I'm beginning to hate my body.
No, not in the body-image sense (I more or less made peace with that some time ago). I mean I hate my body, and the way it seems intent on betraying me. Certain old heresies in the church are starting to sound appealing.
The latest is some sort of intestinal infection that is being highly resistant to treatment. I won't discuss the effects; you really don't want to hear it. Suffice to say I'm more or less constantly on edge, not to mention (again) tired a lot, in ways that defeat efforts to start rebuilding my stamina. One doesn't want to be dozing off while trying to work with weights.
It's just strange to be fighting to stay awake at 8:00 p.m. And it's not helpful with ordination exams this weekend.
Anyway, more tests are now on order. Perhaps the infection was not as simple as previously diagnosed. I have trouble caring any more. I'd just like to get through the day and night without disaster.
Of course this kicked in just a little after chemotherapy ended. Naturally, just when I was looking forward to starting to recover a bit. So much of the summer has been spent fighting this instead of getting my strength back.
I have ordination exams to take. I have classes and such for the fall to get ready for. I have blog entries I'd much rather be writing than another health whine. Instead I'm just trying not to doze off in the middle of an ords review.
I cannot suck it up and put on a happy face at the moment. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that's about as much as I have energy to say tonight.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
So hymnals matter after all!
As it happens, my denomination got ever-so-briefly into the heat (if not always light) of cultural conversation of late, this time over the non-inclusion of a popular recent praise song in its forthcoming new hymnal. (In lieu of rehashing the controversy, I'll just indulge in a linkfest to blog posts and articles here, here, here, here, and here, among others available out there. It's not comprehensive; under no circumstances will this blog ever link to anything having to do with Glenn Beck.)
I have no intention of addressing the controversy directly. For one thing I don't even know the song. I don't particularly have an itch to do so. I have no doubt you can find plenty of folks using the kerfuffle to sharpen their already pointed knives to draw some more blood from what the consider a corrupt and fallen denomination, and I'll be damned if I contribute anything to that. It's my denomination, dammit, and if you have a problem with that you should probably move on.
My intent here is to go to what I hope is an obvious point, one that is often disputed or dismissed in other circumstances: hymnals still matter.
What I want to insist is that hymnals matter not primarily because they reflect a church's or a denomination's theology. They do that to some degree, but that is not necessarily the most important thing they do. I'm more concerned (much more concerned) with how hymnals shape a church's or a denomination's theology.
One project I did for an independent study this past spring semester put me in the task (one which quickly proved much larger than a spring semester could handle) of reviewing the hymns associated with the Lord's Supper (or Communion, or Eucharist, for readers of other denominational persuasions). It was a pretty sad affair. While collections ranging from the mid-1800s to, the mid- to late-1900s would offer a listing in the index titled "Lord's Supper," almost every hymn in such an index listing was at most a Maundy Thursday hymn or, even more likely, a Good Friday/Crucifixion hymn. With very few exceptions (as often individual lines in hymns as hymns themselves), there was nothing in what the congregation sang that spoke of being at the table; nothing to guide any sort of reflection or theological consideration about the table itself as an act of faith, welcome, hospitality, humility; nothing about the life of a Jesus who broke bread over and over again with all sorts of unseemly people, to the point that Pharisees sneered at him as someone who eats with sinners; it was all crucifixion all the time.
For a church that probably didn't observe the Lord's Supper more than four times a year, perhaps such a lack was less glaring. But as the twentieth century advanced and Presbyterians started figuring out that such infrequent communion may not be the best thing for the spiritual health of the church, there was very little available to those who might wish to have a hymn or two to turn attention to the act of communion itself in the congregation. The 1940 Hymnbook (the infamous "red book" to which some churches still cling) introduced a handful of table- or communion-focused hymns, including the spiritual "Let us break bread together." Even if an awareness and broadening of sacramental theology was at work in what might be called the "theological elites" of the denomination, one can say without too much stretching that even now such ideas have barely to make a dent in the larger body of the denomination, I would contend at least in part because it has taken quite a while for a body of hymns to emerge that can help to lead pastors and congregations in that direction where sermon after sermon will only go so far. What we sing matters, and what we collect to sing matters, even in an age where you can get a license and pop almost anything up on a screen.
Even a hymn borrowed from a distinct theological tradition will, given time, start to affect the way people think about their faith. The new Presbyterian book will include "Gather us in," a song born of the post-Vatican II overhaul of music in the Catholic tradition. While most of the text is fairly innocuous in terms of inter-denominational theological exchange, it does contain the phrase "give us to eat the bread that is You," which is fairly clearly tied to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, in oversimplified summary). Presbyterians don't hold that belief. Nonetheless, give that song (which is already pretty popular in some corners of the denomination) twenty or thirty years of use and you'll have at least a few people in the pews at least wondering about how that works, no matter how much they got instructed on What Presbyterians Believe.
What we sing shapes what we believe and how we do theology (hint: everybody does theology, whether they know it or not). I'm not particularly campaigning to yank "Gather us in" out of the new book, before anybody goes there, but I am insisting that hymns matter, that what we collect into hymnals (no matter what media form those "hymnals" may take) matters, and that paying attention to what the hymns we sing actually say (as opposed to enslavement to the "old favorites" or the hottest new praise choruses) is a bare minimum responsibility of any pastor, church musician, worship committee, or denominational hymnal committee.
What we sing matters.
And I haven't even gotten into how the music to which we sing those songs matters. But that's a whole other blog post, or bunch of posts, or a book or two.
