Williamsburg Presbyterian Church

The Sermon the Ox and Donkey Preach

Patrick J. Willson — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:00:34 +0000

The Eve of the Nativity of the Lord

Text: The Prophet Isaiah 1:1-3
The Gospel According to St. Luke 2:1-16

    On Christmas Eve we have a special service for children at 5:00.
    This evening I want to talk with the grownups. You may wonder if you are a grownup, so many of us do, and for so many reasons, but suffice it to say that a grownup is someone who comes to worship on Christmas Eve without his or her parents insisting. A grownup is someone who is here and not home this afternoon shaking packages for their rattle and poking them trying to figure out what it is; not already slipped off to bed because the sooner you go to bed the sooner Santa will come.
    A grownup knows, knows oh, so well, that what she or he really wants, really hopes for, really dreams of, and in fact, aches for will not be found under the Christmas tree wrapped in pretty paper with a big red bow. Grownups are old enough or experienced enough or wise enough to that life doesn’t work that way, but precisely because what we wish for most cannot be wrapped up and handed to us, grownups wonder how to receive the gift that Christmas brings. We are grateful to receive the presents under the tree, thoughtfully selected and lovingly given, but it is the gift of Christmas itself that baffles us year after year.
    Children receive the gift of Christmas effortlessly, or a least many children do most of the time. Each package brings excitement at least until it is opened, and some presents not only charm for an instant but bring permanent enlargements. Santa has brought a bicycle this Christmas and with that bicycle the landscape of a child’s world enlarges from your street to the neighborhood to the nearby grocery and before too long you’re receiving an e-mail from Paris where your vagabond student has bought a third-hand bicycle to get around the city.
    Christmas presents not only change children receiving them they can mark the changes in a child’s life. Growing up a boy in Texas at age 12 or 13 you got your first rifle, a 22, and a lecture from your father that began, "This is not a toy!" The gift was a rite de passage marking entry into new responsibilities and a new chapter of life. Women have told me their first Barbie was a similar marker. Before they had baby dolls and companion dolls like the American Girls series, but Barbie was a very different kind of doll. We change and grow and the gifts we receive mark changes in life.
   Children receive these gifts naturally. They hunger for them, delight in the recognitions of changes and do it so exuberantly.
     Children come to Christmas hungry, and there’s our problem. We have tamed our hunger to reasonable proportions. We are realistic people, after all. At the 5:00 worship service children are bouncing off the walls, climbing over the pews. We know how to behave in church. We do not expect too much. We do not succumb to the indignities of excitement. We know that no present under the Christmas tree will change our life the way Christmas presents used to do. And as for those presents that mark the transitions of life, we joke about those, saying we’re buying a hip replacement for Christmas or hearing aids.
     Children receive the gift of Christmas effortlessly but grownups need help. The gospel of Luke understands this. Luke is a most sophisticated writer and wastes no words, so when he tell us the same thing three times in only seven sentences we should pay attention.
     Mary "gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger."
     The angels tell the shepherds: "This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
      "So [the shepherds] went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger."
The word "manger" is not a common word in our vocabulary. Do we ever speak of a "manger" except at Christmas? I doubt if it were a common word in Luke’s vocabulary. Luke borrows the word not from his extensive experience in animal husbandry but from the prophet Isaiah.
    Isaiah speaks for the Lord:

The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s manger;
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.

