Sermon: Living Right But Getting It Wrong

I went back and forth a bit about posting this sermon.  It is a bit "wonky" theologically in spots, and I feel like part of it goes out on a limb a bit as well.  But it seemed to connect with the congregation, and then today has felt as if I've seen or heard about fifteen news stories or anecdotes in which people or groups do the very thing identified in the latter half of the sermon as a rather poor tendency for Christians to fall into.  So, here it is, for what it's worth.

Meherren Presbyterian Church

July 6, 2014 Ordinary 14A

Charles S. Freeman

Living Right But Getting It Wrong

For many years scholars, pastors, and all manner of Christians have agreed that one of the most difficult books of the New Testament (aside from Revelation, perhaps) is Paul’s extensive, complicated, and downright thorny letter to the church at Rome.  The last letter Paul wrote, Romans is set apart from its fellow Pauline letters by its lateness and by the fact that unlike the other letters that can be attributed to Paul with certainty, Romans is not written to a church that Paul had founded; in fact, aside from a few individuals mostly mentioned in the book’s last chapter, Paul did not even know most of those who belonged to the community of Christ-followers in Rome.

As a result, while Paul’s other letters speak to a specific condition or event in the churches to which Paul wrote, Romans has no such focus; rather, it is a theological résumé in letter form.  Because of Paul’s ambitious plans to travel even further west, and because of his desire to stop in Rome on the way to Spain (a journey he was never able to make) and to be supported by the Romans on that journey, Paul needed to introduce himself to the community there.  Just because Paul had never been to Rome, however, did not mean that his reputation did not precede him; therefore, it was also necessary to provide a context and a summary for the ministry and teaching he had carried out thus far.  For once, Paul needed to put forth at least a somewhat coherent explanation of his theology, instead of responding to particular problems in Corinth or explaining points to the church in Philippi.  Romans is, in the end, the closest thing we have to a complete or even mostly complete summation of Paul’s theology, his understanding of such things as the nature of Christ or of sin or other things we would call “doctrine.”

The letter to the Romans is quite wide-ranging, walking his readers through no less than the nature of sin, the goodness and yet insufficiency of the law in the face of sin, the necessity of salvation from God through grace, and the role of the Hebrew or Jewish people in this everlasting and ongoing process.  It is as if John Calvin had written something like his monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion as a means of introducing himself to a church in a city he had not visited yet.

A pastor does not ordinarily want to start a sermon with such a long background passage, but in this case it is vitally important to understand where this letter is coming from before delving into the passage before us today.  In dropping into the seventh chapter of Romans we are entering into the book at the very heart of Paul’s argument, the core of his theological understanding.  And it is extremely important to remember this as we begin to unfold this understanding, as Paul seeks to explain no less than the nature and relationship of sin, law, and grace.

The seventh chapter of Romans comes off as a curious piece of writing to biblical scholars and preachers.  Had Paul submitted it as a writing assignment in a composition class, I fear that it would have been returned with numerous red marks, questions, and corrections about carelessly changing the tense and person of his account.  Nonetheless, as twisty a piece of writing as the chapter offers, it marks a key moment in revealing how Paul understood the whole business of sin and redemption, while also both upholding the Torah, or Jewish law (we know it as the first five books of the Old Testament) and insisting on its inability to bring salvation to humanity.

Our beginning point today is the thirteenth verse, which serves both as the end of one part of Paul’s argument and the beginning of the next part.  In fact verse 13 refers back to a point made first in verse seven; that the law is not sin (emphasized by a favorite exclamation of Paul’s, translated here “by no means!” which today might be expressed as “no way!” or possibly something stronger), but the law is the means by which sin is made known to us.  In verse 13 Paul strengthens the argument by observing that the power of sin actually made use of the law – and the law is a good thing, remember – in order to bind the individual to sin.

Now we need to talk about sin for a moment here, which is not a popular thing to do, I realize.  But what we modern Christians tend to think of when we speak of “sin” is often quite a different thing from what Paul is talking about.  We might speak of “sins,” or perhaps of “a sin” as being the problem.  Paul is not particularly speaking of an individual lie we might tell, or an infidelity we might commit.  These may well be symptoms or even consequences of what Paul describes, but the apostle has in mind something much larger.  Paul wants his Roman readers to understand sin, in the words of Ted A. Smith of Vanderbilt Divinity School, as “an active, aggressive power that seizes hold of God’s good gifts – like the law – and bends them towards death.”  John Calvin’s doctrine of “total depravity” – the utter inability of the human to transcend sin on his or her own – comes close to expressing this idea.  Sin certainly causes us to commit sins, but it is a far more powerful and oppressive thing than any individual act.  We are born into it, we are mired in it, and absent the dramatic intervention of God in Jesus Christ, we die in it.

With this understanding of sin in mind, the extended and convoluted passage from verses 14-20 unfolds differently, or perhaps more expansively, than we are perhaps accustomed to understanding.  Paul’s slip into first-person – “I do what I don’t want to do, I don’t want to do what I do” – tends to nudge us into reading the passage as a lament on Paul’s inability to live up to the law, always falling short and doing in the end what he hates. 