I have no intention of addressing the controversy directly. For one thing I don't even know the song. I don't particularly have an itch to do so. I have no doubt you can find plenty of folks using the kerfuffle to sharpen their already pointed knives to draw some more blood from what the consider a corrupt and fallen denomination, and I'll be damned if I contribute anything to that. It's my denomination, dammit, and if you have a problem with that you should probably move on.
My intent here is to go to what I hope is an obvious point, one that is often disputed or dismissed in other circumstances: hymnals still matter.
What I want to insist is that hymnals matter not primarily because they reflect a church's or a denomination's theology. They do that to some degree, but that is not necessarily the most important thing they do. I'm more concerned (much more concerned) with how hymnals shape a church's or a denomination's theology.
One project I did for an independent study this past spring semester put me in the task (one which quickly proved much larger than a spring semester could handle) of reviewing the hymns associated with the Lord's Supper (or Communion, or Eucharist, for readers of other denominational persuasions). It was a pretty sad affair. While collections ranging from the mid-1800s to, the mid- to late-1900s would offer a listing in the index titled "Lord's Supper," almost every hymn in such an index listing was at most a Maundy Thursday hymn or, even more likely, a Good Friday/Crucifixion hymn. With very few exceptions (as often individual lines in hymns as hymns themselves), there was nothing in what the congregation sang that spoke of being at the table; nothing to guide any sort of reflection or theological consideration about the table itself as an act of faith, welcome, hospitality, humility; nothing about the life of a Jesus who broke bread over and over again with all sorts of unseemly people, to the point that Pharisees sneered at him as someone who eats with sinners; it was all crucifixion all the time.
For a church that probably didn't observe the Lord's Supper more than four times a year, perhaps such a lack was less glaring. But as the twentieth century advanced and Presbyterians started figuring out that such infrequent communion may not be the best thing for the spiritual health of the church, there was very little available to those who might wish to have a hymn or two to turn attention to the act of communion itself in the congregation. The 1940 Hymnbook (the infamous "red book" to which some churches still cling) introduced a handful of table- or communion-focused hymns, including the spiritual "Let us break bread together." Even if an awareness and broadening of sacramental theology was at work in what might be called the "theological elites" of the denomination, one can say without too much stretching that even now such ideas have barely to make a dent in the larger body of the denomination, I would contend at least in part because it has taken quite a while for a body of hymns to emerge that can help to lead pastors and congregations in that direction where sermon after sermon will only go so far. What we sing matters, and what we collect to sing matters, even in an age where you can get a license and pop almost anything up on a screen.
Even a hymn borrowed from a distinct theological tradition will, given time, start to affect the way people think about their faith. The new Presbyterian book will include "Gather us in," a song born of the post-Vatican II overhaul of music in the Catholic tradition. While most of the text is fairly innocuous in terms of inter-denominational theological exchange, it does contain the phrase "give us to eat the bread that is You," which is fairly clearly tied to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ, in oversimplified summary). Presbyterians don't hold that belief. Nonetheless, give that song (which is already pretty popular in some corners of the denomination) twenty or thirty years of use and you'll have at least a few people in the pews at least wondering about how that works, no matter how much they got instructed on What Presbyterians Believe.
What we sing shapes what we believe and how we do theology (hint: everybody does theology, whether they know it or not). I'm not particularly campaigning to yank "Gather us in" out of the new book, before anybody goes there, but I am insisting that hymns matter, that what we collect into hymnals (no matter what media form those "hymnals" may take) matters, and that paying attention to what the hymns we sing actually say (as opposed to enslavement to the "old favorites" or the hottest new praise choruses) is a bare minimum responsibility of any pastor, church musician, worship committee, or denominational hymnal committee.
What we sing matters.
And I haven't even gotten into how the music to which we sing those songs matters. But that's a whole other blog post, or bunch of posts, or a book or two.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Communion meditation: The Medium Is the Message
The final sermon of my summer internship is done. And it was not quite a full sermon: a "communion meditation" is probably a more accurate description. Pathetically, I am rather sad that this will probably not happen again for a while.
Charles Freeman
4 August 2013
(Communion)
Ashland Presbyterian
Church
Luke 24:13-35; John
2:1-12
Communion Meditation:
The Medium Is the Message
It was in 1964
that an obscure communications theorist from Toronto, Marshall McLuhan,
introduced in his book Understanding
Media the phrase “the medium is the message.” Despite its seeming simplicity, the phrase would, over the
years, assume a dizzying complex of meanings, but at its core was the basic
idea that such emerging and increasingly dominant media of communication such
as radio, film, and television were anything but neutral conveyors of
information; instead, the medium shaped, configured, and even altered the
“message” its users might have intended to convey. Nearly fifty years later one might well wonder what McLuhan,
who died in 1980, might make of more recent communications media such as email,
the Internet, or Twitter.
One thing about
McLuhan that was not well-known at the time was that he was a devout
Catholic. He would in later years
acknowledge that his theories on communication and media – including the famous
idea that “the medium is the message” – were influenced by his
Catholicism.
He did not say
specifically what part of his Catholicism might have influenced his thought,
but I wonder if he might have been reacting to his experience of the Mass,
particularly that part of the Mass known as the Eucharist, or as we Protestants
would say, Communion, or the Lord’s Supper.
It seems a very
simple observance: bread is broken, juice (in our case) is poured, the bread
and juice are distributed among the congregation. But there is, particularly in the story from Luke’s gospel
today, something much stronger and deeper at work.
