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  • Christ of the Celts: the healing of the creation

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Catherine Foote University Congregational United Church of Christ, Seattle, Washington

    Newell, J. Philip. Christ of the Celts, The Healing of Creation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,2008.

    Early in his book, Christ of the Celts, the Healing of Creation, J. Philip Newell shares this story. At the end of a lecture he was giving in Lynchburg, Virginia, a woman in her eighties came up to speak to him. She was carrying an earlier book of his, and his talk had been focused on Celtic spirituality and the nature of God. The woman said to him, “I don’t normally write in the books that I read, but I want to show you what I’ve written in this book of yours.” And she opened the front cover to show him these words: “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” (p. 22). Since that is one response I enjoy getting to my sermons (the other being, “Wow, I never thought about that before.”), I was intrigued to see what Newell had to say. In just over one hundred pages, Newell takes on much of the theology of traditional Western Christianity. He examines the doctrine of original sin, the nature of God and the relationship of Creator to creation, the connection between physical and spiritual reality, and atonement theory, to name a few. He uses as his foundation for this examination his understanding of Johannine theology, early Christianity, and Celtic spirituality. The Celts, Newell points out, were once spread as far as modern day Turkey before they were driven back to the corners of Scotland and Ireland by the expansion of Greek and Roman Empires. And while Celtic spirituality before its contact with Christianity had some brutal manifestations, its expression early on in the Christian story provided a path for understanding Jesus and knowing God which can allow us as contemporary Christians to reconnect with ourselves, our world, and all of creation. In following this path, Newell not only takes issue with some common understandings of Christian doctrine, but also offers a way of speaking about the role of empire and political power in shaping those understandings. This book engages the “theologian” side of our identity as preachers in a way that invites us to wrestle again with our most basic understandings of the Gospel. I find that such an exercise is always helpful for a preacher. We can get so caught up in our way of speaking and thinking that we are surprised when folks gaze back at us from the congregation with expressions that clearly demonstrate they don’t have any idea what we are talking about. This seems especially true during the season of Lent, when we are called on to interpret parts of our tradition that are often difficult: the meaning of Ash Wednesday and our own connection to “dust,” the nature of temptation and evil in the world, the crucifixion and its significance, and the reality of resurrection. Similarly, we are all subject to the dominant images of the world in which we live. Without even realizing it, we can find ourselves repeating “conventional wisdom,” even when such conventions undermine the truth we have discovered at the heart of the Gospel. In looking again at the conventional teaching of Western Christianity, Newell gives us a path for clarifying for ourselves the good news we have to share.

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    To begin, Newell suggests that the doctrine of original sin, as it has been taught by the Western church since the fourth century, has actually alienated us from our Creator and from creation and deafened us to the good news of Jesus. This understanding of human nature, Newell says, gained strength when Rome began to use the Christian religion to solidify its political power. By teaching that human beings needed an outside source to rescue them from their basic evil nature, the Roman Empire could use the Roman Church to control the populations they defeated militarily. Employing a very familiar rationale used by empires throughout history, Rome could then present itself as liberator rather than conqueror, and could understand itself as bringing light and life rather than death and destruction, as it continued its expansion and domination . However, such an understanding of what it means to be human has left us Christians in the twenty-first century alienated from ourselves and from the rest of creation and has often forced folks to choose between their own deep sense of life’s meaning and the teachings of the church. Newell says, “The religious fare they have been offered contradicts some of their deepest knowing and hunger for the goodness of creation” (p. 35). Instead, Newell says, when human nature is understood to be essentially good, then the message of the Gospel is an invitation to “remember who you are.” Human beings do not have to turn away from themselves, but can instead, with Jesus, move more fully into the unity of life. It is helpful to note that Ne well’s rejection of the notion of original sin does not mean that he minimizes the reality and power of sin in the world. Human brokenness surrounds us, and we come to know it, and even participate in it, early in our lives. It is deeply intertwined with our sense of self. But what Jesus does, in this framework, is remind us that we are at the core beloved children of God. Jesus comes to show us what it means to be authentically and vulnerably human. Newell then goes on to observe, “Just as the doctrine of original sin was a convenient dogma for an empire set on dominating the world and dictating truth to the masses, so the doctrine of creation ex nihilo came into the service of a world power that was set on doing whatever it pleased to the earth” (p. 54). For our faith journey, Celtic Christianity reminds us that we have been given two books. The first is scripture , called “the little book” by Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena. The second, bigger book is the book of creation, of the universe. Newell cites sixth century Irish theologian Columbanus, who said if we want to know the Creator, we must come to know the creatures. Such an open understanding of God’s revelation and such an honoring of creation, Newell contends, is always a threat to empirical power. And yet, the invitation to reconnect with creation and with our own “creatureliness” is another invitation to unity: “The creatures know the rhythm of the earth. They have not forgotten the oneness of which we are a part. So in the Celtic world, they are the messengers of Christ, the One who comes to reconnect us to the Heart of Being” (p. 44). In such a context, Newell then tackles atonement theory, rejecting a substitutionary or “satisfaction” understanding of the death of Jesus. Here he employs some of the imagery of Julian of Norwich, offering an understanding of the cross as a sign of God’s compassion. Again, Newell does not dismiss the depth of suffering represented by the cross, but he does offer a different understanding of that suffering: “Forgiveness

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    is not about payment. Never. It is about the free and costly opening of ourselves to one another…” (p. 85). Ne well’s personal stories add pastoral depth to his theological conversations. He blends insights from the wisdom of early Christian teachers such as Irenaeus with his own experiences growing up in a Christian home in Canada. He speaks in poignant ways about his childhood views of himself and of God, which focused on fear rather than on love. He tells of an adolescent experience of God’s mystical presence about which he has only recently begun to speak. He describes his feelings as a father and his ongoing journey of faith with those he calls his “companions of the soul.” Any preacher knows what it is like to try to strike a balance between thorough investigation and concise argument, between the testimony of ancient witnesses and the stuff of one’s own spiritual journey. Newell’s arguments are simple and understandable . He cites early Christian writers, both canonical and non, as he makes his points. His ability to weave personal stories throughout his theological observations often makes this book read like an extended sermon. But it is a very good sermon. And while Newell does not offer rigorous scholarship within the text, his writing reflects some rigorous work, and his citations give us good directions for taking a similar journey. As we enter the season of Lent, Newell’s book invites us to turn toward ancient wisdom to address contemporary issues. It invites us to rethink some of our ways of understanding and describing our Christian story. It invites us to reconsider the ways our worship words and actions reflect our faith. And in that invitation, Newell provides some good foundations for study, reflection, conversation, and preaching. He does it in a very readable and convincing way. As I finished his book, I found myself thinking, “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”

  • Sacred trash: the lost and found world of the Cairo Geniza

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    John Friedman

    Judea Reform Congregation, Durham, North Carolina

    Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash : The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (New York, NY: Schocken, 2011)

    I used to save all my sermons. (This was in the days before I relied upon the Ruach HaKodesh.. .the Holy Spirit, for immediate inspiration!) It did not matter whether a sermon was well reviewed by my congregants. It did not even matter whether or not I liked it. It did not matter that the sermon’s theme focused on some passing event of the moment. These were my words, my essence, and so they were destined for my ever-fattening manila file folder. The same fate awaited programs, poems, parodies, and prayers that I penned (literally , as this was B.C., before computers). I kept them all neatly filed and organized by date, holiday, or Torah portion. Woe to my heirs who would discover this sacred trash. Would they decide to read through these reams of rambling? Or would they sensibly conclude that this was asking too much of filial piety and chuck the whole heap? There are those of us who effortlessly throw things out and work in orderly, uncluttered offices and those who cannot bear to discard the least item however so chipped, valueless, or ugly. We Jews generally find ourselves among the latter, especially as regards religious items. To deal with our particular desire to preserve Jewish books and documents that have become so worn or dated as to be unusable, our ancestors conceived the geniza. The geniza is a religious solution to the problem of needing to discard documents or manuscripts that contain the actual name of God, most sacred among Jews. Even during worship, we do not pronounce the tetragrammaton, using the word Adonai, Hebrew for “my Lord,” instead. To the observant, consigning a page on which the “Name” is actually written seems positively impious. A geniza or repository may be a room, attic, closet, or even a grave that the Jewish community sanctifies as the final resting place of holy documents containing God’s name. It is usually found within the synagogue itself, though less and less often in modernity. Imagine that you came upon a geniza in a synagogue that was 500 or 1,000 years old. What would you expect to find? In Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole tell the tale of the most famous geniza in history, the one unearthed, brought to light, and retrieved by Solomon Schechter, Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge University in the last decade of the nineteenth century and later President of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. The geniza of the ancient city of Fustat or Old Cairo held hundreds of thousands of holy documents and fragments-biblical, rabbinic, and medieval-deposited there between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Schechter’s first clue as to the nature and bounty that awaited him in Egypt came when, in May of 1896, the learned Cambridge sisters Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson showed him the fragment of an ancient manuscript that they had purchased at an antiquities dealer in Cairo. The scholar

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    recognized the Hebrew passage as coming from the apocryphal book, The Wisdom of Ben Sir a or Ecclisiasticus as Christians know it. What made this find so exciting was that Ben Sira’s Hebrew version had not been sighted since the tenth century when it was mentioned in an important Jewish text. The last Christian reference to the Hebrew version was by Jerome in the fourth century. Schechter set sail for Egypt on December 16,1896 “armed with a pile of visiting cards, his good black suit, and a letter of introduction to Cairo’s grand rabbi from England’s chief rabbi, Hermann Adler….” Five days after arriving in Cairo, he was given access to the geniza in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. What he found was a “hoard of Hebrew manuscripts.” The “excavation” of this small eight feet long and six and a half feet wide room above the women’s section of the synagogue took the Cambridge scholar four weeks of grueling, uncomfortable physical labor in odorous, infested, and cramped conditions. In the end, Schechter shipped 190,000 items back to Francis Jenkinson, University Librarian in Cambridge. In Cambridge, as Schechter toiled day and night in his gargantuan find, he realized that the Jews of ancient Cairo, so it seemed, had extended the commandments pertaining to the disposition of sacred texts to include everything and anything actually written down! Together with unique rabbinic documents and newly discovered religious poetry lay shipping documents, divorce agreements, money orders, and magic charms, a veritable portrait of antiquity. Furthermore, the texts that were shipped in 1897 to Cambridge University were not uniformly Hebrew. Documents included the expected tongues: Judeo Arabic, Arabic, and Aramaic, but also Yiddish and Chinese! When he began work on his miraculous “battlefield,” Schechter estimated that the sorting and publishing of the Cairo Geniza fragments would require a decade. In the late 1990’s, the final fragments were still being examined, and work on them continues to this day. In 1901, Schechter accepted an invitation from American Jews to become the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He was quite ready to leave England, having been exhausted by the sheer size of his geniza project. While he did not leave the geniza entirely behind him-he arranged to have 251 fragments sent to New York for his continued attention-he was ready for a new challenge. The Geniza Project did not, of course, cease with Schechter’s departure. Aparade of extraordinary scholars continued his exertions. The work of Israel Davidson in the 1920’s revealed a cache of palimpsests, sacred texts written on paper that had been nearly washed clean of another important document. Davidson worked painstakingly to reveal the original text beneath. Among his palimpsest finds was a growing collection of liturgical poetry by Yannai, a barely known poet who lived a thousand years before. Davidson’s successor,Galacian refugee Menahem Zulay, collected more of Yanai’s poems and, in 1938 published Piyyutei Yannai (The Poems of Yannai), culled nearly entirely from the Geniza. Shelomo Dov Goitein came to full time Geniza work as a professor at University of Pennsylvania in 1957. He revealed a picture of life in Geniza times, discovering the dealings of a successful Fustat business woman named Wuhsha, drawing a picture of the overworked head of the Cairo Jewish community, Abraham Maimonides (son of the great Moses Maimonides), and publishing his magnus opum, A Mediterranian Society y based on Geniza documentation, in 1967. Sacred Trash is the colorful record of scholarly heroes patiently examining

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    Schechter’s treasures, reimagining life in medieval Egyptian culture, and revealing to us the origin and originality of sacred tradition. We Westerners venerate our books and testaments, whether new or old. In lively prose, Hoffman and Cole remind us that our bibles and commentaries deserve the attention and praise we shower upon them not because of their pedigrees, humble or celestial, but because of the personal and communal relationship we build with them by studying their contents and permitting their authors to help us reflect on the nature of the ordinary and the divine. Schechter and his successors began the process of resacralizing these newfound, ancient texts from the Near Eastern Jewish world. That is why, for Judaism, the importance of the discovery of the Cairo Geniza surpasses even the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a book about the humble origins of holiness and well worthy of your pulpit.

    P.S. Hang on to those old sermons.

  • Reframing hope: vital ministry in a new generation

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Adam J. Copeland

    First Presbyterian Church, Hallock, Minnesota

    Carol Howard Merritt, Refraining Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation (Herndon , VA: The Alban Institute, 2010).