This is a strange reading, though when one remembers the other letters Paul has written before.  In both the letters to the Galatians and the Philippians, Paul is quite insistent on his success in keeping the law.  Galatians 1:14 finds him claiming that “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.”  Philippians 3:4-6 finds even more striking claims Paul makes on his own behalf: “If anyone else has reason to be confident … I have more …. As to the law, a Pharisee … as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”  This doesn’t sound a lot like the stammering of Romans 7.

But also buried in that Philippians passage is the key: “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.”  Remember how we are first introduced to Paul in the New Testament?  Back in the book of Acts we meet him, still called by his birth name Saul, at the stoning of Stephen, holding the coats of those doing the stoning and approving of the deed.  We catch up with him again “breathing threats and murder against the disciples” and zealously persecuting those who had taken up with the new sect.  Saul didn’t do these things because he was a wild man bent on violence and destruction; he persecuted Christians because of his zeal to follow the Law.  Paul, writing to the Romans, no doubt remembered Saul the zealous and blameless follower of the law and what came of his rigorous adherence to the law.  Paul knew that even the one who followed the law ended up in the power of sin. 

That is our condition, absent the action of God. 

Even as much as Paul describes his “delight” in the law, he knows sin is close at hand ready to twist and distort that love of the law into something evil.  If even the law can be twisted and misused so powerfully, we indeed can understand Paul’s lament in verse 24 – who can rescue us, indeed?  And yet the very next words from Paul’s pen point to the answer – “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 

We cannot deliver ourselves from sin.  This is done for us.  We are delivered from that bondage to sin in the dramatic cosmic intervention that is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  As Ted Smith of Vanderbilt puts it, “God does not just give us individual humans the willpower to live our best lives now, or say that it does not matter if we do not.  In Jesus Christ, God sets the cosmos free from bondage, redeeming the law and opening the way to life, and life abundant.” 

And yet, we humans – particularly we Christians – are prone, and even eager, to bind ourselves and others to some kind of  law again.  Perhaps it is biblical law.  Maybe we are prone to pull out the Torah – or particular, individual verses from the Torah – to use as weapons against those we want to keep out, while conveniently ignoring those individual verses from the Torah that might indict or inconvenience us more directly.  Or perhaps it is more a law of our own making that appeals to us.  Maybe we want to judge our own righteousness by how often we’re at church, or how much scripture we have memorized.  As we come to the end of a full weekend’s worth of Independence Day celebration, maybe we might recognize that we sometimes let the law of the land, or the rules of “patriotism,” or some other kind of secular guidelines infiltrate our thought and become a law that we use to promote our own righteousness and diminish others who are not like us.

All of those “laws,” wherever they may originate or however they may infiltrate our minds, are as powerless against sin, and every bit as twistable by sin, as the good Torah that Paul describes.  Anything less than whole-hearted, abject surrender to the grace of God is so powerless and twistable.

We are powerless to resist sin on our own.  We don’t like to hear this; we who have been raised in a culture of independence and “rugged individualism” aren’t keen to hear that we can’t do … well, anything.  We are confident in our own power to “get out of” whatever condition might bind us.  We are not unlike the mathematician John Nash, as portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind, who claims he can use his own analytical skills to set himself free from his mental illness, even though his doctor warns him that the mind on which he relies for analysis is the very source of his illness.  We are so often incapable of accepting what some preacher (or worse yet, some guy who’s still trying to become a preacher) says when we know we can “do better” on our own.

And yet Paul is laying before us here the utter futility of any such claim.  Our own efforts to live up to any standard – be it the Torah or anything of our own devising – will not deliver us from the sinful state in which we are all mired except for God’s divine rescue. 

We have trouble understanding this because, well, when we look around the world doesn’t really look redeemed.  Maybe we don’t really feel redeemed.  And certainly we are not yet at that point where we will fully know what it is to be redeemed by the action of Jesus Christ.  But that is our place; that is the door that has been opened to us.  Even so, even though we don’t really feel it, the promise that follows directly after this passage – “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is our hope, not just for the future but even for the present.  The way to life is open. 

It is a radical thing to trust, especially in that which we cannot see.  It’s a lot easier to rely on “law” or “rules” than to live relying only on the redemptive love of Jesus and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  And yet this is our only “escape”; only in this redemption done for us by God through Jesus Christ does our life here on earth have any chance to be anything other than the same old quagmire of sin and despair that we were born into. 

Wretched people that we are, who will rescue us from this mire of sin?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.  No matter how much it pains us, let our prayer always be; Thanks be to God.