We are of course
familiar from this story at or immediately after Easter. Two disciples, identified as
“disciples” even though not among the numbered twelve, are walking from
Jerusalem to the nearby town of Emmaus on Easter evening, their world
shattered. There was that strange
report from the women in their group about the tomb being empty and angels
being there, but no one else saw that (the angels at least). The stranger appears and enters into
conversation between the two; they tell their story, and the stranger responds
with a staggering knowledge of the scripture, arguing that the events of
crucifixion they described were exactly what had to happen, which they’d have
known if they weren’t so foolish and slow of heart. With day fading, the two stop and entreat the stranger to
stay and be their guest, which he does.
The stranger then, surprisingly, takes the role of host: he takes the
bread for the meal, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them. Then – and only then – did they recognize that the stranger was none other
than Jesus himself. When he
disappears, the two disciples rush back to Jerusalem to report to the others,
and to describe how, as verse 35 puts it, “he
had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
Throughout all the
gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of Luke, one of the most frequently
recurring themes is one of hospitality, often signaled in the breaking of
bread. It is seen in miracles,
like the feeding of the five thousand; it is seen in teaching moments, such as
the incident in the home of the Pharisee, where the host’s lack of hospitality
is contrasted with the overriding concern of the woman who washes Jesus’s feet;
it is seen in surprising announcements such as Jesus’s shocker that he must go
to the home of that sinful tax collector Zacchaeus; it is seen in a pattern of
hospitality and fellowship so strong and so pronounced that the Pharisees scorn
Jesus as a “fellow [who] welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
(Luke 15:2)
Finally there was
that event just a few days before, the Last Supper as we call it, in which
Jesus breaks bread, pours a cup, and commands his disciples to do so, as often
as they do it, “in remembrance of me“
(Luke 22:19). Even here, Jesus is
not throwing some new practice at the disciples; instead, he is taking a
gesture, an action they have seen him perform again and again in their time
with him, and commanding them to do likewise—not as some stiff memorial, but as
a remembrance, a way of living that
echoes and demonstrates to the world the way that Jesus lived.
But what is
fascinating about this Emmaus Road story, as well as a bit depressing for
preachers, is that it is this gesture, this breaking of bread, that opens the
eyes of the two disciples to see Jesus for who he is. All of that amazing expository preaching that Jesus did? Nope. If you felt like reading the story tongue-in-cheek, you
could even say that all it did was give the disciples heartburn. But the act of breaking bread was one
so characteristic, so typical of
Jesus that their fogged and shrouded eyes could no longer conceal from them
their Lord.
The message came
to these two disciples, not in a barrage of words and scriptural exegesis, but
in the rather simple medium of bread.
Stuff of the earth, harvested, ground into flour, mixed and kneaded and
baked into the most basic staple of the disciples’ diet. But in that medium indeed was a message
that had been witnessed and lived so many times by Jesus that it was one the
disciples knew by heart; a message of welcome, of hospitality, not just to the
good folks but to the worst sinners society could dredge up, even sinners like
us. And this medium of bread,
being broken, still shapes and forms that message even today, whenever we come
to the table.
On that Maundy
Thursday Jesus paired the breaking of bread, a token of humanity’s most basic
needs, with a cup of wine poured.
If bread represented the basics of life, wine no doubt served as a token
of celebration. The reading from
the Gospel of John reminds us that the very first sign Jesus performed in the
presence of his disciples was one of turning ordinary water into wine, a sign
that became the rescue and continuation of a wedding feast, one of the most
joyous celebrations that culture knew.
Bread broken, a
cup filled. These are still signs
of welcome and celebration to us today.
They still point us to a Life of welcoming and making welcome, a Life
that celebrated and rejoiced even as it grieved and mourned and got angry a time
or two. They point us to a Life
that was so dedicated, so insistent on bringing us in and ministering to us,
that it poured itself out in death rather than suffer any one of us not to be
guests at his table for eternity.
Perhaps the bread
and cup seem a curious choice of medium, but the message that bread and cup
shape for us in this sacrament is still one we need to hear, as many times as
possible. Christ calls us to come;
he welcomes us to the table; he bids us be his guest. Let us not be blinded to the message in this humble, yet
exalted medium.
The table is made
ready; Jesus our host bids us come and eat.
In the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Hymns:
God is Here! (PH #461); Psalm 107 (from The
Psalter: Psalms & Canticles for Singing); Be Known to Us in Breaking
Bread (PH #505); Draw Us In the Spirit’s Tether (PH #504)
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Sermon: One Thing
Summer internship sermon four out of five has been preached. Finally got around to the New Testament. May not have blown up anything major in tiptoeing through this particular minefield. And I'm rather sad to have only one sermon left to preach this summer.
Ashland Presbyterian Church
21 July 2013 (Ordinary 16C)
Charles S. Freeman
One Thing
Before I
begin I am going to admit to you that I am will break two of the significant
“unwritten rules” of sermon writing and preaching today. Actually, admitting this is probably a
third such rule-breaking, but I do believe in being as open and transparent
with you as possible in these last few weeks of my time here at Ashland, and I
want to be up front about what I am preaching here.
One of the
rules I am breaking involves actually using and discussing a Greek word from
the text in my sermon, but that’s later.
First I am going to admit to you that initially, I really didn’t want to
preach on this text.
This is a
very familiar story, this one of Martha and Mary. Too familiar.
The story is often told and preached with particular “tweaks” added and
unexamined presumptions included without even thinking about it. And, with its two female protagonists
face-to-face with Jesus, it is a major, major trap for any preacher who falls
into the mistake of “choosing sides” with either industrious Martha or
contemplative Mary, or even of reducing the two characters to stereotypes of
(female) Christian discipleship.