    Before I visit Jane, I take a deep breath and pray for patience and understanding. In her mid-nineties, Jane is still active in the community and one of the most religiously devout people I have ever met. Before arthritis made it too difficult, she not only would read through the Bible from cover to cover, but she would write it out. Each verse. By hand. (She’s finished the entire Bible more than 70 times.) Jane’s house is full of closets containing stacks of legal pads filled with hand-written scripture. A pastoral visit with Jane leaves one in total awe of her scriptural knowledge, but it also requires a good deal of stamina. Like some in her generation, Jane looks back at her earlier years as the golden age. She tells detailed (and opinionated) stories of growing up and taking a horse and buggy into town for church services, back when worship was more formal and women stayed in the kitchen and out of the pulpit. When I visit Jane, every once in a while I’ll get a word in about positive changes I see today, but most of the visit consists of my listening to her description of a contemporary church and society in turmoil. Jane would strongly dislike Carol Howard Merritt’s Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation. In Reframing Hope, Carol Howard Merritt offers the church a primer in ministry for a new generation. Merritt’s perspective on the contemporary mainline church is second to none. A pastor in Washington, D.C., with experience in a small rural parish as well, Merritt understands Twitter and community outreach via Facebook, but also the wealth of tradition and the pitfalls of our rapidly changing world. While some have tried to classify Merritt as part of the emergent church movement, such labeling misconstrues Merritt’s work. Yes, Merritt is not scared to take on traditional structures or broken systems, but she is no apologist for the emergent church either, writing, “When we fail to recognize our history, we miss out on the great wisdom of previous generations… .When we ignore our traditions, we turn our backs on centuries of rich and wonderful thought.” If one must label Merritt in the mainline/emergent church discussion, the term “loyal radical” probably describers her best. She delivers a careful, critical, and helpful look at vital ministry today. In her first book, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, Merritt focuses her careful eye on the mainline church’s ministry with young adults. Reframing Hope builds on this foundation, but expands the view towards a vital and relevant ministry with all. Throughout this more recent work, Merritt employs an encouraging and hopeful tone, a nice balance between a simplistic “how to” book and an overly theoretical work. Reframing Hope includes many stories of how congregations are meeting the challenges of ministry in our wired and weary world, but it does so leaving room for others to discover new approaches for their own context. As opposed to my beloved parishioner Jane, Merritt writes, “I cannot remember a time when church was the hub of society and life. I was born in the 1970s, part of

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    Generation X. I never lived in a church-centered world.” But instead of despairing, Merritt sees hope. The Millennial Generation (those born between 1982 and 2001), she explains, is much more community focused than previous generations, and it is more institutionally minded and open to rituals. But hope isn’t simply reading generational data, but reframing the way we see the world. Reframing hope, she argues, takes understanding our current situation while also reimaging what the future can be. And so, Merritt’s seven chapters all begin with the prefix “re,” for she seeks to frame ministry today with a fresh perspective. In “Redistributing Authority” Merritt traces recent shifts in culture from the civil rights movement to today’s culture of fear and bigger-is-always-better approach to life and church. Rather than bemoaning the changes that include a shift in the power of “denominational brands,” she writes that those congregations that respond to shifts in power will be the ones that remain vital in the future. Religious communities must acknowledge that the Internet era not only means a good website is important, but that power is redistributed—a post of YouTube goes viral, a pastor’s blog post makes a connection previously unimagined. Such shifts in authority bring about shifts in community, as Merritt chronicles in “Re-forming Community.” For instance, while support for preachers themselves was once designed on the “expert model”—big steeple pastors mentoring less experienced ones with a how-to approach—young pastors today seek mutuality and interaction instead. Post-modernism has led to questioning of institutions, but also spawned new religious movements and fresh possibilities within denominational structures. Merritt does not suggest mainline churches should adopt the practice of some emergent churches and replace a traditional sermon with a “discussion time.” Instead, she argues that mainline churches can offer blog discussions, Podcast feeds, and other Internet discussion forums to augment traditional sermons. As if to add credence to her thesis, while reading the chapter “Reexamining the Medium” about the possibilities and dangers of other forms of pastoral ministry than traditional face-to-face ministry, I received a text message from a parishioner announcing the birth of his baby girl (with a photo attached, of course). Merritt would not be surprised by the text message, but she would also emphasize the importance of my hospital visit that followed. She suggests how technology can support ministry, but Merritt does not shy away from its downsides. “Retelling the Message,” a chapter particularly interesting for preachers, examines how the Word can break through our complex world of mixed-messages in new and compelling ways—Facebook status updates and Twitter posts as testimony. Again, this is not an old church-goer complaining about new-fangled ideas, but a savvy pastor reframing the world in which preachers proclaim the good news. “Reinventing Activism” explores how the reign of God can be seen and shared in new ways. And in “Renewing Creation” Merritt puts a hopeful spin on how congregations can act amidst our ecological crisis by being attentive to creation, embodying faith, and nurturing a grounded spirituality. Finally, in “Retraditioning Spirituality” Merritt acknowledges that though dividing the secular and the sacred might make preachers’ jobs easier, the challenge for our time is connecting the varied pieces of our lives—digital presence and embodied presence, virtual reality and physical reality. To make these connections, Merritt advocates practices that respond to the challenges of today: “For wired women and

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    men, people who live constantly alert to incoming e-mail and flashing images, there is a hope for a bit of time when we might unplug.” Churches, then, can become places of contemplation and reordering of lives. Merritt concludes arguing that hope is found, for contemporary ministry, not only in the “innovation and compassion of a new time,” but in realizing that “the longings of the current generation are the very things that we have been nurturing in our spiritual communities for hundreds of years.” Reframing Hope, while a helpful and entertaining read, will not surprise those fully engaged in vital ministry today. In fact, readers may even find their own congregation , or congregations in the area, used as hopeful examples. Reframing Hope failed to alert me to many completely new ministry concepts—though admittedly, I am a fairly recent seminary graduate. What I did find, though, was a clear description of how ministry in the mainline church today can be approached seriously and truthfully, but also with hope. As a preacher, with Merritt on my mind, I’m loathe to complain about life these days without also considering the hopefulness of our era, the new ways in which the Spirit is working. As I do so, I can look at the past and at tradition with a hopeful and honest perspective as well. If Jane could somehow bring herself to read this book—or if her pastor could help her read it—she would find, as all readers, a hopeful call to action for vital ministry today.

  • Common prayer: a liturgy for ordinary radicals

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Sam Miglarese

    Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

    Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 1 volume, 590 pages.

    Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is one of the talented authors of this newly published prayer book for “ordinary radicals.” We had coffee together recently to discuss his work and life in the Walltown neighborhood in Durham, N.C., where he resides and leads the Rutba House community and School for Conversion’s work with youngsters there. He shared with me this volume that has been the object of his collaborative labors for the last two years. I was delighted to read it and attend one of his Common Prayer release parties. Common Prayer offers preachers, teachers, parents, and ordinary Christians living their faith a great resource to deepen their faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ throughout the liturgical year. His expressed hope for this prayer book is to encourage Christians of every sort to rethink and relearn the art of prayer. It also serves as a primer for those unfamiliar with the rich tradition of liturgical prayer and practice in the church catholic. But what sets this prayer book apart from the many at our disposal? First, it is thoroughly ecumenical. Despite the many divisions within the Christian family, this volume reminds one and all that Jesus’ call for unity is not a by-product or side effect of his mission to save and redeem, but the object and purpose of His being “Apostle” to us. We may not agree on every conceivable religious issue, we may not experience perfect mutual understanding, but what we can do is pray with and for each other so that we participate in “God’s deepest longing for the Church” (p. 9). The authors remind us, “Our prayer lives connect us to the rest of the body of Christ around the world; at any hour of any day, many of the prayers in this book are being prayed in some corner of the earth” (p. 10). Secondly, this volume highlights a shared faith. If faith is about a relationship with God in Christ mediated by the communion of God’s people we call Church, then we know that faith is dynamic-either growing or dying. This book of prayers offers an opportunity to grow and nourish our relationship with God in Christ in a way that challenges us to live a shared faith on a deeper and more authentic level. Thirdly, this collection of prayers attests to the truth that the communities to which we belong are decisive in forming our vision, our values, beliefs, and behaviors. I see this resource as a way to support and renew the family at prayer, congregations and parishes at worship and in small faith communities, Bible study groups, mission and service committees, any gathering of two or more believers who know that common prayer is crucial to feeding their souls (p.ll). Common Prayer does this by helping faithful disciples know their story, shape their ability to recognize the holy presence, and make themselves comfortable with different kinds of prayer. The heart of any renewal of worship for a Sunday assembly is the practice of prayer by those who are the Church. Liturgy is not private, but public, and calls us to prayer in common and

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    in communion with one another. Fourthly, the prayer book “welcomes its participants to a new time zone” (p. 14). Common Prayer honors the daily “hours” of evening, morning, and midday prayer and all within the weekly cycle that culminates in the Sunday worship of the Lord’s Day. The authors remind us that the weekly cycle happens in an annual “rhythm” of seasons we call the liturgical year:

    But the weekly cycle also happens within an annual rhythm of seasons— Advent to prepare for Christ’s coming, Christmas to celebrate the Prince of Peace, Epiphany to remember the Light,… Lent to confess our resistance to the Light, Holy Week to remember Christ’s suffering, Easter to celebrate Resurrection’s power, the birthday of the Church at Pentecost,…. And Ordinary Time to bring us back to the beginning again. These are the seasons of the Church, (p. 16)

    To experience time as “sacred” is a formidable challenge in our digital age since we are a “wired” people “and our lives our filled with overlapping calendars and dates” (p. 15). But sacred time is the Lord’s time. This book of prayers will assist us in leaving behind mere chronological time and the many calendars of our lives and open us to God’s grace-filled, sacred experience of time. Inviting the reader to embrace the discipline of daily prayer rooted in the seasons of the Church is a clear objective of this book of common prayer. Some may wonder why particular prayer selections were not added and others not deleted, why not more than one verse for the hymns, why not this saint chosen and not others. But a “collection” such as this must make choices, and the author’s decisions were on the whole balanced and judicious. I encourage one and all to become familiar with this excellent resource and use it for your own prayer parties!

    Journal for Preachers

  • Falling in love with mercy

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    Falling in Love with Mercy

    Will Willimon North Alabama Conference, United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

    On the first day of our second attempt at an Iraq war, evangelical activist Tony Campólo preached a sermon in which he recommended that the United States dump shiploads of free food and medicine on Iraq and then see if Sadaam was still in power a month later. He was serious. When asked for his justification for such unorthodox diplomacy, Campólo replied, “Mercy. Read Micah 6:8.” In Micah 6:1-8, the first lesson for Epiphany 4a, after taking up a “controversy” with Israel because of the nation’s infidelities, Yahweh straightforwardly tells Israel what is expected of a liberated people. Surprisingly, Yahweh, unlike many other gods, is not into “burnt offerings,” even “thousands of rams,” or the sacrifice of children. Yahweh’s liturgical requirements are few (6:8): doing justice (mishpat), loving mercy (hesed), and a humble walk with God. Do you find it interesting that whereas we are to “do” justice and to “walk” humbly, we are to “love” mercy? How can God “require” us to “love mercy”? At first glance, my colleagues and I seem to have an easy task in this homiletical exchange on Micah 6. Justice and humility are popular just now. Everybody, even someone like Richard Dawkins who doesn’t love Yahweh, loves justice, peace with justice, and a just resolution of all conflicts. And when it comes to us pastors, humble “servant leadership” is all the rage.1 Have I been given the tougher task of defending Yahweh’s requirement to “love mercy”? Biblical hesed is often rendered “mercy,” but sometimes “lovingkindness” and “goodness.” I count in the NRSV about one hundred fifty occurrences of “mercy” and fifty for “compassion.” Hesed is defined basically as aid rendered to the miserable, particularly a miserable person in debt. And yet here is the thing I find remarkable: in scripture, mercy is almost totally a divine, rather than a human, attribute. Of course, there are notable examples of mercy as a human endeavor. Joseph showed mercy to his brothers who turned up in Egypt looking for food (Gen. 43:14). Jesus makes mercy a characteristic of life in the kingdom; those who show mercy will be rewarded by God’s mercy (Mt. 5:7). Luke commends mercy specifically as a way to imitate God: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). Jesus tells the story of the unmerciful servant, commending us to be merciful to the miserable even as God is merciful to us (Mt. 18:38). I find it significant that these references to humans doing mercy are numerically few when compared to the multiple passages that marvel at the mercy of God. In scripture human mercy is derivative of the sort of God that we’ve got. The God who created Israel is providentially merciful to all creatures, but toward humans God is particularly merciful in forgiving sins. God is universally acclaimed as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6; Ps. 86:15 ; 103:8 RS V). The New Testament continues this very Jewish assertion of a merciful God who is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4-5), the “father of mercies” (1 Cor. 1:3). God’s mercy is principally experienced as God’s gracious forgiveness of humanity’s sin, Christ himself being the culmination, the embodiment not so much of

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    God’s righteousness, but of God’s mercy. Christ is the “merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb 2:17). As for us Gentiles, once we “had not received mercy,” but now we “have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:10; cf. Hosea 1:6,9; 2:1,23). Mercy in Christ has a shocking, counterintuitive quality. Jesus is mercy in motion. Faced with demanding, hurting crowds, Jesus is said to have “had compassion (splagchmizomai) for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt. 9:36). People often came up to Jesus begging him for mercy before they asked to be forgiven or to be healed (Mt. 15:22; 17:15;20:30-31;Mk. 10:47;Lk. 17:13; 18:38-39), though aprimary sign of amerciful God is forgiveness of sin. In one sense, every story of exorcism, feeding, healing, and forgiveness is a mercy story. Mercy is close cousin of compassion in scripture. Mercy is compassion in motion. It’s one thing to feel compassion (literally to think “from the bowels”), but it’s another thing to show compassion, to act mercifully. We preachers note that some of the most outrageous depictions of a merciful God are Jesus’ parables (the parables being the perfect idiom for the depiction of outrageous mercy) like the Laborers in the Vineyard (Mt. 20), the Dishonest Servant (Lk. 16:l-8),the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:30-35), and the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15:11-32). All of these parables depict how offensive divine mercy can be, particularly to those within synagogue and church, communities of mercy. Our best gospel figure of mercy is the Good Samaritan, a despised outsider who not only “had compassion,” but also “showed mercy to the wounded man (Luke 10:33,37). Note that all these parables are renditions of how God is merciful before they are admonitions about what we are to be or to do. John Wesley disputed Luther’s put down of the Letter of James wondering why on earth Luther, who so stressed a merciful God, would despise James’ insistence on our being merciful people (Jas. 1:27) by helping the widow (Jas 1:27) and respecting the poor (Jas 2:1-16). Against Luther, Wesley stressed how sharply James shows that, when it comes to the Trinity, “mercy triumphs over judgment” (Wesley ‘ s Notes on the New Testament, on Jas. 2:13). Our relationship to God, as Romans 9:16 says, “depends not on human will or exercise, but upon God’s mercy…. He has mercy upon whomever he wills.” This was a major reason why Wesley argued with Calvinists against their stress upon the sovereignty of God – God could be sovereign and allcontrolling if God wanted, but instead God chose to be merciful. I note the theological grounding of mercy in scripture because most of the sermons that I hear, and many that I preach, trade especially on the preacher’s enumeration of what is required of us. My image of Methodists on Sunday morning is our sitting in worship with a hymnal in one hand and a notepad in the other. The purpose of the sermon is to give us our assignment for the week. Most of us are conditioned to be more interested in what we are required to do than in what God has done or is doing, a byproduct of a people more concerned with ourselves than God. But I’m saying that Micah 6:8, when it requires us to love mercy, is making a most interesting assertion about God, and only secondarily, and then derivatively, does it say anything about us. In requiring us to “love mercy,” God is demanding something odd and unnatural of us. I think Nietzsche was among the first, at least in modern times, to see this clearly and to focus upon mercy as one of the most despised of the many Jewish and Christian mistakes. Nietzsche hated Christianity principally for its ethic of mercy, its enfeebling solicitude for the weak and outcast, the diseased and crippled. Yet those of us in liberal