Hymns (all from PH ’90): Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (356), Jesus, Lover of My Soul (303), Just As I Am, Without One Plea (370)

The (Clergy-Search) Dating Game

In case I haven't made this clear, I did actually graduate!  That particular part of the fool's errand that gives this blog its name is done.
Of course, that means that the challenging part -- the "becoming a Presbyterian pastor" part -- is where I am now.  And that means it's time for me to play The Presbyterian Dating Game.
Different denominations have different means of pastors being placed in churches.  On one end of the spectrum is the free-for-all involved in Baptist and other such denominations.  On the other, the strict placement practice of United Methodists, in which not only are you placed by a bishop, but you are subject to being re-placed four or five years later.
As is typical in just about everything polity-wise, the Presbyterian Church (USA) sits somewhere in the middle, with a system that leaves the choice up to church and potential pastor while centralizing the contact process in Presbyterian offices in Louisville (henceforth called the Mothership).  Without betraying confidence or otherwise giving away state secrets, here's a little of what it's like to be caught up in this process.
Once one has been certified by one's presbytery as ready for examination for a call, the potential pastor is called upon to summarize his/her life in a few pages via the Personal Information Form (PIF).  The PIF is, without too much exaggeration, your life essence, your core, your Patronus, your very being itself all digested and wrestled into electronic written form.  Beyond the practical details of your life history and education and experience the PIF also captures your response to a set of narrative questions that are intended to say something about you as a potential minister (or experienced minister if you're that).  It also includes references, like a more traditional resumé, and your contact information of course.  Completing this PIF becomes the Holy Grail of your existence once you're certified, even to the point of becoming a bigger deal than graduation (I got this wrong, therefore I'm a little behind many of my classmates who are already toddling off to their first calls).
Of course the seminary has an office to help with this kind of thing, but ultimately you've got to get it done and filled out on a PC(USA) website so it can be approved by your presbytery's appropriate committee, after which it is posted on the denomination's Christian Leadership Connection list of pastors and others seeking new calls.  Hundreds upon hundreds of PIFs are lodged there.
At the same time, the CLC is also gathering MIFs, or Ministry Information Forms, from churches seeking new pastors or associate pastors or whatever may be the case.  (In case you didn't guess it from the PC(USA) abbreviation, we Presbyterians love love love us some acronyms.)  Once your PIF is posted, it's time to start looking for matches, with the CLC functioning somewhat like the dating site eHarmony.  Your seminary's vocational office can help you out by finding those churches that match your criteria (i.e. are willing to take on someone with no pastoral experience or seeking a first call, in my case) and, possibly, going ahead and referring your PIF to the churches that match.  You can also refer yourself via good ol' email, though it doesn't hurt to have your seminary vouching for you, so to speak.
Then, you wait.  This is the part at which I am not good.
If things go well, churches start to contact you via the chair of their Pastor Nominating Committee (or PNC).  Often the first contact might simply be a query as to whether you're still interested in that church, or it might be a request to see a video of you preaching a sermon, particularly if you're seeking a solo or head pastor role.
I assume all the seminaries have some means of helping you get such a video done; Union does, and so I was off to preach a sermon to a video camera.  Such is the essence of strangeness.  In this case the video is hosted by UPSem's media services, so the PNC can simply go online and watch the sermon to see if you're a total incompetent or not.  If after this the church decides you're still a person of interest, the next step might be to set up an interview with you and the committee via Skype or old-fashioned conference call.  This is as far as I've gotten; I've now completed such interviews with two churches, the second just earlier this evening.
There is one other potential step, if you choose.  This year PC(USA) offered a face-to-face interview opportunity running concurrently with its General Assembly a couple of weeks ago in Detroit, on the premise that elders or nominating committee members or presbytery executives were likely to be on the premises and could sneak out of meetings on occasion to interview either newbies like me or, in some cases, currently employed pastors who were seeking new calls.  It is the latter that causes the face-to-face interview room to be placed in the most remote part of the meeting facility, I assume (seriously, the interview room was practically in Canada).

See? There's Windsor, Ontario, seen from just outside the interview room!

If the CLC website is eHarmony, this face-to-face is a speed-dating event.  I barely got into the interview room before I had two different potential interview groups coming after me.  The whole week wasn't quite that hectic, but I did stay busy, which I take as a good thing (one of the two interviews I've done resulted directly from this face-to-face program, so I am required to go on the record saying it's worth doing).  Still, it was odd being right there as all the difficult and controversial overtures before the GA were being discussed and debated and knowing less than the average person sitting at home following on Twitter.
Anyway, that's as much as I can say because that's as far as I've gone.  There may be more churches yet to contact me for sermons or interviews, or something more might happen with one of the interview churches, or the whole business could suddenly freeze up and leave me stranded.  I have some self-referrals I need to do, and I need to go back to the CLC to see if there are any new churches that match up with me.
And that, in a really long and winding nutshell, is my life.

We have only a witness

I spent part of my week in Detroit.  This was primarily part of the "next stage" of my fool's errand, the part where the seminary education and general seeking to discern gets (hopefully) translated into a vocational calling as a pastor somewhere in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  That denomination is holding its General Assembly, an every-other-year orgy of polity and overtures (not the operatic kind, regrettably) and amendments and amendments to amendments and such by which the church seeks to set a path forward as a (more or less) unified church in a world that (more or less) doesn't care what we do, except when it does (and GA is often the time when it does).  The GA made a bit of news this week; you may have heard.