Given the (hopefully) evident fact that I am not female and the
potential questions of gender roles and restrictions embedded like tripwires in
this story, it’s too easy to get in trouble preaching this text. Try to defend Martha, and you’re
reinforcing old gender stereotypes about a woman’s place being in the kitchen –
and only in the kitchen. But, endorse Mary and her breaking out
of that stereotype, and you’re still in trouble; now you’re endorsing the
passive, submissive role of a woman sitting at the feet of a (male) authority
figure. Really, you can’t win.
Before
negotiating this particular theological minefield, it is helpful to remind
ourselves of where we are and how we got to this place. The tenth chapter of Luke is part of
this gospel’s travel narrative, the story of the teachings, confrontations, and
other events that are recounted as part of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. The narrative actually is initiated
towards the end of chapter nine, when the text notes that Jesus “set his face towards Jerusalem.”[1]
So far on
the journey the primary events have included an unpleasant encounter with a
Samaritan village, in which the disciples wanted to call down fire on the
Samaritans in return for not receiving them (Jesus had to rebuke them for that);
the “mission of the seventy,” in which Jesus sends out pairs of disciples to
preach, teach, and heal across the region, and from which those disciples
return rejoicing that “Lord, in your
name even the demons submit to us!”[2];
and, finally, the story heard in last week’s sermon, in which a lawyer who
challenges Jesus on the law ends up getting a lesson in being a neighbor.
We do need
to keep this background in mind, because it offers us the chance to break out
of some of the assumptions and stereotypes that have clung to this story over
the generations, and might allow us to hear in it a warning that is not at all
gender-bound or stereotyped.
Jesus enters
a village. Our subconscious ears,
accustomed to the Mary-and-Martha background supplied in the Gospel of John,
probably want to fill in the name “Bethany” for that village, but that isn’t
supplied here; just “a village.”
Jesus is greeted by a woman named Martha who welcomes him into her
home. Catch that? Her
home. Interestingly, the scene
described here looks very much like the kind of scene that might have awaited
those seventy disciples sent out by Jesus earlier in chapter ten, given the
very specific instructions Jesus gave those disciples about their travel and
receiving the welcome of those in the villages they visited.
In the next
verse sister Mary is introduced, sitting at Jesus’s feet as Jesus teaches. Unlike the richly narrative account of
the Good Samaritan incident, we get only bullet points here, and barely that –
Jesus arrives; welcomed by Martha, etc.
Also, where’s Lazarus?
Don’t these two have a brother who dies and is raised by Christ? In the Gospel of John, yes, but there
is no mention of Lazarus here.
Back to the
bullet points; Mary sits at feet, Martha distracted by tasks. Now here’s the most fertile place in
the story for readers over the ages to start “filling in” unmentioned details. Think about it: in your own hearing and reading of this
story, what “tasks” is Martha distracted with? Be honest – you don’t learn when you cheat.
How many of
you were picturing Martha distracted with “kitchen” tasks – cooking, or
otherwise preparing a meal? Or
perhaps “cleaning” tasks?
Now would
we have conjured such images if the folks welcoming Jesus were two brothers
named Samuel and Simon?
Over the
years many, many scholars, commentators, preachers and others have
presumptively “filled in the blank” about Martha’s tasks with the stereotyped
“women’s work” of their own ages, so you’re hardly alone – you’ve been well
conditioned. But here’s where that
other bit of sermon rule-breaking comes in, the one about quoting Greek in your
sermon. Where the New Revised
Standard Version translation uses the word “tasks,” the Greek texts have a form
of the word διακονια. It might
sound familiar, or perhaps sound like the English word “deacon,” which indeed is
related to that Greek word.
Now
διακονια has a wide range of meanings, centered around the concept of
serving. The kind of kitchen tasks
we were just considering can be included but are hardly exhaustive of the full
definition. In fact, as biblical
scholar Warren Carter points out, the overwhelming majority of the times when
this author uses the word, either in the Gospel of Luke or the book of Acts,
these domestic tasks are not what the
author has in mind; rather, the tasks are those of service as in a “church” or
church-like body, tasks that might include caring for the needy, distributing
gifts given for the poor, or possibly even including proclamation (that would
be preaching).[3] Hmm. Thinking of Martha and Mary as house preachers certainly
puts a different spin on this story, doesn’t it?
At any rate
I hope that such a consideration allows us to lay aside questions about
“women’s work” and get to the thing that seems, to me, to be the vital word of
warning to any follower of Christ, of any gender, who hears this passage today.
In the
movie City Slickers, one of the title
characters, played by Billy Crystal, comes under the scrutiny of Curly, a
crusty but enigmatic cowboy played by Jack Palance. Crystal’s character is one of a handful of urban folk who
have signed up for an authentic old-fashioned cattle drive; these folks are to
Curly a confused and messed-up lot.
They come out to do a cattle drive thinking it will suddenly straighten
out their confused and messed-up lives, when in fact those same confused and
messed-up lives will just be waiting for them when they return. Curly continues to suggest that folks
don’t take time to know what’s important; too many things get in the way. To Curly the secret of life is: “this,”
as he holds up one finger. “One
thing.” Crystal’s character asks
what the “one thing” is, and Curly answers, “That’s what you have to find out.”
The virtue
of Mary in today’s scripture lesson is that, in that moment, she chose “the
better part,” or as most Greek texts would really translate, the “good part” or
“good thing.” Such passive sitting
is not always the right thing to do.
But in that moment, with Jesus in the house teaching, Mary figured out
what the “better part,” the “good thing,” even the “one thing” was and fixed on
it. Martha, on the other hand, got
distracted or disturbed by many things when the “one thing” was sitting right
in her living room.
The tasks
of ministry are needed, now more than ever. But without the “one thing,” the teaching, the life, the
very presence of Christ at the center of our doing and serving, it can too
easily become distraction, disturbance, even uproar. And we don’t have time for that.