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    mainline Protestantism ought especially to note that though Nietzsche thought it essential for a humanity come of age to overcome traditional Christian piety’s “slave morality,” Nietzsche had equal contempt for any modern liberal attempt to resuscitate Christian mercy in a diluted, atheistic form — such as social conscience or sympathy for the marginalized, suspecting that any effort at an ethic of compassion based upon something other than Christ (such as soft hearted sentimentality) would be an even greater delusion. An ethic of compassion without a prior assertion of a God of compassion is the ultimate delusion. People just aren’t built that way. It’s unnatural. Since the Christian God of mercy is dead, Nietzsche figured that there was absolutely no rationale for an ethic of mercy other than resentment by the weak of the strong. He was wrong in this, but right in his assertion that the only commendation of mercy that makes sense is theological.2 Resentment is crude, destructive, vindictive; mercy is counterintuitive, unnatural, countercultural, and courageously creative. In short, there is no motive for mercy other than this is the way God really is and therefore God’s world is created to be. While the Christian faith has been used, however bizarrely, as a motive for killing, the one who died showing mercy on those who tortured him to death, the one who commanded us to love our enemies, provides the sole compelling reason for being merciful. I stress this because we preachers think about mercy in the context of the most violent and unmerciful of centuries in which the secular order succeeded in freeing itself from religious authority, thereby enabling the secular state to kill on a previously unimaginable scale. The death camps and purges of the modern state, left and right, democratic and fascist, suggest that when Christianity departs, what is left is not reason and enlightenment, but mass murder, eugenics, and abortion. There is a fearful cost to the modern world’s loss of a merciful God. Mercy is that peculiar quality which has never been produced by the various religions of the empire.3 Nothing any of the pagan gods preached ever motivated anyone to visit the prisoner, to feed the hungry, to care for the suffering and dying, or to receive the unwanted child. No pagan cult, classical or modern, ever built a hospital or orphanage. The Christian embrace of mercy therefore always involves a rejection of the gods who have previously held the empire together and provided a rationale for its existence. Mercy was the revolutionary, defiant act that Jesus hurled in the face of the Empire.4 Mercy was a main attraction (as well as chief repulsion) in the evangelism of the Roman Empire .5 It was Christian mercy that made the Christian minority a real threat. Mercy was the one Christian practice that baffled most imperial observers of the faith who knew that there was no classical intellectual means of explanation for such curious behavior (see Celsus’, The True Word). Fitful pagan provision for the sick and the infirm is insignificant when compared with the veritable explosion of unprecedented Christian charity. Even the Emperor Julian, for all his animosity toward the faith, acknowledged, “It is [the Christians ‘ ] philanthropy toward strangers, the care they take of the graves of the dead, and the affected sanctity with which they conduct the sanctity of their lives that have done the most to spread their atheism.” In short, mercy was, for imperial Romans, the strangest, most countercultural of Christian practices, a virtue for which the entire Classical philosophical tradition provided them no help in comprehending.6

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    Mercy was built into the core of ecclesiastical life from the first. The third century Didascalia entrusts the bishop with oversight of food distribution to the poor, the care of widows and orphans, and watching over the finances of the church to be sure that no money is taken from those who abuse slaves or wasted on those who are not in real need. It was only after Constantine’s conversion that the West suddenly created for the first time in history, an extensive welfare system, overseen by the church. During the great plague of 251-266, a number of pagan commentators noted that Christians refused to flee the cities and cared for those who were not even in their own families. Rodney Stark thinks that this behavior during the plague may have been the single most important eye-catching impetus for evangelism. Nietzsche noted that this move toward mercy, in the Christianization of the Empire, this “transvaluation of values,” was a complete revision and reversal of timehonored , classically upheld values, a tragic dismantling of the grandest culture humanity had produced. Why did this dismantling occur? In just a few hundred years, the world’s definition of God had changed on the basis of the world’s reception of the one who had exchanged the form of God to the form of a slave (Phil 2:1-11). Nietzsche scorned Christianity as a sort of slave revolt against classical values, a sickly version of morality that judged human action not against the standard of the brave, the heroic, the beautiful, and the noble (universally held classical virtues), but against the baffling standard of mercy. To believe that the glory of God is revealed in the raising of a humiliated, crucified, suffering slave who proclaimed the Kingdom of God for the enslaved and forsaken of the earth is thus to turn the world upside down. This slave was in the world as an otherworldly tenderness. As he said, “My kingdom is not from the world” (Jn. 18:36). His was a mercy beyond mercy, seeing the marginalized not only as those to be pitied, but also as those to be cherished, served, and adored. I’m arguing here that the sheer impracticality of Christianity, its strange mercy ethic, is an argument for its theological origin. No utilitarianism, no pragmatic rationalism, could have resulted in this sort of ethic. It is truly “not from here.” In pointing to the theological rationale for mercy, I am attempting to challenge the liberal, mainline, Protestant attempt to commend mercy on grounds other than God. For us mainline protestants, Reinhold Niebuhr is a tough habit to break. Niebuhr taught us that in order to be politically responsible and socially significant, that when it comes to ethics, particularly social ethics, Jesus needs to be left behind. A major impulse for jettisoning Jesus is his propensity toward mercy which Niebuhr thought had no other rationale than rank sentimentalism. Niebuhr made justice more important than love or mercy, ideals that must be left behind because everybody knows that justice requires coercion and even violence. For Niebuhr “justice” is the relatively equitable arrangement that we construct because we obviously cannot show mercy to all of our neighbors. Justice names the arrangements necessary to secure more equitable forms of life when we cannot love all neighbors equally. Niebuhr didn’t talk about mercy because he assumed that the purpose of the church and its ministry was to help the modern democratic nation work, and, as anyone knows, mercy is too much to ask of a government, any government. One of the most radical, politically defiant acts Christians undertake is to show mercy across national borders and to be merciful to those whom the modern state, in order to insure its survival, puts outside the bounds of mercy.

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    I didn ‘ t have to be a Christian theologian to figure out that the Bush Administration ‘ s wars without end were counter to our Christian convictions. But I do find that knowing who God really is and what God really requires is helpful in exposing the dangers of the apparently well-intentioned Obama administration and its good hearted war to force Afghanistan to be a modern nation. If you would like to see an attempt to construct an ethic of compassion without reference to a compassionate God, check out Karen Armstrong’s “Charter for Compassion” (charterforcompassion.org). Armstrong claims that compassion is “at the heart of all religions, ethical and spiritual traditions.” I don’t know as much as Armstrong about all religions, but I do think she demonstrates that if you empty “compassion” of any offensive content, making it as vague as possible, there is a good chance that all religions can affirm it. This is something quite different from Christian mercy. For Christiansjesus is God’s definition of the word “mercy.” But when it comes to what we are to do, ethics, we are able to say more than simply, “Jesus showed mercy and so should we.” This relegates Jesus to a motivator for us to show mercy. Jesus becomes a symbol, an example, and makes the Jewish people, who are themselves a surprising creation of a merciful God, irrelevant. Mercy is not an external value to which Christians ought to aspire. Mercy can’t be understood or enacted apart from this Jew from Nazareth who is the full revelation of God. Our mercy must be Christocentric. It must be ecclesial, not only because there is no way to practice mercy solo in an unmerciful world, but also because the church itself is God’s outrageous, defiant definition of mercy. If God isn’t merciful toward the ungrateful and the selfish, then how do you explain the churches of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church? Mercy isn’t just something nice that we do for the less fortunate; mercy is the way the world is structured, a revelation of God’s pentecostal redemptive activity. When we say “Exodus” or “Calvary,” we are naming God’s merciful nature. Jesus is notable not only because he was merciful, but Jesus is the mercy of God. Thus mercy is the way we worship, the way we keep exploring the odd sort of God we’ve got. The Sunday liturgy thus helps us locate ourselves as disciples in the world. We relearn, in word and table, that we are those “who once had not received mercy but now receive mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). We are given the grace to repent of our failures to be merciful and given the eschatological vision whereby we see the new heaven and new earth, namely the earth filled with love of mercy when God finally gets what God wants. Sunday worship is when God draws us, not usually through careful argument and deliberation in a sermon, but through love, through a merciful meal at a table prepared and presided over by the one who, even as a tortured to death slave, prayed, “Father, forgive….” Mercy is the byproduct of a community that is shaped by love of Christ. Which is a long way around to say that I think that’s the reason why the prophet connects “love” with “mercy.” God’s command for us to fall in love with mercy is an aspect of God’s redemptive work among us, God’s desire to liberate us from our sin. The call to love mercy is a call to be engrafted into the Body of Christ, to allow Christ to reorder our loves, to be drawn, Sunday-by-Sunday into the love of the right things rightly through our love of Christ. Israel kept being forced to remember that it was an alien in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:33 ) as well as a slave (Deuteronomy 24:21) and indeed would still be

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    were it not for a merciful God. Israel was enjoined to be merciful as a memorial of Yahweh’s deliverance from the Empire. Matthew 25: 31-45 suggests to me that works of mercy are not general principles or worthy values that Christians must translate into a more universal or secular vision that is applicable to the “wider world.” Rather mercy is God’s invitation to participate in God’s redemption by feeding the hungry, offering drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the sick and imprisoned. In doing works of mercy, Matthew 25:31 -45 implies that we come face-to-face with the true character of God.7 Merciful work is also a primary gift that God gives us to overcome our sinful accommodation (Christian “realism”!) to the ways of the world. Thus one of God’s most merciful acts in Jesus Christ is through word and sacrament, to enable us, even us, to be merciful and thus to discover who and where God really is.

    Notes 1 William H. Willimon, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 68-69. 2 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 238. 3 Ibid., 121. 4 To my mind, this is one of the things that John Dominic Crossan gets right and makes so vivid in his The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). 5 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity SanFrancisco: HarperCollins, 1996. 6 Julian, Epistle 22, written to a pagan priest, quoted by Hart, 154. 7 Dan Bell, “Jesus, the Jews, and the Politics of God’s Justice,” Ex Auditer, 22 (2006), 106.

  • Walk humbly with your God: Micah 6:8

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    Walk Humbly with Your God

    Micah 6:8

    Walter Brueggemann

    Cincinnati, Ohio

    The famous triad of Micah 6:8 comes as the culmination of a long disputatious transaction between YHWH and Israel that is performed by the prophet.

    I. In Micah 6:1-2 there is a summons to court in which YHWH enters into a juridical dispute (“controversy”) with Israel. YHWH states YHWH’s case against Israel (vv. 3-5): YHWH has been generously faithful, and Israel has been perfidious “from Shittim to Gilgal.” The question of verse 6 explores Israel’s appropriate response to the case YHWH has made. What is now asked of Israel after the contrast of divine generosity and human treachery? It is odd and noteworthy that the question is asked of “man” (Adam). In aparallel posing of the same question in Deuteronomy 10:12,the question is addressed to Israel. The double address of Micah 6:8 and Deuteronomy 10:12 suggests that the question posed to Israel is,mutatis mutandis, the same question the creator puts to Adam, that is, to all humanity. The primal question for Israel and for humanity is how to come before YHWH when the relationship has been fractured. Prior to verse 8, the same question is asked in verse 6 in a slightly different form. The proposed answer in verse 6-7 is a “false answer”: burnt offerings, calves, a thousand of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, my first born. It is commonly noticed that the answer builds from the least valuable to the most valuable. But every part of the answer is a commodity. The answer ponders how one offers something “of value.” The re-asking of the question in verse 8 indicates, without explanatory comment, that the “commodity answer” is wrong and rejected. YHWH does not want “stuff from Israel or from humanity (see Psalm 50:8-13). It is only after the false proposal of verses 6-7 that the question is again posed in verse 8. The question implies and assumes a certain positioning between YHWH and Israel or between YHWH and humanity. YHWH asks and Israel must respond. YHWH “requires” and humanity must answer. The God of generous rescue (v. 4) is the God who must be obeyed. The Lord of the exodus is the commander of Sinai. Or in Barthian language, the God of the gift (Gabe) is the one who assigns a task (Aufgabe).

    II. Being warned in verses 6-7 that the right response to the requirements of YHWH is not material commodity, verse 8 now answers appropriately that the God of the covenant wants faithful relationships and reliable solidarity. The famous triad, upon close encounter, makes clear that the first two “commands” bespeak Israel’s most familiar vocabulary of covenantal solidarity: -To “do justice” (mispat) is to be sure that the neighbor is well provided for; -To “love kindness” (hesed) is to practice a life of reliable solidarity. (“Kindness” is a notoriously weak translation of the term.)

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    The two terms, mispat and hesed, stand at the center of Israel’s faith-talk. Indeed mispat most often comes in a pair with sedeqah (righteousness) and hesed most often comes in a pair with ‘amunah (“faithfulness.”) If we extrapolate according to Israel’s preferred rhetorical practice, we are given Israel’s two most important word pairs, “justice and righteousness,” “steadfast love and faithfulness,” that echo with love of neighbor and love of God. The first pair, “justice and righteousness,” concerns the neighborhood. The second pair, “steadfast love and faithfulness,” concerns love of God, so that Micah’s first two components allude to “the two great commandments.” Alas, in the third component, the one assigned to me, there is no such defining vocabulary from Israel’s tradition. The phrase “walk humbly with your God” does not give much to work with and evokes no spectacular connections. We get five words that invite an Israelite (human) response to YHWH that is perhaps even beyond the first two commandments of love of neighbor and love of God.

    III. The command concerns “humble walking.” “Walking” in the Bible is a metaphor for a life journey or a life performance. “Being on the way” is a life chance and a life performance. It refers to Torah obedience and is transposed in the New Testament into discipleship as Christians are “followers of the way,” the way of Torah, the way of Jesus, the way of well-being. Thus in Deuteronomic theology (on which see Psalm 1:1), Solomon is to “walk in the ways” (I Kings 3:14; see 8:23,25), but Manasseh, the model of disobedience, walked in the way of idols (II Kings 21:22). That entire theology concerns a choice between “two paths,” one that is wide and leads to death, one that is narrow and yields life (Deut 30:15-20; Matt. 7:13-14). Decisions are always being made about the paths and their different outcomes. In our Micah passage, Israel is summoned to a path of “justice” and “kindness.” That opens two questions: How to walk? With whom to walk?