I was there not for GA proper, but for the oh-so-secret face-to-face (I'm apparently into hyphens today, big-time) interviews that take place between churches and those seeking a call.  Since I'm just about the only person in my graduating class (almost three weeks ago now) who hasn't already secured a call at BigCity Presbyterian somewhere out there, it seemed worth a shot.  I guess it went well; I stayed busy enough that I really didn't know much at all of what was happening in GA proper.  I'd know more today except I can't follow the live feed of the floor proceedings; my connection doesn't seem to be up to the challenge.

After a bit of hunting and pecking I did finally find out what happened on one issue with which I was particularly concerned.  On an overture to move forward on divestment from the fossil-fuel industry, the GA did something at which it excels.  The headline of the linked article, "Creation Care PC(USA) looks to long-term efforts, not immediate divestment with fossil-fuel companies," is what I shall call generous; it might as well and more honestly read "GA punts on fossil-fuel divestment just like it does on every mildly contentious issue that comes before it, at least two or three times."  (I suppose I'm required to be fair and note that the GA has plenty of other contentious issues before it on which it can no longer punt, so I'm probably being unfair in my snark.  I don't really care at this point.)  In theory the divestment issue can be revisited in two years, but more likely we will get around to divesting only when a major US city is leveled by the explosion of a Bakken-crude oil train or pipeline along the lines of the unfortunate city of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, or a major river/water source is befouled by such an accident.  (I'm exaggerating.  I hope I am, at least.)

Is this what it will take?

While I could easily go on on this particular subject, as anyone who follows my Facebook or Twitter feeds could tell you if they haven't tuned out already, that's not where my current ranting is directed.  No, it is instead a perennial argument found in all manner of previous punts on divestment issues in this and other denominations.  It is the concern, voiced in the PC(USA) GA article linked above in so many words, that we will somehow lose our influence with fossil-fuel companies if we divest from them.

I am sure that those who voice such concerns are sincere, and believe that they are somehow making progress with Exxon or BP or Shell or whatever companies my future retirement is sunk into.  However, when I continue to see a steady stream of stories like this one, in which states go so far to protect the fossil-fuel industry as to forbid residents sickened by the activities of the fossil-fuel industry from saying so, I am hard-pressed to see where that progress is.  When I continually see stories about the poisonous water that the fracking process pumps into the ground -- that will eventually make its way into our groundwater -- and how said industry won't fess up to what they are (with the aid of the state governments again protecting them), I'm a bit unsure about what influence we're having.  When I see the Gulf coast still struggling with the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill this many years later, I don't quite see how my future retirement money is changing much of anything.

Here is the thing; the church does not have influence.  The church has only a witness.  Here it is again, pardon my shouting: THE CHURCH DOES NOT HAVE INFLUENCE.  THE CHURCH HAS ONLY A WITNESS.

And here's a corollary to the above: when the church tries to wield influence, it usually ends up failing to be the church.

Look to history.  Is there any historical case where the church, in any of its manifestations, has been particularly Christlike or godly when it has thrown its weight around in world affairs?  Do all those crusading armies particularly recommend the faith all that well?  Is England particularly nostalgic for Oliver Cromwell's Puritan types?  Oh, it might look good for a while.  I dare say Southern Baptists got a little bump from their culture-war turn, but that denomination is now well into its fourth decade as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, and look what's happening to their membership and baptism numbers; it's still a slow decline so far, but the bloom may just be off that rose at the last.  (Let's be clear, it wouldn't have mattered which party they sold out to; it would still have constituted a selling-out of witness in favor of influence.)

Corporations are give-me-your-money-and-shut-up outfits; unless you're at the Big Boys Table (and that's usually a pretty accurate description, but I digress) you opinion does not matter.  Political parties, or their upper-level types, are that way rather often as well.  I'm trying to come up with a time when a church's money actually moved a corporation off the time and towards more just business practices, but I'm getting nothing.  Anyone?  Seriously, if you've got an answer I want to know.

In short, I do not see where our money invested in such corporations (be they fossil-fuel corporations now or Big Tobacco backintheday) has ever had a whole lot of influence on those corporations and their concern for justice and basic human decency.

Now let me make this clear too: there is absolutely no guarantee that divesting from fossil-fuel companies will move them at all, either.  PC(USA) just isn't that big, for one thing.  For another, fossil-fuel companies are increasingly shielded by the states in which they do their damage, as noted above; until that changes, there is very little that can influence them at all.  Do you see any signs that BP is suffering in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill?  I don't mean embarrassed, I mean suffering even the tiniest ill effect on their revenues or sales?

We do not have influence.  We have only a witness.  And more and more I'm convinced that my future retirement money, such as it is, being tied up in the fossil-fuel industry of the 21st century actually harms my witness, no matter how fine my preaching is or how compassionate my pastoral care may be.  Is the sickening of the people of Fort Chip or the water deprivation of Texas o.k. for me to live off of in my dotage?

We have only a witness.  It requires us to speak up.  Speaking up requires us to live in a way that backs up our speaking up, which can get awfully inconvenient.  Speaking up might even require us to march, to (shudder) protest, to (*swoon*) do advocacy.  It might cause our neighbors to dislike us.  It might cause them to try to shut down our soup kitchens or homeless shelters.  It might cause them to decide we're too impure or sinful to be associated with.  But it is all we have.