We live in
a world where society is too willing, gleeful even, to enshrine injustice into
law, and to enshrine poverty as a necessary condition of a thriving economy. For example: McDonald’s has launched a
new program for employees to teach them how to live on the $8.25 an hour the
typical full-time employee makes.
The worksheet immediately tells you the first thing you need to do for
that to work is…get a second job.
Seriously. The budget
worksheet includes “second job” income.[4] Poverty enshrined as necessary for
others to prosper? Check.
You all
heard about the Trayvon Martin verdict, I know. Did you hear that just the day before, also in Florida, a
black woman was sentenced to twenty years in prison for firing warning shots in an attempt to prevent her abusive husband
from beating her again. Black
woman shoots no one: twenty years.
Unarmed black youth killed: no crime. Injustice enshrined into law? Check.
In this
world we do not have time to get caught up in sniping over who’s not doing
what, and we certainly can’t get cut off from the One Thing. We must take the time, as
counterintuitive as it feels, to stop.
Stop and listen for the Word that gives meaning to our doing, that is
the motivation and source of strength for all of the tasks that await us as a
church. When we fail to do so, we
get distracted, disturbed, in an uproar over many things without recourse to
the One Thing that makes them matter. On that day, that one time, Mary got it right, and as Jesus
said, it wouldn’t be taken away from her.
Neither will it be taken from us to sit and listen at Jesus’s feet. At least, not until it’s time to get
back to work.
In the name
of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Friday, July 12, 2013
A hymn, or the beginning of one, maybe?
In starting to peek ahead for a sermon on July 21, I couldn't help but be frustrated at the seeming lack of good hymns, particularly where the last verse of the gospel passage (Luke 10:38-42) was concerned. So of course something happened that I thought I had dismissed from my life: I apparently wrote a hymn. It's rather slight and perhaps a bit obvious, and I don't have an obvious tune to go with it (though it falls in common meter and there are a kajillion options).
Anyway, here it is, and make of it what you will.
Anyway, here it is, and make of it what you will.
This one thing only, loving God, plant firmly in my heart;
Amidst our work, to hear your word and choose the better
part;
Lord, teach us when to labor on and when to stop and rest,
To hear your voice and, so restored, to serve you at our
best.
O give this gift, our loving God, and this one grace please
give:
To know one thing above all else and in this one thing live.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Sermon: The Anonymous Evangelists
The third sermon of my summer internship is in the books. And now it's online. As always, your mileage may vary.
The Anonymous
Evangelists
7 July 2013
Ashland Presbyterian
Church
2 Kings 5:1-14
A few weeks ago I
made my way out to lunch, seeking food and drink but mostly in need of wi-fi,
since I had a whole lot of emails that I needed to answer. As I settled in with my club sandwich
and set about answering emails, I couldn’t help but notice the conversation at
the table behind me; just loud enough that I could not ignore it or block it
out completely, but not so loud that I could actually follow most of it. Short bits of the conversation would
burst in against my concentration.
One of those short
bits clued me in to what was going on; the conversation was between a staff
member for one of this year’s gubernatorial candidates and a potential local
operative. While the conversation
suddenly seemed much juicier and more potentially provocative, I still had my
emails to finish.
Finally, my
concentration was broken when the subject of “religious outreach” came up. The operative mentioned that the
candidate would seek to attend services at churches generally around the
Richmond area; the local offered the opinion that it was distasteful and ugly
when preachers started politicking for candidates, to which the operative
agreed; the local suggested some other events of a religious nature at which
the candidate might appear. The
most striking moment came when the operative stated that the churches or other
events would need to be of “at least” a particular size; going to an event with
too few people in attendance, the operative said, would be a waste of the
campaign’s resources and take away time from reaching the largest audience
possible, a statement with which the local agreed as well.
Based on that
conversation, I’m going to take the wild guess that neither Ken Cuccinelli nor
Terry McAuliffe is likely to show up for a Sunday morning service here in the
next several months. While it
might be easy to joke that this is a good thing for Ashland Presbyterian
Church, I’d say it’s probably not a good sign for the people of Virginia. The people suffer when leaders only
listen to those from whom they can get something, or to those of equal power or
prestige, and shut out those who do not carry sufficient power, status, money,
or other tokens of influence. Lest
you think I’ve gone politicking myself, I will point out that this is even more
so outside of the political realm; religious leaders who lose touch with the
poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden are even more culpable, given how many
passages of scripture tell us that these are the very people for whom God
advocates and demands that we do likewise.
Today’s scripture
from 2 Kings contains two different types of characters. One type is the powerful: figures such
as Naaman, the foreign general and protagonist of the story; the king of Aram
(or Syria) and the king of Israel; and Elisha, who though not politically
powerful can claim at least the power of being God’s prophet.
If there are
powerful people, we might expect there are some powerless people as well, even
if we might miss them at first. In
this case, there are some servants.
As far as our author is concerned, that says just about everything that
needs to be said. Naaman and
Elisha get names, and also are identified by titles that suggest their
significance. Curiously, the kings
in this story are not named, but when you call someone a king you’re pretty
clearly indicating they are kind of a big deal.
Not so for these
servants. One of them, the young
girl serving Naaman’s wife, is identified as being a captive Israelite, but
that is all. The other servants
are given no other differentiation whatsoever. Just anonymous, faceless servants, speaking one line of
dialogue.
And yet, as
happens in other stories in scripture, it is these otherwise anonymous servants
who play perhaps the most pivotal roles in this story and in the carrying out
of what strangely has to be regarded as God’s work in this narrative; the
healing of a foreign general, a man who possibly represented the gravest threat
to the nation of Israel at the time.
