all your mind, and with all your strength.” Then he added, “And your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27). Our minds are integral parts ofthat central equation of devotion. The life of the mind is crucial to a life lived in the service of God. We are, after all, those who have been encouraged to embrace the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5) – a mind of humility, thoughtfulness, and self-emptying embrace of God’s purposes. The imperative in Jesus’ reiteration of the commandment requires of us honest thought and the alignment of our intellects with our hearts and wills in the service of God. The love of learning, the proper stewardship of rational capacities, and hearts inclined to explore the depths of Scripture were likewise characteristics of the Reformation and the Reformed tradition from their beginnings. From our roots we have been shaped as a people for whom the life of the mind was an appropriate and faithful venue for stewardship and discipleship. Our forebears planted schools wherever they established churches. They established scores of church-related colleges in this land, not only to teach matters of faith, but also to offer an education in the liberal arts and to prepare graduates for lives of service. From the church’s vantage point in our time, however, one would have to say such efforts have not stemmed the rising tides of ignorance, fear, and distrust. There are still strong faith communities where biblical literacy and engagement with the larger culture are valued, where the Gospel is proclaimed in a lively engagement with the complexities of modern life, and where congregants are well versed in the grammar of faith. I worry, though, that such congregations are too often outnumbered. We could point as well to other congregations that rally precisely around “fashionable untruths,” around unadulterated anti-intellectual prejudice. And we could point to a resistance to probing the depths even in our own faith communities. It is against such a tide that churches and preachers need to reclaim their voice. Addressing the fall convocation at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary last September during his first months as seminary president, Michael Jinkins lamented the loss of an intellectually rigorous faith as he recounted his own personal journey of faith.

    As a young person, I became a Presbyterian in large measure because of the Reformed movement’s conviction that our love of God is somehow incomplete until we love God with our minds, as well as with heart, soul, and strength. I also worry what will become of Christian faith – indeed, I worry what will become of the world we live in – if Christians fail to ask the tough, deep, critical, sometimes intractable questions posed by and about faith. I am concerned about what it will mean for us all if Christians choose to ignore life’s most profound mysteries and insoluble riddles. I am concerned about the integrity of the church if we abandon the curiosity that is courageous enough to swim at the deep end of the pool, or if we jettison a passion for ideas and knowledge and wisdom for their own sake. And I am equally disturbed about what will become of society if persons of faith retreat from the public sphere, where ideas must fight for their lives among competing interests, and where justice is served by vigorous argumentation and informed action as much as by high ideals.3

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    Decades ago, the evangelical teacher R.C. Sproul raised an alarm at what he called “the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization” and argued that while we needed passion in the church – “hearts on fire for the things of God” – yet, he said, “that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world.”4 In our own day, when passion seems often disconnected from reason, the church needs more than ever to embrace the life of the mind as a form of faithful service to God. The onus for such a movement is on the clergy. It matters not whether the congregation we serve meets in an urban cathedral, a rural frame building, or an old storefront; we ought never to underestimate our parishioners’ capacity for depth. In his seminary convocation address, Jinkins noted:

    The comments of the lay people I meet, people who want to learn more about their faith, are often along the lines of an elderly woman who approached Tom Long one evening after he had preached in one of the many congregations in which he has spoken around the country. As Tom was making his way from the pulpit to the exit, the woman stepped forward to greet him. Earlier in the evening he had invited members of the congregation to share with him any messages they’d like him to take back to the students he teaches in seminary. As this woman stepped forward, Tom greeted her with the question: “Is there a message you’d like me to take back to the seminary, something you’d like me to tell our students?” “Yes, there is,” she said. “Tell them to take us seriously.” Now, I know that not every person in our churches—or indeed in our society—craves to understand God, or, indeed, anything else, more deeply. Certainly, we must speak with a compelling voice if we hope to be heard. What we say must be said well and interestingly. And I would be among the first to argue that we have a mandate not to bore. But treasure seldom lies on the surface.5

    Preachers have a crucial role to play in helping their congregations learn to plumb the depths. There is, of course, a difference between preaching and exegesis, between preaching and a theology class. We have all heard sermons that bogged down in the latter. But doubtless we ‘ ve also heard sermons that never pushed out from the shallows. Thoughtful preaching-preaching that embraces the mind’s rational processes in an engaging way-most often finds its genesis in and moves out from a deep encounter with scripture. In my experience, most people in the pews readily acknowledge their lack of biblical and theological awareness and confess a desire to know more. They want to learn, to explore the faith at a deeper level, and they want that depth to be part of what they hear from the pulpit.