Our money is pointless.

We have only a witness.

There are people

I did not get to go on the seminary's travel-seminar trip to the Middle East in May.  I wanted to, badly.  But about the time in the fall I needed to make a commitment and start trying to scare up some funding, my surgeon sounded an alarm about something suspicious-looking that couldn't be explained and might require surgery.  Of course, as it has turned out so far, that thing has not grown or changed or gone anywhere, and any apparent threat to block something or damage something has not materialized, and I'm in more-or-less normal health for now (as normal as ever after the kind of surgery and treatment I had).
So, I missed the trip.  The group traveled through Turkey and its significant sites, both Christian and otherwise, and then to Israel, with stops in (if I remember correctly) Tel Aviv, Jericho, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem.
I freely admit the site I would have been most eager to see was the site at Gallipoli, a World War I battle, more than most of the religious sites (although I was thoroughly excited about the various New Testament-related sites in Turkey).  In all honesty, I was a bit ambivalent about the Israel-Palestine part of the trip.  That wasn't because of any particular concern about the itinerary.  It was because people tend to get stupid about the "Holy Land."
Hear me out.  You might even get to witness an unbegun pastoral career going up in self-inflicted flames.
Leaving aside Jerusalem syndrome, it's just about impossible to get into a discussion of anything about the modern-day state of Israel without an awful lot of Christians starting to act, frankly, goofy.  (I would guess that Jews and Muslims also exhibit awfully strong feelings on the region, but I will stick with what I know most from experience.)  It might be a simple as a total change of vocal tone upon the thought of the "Holy Land", or perhaps some dreamy look in the eyes, or an uncontrollable urge to break out singing the old sacred-song chestnut "I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked."
To me, something of this kind of distractedness is evidenced by a blog on the Christian Century website with the title "An Open Letter to the PCUSA" concerning upcoming General Assembly debate over the question of Israel-Palestine conflict.  Maybe others read it differently.  Maybe the author is seeking something else and I'm missing it.  But as far as I can see, the author's sole purpose is to undermine any serious discussion of the conflict in the region and to treat the whole region as something like the song linked above.
Of course, there is the use of "politics" as an implied dirty word.  There is only a minimal amount of concern for any person involved in the conflict; indeed to read the article one might forget that there actually are people -- Palestinian residents, Israeli settlers, soldiers, etc. -- involved in the conflict, or indeed living in the region at all.  The "Holy Land," or the "Fifth Gospel" as the author names it, is an abstraction, virtually a theme park (and no, I'm not referring to the one in Florida, but at times in the blog entry I wondered if I might be) to which we are invited to wander and wonder and meditate for our own peace and contentment.
This I find appalling.  This is not about "our faith" as a historical artifact bound to a particular geographical region; this is about our faith as we are called to live it, discerning the will of the Holy Spirit in finding some way to a just peace in the region, or at the very minimum not being caught supporting the perpetuation of injustice.  This is a conflict between people.  Our sentimental attachment to the pictures we used to see in Sunday School class is not a basis for discerning justice.
There is virtually nothing I can add to the debate that will culminate at General Assembly.  I find it sad and pathetic that there are some who would treat the debate as an excuse for a low-grade case of Jerusalem syndrome.

It doesn't look quite like this anymore.

Sermon: This Way

I am discovering that as I do this more, I go "off script" a lot more.  But this was the script for what it's worth.

Browns Presbyterian Church, Farmville, VA

May 18, 2014 Easter 5A

John 14:1-14

This Way

There are certain passages of scripture that are instantly recognizable.  All I would have to do is to say the first few words of the verse, and I’d guess you could immediately, almost as if my reflex, complete the verse.  For example:

“God so loved the world…”

Or, “The Lord is my shepherd…”

Or maybe, “In the beginning…”

Or maybe this one: “I am the way…”

The sixth verse of this chapter does indeed have a particular niche in the church, and therefore has a certain safe place in the memory banks of a lot of Christians.  Perhaps it isn’t quite as memorable as the others, but it does stand out.

Much of this is because it is part of a passage, indeed even the climactic verse of a passage that is often used for funerals.  Coming after several verses of Jesus’s teaching, describing how Jesus is going to “prepare a place” for us, and after his describing “many mansions” in that place, in the context of a funeral, or perhaps a time of counseling in the face of impending death, this verse becomes a tremendous source of reassurance for the dying soul or for his or her family members and loved ones.  This is perfectly appropriate; the verse does offer a word of comfort or even hope in a time of tremendous, even overwhelming grief. 

There is, however, a potential problem with verses like this, verses that often get memorized and remembered separate from the context that informs and defines them.  It’s easy to remember what comes after “God so loved the world,” but how much do you remember of what comes before that verse?  It’s not hard to come up with the rest of Genesis 1:1, but not as easy to remember Genesis 1:2, or 1:3 or any of the other verses that refine and complete that account of creation.