Perhaps we should spend some time with these anonymous evangelists,
unnamed bearers of a good word.
First, the slave
girl. We know she is an Israelite;
she was apparently captured, possibly after some large battle or maybe in a
smaller raid against Israel; and after her capture she was assigned to serve
Naaman’s wife (another figure who is not given a name in this story). We have nothing else to go by, no other
information by which to understand this young woman. All we know of her in all of scripture is what we are given
in verses 2 and 3; beyond what we know above, she tells Naaman’s wife of a
prophet back in her home land, who would be able to cure her mistress’s husband
of his particular ailment, which the text calls leprosy.
This term in
scripture is a bit vague, and does not necessarily refer to the modern disease
of that name. That illness would,
however, have been enough to bring at least some social ostracism upon Naaman,
even if he was a great warrior and favorite of the king. The text doesn’t make it entirely clear
whether this was a long-standing issue for Naaman, or something new and getting
worse. If the latter, one can
imagine Naaman’s desperation to hold on to his position, to find some way of
stopping the disease from ruining his standing.
The Israelite girl
sees all this. She knows that
Naaman is a threat to her own people in Israel. One might imagine that, if her fellow Israelites could have
spoken to her at that point, they might have told her to keep silent about that
prophet. He’s our enemy, they might say. If he’s gone, we don’t
have to worry about the Arameans anymore. We can win.
They might even suggest to her that letting Naaman fall in his leprosy
would be the patriotic thing to do.
The young woman
might have had those thoughts herself.
If she did, she gave them no heed.
She knew that the Lord had a prophet in Israel, a man touched by the
power of the Lord Most High; she knew that her mistress’s husband could be
cured of his disease if only he could see that prophet. She had good news to share, and she
shared it, without regard to national politics or “security interests” or
whatever term you choose. Her
love, her allegiance was clear; hers was a God Who told her not to hold back
her good news. She shared it, and
thus was set in motion Naaman’s healing.
It is a surprise
that Naaman was willing to take the word of a slave girl. Perhaps it is a sign of just how
desperate he was. At any rate he
appealed to his king, and in turn his king sent Naaman with a considerable entourage
to the only person he could conceive of being able to accomplish such a thing;
naturally, his counterpart the king of Israel. In turn, that king, suspicious of Arameans bearing gifts,
assumes a trap is being sprung – Aram will punish Israel for failing to heal
Aram’s best general. The king of
Israel panics, and only word from Elisha, that difficult prophet out in the
city of Samaria, prevents a full-fledged meltdown.
Naaman and his
entourage arrive at Elisha’s home for a healing. Quite possibly Naaman was looking for a big, ceremonious
event; after all, Naaman was, in modern slang, kind of a big deal – certainly a
healing for such an important man would call for a serious demonstration of the
power of this prophet and the God he served. Flashing lights, grand incantations, spells, potions, … who
knows?
Nope. No spells, no potions, no big
displays. Not even the prophet
himself – just another anonymous servant with a good word; go dunk yourself in
the Jordan River seven times and you will be clean.
Naaman goes
nuts. Are you kidding me? I get
some servant telling me to go take a bath? And in that podunk creek they call a river? We’ve got way better rivers at
home. A man like me shouldn’t have
to take this kind of insult.
The man who was desperate enough to listen to the suggestion of a slave
girl seems to have been overcome by the more powerful Naaman, or the prideful
Naaman, the one accustomed to being the king’s favorite and to conquering other
armies and nations in battle.
But, once again, he
is saved by his servants. We know
even less about these servants than we know about the Israelite slave
girl. They are simply “his servants”;
captive or not, native or not, we will never know. Yet again it is the servants who talk sense. “If
the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have
done it?” If he’d told you to capture a thousand wild animals, or cross the great
sea, or ascend the highest mountain, you’d have done it. Why resist when you have been told to
do something easy? The desperate
Naaman, or the sensible Naaman, comes to his senses and heads for the
Jordan. He washes himself seven
times, just as Elisha had instructed; and lo and behold, he is not only healed
of leprosy but his skin was made “like
the flesh of a young boy.” It
wasn’t just the Jordan River, it was a virtual Fountain of Youth.
So much about this
story might well offend our sensitivities these days. The Lord, the God of Israel, brings about the healing of the
great military leader of Israel’s great enemy. Translate that into a modern setting and imagine just what
kind of reception that would receive today. We have to acknowledge that our God is a God who will not be
bound by the borders we draw today, whether between nations or individuals or
religions or churches. God will
heal whom God will heal; God will touch whom God will touch; God will use
whomever God will use. And the
only thing we better be caught saying about that is Amen. Praise the Lord.
Even Jesus knew how offensive this story could be; remember that in the
fourth chapter of Luke, when preaching to his hometown folk in Nazareth, he
nearly gets himself killed by reminding them that in a time when there were
many lepers in Israel, Elisha only heals Naaman – or as Jesus points out, “Naaman the Syrian.”[1]
What strikes me
most, though, is that the good in this story is not accomplished by the people in
power. The king of Aram is
clueless; the king of Israel is even more useless. But a servant girl from Israel, an unknown messenger from a
prophet, and a handful of the general’s servants – anonymous, all of them – point
Naaman to a source of healing, give him instructions on how to be healed, and
pull him back from the worst impulses of his pride. Had Naaman not heeded those voices, those words from the
powerless, the captive, the underlings, no healing could have taken place.