    Minds Disconnected from Hearts As we seek to respond to the lament about the way passion gets disconnected from reason, we would do well to consider that there is also potential for unfaithfulness when rationality is detached from its relationship to heart and soul, when reason comes untethered from ethics. In his commentary on Mark’s Gospel, Alan Culpepper notes that more than simple rationality was at stake in Jesus’ expansion of the first great commandment to include loving God with all one’s mind. “Mind” or “under-

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    Standing” (dianoia), he argues, denotes moral consciousness.6 Occasionally, a preacher encounters a story so compelling that it becomes forever linked to the way she/he understands a text. I discovered such a story some years ago in an essay Robert Coles wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education.1 Coles described one of his students, a young woman who came to Harvard University from the Midwest, from a working class family. To fill the gap between financial aid and financial need, she was working her way through Harvard, and, in so doing, was cleaning the rooms of some of her fellow Harvard students as a housekeeper. The student told Coles that in her work as a housekeeper, again and again she had encountered classmates who “apparently had forgotten the meaning of please and thank you – no matter how high their [S.A.T.] scores – students who did not hesitate to be rude, even crude toward her.” Coles said the young woman came to see him in tears one day, describing for him a work-related encounter in the dorm with a classmate who had sexually harassed her. It was not the first time, she said. And after all the other harassment and rudeness, she had finally reached the breaking point. Feeling vulnerable and hard-pressed, she had quit her job and was getting ready to drop out of school. As she told Coles about the precipitating problem with the unprincipled classmate, she commented that the young man who had harassed her was a very good pre-med student. “That guy gets all A’s,” she said. “In fact, I’ve taken two moral reasoning courses with him, and I’m sure he’s gotten A’s in both of them – and yet look at how he behaves with me, and I’m sure with others.” She talked about the irony of it happening at Harvard, of all places. Then, said Coles, she became a bit more reflective. A philosophy major, she began to talk about a course she had taken on the Holocaust and of the ironies of that unspeakable crime – that it could have happened in a nation previously known as one of the most civilized in the world, with a citizenry as well educated as that of any country at the time. Before she left his office and the university as well, she asked Coles a pointed question: “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?” She raised a very good question. Indeed, we might ask, what’s the use of learning and education at all if it does not make some significant contribution to the public good, if it does not make us better persons and more thoughtful contributors to the communities and world in which we live? Franklin Roosevelt once said, “To train a [person] in mind and not in morals is to train a menace to society,” but that idea draws fire today in an age of moral relativism and multi-culturalism. Whose morals? Which values? According to what authority? They are, of course, legitimate questions, which make simple answers very difficult to come by. So, let me simplify matters a bit by focusing our attention on the role of Christian preachers, teachers, and leaders to help education find its heart and its soul; that is, to help bridge the chasm between intellect and character, between knowing good and doing it. The single-mindedness that Jesus taught his followers leaves no room for a knowledge/morality gap in its focused way of living. Knowledge, faith, behavior, and character all fit together, as do heart, mind, soul, and strength. They are all part of our calling and responsibility. Of course, the greater the knowledge one attains, the higher the responsibility for faithful living. It is a point underwritten by Jesus’ reminder to the disciples that