    IV. The question of how to walk is answered here: “Humbly.” The term is misleading in translation, however, because it may suggest groveling self-abasement that is much embraced in much fraudulent piety. Nothing, of course, could be further from the intent of this prophetic poetry. Israel is never summoned to groveling selfabasement , and the church has a great deal to unlearn about that, notably concerning Lenten disciplines. Surprisingly the term “humble” occurs only one other time in the Old Testament, and therefore that other usage is important for our study: When pride comes, then comes disgrace; But wisdom is to the humble (Proverbs 11:2). As is usual in such two line proverbs, there is a contrast between the two lines (two paths), each of which comes with inescapable and predictable futures. The positive claim is: Humbleness will yield wisdom. This is a primary conviction of the book of Proverbs. We are helped in understanding “humble” by the parallel line that state the antithesis: Pride will yield disgrace (shame). Appealing to the double use of the word “comes,” Christine Yoder suggests that pride

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    and disgrace are “traveling companions.”1 They arrive together. When pride arrives, shame will arrive along with it. The learner may expect to have either shame or wisdom, and the choice will come by the behavioral option of “humble” or “prideful.” Thus “to walk humbly” is the opposite of walking proudly, that is strutting. On strutting, see Proverbs 30:28-31 where the wisdom teachers mockingly identify four “strutters”: a lion, a rooster, a he-goat, a king, all macho images of self-exhibit and self importance.2 As we have seen recently with so many “self-righteous” politicians and ministers, such a strutting way often leads to embarrassment, and the wisdom teachers could see such embarrassment coming a long way off. Such prideful strutting bespeaks arrogance, self-sufficiency, autonomy, the need to occupy center stage, the sense that I am the only one on the set. In reading up for this exposition, I have been instructed by two studies, both of which have suggested that ‘”walking humbly,” in contrast to strutting, is to pay attention to the other, or in more elitist talk, “alterity,” that is, to recognize that on the path with me are others from whom one receives one’s identity. “Walking humbly” means to be on the path with them, to be in relation to them and with reference to them on the way. The strutter acknowledges no other, and imagines he needs no other and may end in despair. Thus the phrasing of Micah answers the question ” How to walk” by calling attention to the need and inescapability of the others who walk with us on the path of life. Indeed God requires that we walk with the other. Bruce Ellis Benson writes:

    The Christian can only offer them [the teachings of Christ] in a spirit of deep humility, precisely because they are examples of being truly humble, of being dependent on one another, of loving even those who do not love us back. Of course, even these examples must be offered up in political discourse only in a spirit of respect and with a willingness to dialogue with the other.. .rather than starting by focusing on me, the focus begins on the other. Of course this is fully in line with what Jesus says. His injunctions are what one does in response to the other—whether the widow, the stranger, the enemy, or the one who demands one’s clothing. In regard to these last two, Jesus in effect says, “Do the opposite of what you would be inclined to do”—instead of hating in return, love; instead of resisting the demand, give freely of even that which is not demanded. In not responding in kind, one changes the entire structure of the relation: it is now structured by love.3

    Lisa Fullam, in her exposition of Thomistic thought, champions “other-centered solidarity” and “paying attention” as ingredients in a life of authentic humility.4

    V. We may now ask our second question: If we walk the path humbly, acknowledging “the other,” who will be our companion along the way? The answer to this question is given by Micah, “with your God.” There are many uses of phrases like “walk in the way of God,” and in Micah 4:5 it is to “walk in the name of God.” But here it is “with God.” I do not know if there are other uses of this formulation. Whether unique or at least rare, the imagery is that of direct and immediate companionship with God, so that one’s way of life is with reference to and in the company of, this God who willingly

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    walks with us on the path. The strutter has no companion, surely not the God of Exodus-Sinai, the Lord of Friday-Sunday. The phrasing is terse. It is only “your God.” We can, of course, unpack the phrase in rich and thick ways. First of all the companion God of the walk is, according to the first two elements in Micah’s statement, the God of justice and kindness. These core words of faith refer first of all to the qualities experienced in Israel’s life with YHWH. It is YHWH who wills and practices restorative justice. It is YHWH who embodies and exhibits steadfastness. It is YHWH whose very presence on the path redefines the path of life according to neighborly justice and covenantal solidarity. This companion is not just a good feeling or a happy intimacy, but carries along on the way an entire recharacterization of reality as a relational enterprise that both reassures and summons . Beyond the two words in our verse, justice and kindness, the companion God is the God of the entire saving tradition, so that one walks with the God who saves and feeds and reconciles and heals and forgives and transforms. Thus for example Moses, pondering the next leg of the journey to the land of promise, can say to YHWH with some tone of insistence: “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here” (Ex. 33:15). Moses requires YHWH’s companionship; and YHWH agrees to travel with Moses and with Israel on the way.. .when Israel walks “humbly” with God. Now we have Micah’s two defining qualifications for the walk:

    —How: Humbly.. .with reference to the other; —Who: with YHWH, the companion God of transformative well-being.

    VI. It remains for the preacher to transpose this redefined travel with companionship into a contemporary possibility. One may begin with the commitment of our consumer society to strutting autonomy. This is evident in the excessive virility of athletes who must not only win, but must make gestures of triumph in the dismantling of the opponent. And even in suburban families, every little achievement by a young child .. .a refrigerator door drawing, “graduating” from first grade, arriving in church after Sunday School… must be treated in such a society as an awesome accomplishment. The assumption is that esteem and enhancement will generate more adequate personhood. It seems clear, in more careful perspective, that such celebration that evokes strutting.. .upon which the consumer society depends.. .produces endless need for satiation and eventually narcissicism. The covenantal tradition of the gospel offers an alternative form of life that does not depend upon self enhancement and congratulations. It depends rather on selfabandoning companionship along the way, for it is the act of companionship (and not self-celebration) that gives staying power, self respecting dignity, and eventually wellbeing . The contrast between self-announcing strutting and self-giving alterity is a defining stress point in our society, a point at which the church offers a genuine alternative. It is an alternative that is pervasive in sapiental perspective, one that is rooted in the God of the gospel who does not need to strut. Indeed, Paul’s Christological hymn is to the point (Philippians 2:5-11):

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    —Jesus could have strutted: He was in the form of God. —Instead he gave himself for the ones on the path of obedience: He emptied himself and became obedient. —He arrived at great affirmation from God who stands with such self-giving; Therefore God has highly exalted him.

    Thus the great triad of Micah reflects the path of life—required by God of Israel and of Adam—in terms of the other on the path with us who precludes our traveling alone in arrogance or in despair. On the one hand, we notice, as Israel always noticed, that the companion God of covenant is totally incommensurate with us. This God may travel with us, but this God is radically unlike us, and we may not imagine that this traveling companion is only “a good buddy.” This traveling companion who willingly walks with us is creator of heaven and earth, but who on the path has no need to call attention to such asymmetry. It is like being helped by a “famous” person who does not need to call attention to self. This incommensurate quality of the other as companion is well attested by Alan Paton in his poem addressed to his young son:

    Do not pronounce judgment on the Infinite, nor suppose God to be like a bad Prime Minister. Do not suppose Him Powerless, or if powerful, malignant, Do not address your mind to criticism of the Creator, do not pretend to know His categories, Do not take His Universe in your hand, and point out its defects with condescension. Do not think He is a greater potentate, a manner President of the United Galaxies, Do not think that because you know so few human beings, that He is in a comparable though more favorable position. Do not think it absurd that He should know every sparrow, or number the hairs of y our head, Do not compare Him with yourself, nor suppose your human love to be an example to shame Him. He is not greater than Plato or Lincoln nor superior to Shakespeare and Beethoven, He is their God, their powers and their gifts proceeded from Him, In infinite darkness they pored with their fingers over the first word of the Book of His Knowledge.5

    This is the breath-taking truth of “walking humbly with your God”! This is God! And we travel along! But on the other hand, if we look closely at the one who travels with us in hiddenness and without calling attention, we notice an odd thing. The other to be noticed in our genuine alterity is not a holy God, “immortal, invisible, only wise.” Rather the one on the path with us takes the form of sister and brother, of widow and orphan, of publican and sinner, of lame, leper, dead, needy, who in their neediness are ready to travel and have gifts to give. We are mindful of the vexing linkage Jesus made

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    about traveling with the least: Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me… .Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me (Matt. 25:40,45). Along the path we blink and do a double take, like a “rabbit and a duck.” Our companion is the incommensurate other who is the least, or conversely, the least whom we encounter is the incommensurate one from whom we receive life. Either way, “we never walk alone” when we perform justice and kindness. The alternative to this traveling mercy is one to which we are frequently seduced. That alternative path that is wide leaves us all alone when in fact we are made for companionship. We are made for companionship by the God who is willing to be seen with us, in public, on the way. No groveling, no self-abasement. Such companionship yields a joyous satisfaction that our strutting can never produce.

    Notes 1. Christine Roy Yoder,Proverbs (Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 131. 2. Ibid., 286. Yoder, more generously, refers to these four as “magisterial, fearless.” 3. Bruce Ellis Benson, “Radical Democracy and Radical Christianity,” Political Theology 10/2 (2009): 253. 4. Lisa Fullam, The Virtue of Humility: A Thomistic Apologetic (Lewiston: Mellen, 2009), 120,184-185. 5. Alan Paton, “Meditation for a Young Boy Confirmed,” Christian Century October 13,1954): 1238.

  • Preaching the Lenten texts

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    Preaching the Lenten Texts

    Lindsay P. Armstrong

    First Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, GA

    It may be a risk worth taking. Preaching a Lenten series on the Psalms, that is. Some might see that as a form of penance, but the Psalter is one of the most widely read and loved books of the Bible, filled with gifts of wisdom and authenticity. The Psalms meet us where we are and lead us forward, where we need to be. They are filled with real faith, unrefined honesty, raw emotion, eager hopefulness, blank despair, and robust experience of life with God. While we may not be close to the specific situation that inspired a particular psalm, a wealth of modern experiences in life gives rise to expressions similar to those we find in the Psalms. Furthermore, they have functional fluidity; other more traditional Lenten texts connect with Psalms easily. Lent is a season of change. With the Holy Spirit as our guide, we change our minds, habits, perspectives, faith practices, focus, and desires. This year, we are invited to change our habits and let God’s word found in the Psalms direct our Lenten Journey. Martin Luther called the Psalms “the little Bible,” due to the scope of riches found in this brief, poetic prose. John Calvin described the Psalter as “the mirror of the soul,” noting that the impressive quality of the Psalms is not as much their poetic splendor, but the expression of every experience and emotion within us. We find ourselves in the Psalms; they provide mirrors for our lives. They are records of our response to God, even as they are God’s profound word to humanity.

    First Sunday in Lent Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

    As the season of Lent approaches each year, my daughter inevitably sparks a feisty family conversation. After conferring with her devoutly Roman Catholic friends from the neighborhood, she invariably bursts into the house on an evening approaching Ash Wednesday and asks, “What are you all giving up for Lent this year?” “I’m not giving up anything,” was my shocked response the first year this happened. “But I thought you love Jesus. I thought you were a minister!” she protested . Abandoning dinner preparations and calling my husband for back-up, the two of us double-teamed our eight-year-old and attempted to explain that the practice of fasting or giving up things for Lent is not really required. After all, I argued, it’s much better to do something life-giving during Lent. Don’t give something up. Add something good to your life that makes you a more faithful follower of Christ. Offer overdue forgiveness. Make a new friend. Pray or study the Bible with renewed commitment. Learn a new spiritual discipline. Volunteer. Focus on extreme kindness to someone who needs it. Worship more often. “I’m not eating meat,” she announced just as the smoke detector went off, ironically signaling that we were not having fajitas for dinner after all. We had been warned that preacher’s kids tend to stir up trouble. Furthermore, we were clear on who calls the shots in our household, and it was (and is) not the kid. So, we were not about to let our dearly beloved child focus Lent on limits, whether they

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    be limits on food, internet time, spending, complaining, or anything else. Nevertheless, turning to Psalm 91 on the first Sunday in Lent, I run straight into my limits. The psalm makes remarkable promises of deliverance and protection, offering comprehensive coverage that tests the limits of my patience and belief. After all, many devout people know the heartbreak of betrayal, the pain of loss, or the menace of a fatal disease. How can we then say, “no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent” (v. 10)? In speaking about this psalm, English clergyman Leslie D. Weatherhead argues, “It just is not true.”1 Yet, a closer reading of Psalm 91 reveals that it is those “who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (v. 1) who will know God as a refuge and fortress. Those “who have made the Lord [their] refuge, the Most High [their] dwelling place” (v. 9) will have “no evil befall [them], no scourge come near [their] tent” (v. 10). Therein lies the biggest limit of all. Who among us has truly made God their refuge ? It’s often easier to cling to the safety found in competency, wealth, health, friends, busyness, or work. Who among us lives in the shadow of the Almighty (v. 1), making the Most High their dwelling place (v. 9)? Many of us would like to and are able to do so at times. We just can’t do it all the time. It is difficult to trust God perfectly, wholly, and persistently. Furthermore, there is only one person who has ever been able to fully do so: Jesus Christ. Lent is a time to recognize our limits. In the midst of a culture that teaches that we can do anything or be anyone, Lent is a season to make peace with our limits of time, ability, character, or belief. Limits teach us to prioritize. They invite us to come to terms with our fears. They insist that we master time management. Taught by society to let nothing stop us, limits teach that saying “no” is not rude, but honest, sensible, and best for all. Taught to be self-sufficient, limits teach us to partner and to treasure those who offer collegiality, camaraderie, or friendship. Taught to deny weakness, limits remind that we’re not self-sufficient, autonomous beings, able to flourish on our own. Limits ask us to relinquish the pretense of being perfect, having it altogether, and being worthy of much of the grace we have received. During Lent, we are asked to offer God not our goodness, but our honesty; we are invited to lay down real, solid sin. In the assurance that we are loved fully, forgiven freely, and delivered from the enemy named sin, we face our personal limitations which scare us into countless hiding places. During this season, we own our limits and begin to appreciate the gifts they offer. Our self-indulgent, self-flattering age may find this strange, but limits can be as life-giving as our gifts. We are led to truth and abundant life by our weaknesses as well as our strengths. When we know ourselves as flawed and graced, then we grasp how extraordinary it is that God has come to us and delivered us in the person of Jesus Christ. The extravagant promises of Psalm 91 call for an equally extravagant faith, one that I hope the Holy Spirit will continue helping us all develop and discover. Yet, perhaps this is the year to take on a Lenten discipline of fasting. Yes, we should also plan to laugh, pray, and worship this season; however, a discipline of giving up something can remind us of our limits, the gifts that accepting them brings, and the extraordinary news that the limits which keep us from God have been overcome in Jesus Christ. The One who is without limits became limited so that we might be free of all that

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    distorts our humanity. Because of this, whether we acknowledge it or not, we live in the “shelter of the most high” and can know God as our refuge, fortress and salvation.

    Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

    In a world teeming with broken relationships, personal disappointment, public scandals, political games, cultural disrespect, and ongoing terrorist threat, trust is difficult to extend – even to God. After all, even the faithful know bitter disappointment and crushing pain. We are familiar with people maneuvering against us (v. 2,3, 6,12). God’s own even know the feeling of abandonment or being “turned away” (v. 9) by God. Consequently, how can we or anyone call God “light” and “salvation”? What makes the psalmist believe in seeing “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (v. 13)? Does God deliver people from evil or hide people “in his shelter in the day of trouble” (v. 5)? As Christians sit together in diverse seasons of life, Psalm 27 uniquely speaks to the person who has faced difficulty and yet knows the easing of initial pain. While perhaps callous for one in the throes of grief and insufficiently challenging for someone comfortable to the point of needing reminder that their hope is in God and not self, Psalm 27 offers camaraderie and subtle guidance to someone scared or uncertain about the future. Whether this person is surviving cancer, navigating a 12-step recovery program and still tempted by old adversaries and unsure of his long term fortitude, or is a soldier reintegrating into civilian life but still dueling her post traumatic stress disorder demons, Psalm 27 maintains gritty honesty as it dances back and forth between fear and trust. On the one hand, the psalmist addresses God as “light,” “salvation,” and “stronghold .” God “hides” or protects the psalmist in times of trouble. God “teaches” and “leads” in the ways of right living. Even in times of trouble, affirms the psalmist, God is worth the wait. Psalm 27 is a breath-taking affirmation of faith and trust in God, even in the face of dangerous enemies. On the other hand, the questions “Whom shall I fear?” and “Of whom shall I be afraid?” may not be rhetorical. Verse 2 names “evildoers,” “adversaries,” and “foes,” while verse 3 identifies entire armies or groups of people as arrayed against the psalmist, ready to fight. By verse 7, the bravado of these initial verses is gone, and the psalmist pleads with God: “Hear me… when I cry aloud” (v. 7). The psalmist implores God: “Answer me !” (v. 7), “Do not hide your face from me… do not turn your servant away in anger.. .do not cast me off, do not forsake me…” (v. 9), and “do not give me up” (v. 12). The tension between verses 1 and 12 feels palpable. Real fear lives alongside honest faith. Bona fide doubt holds hands with genuine trust. In this psalm, as in life, both are unavoidable. Perhaps unexpectedly, both are also essential. Vigorous faith, as well as animated doubt, both insist that God be taken seriously, asked real questions, and depended upon in tangible ways. Examined doubts refine our understanding and illuminate our experience of God as we filter our beliefs, sifting wishful thinking about the God we want from the challenging wisdom of the God who is. Thus, though an uncomfortable part of Lenten discipline, we follow Psalm 27’s lead, holding fear and faith, doubt and trust together. We form communities where

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    people are allowed and taught to talk honestly. In response to culture’s deep and pronounced needs for connectivity and authenticity, we offer safe space, even to people whose lives, view of the world, or clothing style may not match our own. In many churches, we spend tremendous time debating interesting questions, “believing” or “not believing” that God engages personal or political matters, for example, “believing” or “not believing” that God rescues and hides people from enemies. Yet, faith is not simply about “believing” or “not believing.” It is not assent to a specific supposition; at its best, it is not about doctrine at all. It is about the truth of what we have known. The life of faith is grounded in experience; it is about the real mystery, awe, pain, and grace that we know. As such, the faithful live at the intersection of religious ideas and real life, humbly bringing soaring trust, persistent doubt, and everything in between into conversation with one another, scripture, church tradition, the chorus of witnesses, and the Holy Spirit who works in and through all. In this busy age of anxiety, as in the contemplative days of Lent, we teach and provide opportunity for people to do what the psalmist is doing in Psalm 27 : sharing experience of God (v. 1-6, 13-14) and praying raw prayer that may not seem respectful or theologically correct, but is honest (v. 7-12). Learning to hold doubt and faith together takes patience, which is why the last verse of the Psalm holds all fourteen verses together. Patient seeking, patient searching, patient development of spiritual practices that make both faith and doubt meaningful—give us the time and skills needed to navigate pain, learn lessons, gain perspective, or perhaps even experience the world differently. After all, those with the courage and skills to gaze deeply at doubt, faith, and all of life generally have “eyes to see and ears to hear” that which we easily miss. They see differently, turning a corner and seeing abundance before scarcity. They reach a milestone and recognize grace before loss. Rejecting the self-fulfilling belief that we live in a world based on fear, scarcity, and competition, they notice what is easily overlooked and recognize what they are given each day. They do not gloss over real poverty (material, intellectual, spiritual or emotional), nor do they minimize pain or injustice. They know the power of trust and the benefits of doubt in bringing out the best in others and in them. Furthermore, based on who they keep discovering God to be, they too proclaim the word we all need to hear: “The Lord is my light and salvation.. .the Lord is the stronghold of my life.”

    Third Sunday in Lent Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; I Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

    Barbara Cawthorne Crafton says, in “Living Tent,” that we didn’t know the word. “We didn’t even know what moderation was. What it felt like. We didn’t just work; we inhaled our jobs, sucked them in, became them. Stayed late, brought work home – it was never enough, though, no matter how much time we put in.”2 We didn’t just shop; we maxed out our credit limits. We shopped for new clothes, though we didn’t have any more space in our closets. We came home with new toys, not wanting the kids to be without. We bought more groceries while the food in the refrigerator spoiled. We bought houses with double height entry ways, chef s kitchen, oversize garages, master suites or home theatres where, on our big screens, we cheered on the biggest loser (of weight, that is) or watched the audaciously proportioned Super

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    Bowl. “We didn’t just eat; we stuffed ourselves.”3 We didn’t just exercise; we became week-end warriors. Christmas was as big as we could afford. Our waistbands became even bigger. Michael Jackson encouraged “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough,” but we never had enough. Except when it came to God. We never let our appetite for God get out of control. In fact, in the midst of this propensity toward size, our appetite for God stayed paltry. But what about now? We may be committed to spending less and saving more. We may eat more simply, drive older cars, and wear the same clothes for several years. We may work more reasonable hours; in the face of excess, the call for moderation is crystal clear. But is moderation any more Christian than excess? The Christian witness isn’t toward moderation, but toward properly ordered desires. The faithful life does not demand restraint in all things, but restraint in the right things. Faithfully following Jesus means learning to passionately love and spend our lives on the right things. The question asked by Psalm 63 as well as the entire season of Lent is: Are we zealously loving what is best? While we may energetically desire a job, professional recognition, a hybrid vehicle, home renovation, or the latest I-Phone, do we yearn for God with similar zest? While we may steadily save for retirement or vacation, do we seek God with the same regularity, intensity, and focus? Do we hunger for God so deeply it is as if our stomach growls? Do we love God with the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm that we might bring to one of our other loves: March Madness, jazz, gardening, NASCAR, travel, or cooking with vine ripe tomatoes and pungent basil fresh from the garden? Our gusto for God can be remarkably small, particularly when contrasted with the joy and delight in God that we discover in the psalms. In Psalm 63, the psalmist is not simply interested in or respectful of God; instead, the psalmist craves God like a coffee drinker craves the first morning cup. In fact, dire thirst symbolizes the need in verse 1 ; hunger represents the need in verse 5. The longing for God is so intense, it is experienced physically. Alongside this profound longing, Psalm 63 exudes utter rapt joy. Like a young child exhilarated at riding her first bicycle down a steep hill, the psalmist delights in God’s presence: “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips.. .praise you (v. 3).. .1 will bless you as long as I live; I.. .lift up my hands and call on your name. My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast (v. 4-5a)… .You have been my help… .1 sing for joy (v. 7)… .My soul clings to you” (v. 8a). Throughout Psalm 63:1-8, desire for God is clear. If verses 9-11 are included, this gusto for God is even more breathtaking when it is revealed not as naively flip, but as sustained, profound joy that endures threat and danger. Despite the real enemies, opposition, and pain described in 63:9-11, the psalmist is “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”4 This psalm offers a vision of the faithful life as hungering and thirsting for God, ultimately feasting on God’s presence. Centuries later, Jesus similarly advocates big passion for God: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). The example of faith demonstrated in Psalm 63 invites us not to measure ourselves based on our relationship to moderation, on how well we care for others, our gifts, our responsibilities, or by anything other than what goes on in our deepest being. In the midst of a world filled with competition for our affections,

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    allegiance, energy, and love, Psalm 63 challenges the faithful to cultivate gusto for God. The faithful develop their hearts, honing their desires until we find, with St. Augustine (354-430), that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Unfortunately, as seen in soaring addiction rates, disordered desire is the norm. Sometimes we want wrong things. More often, we want good things in bad ways. We want some things too much (as in the case of most addictions), or we desire other things too little. Savoring Psalm 63 centers the soul. It directs desire. If there’s anything we need more of in our XXL society, it is more joy and pleasure in God. Loving God more than life (v. 3) still feels foreign to most of us; our desire for God has rarely been so full-bodied and comprehensive that it feels like hunger or thirst. Instead, overwhelmed or embarrassed by the religious passions of some people, we may be tempted to downplay the importance of cultivating zeal for God. Alternatively, gusto for God that is as natural and spontaneous as our enjoyment of life’s other loves may seem unrealistic, and we may not know how to begin the Lenten discipline of honing and healing our wounded desires or, quite honestly, whether we want them healed at all. Fortunately, size is not central with God. For those who worry they are not good enough or who feel isolated on the outskirts of the “real” Christian community, Psalm 63 invites identifying and starting with whatever longing we do have. Whether we genuinely desire to know and enjoy God more, whether we want to desire such a thing, or whether we simply know discontent, restlessness, boredom, or a breaking point, God takes the small and changes the world with it. God did it in choosing a small nation of Hebrew people to be his own. God did it when sending a vulnerable baby to forever change the world. God did it in healing all of wounded creation through the ignominy of a common, crude cross. Like the proverbial mustard seed, God works with what is (even if it is nothing more than the smallest of desires), and changes the world with it. Even so, the Holy One works with whatever desire for God we do have and helps us cultivate and grow it, until it too turns into a feast of praise and joy. After all, the whole time we are seeking and thirsting for God, we’re held in God’s hand (v. 8).

    Fourth Sunday in Lent Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; II Corinthians 5:16-12; Luke 15:1-3, llb-32

    Happiness is high on people’s list of priorities. In fact, hunger for happiness drives much of our lives. The ambitions we pursue, the homes we live in, the relationships we engage, the professions we enter, the hobbies we love, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and even the way we observe Lent reflect individual belief about what brings fulfillment and happiness. Noting the universality of this desire, the Dalai Lama observes:

    Indeed, the more I see of the world, the clearer it becomes that no matter what our situation… rich or poor, educated or not, of one race, gender, religion or another, we all desire to be happy… .It is in our nature. Our every intended action, in a sense our whole life —how we choose to live it within the context of the limitations imposed by our circumstances—can be seen as our answer to the great question which confronts us all: “How am I to be happy?”5

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    In Psalm 32, happiness comes from being forgiven. It comes not from being important , accomplished, organized, optimistic, or busy. Instead, being happy is a matter of being righteous, and according to Psalm 32, righteousness is not a matter of being sinless. It is about the ego bruising-work of Lent: acknowledging sin, accepting forgiveness, vigilantly attending God’s teachings, trusting God more than self and, then, being happy in the One who steers us toward paths of utter fulfillment. Undoubtedly, this work is difficult. The confession stage alone is a lonely and tempting place. Culturally, it is popular to assign blame to others and not assume responsibility ourselves. Sin is accepted readily and dismissed as unproblematic. Alternatively, telling the truth and nothing but the truth about our lives leaves others feeling like lone sinners surrounded by saints. Eventually, they withdraw from community and even from God. Still others stay frozen in a state of perpetual horror at their sin and magnify its importance. Rehearsing their crime repeatedly, as if they alone are guilty of such a thing, they berate themselves repeatedly and ask for forgiveness without repenting because, like rubberneckers staring at a car accident, they are unable to pull their gaze from their sin toward God and the open road of sanctified possibilities lying ahead. Some sin may be small but haunting, as it is never released, but instead hauled everywhere. Much like Augustine’s ongoing grief at stealing pears from a neighbor’s tree when he was 16 years old6 or like a friend’s ongoing remorse at having intentionally embarrassed an awkward grade school classmate, some build a past trespass into a paradigmatic representation of the host of failure and sin characteristic of their lives. However, focusing on fault and magnifying its importance is not confes-sion but megalomania, as if we know better than God does that we are undeserving. It narcissistically keeps the focus on our actions, when what God has done and continues to do is far more important. It involves refusing forgiveness and features failure to follow God’s lead into fresh ways of living. Thus, though Psalm 32 is considered the second of the traditional penitential psalms, even this Psalm does not stop with confession, but pushes past the temptation to dwell on one’s crimes into the essential next steps taken by the righteous. Notably, after 32:6, there is no more mention of fierce faults or forgiven foibles. Instead, the happy acknowledge sin (v. 5-6), accept forgiveness (v. 7), attend God’s instruction (v. 8-9), accentuate and trust God more than self (v. 10), and act glad in God (v. 11). Psalm 32 digs beyond the psychologically therapeutic benefits of confession and is about personal change that places God alone at the center of our lives, without rival. The starting point, however, is giving up foolish avoidance of the topic of sin and breaching the silence between self and God. After all, when we keep silent, the consequences are dire. The psalmist had his strength dry up and wither away like shriveled grass browning in the heat of the summer sun. His mouth kept silent, so his body spoke. It wasted away. Alternatively, we may exhibit extra pounds, knots in our back, higher blood pressure, shorter temper, or insomnia, but the result is the same: silence about sin makes us sick. When the only confession we engage involves prayers that lack specificity, selfexamination , and sorrow, there is no bruising of our ego, but neither is there transformation or inner healing. When we let fear or pride infest our lives, we make ourselves at home with distorted views of the nature of humanity and Christian community. At its deepest core, to be human is not to be a sinner, but to be loved. To be righteous is

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    not to be sinless, but to be forgiven and freed. To be in Christian community is not to downplay brokenness, but to accept it and be transformed by the One who healed brokenness on the cross and whose name is and always has been Love. The Christian faith and even the season of Lent is about entering into a way of life that answers the deep human desire for happiness. The entire study of Christian morality and what it looks like to faithfully follow Christ is best understood as “training in happiness,”7 an ongoing initiation into the desires, attitudes, habits, and practices that make for a happy and good life. We may be accustomed to understanding confession, let alone morality or the penitential season of Lent, as life-sapping law, obligation, or rule. However, the witness and instruction of Psalm 32 announces that happiness comes when we are made right with God and engaged in practices such as confession that provide basic building blocks upon which this fundamental friendship flourishes.