I don’t think
anyone here will try to claim that this is anyone’s contemporary idea of a
“powerful” church. Neither of the
gubernatorial candidates will be coming by to sit in our pews hoping to sway
your vote. We most likely won’t
see any celebrities flocking to our doors. We don’t control a huge “worship center” with theater seats
and the hottest praise band around, or a choir that can knock off Handel’s Messiah every Christmas with a full
orchestra. We won’t even be
hosting the Presbytery of the James meeting any time soon, most likely. I hate to tell you this, but there are
people right here in Ashland who don’t even know we exist.
But we have a good word. We have good news. We know of a God in the land, one who
heals, one who restores those who are broken, hurting, desperate. We know a God who knows the names of
the anonymous, hears the voices of the voiceless, shows power through the
powerless. God is not necessarily
calling us to be a megachurch, or to control the balance of power on the
Ashland Town Council. But we have
a voice that needs to be heard, we have good news that all of our town needs to
hear, we have a word of hope in a culture that calls hope foolishness, we have
a word of healing and restoration and reconciliation that those who deny it
most need to hear the most, even if they might happen to look like enemies and
not friends. We may be small but
we have a good word. Let it never
be said we were afraid to speak it.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Hymns:
“God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand” (PH #263); “Come Sing to God” (Psalm 30,
#181); “Lord, You Give the Great Commission” (#429); “Rejoice, the Lord is
King” (#155)
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
An experiment, just for the few faithful NoaFE readers...
A couple of years ago when I started this blog, one of my goals (not necessarily stated out loud) was to work myself away from the academic mode of writing and towards one that was more suitable for the task ahead of me in my newly-pursued vocation, where preaching would probably me my primary outlet for writing. Preaching has its forms, to be sure, and its forms are not necessarily less rigorous than your basic academic paper or encyclopedia article, but they are different, and they call upon a different character of language. Even as informal as I was in academic mode, that was still a different tack than preaching, and I wanted at the minimum to start to loosen up my writing from my accustomed academic habits and patterns and begin to adapt to something different. Feel free to pass your own judgment on my success or failure at that task to whatever degree you care.
At this point, given the limited circumstances of being a seminary student currently in a parish internship, I have a moderate to reasonable degree of confidence that I can write a sermon. No, I'm not in the position of grinding one out every week, but it is a task for which I have the capability. There will be stinkers along the way, to be sure, and I'll be stuck with no option but to throw it out there and trust the grace of God to be ready to make something useful or at least harmless out of it.
I seem to have mastered the art of the rant, in a few cases here and there. I'm not entirely sure of the value of those things, but they do seem to touch a chord with the handful of folks who read them. I guess there's some value in being willing or able to put a face on feelings that many folks can't find a way to make real and viable to others, and I'm not complaining, but it's not the kind of thing one can do all that often. It has a limited shelf life, so to speak. And frankly, I hope not to be in the position of needing to rant those health-related rants, or at least to do so less often. Mind you, there are plenty of things in the world to rant about, but if I took on all of those I'm pretty sure I'd have jumped off a building by now, and there are plenty of other writers and bloggers out there who can tackle those subjects far more effectively than I.
The hymn writing urge is low at the moment. I have put up one or two of those along the way here, but the news of needing chemo back in February put me in a state of rebellion, of sorts, in which I am not attuned to that particular frequency of creativity/devotion. I can't truly say if it will return.
Still, I feel the need (urge? passion? dare I speculate, calling?) to try something different. There was one post, quite some time ago, I did toss a monologue up here. The faithful few of you who actually read this blog are going to see a few more such things pop up here.
Of late I have been troubled/plagued/motivated by the challenge of identifying those things that stand in the way of full-fledged following of Christ. I'm not talking about what keeps people from being a Christian; that's a different kettle of fish. I am talking about people who identify themselves as Christians, who practice that devotion as a part of their everyday lives, who by every evidence are what we humans would call "good people" who truly do seek to follow, but there's that one thing, that one petty grievance, that one long-embedded hatred, that one fear, great or small, that stands in the way. We can't, or won't, let go of it; we convince ourselves it is part of us, irreplaceable; we believe that it is in fact The Truth, the Real Christianity, perhaps; for whatever reason we choose it when we should be looking for that better thing to which Christ calls us.
What I am hoping is that by approaching the question via drama, I will be forced to approach the question with some level of empathy, at least some attempt to understand and feel for (if not agree with) the motivations behind that fear, or hatred, or refusal. A sermon is, well, preachy; may not be beneficial for understanding. Essays can get cold and clinical and, frankly, even more preachy than sermons in some places. Maybe the drama device will help. And yes, perhaps it becomes a means to identify that one thing (or things) in my own life.
I'm frankly a little scared of the idea. This could go to some very dark places. C. S. Lewis once acknowledged that the hardest thing about writing The Screwtape Letters was having to think, on a regular basis, like a devil. Hopefully I'm not going into that level of darkness, but these characters aren't going to be living in sweetness and light necessarily.
Anyway, since this is drama and not documentary, I'm allowing myself a setup that may offer some freedom that a straightforward "realistic" monologue might not offer. These little monologues will be offered to you, dear reader, under the title Sketches from the Heavensgate Boardinghouses. Our characters will be just outside the Pearly Gates, a nice comfy familiar metaphor for our goal of full discipleship and union with the will of Christ. I'm no Dante, folks, so don't look for anything that elaborate. I'm not going to try for anything even so detailed as, say, Lewis's The Great Divorce. It's a useful metaphor, that's all; I'm not trying to make any statements about the Afterlife or Heaven or the Holy City or whatever you choose to name (I've never been there, how would I know?). As our folks approach those gates, they are confronted by that one thing; it is, literally in the context of the story, standing in the way. Thus our protagonists are forced to confront, unavoidably and honestly, that one thing. The boardinghouses are just a metaphorical place to get out of the heat.