In the case of John 14:6, it’s very easy to forget about the context in which this verse is heard, and in fact very easy to forget that the part we remember is not even an accurate rendering of the whole verse.  And of course, it’s not all that easy to remember what comes before it or after it.  We might remember a little bit about many mansions and Jesus going to prepare a place, and someone really bright might remember Thomas asking what sounds to us like a dumb question, but chances are we mostly remember those nine words – “I am the way, the truth, and the life” – and not much of the passage around it.

And in this case, that can lead to real problems.  Without that context this verse can, and often is, misinterpreted in two very different yet equally troublesome or even destructive ways. 

First of all, the English language causes us a problem.  Throughout this passage we see Jesus speaking to “you”.  I go to prepare a place for you.  I will come again and take you unto myself.  And you know the way.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.  Over and over again the pronoun “you” is connected to all manner of verbs.  Now we know, intellectually, that in English “you” can be singular or plural.  Still, when we hear it in scripture like this, we have a bad habit of assuming, unconsciously, that “you” equals “me,” instead of “you” equaling “us.”  As a result, we might too easily hear all these verbs being directed at me, and letting our minds get caught up in an extremely individualistic interpretation of the scripture before us.

We might hear Jesus saying “I go to prepare a place for you.  You personally.  Your own personal mansion.  And I’m gonna come back just for you, complete with your own personal flaming chariot ride.  The trouble is, all of these verbs are second person plural, not singular.  (This is why we have to take Greek in seminary.)  Though it might drive certain grammar devotees nutty, we’d all be better off if we could plug in that very practical Southern pronoun, y’all.  I go to prepare a place for y’all.  I will come again and take y’all to myself.  Y’all know the way to where I’m going.  If y’all know me, y’all will know my Father.  All throughout this passage the verbs are plural, not singular, when Jesus is speaking in second-person verbs. 

So why is this grammar diversion important?  Because this word of comfort is not an individual Hallmark card from Jesus.  No, this is a promise to all of us.  The whole company of the disciples.  The whole fellowship of believers.  The whole body of Christ. 

Indeed, throughout the last half of this gospel John records Jesus’s words in a whole series of teaching episodes, always focused on instruction and encouragement to the whole fellowship.  Jesus has spent his time on earth, which at this point he knows is drawing to an end, teaching and performing signs in the presence of his disciples, so that they might be encouraged, edified, and empowered to be a witness to Christ once he was returned to his Father.  It wasn’t to make a superstar disciple out of Peter, or to glorify John or Andrew or Nathaniel or any individual disciple.  It was so that the whole fellowship could continue, even when Jesus was gone, to do the works that Jesus did and to teach as Jesus taught, and even more as verse 12 says.  But to do that, they needed to be a fellowship, a body, a community in the strongest way possible, and we need to hear this in these verses today and take it to heart.

My point is not to stop you from using those first six verses at funerals.  But remember that the promise in those verses is not limited to the one being laid to rest; it is directed towards all of us, together, as the fellowship of believers, the body of Christ.

Another way to take verse 6 out of context is potentially much more harmful, both to the world around us and to our own fellowship with Christ.  There is a school of thought that takes this verse, this beautiful testament to Christ’s care and provision for us, and turns it into a weapon.

Let’s say you are hearing an … well, I was going to say “argument,” but let’s be gentler about this and call it a “discussion.”  It’s probably about heaven, and who gets to go.  It might be about believers of other faiths – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or so forth.  Or it might be about Mormons or other groups with an unusual status on the religious spectrum.  I suppose in some cases it might be about Catholics or Seventh-Day Adventists or other Christian groups. 

Whatever directions the discussion may take, whether about  a theology of salvation or comparison of different scriptures, inevitably it seems that someone in the discussion will pull out John 14:6 and wield it like a club or a baseball bat.  Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” This person might even add, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” or something equally catchy before strutting off like a triumphant Roman general to enjoy the spoils of war.

Maybe you noticed that our hypothetical conqueror didn’t quite quote the verse completely?  Remember, it says “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way’” and so on.  When we remember those two words “to him,” as minor as they may seem, we are charged to remember that this wasn’t a free-floating statement out of nowhere; it was an answer to a question.  Specifically, it was an answer to a question by Thomas, one of the disciples, who completely failed to follow what Jesus had been saying so far.  After Jesus’s talk about going to prepare a place – remember, a place for y’all, for all of these disciples – when Jesus finishes by telling the disciples “y’all know the way,” Thomas pipes up that no, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we possibly know the way?  This is the question that prompts Jesus to say “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Thomas, in this case, cares about only one thing; this teacher whom he and his fellow disciples have been following for the last few years is suddenly making noises about going away, going to his Father’s “house” to prepare a place.  In the time John is writing his gospel, to speak of his Father’s “house” would not necessarily suggest to a listener like Thomas any kind of physical structure.  Rather, Thomas might first imagine the Father’s “house” in the way Old Testament writers spoke of the “house of Abraham” or perhaps the “house of David,” a figure of speech less concerned with a physical dwelling (something Abraham certainly did not have most of his life) than the particular intimate and unbreakable bonds of family, the ties that bind brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers together.  To hear Jesus speak like this, and then say he has to go and y’all know how to get there, left Thomas more confused than enlightened. 