    5th Sunday in Lent Isaiah 43:16-12; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

    “Restore our fortunes, O Lord” (v. 4). While the language was certainly different, we have prayed this prayer. Every one of us who has lost a meaningful relationship that we want back has uttered similar words. Each of us who has been unemployed or financially unstable knows of longing for an easier time. We who have been sick need our health returned. We who live in a broken home, abusive relationship, racist environment, or other literal or figurative prison yearn for freedom. We who know the devastation of a flood, hurricane, drought, or other natural disaster crave security, not to mention a better situation. Pain, needs, and ongoing problems prompt us to pray for what we have already experienced. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord… .may those who go out weeping.. .come home with shouts of joy…” (v. 4,6). May our mouths be filled with laughter (v. 2). It is during times of pain that we often look nostalgically back to happier days, and even in this psalm, we witness the people of Israel heralding the good ‘ole days. Remembering their long anticipated return to Jerusalem (Zion), they talk of their dreams coming true, their land, livelihoods, and community being returned, their eyes sparkling with joy, and their mouths being filled with laughter (v. 1-3). Not mentioning the challenges of return from exile, they simply celebrate how wonderful life was, how easily laughter spilled into the air. Some might label this as denial, as a pollyanna attitude, or as whistling in the dark; yet, the past gives hope. We claim God’s past presence and action in our lives and in the lives of others, looking to it as a foundation upon which we continue to affirm God’s ability and will to deliver us from our present circumstances. We offer subversive doxology. We continue to praise God from whom all blessings flow because we believe in God’s power to make new more than we believe in the world’s power to keep status quo. Even in the midst of a heart-breaking, scar-making present, we defiantly etch out moments to praise God because we believe in God’s goodness more than the world’s badness. In the face of difficult and dangerous days that popular culture teaches will always be with us, we witness to a new day. Grounded in the past and looking toward the future, we claim that joy reflects wisdom and that hope is an authentic stance. We spend more time looking at God and his kingdom than at a mirror.

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    Suffering is an inescapable part of life. In the video for REM’s hit song entitled “Everybody Hurts,” the band is stuck in a traffic jam. Filmed along I-10 in San Antonio, Texas, the video shows people in other cars, also trapped in traffic. The thoughts of these despondent drivers and passengers appear on screen in the form of subtitles, and eventually Psalm 126:5 flashes on the screen: “Those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.” The point is as clear as the title of the song. Everybody hurts sometimes. Those of us following a Savior with his face set stone solidly toward Jerusalem, gritting his teeth and facing squarely what lies ahead already understand this. Moreover, suffering not from injustice or the world’s whimsy, but suffering as a byproduct of relationship with God is a sign of faithfulness, a mark of discipleship. Christ’s life is a demand. Taking up our cross is requirement. We are called to die for him as he died for us. We are to be followers, not admirers. As Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “When there is no danger, when there is a dead calm, when everything is favorable to our Christianity, then it is all too easy to confuse an admirer with a follower…. The admirer can be under the delusion that the position he takes is the true one, when all he is doing is playing it safe.”8 There are many reasons we pray to God, saying, “Restore our fortunes.” Glorious expectations are not met. Injustice tears our lives. As our Lenten journey continues, it is important to ask: When has God done great things for you? What do you currently need from God? What currently brings you pain? Is it suffering born of discipleship, disaster, or injustice? What does your faith ask of you right now? To what degree are you following Christ and to what degree are you simply admiring him? As Psalm 126 boldly affirms, more dependable than suffering is God’s deliverance . In trouble as in tranquility, in the storm as in the calm, God is with us and God’s world will be.

    Passion/Palm Sunday Luke 19:28-40; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56 or Luke 23:1-49

    Like an ancient Passover parade, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was filled with heady excitement. People of all walks of life converged on the city in a dynamic swirl of variety and color, exuberantly spreading their cloaks on the ground in front of Jesus as a symbol of honor. Luke reports that “the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully” (v. 37). From the sides of the road, the crowd cheered: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Some leaders were displeased and asked Jesus to order his disciples to stop, but Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (v. 40). The stones would shout? Why? (We’ll save that “how” question for later.) Similarly, in what is only one of many psalms of thanksgiving and praise, the psalmist of Psalm 118 proclaims, “O give thanks to the Lord… (v. 1 ). Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.. .(v. 26). You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you” (v. 28). Why is this show of support, excitement, and admiration important? The title of the book of Psalms in Hebrew is a word which means praises, and many of the psalms begin and end with a call for people to praise God. Furthermore, through-

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    out the scriptures, the “end times,” “renewed creation,” or “heaven” is depicted as a time and place when believers from every nation ceaselessly praise and worship God. Unending praise is our purpose and destiny. Why does God need praise? Why do we have a historic chorus of witnesses incessantly reminding us to praise God? And why, incidentally, does their praise of God so often consist of telling other people to praise God as well? Gratitude to God, reverence, and obedience are things we can understand, and at the beginning of Holy Week, we easily offer them to God. But why is perpetual eulogy important? After all, we easily tire of the person who continually needs reminder and assurance of her intelligence, his sense of humor, or her importance. So, what’s going on here? Praise is asked of us four times in the first four verses of Psalm 118, is asked again in the last verse, and it is offered in each of the remaining verses of this week’s lectionary reading of the Psalter. More broadly, exhortation to praise God is a more dominant feature of the Book of Psalms than prayers for help. So, praise sounds like a good idea, but why the urgency, and why should it begin Holy Week? My daughter Logan is a smart, creative red head who is rapidly developing a personal sense of style, greater confidence, and more curiosity. This played out in a new way over the summer when we were touring Colonial Williamsburg. Our tour guide asked the 40 of us gathered for the tour if we knew when Great Britain first attempted to tax the colonies for revenue. No one answered, until Logan tentatively raised her hand and said, “My school in Georgia told us it was the Stamp Act in 1765. A month later the House of Burgess said it was illegal.” The tour guide looked impressed and confirmed that she was right. I was stunned. Logan does not speak in front of people. She’s the shy child who will not speak in class. However, she was not only speaking, but she was informing a group of strangers. When she raised her hand and quietly answered the follow-up question and then asked a great question of her own, I glanced at my husband, trying to suppress a triumphant smile. However, I was proud. I was happy that she spoke up. She was working past a fear. I was also thrilled that she knew her American history. My husband and I could not wait to tell our parents , and we called them that night, proudly relaying the story, first to one grandparent and then to the other. We even told it in front of Logan in order to build her up. Have you ever noticed that delight spontaneously overflows into praise? Unless something like self-consciousness or concern for others brings that praise into check, we talk about the things we enjoy. In fact, the world rings with admiration: music fans praising their favorite group, sports fans raving about their team, food enthusiasts commending their favorite restaurants, and patriots paying tribute to their country. There is praise of weather, wines, art, actors, ideas, flowers, beaches, mountains, motors, homes, cars, leaders, rare coins, rare collections, technology, sometimes even politicians or ministers. Praise doesn’t even stop in the face of things that fail to be praiseworthy. How many times have we heard a poor presentation, poem, song, recital, or sermon praised? And, just as spontaneously as we launch into praising what we value, many of us also spontaneously urge those around us to join us in praising that which we enjoy: Isn’t she gorgeous? Isn’t he handsome? Wasn’t that amazing? Or, in my case, “Hey! Guess what Logan did?”

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    Unless we deliberately limit ourselves, we too spontaneously urge others to join us in praising that which we enjoy. How many times have you heard a minister stand up and compliment the choir or praise a volunteer? Why not just pat them on the back later? Why urge the rest of the congregation to also express their appreciation or admiration? It is because praise completes the enjoyment. It is not out of vanity that those in love continue to compliment one another; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed . It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good she is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some amazing view and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for the empty McDonald’s bag in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. Praise completes the enjoyment.9 We praise. We worship. We glorify. Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, seemingly hard-wired into the very fiber of our being. Praise is not created to be part of our life; it is our life. Orel Herschiser was an unbelievable baseball pitcher who pitched an amazing 1998 season for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Following a complete game shutout in August , he did not allow his opponents to score an earned run in 59 consecutive innings. When the Dodgers faced the New York Mets in the National League playoffs, Orel dominated hitters, leading the Dodgers to victory by pitching more than 24 innings. In the final game of the playoffs, he pitched a complete game shut-out and ended the season, having won the Cy Young Award and two MVP awards, one for the National League play-offs and the other for the World Series. In one of the final games of the playoffs, the TV cameras zoomed in and caught Orel in the dugout between innings softly singing to himself. Unable to make out the tune, the announcers merely commented that Orel’s record certainly gave him something to sing about. A few days later when Orel appeared on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Johnny asked him what song he had been singing during the game and if Orel would sing it right then and there. The audience egged him on and roared their approval over Orel’s embarrassed reluctance. Finally, on national TV, Orel Herschiser softly sang the tune that he had been singing while competing in the World Series:

    Praise God from whom all blessings flow Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

    “What is man’s chief end?” asks the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” the secret being that these are the same thing. To fully enjoy God is to fully glorify and praise, and in creating us to glorify God in all things, God is simply inviting us to enjoy Him forever. This is the gift Jesus came to bring, and it is the reason that even the stones would shout praises.

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    Notes

    1. Leslie D. Weatherhead, Key Next Door (New York: Abingdon, 1060), 103. 2. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, “Living Lent,” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2003), 15. 3. Ibid. 4. Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” 1747, in Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis : Augsburg Publishing House, 1978) #315. 5. Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverside Books, 1999), 4. 6. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), 49. 7. Paul Wadell, Happiness and the Christian Moral Life (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2008) 47. 8. S0ren Kierkegaard, “Followers, not Admirers,” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2003), 59. 9. This paragraph is an updated rendering of a paragraph by C. S. Lewis, which has inspired this essay. C. S. Lewis, Reflections of the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace and company, 1958), 95.

  • Easter Sunday

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    Easter Sunday

    Luke 24:1-11

    Shannon Johnson Kershner Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, Black Mountain, North Carolina

    It seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them. The women’s testimonies about Jesus’, their Jesus’, rising again— the women’s words about resurrection breaking the power of death— seemed to the eleven disciples to be just empty talk, a silly story, utter nonsense, sheer humbug. “I’m sorry ladies- but that is not the way it works. When you are dead, you are dead. When you are in the pit, you stay in the pit. What you see is all there is. Stones placed in front of tombs on Fridays are still in place on Sundays.” “Their words seemed to them an idle tale” is putting it lightly. I am sure the women must have understood the men’s hestitation. As they had made their way to the tomb that morning, they, themselves, felt that same old world grip of death wound tightly around their own hearts. The Sabbath day had ended. They were certain Jesus’ dead body still remained. Plus, they needed to go to the tomb in order to anoint his body properly and privately. They needed to touch the body of their Rabbi just one more time, to minister to him in his death the way he had ministered to them in his life, if for no other reason than for their own last grasp for closure. So the women started that day making their way to the tomb, with the old world grip of death winding around their own hearts, holding spices in hand, and looking for Jesus’ corpse. Our text tells us they started the journey at early dawn, but another way to translate that phrase is as “deep dawn.” “Deep dawn is that indefinable time between darkness and light.. .that time when you decide either that the promise in which you believe is true; or the promise in which you believe is a lie.”1 And as the women stood in the middle of deep dawn time, what they found when they arrived at the tomb completely undid them. “Perplexed” is how our text puts it—but that is understating it a bit. One can also translate that word to say the women were disturbed, uncertain, at a loss. Well, of course they were. Who can blame them? They had gone to the tomb at deep dawn—at that time between darkness and light, that time when you choose to either believe the promise or not. But they could not make the choice between belief or unbelief because they could not even remember the promises Jesus had made while he was with them. The old world grip of death was so tightly wound around their hearts that it was squeezing hope dry. So when they arrived at that tomb in the middle of deep dawn and they could not find his body, they were left at a complete loss. The old world, the old framework for understanding life, the old way of living Good Friday lives with stripped chancels and stripped hopes— that old world still rang in their minds and hearts. And yet—here they were—standing in an empty tomb, holding spices in hand, and listening as two men in dazzling clothes asked them why they were looking for the living among the dead. Why? Because that is the way it happens. Dead bodies stay dead. What you see is all there is. Stones placed in front of tombs on Fridays are still there in place on Sundays. Why are they looking for Jesus’ body? They were looking for his body because they had watched him die. Standing there in the empty tomb in the middle of deep dawn, the old world grip of death was still tightly wound around their hearts.