Why am I doing this intro? Partly to force myself forward. A few of you will read it and maybe hold me accountable. Partly to save myself the trouble of explaining myself when I put up the first one. Partly as a means of laying out the plan in my head onto a slightly more durable medium. I have some ideas, some of which will sound Law and Order-esque ("ripped from the headlines"), and others perhaps will be a little more obscure. At any rate, now I'm committed.
To some degree I'm taking advantage of the fact that this isn't a highly trafficked blog. In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty well anonymous, and there aren't large numbers of people waiting with baited breath for my next blog entry. The pressure is a little less. A faithful few readers I can trust to be supportive but honest is a better place for trying out this bizarre little experiment than a more heavily scrutinized medium. If it doesn't work out very few people will know or care. If it does work out, well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.
I do have other obligations, so this won't necessarily happen quickly. But now that I've stuck my neck out I guess it has to happen.
At this point, given the limited circumstances of being a seminary student currently in a parish internship, I have a moderate to reasonable degree of confidence that I can write a sermon. No, I'm not in the position of grinding one out every week, but it is a task for which I have the capability. There will be stinkers along the way, to be sure, and I'll be stuck with no option but to throw it out there and trust the grace of God to be ready to make something useful or at least harmless out of it.
I seem to have mastered the art of the rant, in a few cases here and there. I'm not entirely sure of the value of those things, but they do seem to touch a chord with the handful of folks who read them. I guess there's some value in being willing or able to put a face on feelings that many folks can't find a way to make real and viable to others, and I'm not complaining, but it's not the kind of thing one can do all that often. It has a limited shelf life, so to speak. And frankly, I hope not to be in the position of needing to rant those health-related rants, or at least to do so less often. Mind you, there are plenty of things in the world to rant about, but if I took on all of those I'm pretty sure I'd have jumped off a building by now, and there are plenty of other writers and bloggers out there who can tackle those subjects far more effectively than I.
The hymn writing urge is low at the moment. I have put up one or two of those along the way here, but the news of needing chemo back in February put me in a state of rebellion, of sorts, in which I am not attuned to that particular frequency of creativity/devotion. I can't truly say if it will return.
Still, I feel the need (urge? passion? dare I speculate, calling?) to try something different. There was one post, quite some time ago, I did toss a monologue up here. The faithful few of you who actually read this blog are going to see a few more such things pop up here.
Of late I have been troubled/plagued/motivated by the challenge of identifying those things that stand in the way of full-fledged following of Christ. I'm not talking about what keeps people from being a Christian; that's a different kettle of fish. I am talking about people who identify themselves as Christians, who practice that devotion as a part of their everyday lives, who by every evidence are what we humans would call "good people" who truly do seek to follow, but there's that one thing, that one petty grievance, that one long-embedded hatred, that one fear, great or small, that stands in the way. We can't, or won't, let go of it; we convince ourselves it is part of us, irreplaceable; we believe that it is in fact The Truth, the Real Christianity, perhaps; for whatever reason we choose it when we should be looking for that better thing to which Christ calls us.
What I am hoping is that by approaching the question via drama, I will be forced to approach the question with some level of empathy, at least some attempt to understand and feel for (if not agree with) the motivations behind that fear, or hatred, or refusal. A sermon is, well, preachy; may not be beneficial for understanding. Essays can get cold and clinical and, frankly, even more preachy than sermons in some places. Maybe the drama device will help. And yes, perhaps it becomes a means to identify that one thing (or things) in my own life.
I'm frankly a little scared of the idea. This could go to some very dark places. C. S. Lewis once acknowledged that the hardest thing about writing The Screwtape Letters was having to think, on a regular basis, like a devil. Hopefully I'm not going into that level of darkness, but these characters aren't going to be living in sweetness and light necessarily.
Anyway, since this is drama and not documentary, I'm allowing myself a setup that may offer some freedom that a straightforward "realistic" monologue might not offer. These little monologues will be offered to you, dear reader, under the title Sketches from the Heavensgate Boardinghouses. Our characters will be just outside the Pearly Gates, a nice comfy familiar metaphor for our goal of full discipleship and union with the will of Christ. I'm no Dante, folks, so don't look for anything that elaborate. I'm not going to try for anything even so detailed as, say, Lewis's The Great Divorce. It's a useful metaphor, that's all; I'm not trying to make any statements about the Afterlife or Heaven or the Holy City or whatever you choose to name (I've never been there, how would I know?). As our folks approach those gates, they are confronted by that one thing; it is, literally in the context of the story, standing in the way. Thus our protagonists are forced to confront, unavoidably and honestly, that one thing. The boardinghouses are just a metaphorical place to get out of the heat.
Why am I doing this intro? Partly to force myself forward. A few of you will read it and maybe hold me accountable. Partly to save myself the trouble of explaining myself when I put up the first one. Partly as a means of laying out the plan in my head onto a slightly more durable medium. I have some ideas, some of which will sound Law and Order-esque ("ripped from the headlines"), and others perhaps will be a little more obscure. At any rate, now I'm committed.
To some degree I'm taking advantage of the fact that this isn't a highly trafficked blog. In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty well anonymous, and there aren't large numbers of people waiting with baited breath for my next blog entry. The pressure is a little less. A faithful few readers I can trust to be supportive but honest is a better place for trying out this bizarre little experiment than a more heavily scrutinized medium. If it doesn't work out very few people will know or care. If it does work out, well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.
I do have other obligations, so this won't necessarily happen quickly. But now that I've stuck my neck out I guess it has to happen.
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