But nowhere in any of this is there any idea that Thomas is asking about anybody but this group of disciples.  Thomas isn’t asking about anybody else, and Jesus address exactly what Thomas does ask about and nothing else.  When Philip asks his question in verse 8, Jesus’s response is even more explicit; “Y’all have been with me all this time, and y’all still don’t know me?”  Neither Thomas nor Philip give a whit about Muslims or Buddhists or Mormons, at least in part because none of those groups exist yet.  Jesus is begging his disciples to understand that because they have been with him, they know “the way, the truth, and the life.”  They know the way Jesus has followed; they know the truth Jesus has taught; they know the life Jesus has lived.  And this way, this truth, and this life are what Jesus leaves behind to his disciples, and to we disciples who come all these years after.  There’s nothing here about beating up followers of other faiths; there is everything here about living our faith right.

Everything here is about the initiative Jesus has taken to bring us to his Father’s house.  Not one iota of this is anything we could achieve by our own efforts.  We cannot do anything about the way, the truth, or the life except that Jesus has already done it for us.  When we are so utterly powerless and helpless to effect our own salvation, how can we possibly be so arrogant to judge anyone else?  Seriously, how dare we?

Maybe this is why Paul would write to the Philippians to work out their own salvation with “fear and trembling.”  What Jesus has laid before his disciples is nothing less than their utter and complete dependence on him, for how to live, and even for why to live.  This way, this truth, and this life are the very foundation we, the fellowship of believers, the body of Christ, live upon.  To be a Christian is not about winning some kind of eternal palace or beating others; it is about walking this way, hearing this truth, and living this life.  It is a task at which we will fail, repeatedly and embarrassingly.  And yet we will get there not because of our efforts but because Jesus has done it already for us. 

For this, let all God’s people say “Thanks be to God.” Amen.

Hymns: The Church’s One Foundation, More Love to Thee, O Christ

Personae

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm finishing my seminary career with a directed study, on the writings of the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard (I have no idea how to type that "o" with the slash through it).  I came to Kierkegaard via an odd route, mostly drawn in not by any particular introductions to the writings themselves but via Samuel Barber's brief cantata Prayers of Kierkegaard.  So the directed study offers me the opportunity to encounter some of the larger, more "theological" works by Kierkegaard that inform the prayers and other more "pastoral" or "devotional" writings.  What I do with all this in the future remains to be seen, but I hope that it's something.
At any rate, I'm not so insane that I expect to read all of his major works completely.  I'm being a bit selective and putting more time into some works than others.  So far, ripping through some of the earliest stuff, I've been caught short by one particular aspect of Kierkegaard's writing; his use of pseudonyms.

Kierkegaard does rather look like some Romantic composers...

I think I knew this coming in, but it was still a rather serious jolt to encounter it in reading.  It's pretty clear that our melancholy Dane did not "invent" these characters, ranging from a rather Don Juan-ish lover to a sober judge to someone called Inter et Inter, on a whim.  It's also a little disorienting and not a small amount creepy when Kierkegaard starts to enter into epistolary dialogues with these different writing personae.
Or at least it was, until I remembered Robert Schumann.  Of course.
Any musical person (at minimum anyone who ever took any of my courses that dealt with music in the nineteenth century), by now, has remembered Robert Schumann, I'm sure.  Besides his compositional reputation, Schumann engaged in a great deal of printed musical criticism, at times in his own journal and occasionally in other publications.  Schumann, as it happened, also indulged in a bit of pseudonymous writing, both in affixing pen names to his own writings (remember Florestan and Eusebius, gang?) and also by creating dialogues between characters (such as the Davidsbund, or "league of David," combatting the musical philistines of his day -- a kind of Justice League of musicians) to address questions of musical style, or taste, or whatever came into Schumann's fervid imagination.

...maybe even more than Schumann did.

At its best Kierkegaard's writing can be quite poetic (he considered himself a poet), and nothing in Schumann's writing quite matches the elegance of Kierkegaard at his best.  On the other hand, Schumann's sheer enthusiasms (and sometimes the opposite) give his writing a brio and vigor that Kierkegaard doesn't always muster, oft-melancholy soul that he is.
So on some level this is a bit of an apology to Robert Schumann, and maybe to some past students as well.  You weren't such a weirdo, Robert.  I don't know if it was just something in the air, or a relatively common Romantic device or what, but you weren't so off-the-wall as I may have portrayed you to be.  (We'll leave the 1850s aside for now.)  And hey, you were vastly entertaining.

The Future Of The Church

Update, May 31: Well, graduation day was today, and the intensity of feeling is only stronger.  Our class is pretty freakin' awesome.  They're going to do serious good if you folk don't get in their way.  My respect for these future ministers has only grown in the last three weeks.  To all of you; thanks for letting me ride along.