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    “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48). And so, to all intelligent, articulate, highly-educated people, the challenge is even greater. As we know, so should we do. As we have been given, so should we give. And thus, not only should the life of the mind provide an impetus to right behavior ; it also should ask of us something more than the pursuit of self-interest. In the Christian consciousness, education is never simply for the enhancement of self, but always for service. During his tenure as president of Davidson College, John Kuykendall spoke often about the historic Christian and, more specifically, Presbyterian linkage of education and service. Scholarship and service go hand in hand, he said; and the aim of the former is always to prepare us for the latter. I find it a deep sign of hope and encouragement that many students at the university where I serve seem to embrace such a belief and eschew the notion that the primary goal of education is self-betterment or the satisfaction of personal ambitions. The church and its leaders should always press us to see that serving God with all our minds helps equip faithful persons better to serve not only God, but also the welfare and virtue of the whole community. Education is for service. A proper stewardship of the mind leads to the upbuilding of the community in justice and equity and integrity. I had an eccentric old chemistry teacher in high school, one who had mastered the art of teaching by intimidation, who graded each day’s class performance by hundreds and zeros. I’ll call him Mr. Smith. Consistently he began each day by a tour of the room, asking each of us a question, giving each of us a hundred or zero. There was one day, however, when the first question he asked was a stumper. The first student nervously ventured a guess, but missed. Zero. Another shrugged his shoulders. Zero. One girl just started crying. Still, a zero. One by one, we all missed the answer, and all of us felt the sting of the zero in Mr. Smith’s grade book. Then he rose from his desk, and launched into his little homily for the morning. “There are four types of persons in this world,” he said. “There are those who know, and know that they know. There are those who know, and know not that they know. There are those who know not, but know that they know not. And then there are you: those who know not, and know not that they know not.” He may have been right then, as much as he embarrassed us. By and large, however, that’s not our problem today. We know. The challenge for us is to do and to be as well as we know. And it is always a challenge for educated people. Think back for a moment to the Harvard sophomore who asked Robert Coles how intelligent, civilized people could allow and participate in such horrors as the Holocaust, as she thought of the classmate who had behaved so poorly toward her. Her question about the Holocaust brought to my mind a different memory of those horrific days on our world stage. More than thirty years ago the philosopher Philip Hallie wrote a book about a remarkable French village, a town whose people, unlike so many others in France, engaged in the dangerous practice of sheltering Jews from the Nazis during the German occupation. The name of the village was Le Chambón, and Hallie went there to try to discover what led those simple villagers to do such an extraordinary thing. What he discovered was that they weren’t particularly heroic or extraordinary people… not even politically enlightened. In fact, what he found was that the largest part of their education had come from the teachings of the village church and from its faithful pastor, André Trocmé. Each

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    week Pastor Trocmé proclaimed the Word, and each week the members of the parish studied the Scriptures, and each week they came to understand something of what it meant to be called to discipleship and faithfulness. Over time, week by week, the people there came, by habit, to be people who knew what to do and who also developed a willingness to do it. When the time came for them to be courageous, specifically when the Nazis came to town looking for Jews, the people of Le Chambón quietly did what was right—they sheltered their Jewish brothers and sisters from harm. One elderly woman, who faked a heart attack when the Nazis came to search her house, said later, “Pastor always taught us that there comes a time in every life when a person is asked to do something for Jesus. When our time came, we knew what to do.” Another woman, when asked why she would risk her life for the sake of these total strangers, replied, “For what else was I born?”8 Mindless passion threatens to undo the world. But the life of the mind disconnected from the human heart and soul is empty and devoid of promise. Preaching and teaching that embody heart and soul together will yield servanthood and strength. It is the mission of the church in every village, household, and city to help tie together scholarship and service, intellect and character, mind and heart, to help connect the life of the mind with its heart and soul and strength. Why take the time for study? Why continue to explore and learn? Why love God with all our minds? Why strive to integrate heart and soul and mind and strength in the service of God and humankind? For what else were we born?

    Notes 1. Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (London: George Allen & Un win, 1950). 2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, xx, 33, tr. by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 896. 3. Michael Jinkins, “The Life of the Mind in the Service of God: Why a Thinking Faith Still Matters,” convocation address at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, September 9,2010. 4. R.C. Sproul, “Burning Hearts Are Not Nourished by Empty Heads,” Christianity Today, 26 (September 3,1982), 100. 5. Jinkins, citing Tom Long, “A Matter of Depth,” sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia, October 5,2003. 6. R. Alan Culpepper, Mark: Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys Publishing , Inc., 2007), 421. 7. Robert Coles, “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 22,1995), A68. 8. Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambón and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979), 286.