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    “But sisters,” the men said, “your Jesus is not here. He has risen. Don’t you remember what he told you when he was with you in Galilee — that the Son of Man would be handed over, crucified, and then raised? Don’t you remember his words of promise?” On their way, at deep dawn, the women had not been able to remember. But now—standing in that empty tomb—they were confronted face to face with the new reality that somehow, through God’s power of life, the stone had been rolled away; somehow, through God’s power of life, the tomb was empty; somehow, through God’s power of life, Jesus had been resurrected and lived again. And even in their shock and surprise, the women began to remember all the promises they had heard in their time with Jesus. “I remember”—one must have said to another. “I remember now that he told us that he would be handed over, crucified, and would rise again. How could I have forgotten that?” “I remember too,” another one said. “I remember how he said what is impossible for mortals is possible for God. How could I have forgotten that?” “I remember,” another one shouted as they ran back from the tomb, dropping their spices as they went along, “I remember how he said the kingdom of God was coming, was here, was among us in him. How could I have forgotten that?” “I remember,” Mary Magdalene might have claimed, “I remember all those times he told us who and whose he was—our brother, our Messiah, the one for whom we have waited. How could I have forgotten that?” And as they remembered all Jesus had promised them, as they reminded each other all Jesus had promised them, the time of deep dawn started to fade, and the early morning sun began to make its way over the horizon. And as they remembered, as they reminded each other of all the promises—promises of resurrection newness— promises of abundant life—promises of a God whose power of life would trample the power of death—the old world grip of death started to loosen its tentacles from their hearts and fall away. And by the time the women reached the others, the old world grip of death was banished completely. And the women rushed into the room that sheltered the other eleven disciples, and all the women began talking at once. “Don’t you remember what Jesus promised?” they asked the men. “Don’t you remember how he said God would raise him from the dead? It has happened. We have seen it with our own eyes. We have remembered with our own hearts.” The women must have told those disciples, “We can’t explain it to you, but we have experienced it. We can’t tell you how it happened, but we trust it has. Brothers, Easter rises. In the middle of betrayal and death, in the middle of shadows and denial, in the middle of pain and loss, in the middle of tombs and crosses, Easter rises. There is hope—my brothers—there is hope, but you have to remember what Jesus said. You have to remember what Jesus promised in order to see the new world in all its glory.” And surely after they told their brothers all they had seen and heard, the women must have taken a collective deep breath and waited…waited to see their reaction to the news. But to those men locked up in that room— scared, ashamed, guilty—the women’s words seemed to be an idle tale : empty talk, a silly story, utter nonsense, sheer humbug. They just could not remember. The old world grip of death still wound its way around their hearts. In that locked room, they found it too difficult to believe the power of resurrection.

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    What about you this morning? Does this testimony from these women sound like merely an idle tale to you—empty talk, a silly story, utter nonsense, sheer humbug? At this moment in your life, are you walking through a time of deep dawn—a time when you have to decide if what you see is all there is to our lives and to our world, or that there is a different power at work—a resurrection power at work in our lives and in our world? Are you at a time in your life when, if you are honest, you feel the old world grip of death still winding its way around your heart so that any words of empty tombs and Easter rising ring shallow? If you are, you are in good company with the other 11 disciples. But, if you are, I need to tell you the rest of their story. When the women first returned, all talking at once, trying to describe their experience of resurrection and their new vision of hope, the other 11 disciples could not believe them. They could not believe them because they could not remember the promises. They could not remember what Jesus had told them in Galilee because they were too scared, too ashamed, too guilty to recall. But just like the empty tomb proclaimed death did not have the last word on Jesus’ life, their amnesia did not have the last word on their lives either. For later on that same day, the risen Jesus came to be with them to remind them himself of all the promises he had made – to let them touch his wounds, watch him eat, see with their own eyes how resurrection power had broken out all over their world. And slowly but surely, by God’s Spirit, even those 11 disciples found the old world grip of death loosening and falling away. And, slowly but surely, with Jesus’ help, they were able to remember all of those promises and start to believe. And in that remembering, they discovered that they weren’t just disciples, followers, of Jesus anymore. They were now apostles—people sent—summoned by Jesus the living Christ to tell all they had seen and heard and experienced of resurrection power and new life. And their moment of deep dawn faded, and the sun rose for them, too. Now, I realize that for those of us struggling with this testimony sounding like an idle tale, the rest of their story is not a completely fair comparison. For the risen Lord came and stood among them—letting them touch his wounds, watch him eat, listen to his promises again. And I am guessing that for most of us, that kind of appearance of our risen Lord has not happened. And yet, by God’s Spirit, we can join the disciples in remembering all of the promises we have heard and trusting they are true. We can join the disciples in trusting and believing in our own lives that Easter always rises—no matter what the old world tries to tell us, and no matter how many times we have to wrestle with doubt and unbelief. As William Sloane Coffin always preached, “We may kill God’s love, but we cannot keep it dead and buried!” Easter always rises. The power of resurrection always breaks out. That is the testimony of our faith on this Easter Sunday. That is the testimony that broke out with those women at the empty tomb and those disciples in the locked room. That is our testimony that has been handed down from generation to generation to generation so that all those who follow, all those who are sent to proclaim the Lord, crucified and risen, can remember God’s promises and believe. Believe that the old world grip of death has been broken forever. Believe that things are not simply the way they seem. Believe that we can get out of the pit; we will find hope emerging from despair; we can live new resurrection lives here and now; God’s love will not be kept dead and buried.

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    Why? Because the stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty. Our crucified Lord has risen! The power of resurrection is forever set loose into our world. We can remember those promises. My goodness, how could we forget?

    The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!

    Note

    1 This phrase and definition was used in a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowrey, found in the Journal for Preachers, Easter 2004.

  • Preparation, presence, and proclamation: youth groups journey to the 2009 presidential inauguration

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    Preparation, Presence, and Proclamation:

    Youth Groups Journey to the 2009

    Presidential Inauguration

    Molly Kent, Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia Katie Ricks, Church of Reconciliation, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

    I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young women and men shall see visions, and your old men and women shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17)

    Preaching necessarily involves preparation and study, an encounter in the presence of God, and the practice of testimony. The process is not an easy one; you can end up a long way from where you started; and wrestling – usually of the spiritual variety – is almost always a part of the journey. Yet, there are moments when the encounter with God is so palpable, so unmistakable, that our lives are changed forever. The same is true in ministry with youth – particularly on mission trips. It was certainly the case in January 2009, as youth groups from Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta and Church of Reconciliation (The Ree) PC(US A) in Chapel Hill journeyed together to witness the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States of America. The trip was planned long before we knew who would take the oath of office, long before we could fathom the logistical details needed to keep us safe and warm, long before we could imagine how the Spirit would work within and among us. There was much preparation and study; the plan was constantly changing; and wrestling – of the spiritual variety – was definitely a part of the process. Yet, standing on the National Mall – after waiting eight hours in 20-degree weather, surrounded by and embracing people of every race and creed and age and background, with flags waving, tears flowing, and shouts of joy being lifted – God’s presence was unmistakable. Truly, our lives were changed forever. This is our story, the story of a community born between two churches and among two million people, grounded in our belief in a community born 2,000 years ago by the Spirit’s unexpected and unimaginable presence.

    Preparation Planning the inauguration trip was a massive undertaking. The challenges had less to do with the almost 70 youth and adults going on the trip from our two churches and more to do with the two million people who were also embarking on a trip to the nation’s capítol for the same event. We arranged everything from the daily schedule to the smallest detail – how and where to park our vans on inauguration day, accounting for which roads and bridges would be closed to vehicle traffic, and how the groups would make their way to the airport or the highway to North Carolina, respectively. These logistical pieces of the puzzle, usually the most simple – the things that only take one phone call or one email – turned into communication roller coasters and roundabouts . Every other day our best laid plans from the day before had fallen through. As

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    we continued to grapple with the details, we focused on developing a trip grounded in Christian community and a safe environment for all. God calls us to break down barriers between all people and to create community. As with most youth groups, these two have circles of friends and particular dynamics that the members understand and find comfortable. Not only did we want to break down those familiar patterns of interaction within our own groups, but we also wanted to create a space where we were gathered as one community—not two separate youth groups staying at the same place. Technology and intentionality helped us introduce the two youth groups and congregations to each other before we gathered as one community in D .C. We watched each other’s mission trip videos, published the same articles in both church newsletters , connected the groups by Skype during our final trip meetings, and commissioned trip participants with the same liturgy. By doing the same things at the same time and in the same way with the youth, parents, adult advisors, and congregations, we built small bridges to cover the 380 miles between our two churches. We continued to develop this intentional community once we arrived in Washington . We held a meeting with all of the adults so they could learn each other’s names and model community for the youth. We displayed a cross listing the already established relationships between the two churches – including the fact that Katie had served at both churches and that a member of Central, Carolyn Clarke, was a founding member of The Ree. And we had icebreakers, prepared food, and created a joint covenant to blend middle school youth with senior highs, youth with adults, and Central with The Ree. We were aware of the inherent obstacles involved in combining youth groups, and we knew we could not control the relationships among our seventy participants. It was both illogical and essential to believe that barriers would be broken and community formed. Still, we did believe. And we did it – all of us together. We stood in a big circle with a ball to connect us. If you had the ball in hand, you said your name, then tossed the ball to someone else. After giving our names, we asked each other questions until we discovered more about each other—that the person across the room plays lacrosse, is a church officer, or likes science better than history. Safety is always a priority when leading youth, but it had increased emphasis due to the size of the crowds and the heightened security in the area. We sought to weave safety procedures into our practice of community. We wore the same yellow fleece hats, which kept us warm and marked us as one group – easily recognizable by ourselves and others; we went on a combined scavenger hunt to gain a better sense of our neighborhood around Capitol Hill; we created care groups of four youth to each adult to make it easier to keep track of one another; and, we gave each person a laminated wallet-size card with the phone numbers of all the adults and the address where we were staying. Robert Fulghum summed it up well, “When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.” Other than going from our living space downstairs to the sanctuary upstairs for worship, we never went out as one large group. We configured each small group based on what we were doing and where we were going. Youth and adults from both churches worked together for meal preparation and the scavenger hunt. In our care groups, we attended the largest events over the weekend—the “We Are One” concert on Sunday and the Inauguration on Tuesday.

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    On the morning of the inauguration, the two groups separated, but still kept a bond of community together by covenanting to pray the same prayer. The families and both congregations back at home also had the prayer, and we invited them to pray it out loud from wherever they were at 9:30 on inauguration morning. We had it all planned. We thought through every possible obstacle to community or safety and made a plan, a backup plan, and in some cases, a backup to the backup plan. We wanted to ensure that everyone would stay together and not get separated from the group. Yet, before we loaded up the van or boarded the plane to go to D.C., we had to be willing to let go of all the plans and just be, be responsible, but be present as well. It was no longer “plan, implement, control,” but “plan, implement, and let go.”

    Presence When we do mission work, we go out into the world to seek God’s presence—to recognize the face of Christ. It’s different from missions of bygone years, when people believed that they took Jesus into the world. We believe God is waiting to meet us at our destination, waiting to reveal more to us, waiting to call us into new understanding, new service, new life. Sometimes God is present, but we are too distracted to witness the encounter. Other times, it feels as if we can’t turn around without being washed by the Spirit. We experienced this in D.C. The Spirit called us—or rather, compelled us—into intentional community, a ministry of presence, and a new way of being in the world. The sense of community throughout the weekend was overwhelming. Certainly, we had a heightened awareness because we had intentionally sought it within the Central-Rec group, but there was an unmistakable connection to something bigger, perhaps something as big as a banquet thrown for all of God’s children. The almost two million people responded to each other as if they had been friends for years, greeting each other with smiles and embraces; sharing food, blankets and handwarmers ; keeping people together and safe. Because we were easily identified (marked) by those bright yellow hats, others felt an immediate kinship with us. “We know how to find our way back because of you.” “Hey, we saw some of your people about 50 yards over that way.” “Tell us where you are from.” Throughout the crowded weekend, we heard remarks like these and more. Every time we shared the story of our newly-formed community, someone would say, “Wow, I wish my church youth group had done that.” That bond helped on the way out of town as well. As the Central crew of 52 people with luggage tried to make their way through a congested Metro station, the crowd parted, allowing the yellow-hatted group to get to the train platform together. When the last few yellow hats descended the long, steep staircase, a stranger, or new friend, had joined them, carrying the luggage of their youngest member. All of us who took pictures have hundreds of shots of our yellow-hatted crew— a sea of hats — at the Lincoln Memorial concert, the Inauguration on the Mall, the packed Metro station. We remembered family trips from childhood, posing in front of monuments as a group. We were capturing our new family and each extraordinary moment. We didn’t want to leave anyone out. The sheer numbers of people gathered in Washington, D.C. altered our carefully planned itinerary as well. We, along with 32,000 others, took to the streets and shelters and youth centers across the DC area to participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. “Day

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    of Service.” We were set to serve with “We Feed Our People,” an organization that serves a hot meal on that day to people living near the MLK Jr. Library. Three college students started the program 22 years ago, when they heard the call to use the newly established holiday as an opportunity to do something meaningful. When we arrived, one of the founders approached us and thanked us for being there. “We have plenty of volunteers,” he said, “but, please stay and enjoy the program. Your presence means a great deal to us.” We looked at each other with mild panic. What do you do with 70 people who are supposed to be here on a service trip but now have nothing to do? The hardest thing for people of God to do is just be. Yet, that is exactly what we had been asked to do, to be a witness to a generation of young people who are helping to make the world a better place, to be holders of signs that call for all to be fed, to be a yellow-hatted ministry of presence that shares the love of God through laughter and dancing and music and community. The Spirit flowed. (It didn’t hurt that the program included David Arquette, Ben Affleck, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, and Martin Luther King III!) Being in the presence of God not only opens us up to hearing new calls from God, but also sparks a yearning to seek out that presence even more. The desire to be with God can inspire us to make choices that are contrary to our normal way of being. That was certainly the case for our youth. We had created an elaborate “Inauguration Day” plan with staggered wake up times, strategic routes to the Mall, and tactics for surviving the intense cold and the long wait on the Mall. When we approached the youth, they told us that despite their natural inclinations for sleep, comfort, and entertainment, they each, every last one of them, wanted to wake up at 3:15 a.m. to get out to the Mall as soon as possible for the event that didn’t even begin until noon. They knew that God was in the midst ofthat gathered community; they knew that God would be with them in the waiting; they knew that God would spark something new within their hearts. They were right. For upon our return, teenagers who rarely utter more than “it was fine” when describing a mission trip to their parents couldn’t stop talking; they wanted to share all that they had seen and heard.