One of the inevitable things about getting into this particular vocational track, and especially noticeable as I reach the end of the educational process and make ready to jump off the cliff into whatever comes next, is that one hears a great deal of fretting and hand-wringing about The Future Of The Church.  You have to capitalize it that way to get the full effect of the fretting.  Armloads of statistics are deployed to point out that congregations are shrinking, if not disappearing altogether, and aging remarkably as they shrink/disappear.  Other capitalizable claims, all documentable with more of those statistics, are that Young People Are Leaving The Church, The Church Is Losing Its Relevance, The Church Is Losing Its Credibility, The Church Is No Longer Respected...it goes on.
All of these things feed into the fretting about The Future Of The Church. It's not exactly false, by any means.  Certainly the church (and this is fairly across-the-board, with the possible exception of Catholicism) is losing adherents in the US, and the general hair color of the church is getting whiter.  When you ask people about what institutions or individuals they respect, the church and its ministers don't necessarily do all that well (though at least they do better than Congress, low bar that such may be).  Things look bad, no denying that.
So, fretting about The Future Of The Church.  It happens a lot.
I suppose my perspective is a bit different these days, though.  You see, while I've been slogging through this seminary education, I've been hanging out a lot with the future of the church.
I've been in classes with them.  I've shared meals with them.  I've been around the communion table with them.  I've been grinding my way through the library with them.  I've occasionally been to parties and ballgames and other entertainments with them (although I'm an old man and can't handle too much of that).  I've had my butt bailed out by them, particularly while going through cancer treatment.  I've laughed with them, and I'm fairly certain I've been laughed with (or occasionally at) by them, hopefully when I meant to be funny (or perhaps when I attempted to play ultimate frisbee -- yeah, that was a mistake).  I've heard their startling revelations, and made a few myself.  I've been angry alongside them (as opposed to being angry with them, which I never really had occasion to be), been frustrated alongside them, occasionally grieved with them.  I've wondered over grades and assignments, celebrated achievements, regretted setbacks, and generally shared a lot of different emotions.

And from where I sit, the future of the church, at least this sliver of it in this denomination, looks pretty good.  Real good, actually.
This future of the church is deeply intelligent.  Don't get the idea you're going to outsmart these folks when they arrive in your church.  Let's get this straight, church folk: you do not know more about the Bible than they do.  You may have more life experience, to be sure, but don't dismiss or scoff at their intellect.  It is powerful, God-given and seminary-refined, and it is a glorious thing to behold at work.
This future of the church is passionate.  Don't be fooled by all that talk about the indifference or apathy of the young adult generation.  These folks care passionately about the faith, about the church, and about doing Christ's work in God's world.  And they're not inclined to let anyone get in their way, not even you, church folk.

This future of the church, despite what others may tell you, does not seek to change the church merely for the sake of change, and in fact are suspicious of those who advocate change without good reason.  They are passionately for changing what doesn't work, what gets in the way, what deceives us into thinking we're doing what God wants from us when we're really just doing what's comfortable.  They've got vision, and are ready to go after it.  Please don't be obstacles.

I will note that a lot of this future of the church is made up of women.  This probably bothers some people.  There are probably some folks who think that the future of the church is hopeless or lessened for that very reason.  Sorry to hurt your feelings if that's you, but that line of thinking is total b.s.  The church has been waiting for, nay, crying out for these women and their talents and passions and energies for decades now.  The degree to which this church actually does grow into and serve as a genuine and faithful witness for Christ (notice I didn't say anything about "prosper" or other such twentieth-century buzzwords) is largely contingent on these women and the degree to which the church responds to that leadership.  The guys are pretty impressive, but these women rock.  (I feel like I'm echoing that West Wing episode, early in the show's run, where Jed Bartlett and Leo McGarry marvel over the women working in that fictional White House.  Fine.  So be it.  They're good.)

This future of the church isn't perfect.  They have their blind spots, to be sure.  Don't judge, older generations: look where your hangups about money and big buildings and prestige have gotten us.  These people are going to be passionate, vital, profoundly needed leaders in the church.  The very least you can do, the absolute minimum, is to get out of the way.  Better yet, follow them.  Help them out.  Provide that wisdom of experience where needed.  But don't be obstacles.
And really, don't be jerks about how much better things were when five thousand people in your town of two thousand crowded into your sanctuary (that holds about two hundred) every Sunday to hear the strong, powerful sermons of Dr. Noble Whiteguy.

I find myself with all sorts of feelings to sort out about my experiences here.  I find myself already missing these people intensely, and graduation is still three weeks off.  Three years ago I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me how deeply I'd come to care about these folks, these (let's go ahead and say it) kids (I mean, I am old enough to be their father in many cases).  And yet I care about them not as "kids," but as treasured brothers and sisters in the faith.  They are my peers, and I could not ask for better (again, three-years-ago me is freaking out to read that).  They've been there for me, and I hope I've been so for them.  They make me laugh, think, get indignant, get excited to go change the world (three-years-ago me just passed out in consternation).  I love them dearly and will miss them dearly.
There have been "older" classmates, a more obvious age cohort, and they have enriched and challenged my life in so many ways.  But these young ministers coming at you out there in the church are something special.  Welcome them.  Embrace them.  Help them out.  And every now and then, maybe even more often than not, shut up and listen to them.