    Proclamation This desire to proclaim began on the trip and became rooted in the new community that emerged. Because the care groups traveled separately around the city, each would encounter different people, different stories, different challenges. Every time a small group would return to the Washington Seminar Center, eyes wide with excitement, faces red from the cold, hair tousled from the yellow hats, others would approach them to listen and share and laugh. We wanted to hear each other’s experiences. This is, after all, one of the foundations of Christian community. Jesus sends us out into the world to love and serve God and God’s people, and we gather again, each day, each week, each year, to proclaim where we have experienced God, to give thanks, and to listen for our next call. Listen for the Spirit alive in the world, as you hear some words from our community:

    I don’t think I have or will feel that much excitement coming from that

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    many people ever again in my life. It was really moving to see all the emotions going through that crowd. (Jacob Hay thorn, age 12) My favorite experience on the trip was standing out on the mall and feeling so cold, while knowing that I was a part of something so great. (Lauren Melville, age 13) We were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people who were all strangers, but we were all gathered together to witness and celebrate this historic event. Watching Obama being inaugurated made me feel hopeful that our country could accomplish great things and finally change for the better. That was truly amazing. (Kat Thomson, age 14) It was amazing to be there to witness history with two million other people, who had all come from across the country and from different backgrounds and cultures to watch Obama’s inauguration. It was a very powerful moment to be standing in the crowd of so many different people, who at one moment were all there for the same thing — to watch history be made.” (Emma Thomson, age 14) We had the most amazing seats that I ever imagined we would have. With good eyesight, our group could see the stage with our very own eyes. It was just the most incredible experience, even if waking up at 3 isn’t my favorite, or walking 3 miles being pushed into gates isn’t my favorite, I would do it again, anytime, any day. I can’t really put into words how grateful I was to see such an important piece of history, and now I have something incredible I can tell my kids one day! (Dylan Farrow, age 13) I never thought I would see the day when we would elect a non European American as President. Suddenly, that changed. If that was possible, what else could be possible – what else could we do if we were open to what’s possible? (Annette Perot, adult leader) The best part of attending the inauguration was being in that crowd of millions of people and hearing them all laugh. Even in these times when everything seems to be against us, I see that it is still possible to feel joy. Joy in masses. To be standing next to people I had never seen before and will probably never see again and yet still feeling utterly connected to them because ofthat incredible moment when Barack Obama said: ‘So help me God’ and all anyone could feel was this incredible, unspeakable joy. A joy experienced by millions together. Feeling like I am living in a country I can finally be truly proud of. A country united. I can’t believe it took us this long to get here, but we’re here now. Feeling like finally, finally our country is living up to the principles that started it. Thank God Almighty. (Elizabeth Carr, age 14) This trip meant that we witnessed history. This will be a lifelong memory that will stay with me forever. I felt very responsible walking around D.C. and the church where we were staying. I wish we could do this again! (Miriam Moore Keish, age 11)

    This responsibility of which Miriam spoke permeated our time together. We knew that we represented our individual churches and the denomination, but more important , we were a witness to a God who dreams (what we imagine to be) impossible

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    dreams, who creates and unites a community of extraordinarily diverse people, and who opens our hearts and calls us to serve. The call is what drew us to come to the inauguration – not as an individual participant on a school trip, but as part of a community that knows and believes that we are responsible for living our faith in the world. As we have reflected on the trip, the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi keep coming into our hearts – “Preach the Gospel always. If necessary, use words.” Proclamation came in many different forms – in the youth’s awe-struck faces, in their enthusiastic words, in their laughter, and in the manner in which they live their daily lives, seeking to continue living that “incredible, unspeakable joy.” Youth trips are transformational. They build on the intentional community spawned in advance, they challenge us to shake up our daily routines and perspectives on the world, and they continue to shape our lives as we return to our homes to serve God in new and different ways. One of our adult leaders, Craig Carlson, said it this way: “The faces in that crowd told the story of great joy and hope for the future, but also of past struggles and pain. Such a sense of promise filled the air, but it was a promise that seemed firmly rooted in a hard-fought past. That day it was especially easy to feel a part of the sweep of history and the continuing journey of our Nation. Certainly the struggles for equality and justice go on, but all around me I saw and heard signs that the journey had long ago begun and would indeed continue. And January 20, 2009, in the cold, on the National Mall, was surely a milepost on that great journey.” The story of God’s history with God’s people is continually being written. We prepare, we encounter, we proclaim – all the time seeking to be open to the Spirit transforming our lives and compelling us to serve. May God continue to bless all of us on our journeys.

    Inauguration Prayer Holy God, we stand here at this moment knowing that you have been with your people throughout history and grateful that we can rely upon you to be with us now. Fill these newly elected officials with honesty and integrity and conviction – that they would serve your people with fairness and energy and love. Keep our leaders safe – and those around the world – that they might live and serve without fear of physical, spiritual, or emotional attack. Surround all of your children who are actively experiencing violence and abuse and the reality of war – that they may know your Peace and Love. Strengthen those who are wrestling with poverty and famine and these uncertain economic times – that they may find grounding in your presence and resources to care for their basic needs. Guide all of us who join together in lifting up your name – that we may diligently work with you to bring about your Reign of Justice and Peace. We pray with confidence and hope and trust in the One who came to walk among us, who taught us to pray, saying.. .(Insert Lord’s Prayer for your community).

  • The word we don’t mention

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    The Word We Don’t Mention*

    Ruth 1, John 6:66-8

    Sam Wells

    Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

    I’m thinking right now of young man who left college ten years ago. He went into consulting work on the East Coast. He spent a bit of time on Wall Street and had a spell out West learning how companies work. Three or four years ago he and a couple of others set up their own company. It was tough at first, but soon it became quite a success. He had a chance to sell it to his original employer, but it meant too much to him to sell so soon. That company was his life, his identity, his pride, his joy. January just past it all went wrong. The company slid into bankruptcy like a sandcastle engulfed by the incoming tide. The young man saw his dream disappear and his security, prestige , and self-esteem melt away with it. Four months later, to my knowledge, his mother and sister have yet to find a way even gently to refer to the subject with him. His life is shrouded in silence and dominated by the F-word: failure. Here we are, celebrating the great feat of entrepreneurship at the heart of our culture – that’s to say taking someone else’s money and someone else’s ideas and turning them into a degree. You don’t get into Duke without a bulging resume – and for many people life at Duke is about continuing to cram the suitcase full of experiences and journeys and conversations and projects. But lurking behind the gothic pillars lies a shadowy voice whispering the word we don’t mention: failure. The terrifying prospect that after four years of rehearsal at Duke we’ll go out on the stage of the big wide world and find that the auditorium is empty. Everyone out there simultaneously got a call from their bank manager and suddenly left the theatre. Of course we have sophisticated strategies for calling failure something else. We call it broadening our experience. We call it a learning curve. We call it a blind alley. We mutter things like “If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.” We quote Kipling and say, “If you meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same” – even though we know that’s nonsense, and triumph and disaster are not impostors at all. They’re in fact as real as anything we can imagine. Another approach is to adjust our sights and aim so low that we can’t fail. When a person appears to be lazy, it’s often a mask for a fear of failure. Being lazy means you can go on saying, “Just you watch me when I go” – in other words, if I really did try, I really would succeed. The Irish humorist Oscar Wilde said, “There’s only one thing worse than not getting what you want – and that’s getting it.” In the film Chariots of Fire, Harold Abrahams is a young Jewish man with a fantastic ability to run. He has to overcome various kinds of prejudice, but he nonetheless spends years preparing for the 100 meters at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. There’s a poignant scene shortly after he’s won the race. Abrahams is sitting in the changing room, nursing his precious gold medal. His team-mates crash into the room to congratulate him, but his trainer holds them back. Looking at the static, oblivious figure of Abrahams, the trainer says to the team-mates, “Hold on, wait, stand back, give him a bit more time and space. You don’t

    * This sermon was preached at the Duke University Baccalaureate on May 8,2009.

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    know how difficult it is to win.” What I take him to mean is, even when we do achieve our ambition, we then have to face the rest of our days and realize how small our life projects really are. Failure protects us in some ways, because we can remain obsessed by our unfulfilled goal. We only notice its insignificance if and when we attain it. It’s difficult to win, because then the striving is over, and all the fantasies truly threaten to unravel. I’ve had the privilege to know a few Nobel Prize winners. You’d think they’d be a proud and arrogant bunch, but they’re quite the opposite. They tend to mumble self-effacingly about only getting the award because it was a bad year. It’s as if genuine achievement is even more humbling than failure, because it makes you realize how small you really are. We’ve just read together two profound and moving stories of failure. The first comes from the book of Ruth. Naomi has a husband and two sons, and both sons take wives from outside the land of Israel. But Naomi’s husband and two sons all die, and she says to her two daughters-in-law, “Our situation is hopeless – go back to your own people.” One daughter-in-law heads home, but the other, Ruth, clings to Naomi and says, “Don’t press me to leave you. Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” It’s a heartbreaking scene, in which Ruth, in the face of poverty and possible death, says that, for her, there’s something that means more than self-preservation and survival. That something is loyalty and love. In showing such steadfast love against all expectations, she shows us the face of God in a way we might never have seen it if she’d been lucky and successful. The second story comes from John’s gospel. Jesus is finding that a lot of people who hung around him earlier on are turning away from him. He looks at his right-hand man Peter and says. “So, are you going to go away too?” It’s as if the whole of the future of Jesus’ ministry hangs on this one question. Maybe the whole of the future of Christianity rests in the balance. Is it over, then? Like Ruth, Peter says there’s something more important than popularity and circumstances, and that’s love and loyalty. He says “To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life .”It’s almost like he’s saying, “Jesus, even if you’ve failed, your failure is still more important than anyone else ‘ s success.” Again, Peter shows us the face of God, because God sticks with us even when no one else does, even when it looks like there’s nothing in us that’s worth sticking with. The story of Ruth is a story of bad luck. The story from John’s gospel is a story of rejection. But they’re both stories of failure. Failure isn’t just down to our own weakness – it’s often down to simple bad luck or unaccountable rejection. Why do we fear failure so much? I’m going to suggest why. Around about 150 years ago, in Western societies, belief in hell started to go out of fashion. It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of this gradual cultural change. When people believe in a final judgement and in everlasting heaven and eternal hell, there ‘ s only one judgement that matters, and that’s God’s judgement, and only one failure that counts and that’s the failure to enter heaven. But when you gradually take hell out of the picture, all sorts of judgements become sought after and relevant, and correspondingly there become a thousand ways to fail. We come to fear earthly failure in the same way we fear death. In fact, failure becomes a kind of equivalent of death – which is why the young man’s mother and sister found they couldn’t even mention the subject to him. Our earthly successes become our quest for immortality, and if we fail, it’s like a double dose of death. We

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    crave success, and the reason we crave success is that success appears to be the way we transcend our contingent mortality. But in different ways, religious faith is built on the insights of failure. The history of Islam begins in earnest when Mohammed the Prophet is virtually thrown out of Mecca and makes his way to Medina to look for more fertile soil for his message. A key to understanding Judaism is to see the despair of the Jews when they were dragged into exile after the invasion of the southern kingdom by the Chaldeans. When they left Jerusalem, they thought they were leaving God behind, but when they got to Babylon, they discovered God was there too. And failure is also at the heart of Christianity. After all, the symbol of Christianity is a man dying alone in agony, rejected by the great many and abandoned by the close few. Christianity is founded above all on the forgiveness of sins, which is something you only get to discover the day you have the courage and the humility to say, “I realize I’ve been wrong and I’ve failed and I’m sorry.” Christi­ anity is like a 12-step program: you only get to be part of it if you’re prepared to say the terrifying words, “I have failed.” The terrifying truth is, we all fail in the end. Life begins the moment you fail, and the moment you admit you’ve failed. Until then you’re living in a fantasy bubble, and if no one’s yet burst it for you it’s less likely to be because they think you’re immortal and more likely because they’re not optimistic you could cope with living outside it. Of all the moments of insight and self-knowledge in my own life, one of the most significant I think was about seven when I realized I wasn’t going to be a professional soccer player. The rest of my friends took another five years or so to make the same discovery. Γ ve always felt that that gave me a head start because I spent five early years not living in the fantasy land that surrounded my friends. I was quicker to realize I was a failure than they were. A friend of mine was lamenting the demise of the non-profit he ‘ d been running and got into a conversation with an army commander. “Failed, did it?” said the com­ mander, abruptly. “Your fault, or someone else’s? Learn anything from it? Still lose sleep about it? Do anything differently next time?” The commander kept barking out the questions, but as each one cascaded down, it felt not like criticism but liberation, because there was no shame or blame, just an exhilarating sense that life is seldom about much more than making honest mistakes. Finally the commander said, “My biggest failure was in Iraq. Got a lot wrong there. Felt a fool for a long time. Funny thing is, it’s only since then that Γ ve really enjoyed my job. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer obsessed about meeting people’s expectations.” If you want to learn how to transcend failure, if you want to discover how to live with your own failures and those of others, without resentment, you need to spend time with people dealing with long term conflict and crisis, with problems that can’t just be fixed. One such place is Northern Ireland. One priest in Northern Ireland taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Reflecting on decades of disappointment and destruction and devastation and failure, he gently said, “If s better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.” Think again about Ruth’s words to Naomi and Peter’s words in John’s gospel. That’s what makes them so powerful. “It’s better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.” Duke class of 2009, you’ve had four years to enjoy the Gothic Wonderland. You’ve had some successes, and there are thousands of people here today to celebrate

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    them. And you’ve had failures, even though some of those are probably known only to yourself. But what I want to say to you is this: When you’ve succeeded, has it been in a cause that will finally fail? And when you’ve failed, has it been in a cause that will finally succeed? In the end the quality of your time at Duke University will not be measured by the quantity of your successes or the extent of your achievements or your post-graduation salary or your recognitions or awards or the glorious splendor of your Facebook page. It will come down to this: have you here identified and committed yourself to a cause in the light of which all successes and failures will be evaluated, a cause that will indeed finally succeed because of its truth, because of its beauty, because of its goodness? If not, you’ll have no real way of knowing whether anything that lies ahead of you is really success or failure. But if you have discovered and embraced such a cause, if you’ve been claimed in such a way that as you leave this Chapel today, you know who you are and whose you are, then you won’t be destroyed by failure or ruined by success, because you’ll know that any success of yours is just an embellishment to an already breathtaking picture, and no failure of yours can ruin a wondrous story. Class of 2009, this is my dream for you. That you’ll find that cause or be found by it. That you’ll never be dazzled by your own success, but will always be a hospitable place where others can recognize their own needs and fragility and not pretend success is everything or success makes you immortal. And most of all, that you’ll let your life begin the day you really, seriously fail, and let that day be the day you discover who you truly are and whether that failure is really in a cause that will finally succeed. My dream for you is that you then become the most powerful people in the world. The most powerful person in the world is the one who isn’t paralyzed by the fear of their own failure. My dream is that that person is you.