Sometimes you hear it said of someone "He’s a dumb ox," or "She’s as stupid as a donkey," but in Isaiah’s prophecy the ox and the donkey are the ones who get it: they understand. We are so smart, so well educated, so experienced but we miss it.
    No Christmas crèche is complete without an ox and a donkey. Luke goes all the way back to the prophet Isaiah to bring the ox and donkey to the Christmas crèche to teach us, to guide us, to help us receive the gift of Christmas. The poor dumb ox doesn’t know any Christmas carols but it knows its owner’s stable where warmth and shelter can be found; the silly old donkey may not know calculus but it knows where it is fed. We do not know. They can tell us. They are the preachers we need on Christmas Eve, pointing us our homelessness and our hunger.
      Last Saturday in New York City the blizzard was coming. Some predicted the largest snowfall in almost a hundred years. At the Department of Homeless services they declared a "Code Blue":
…outreach teams divide the city into zones and drive around in vans, armed with lists of the most vulnerable homeless people. They visit, or try to visit, each person every two hours, all night long. The outreach workers try to persuade the homeless to climb in the van to be taken to a shelter. Only a small fraction say yes…. The team’s real mission… is ‘death prevention.’ [1.]
A man known only as James was at his usual place on East 57th Street huddled "in a puffy dark green coat and dirty sneakers, sitting on a grate in front of a pharmacy."
      "Hi, James," [the social worker greeted him]. "How you doing tonight? You look cold."
      He peered at her through dark aviator glasses.
      "I’m cold," he said politely. "What specifically do you want?" [2.]
      "What specifically do you want?" he asked them politely.
    Well, they might have said, we want to feed you and find you a warm, safe place to sleep, but most of all what we want is not for you to die.
    The reporter says, "He declined her offer of a ride to a shelter."
      "The teams almost always find people not on their list." One team found a small woman "curled up on the sidewalk, steps away from the [Harry Winston jewelry] store’s door… She was wrapped in a paper-thin gray sheet, wearing socks and furry black slippers with pink bows. She trembled from the cold.
      "’I'm O.K.,’ she insisted." [3.]
      Because she appeared disoriented and therefore susceptible to frostbite or hypothermia they called 911, but before the ambulance arrived she disappeared into the night.
      "I’m O.K.," she said. "I’m O.K.," we all say. We’re doing O.K.
      We become used to the hunger and longing, make ourselves comfortable with homelessness and cold. Grownups learn not to expect too much.
      We come here on Christmas Eve and gather around the crèche with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the wise men, but it is the ox and donkey who guide us and comfort us.
    They assure us that there is a place for us. The One whose we are provides us shelter, warm and secure. Our longing for an authentic home beyond the many homes in which we have celebrated Christmas is not an illusion nor a yearning for something that can never be but a homesickness for a place we have never been but one which promises peace on earth and tidings of incomparable joy. "The ox knows its master," know the one who names and claims him, and just so we are claimed by this story and the one whose birth we celebrate this day/night.
    "The donkey knows its master’s manger," and although we are only dimly acquainted with our hunger for God and wonder if our hunger if our hunger is nothing more than hunger, the donkey nods its head wisely to assure us that here we can be fed, here we will nourished, here we receive the master’s care here we can grow.

    We do not have to be afraid; here we are welcome.
    We do not have to be hungry; here we are fed.
    So the ox and donkey preach to us tidings of great joy.

1 Julie Bosman, "New York Reaches Out to Those Who Won’t Come In" The New York Times, December 19, 2009, A-1, A-19.
2 Ibid. A-1.
3 Ibid. A-19.

Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:48 +0000

Memorial Service: Rev. Neil M. Stevemson (RAdm, CHC, USN, Ret.)

Text: Joshua 24:14-16
1 Corinthians 7:16a

"But as for me and my household,
we will serve the LORD."
Joshua 24:15c (NRSV) [1]

This was not the text that Neil MacGill Stevenson selected for this service of worship today.
"Choose this day whom you will serve … " [2]
Perhaps speaking late in life – and then again, perhaps not – Joshua demonstrates his fear of the LORD … his firmness and faithfulness to God, and says …

Choose whom you will …
Serve whom you must …
But know where I stand on the choice to be made.

As if to say …

Let it be clear …
I have made my choice.
I have chosen – not only for myself – but
for those whom I love.

Choose this day whom you will serve.
    It’s a great text … from the Hebrew Scriptures and tradition Neil loved …   One, I believe that demonstrates the faith and witness of this interpreter of holy writ.    But it wasn’t the text that he selected for this day.
When I met with Neil a few months ago to discuss his wishes for this witness to the resurrection he said …     "Macaulay, I have only one text to suggest … "
"The wife saves the husband."
"Where is that text?" I wanted to know.
"I don’t know … You’ll have to find it.   But that’s the text
I want you to include."
So, I pulled out my 3×5 index card, wrote it down and said, "Aye, Aye," …   Realizing, once more, I had been given an assignment.      I figured it was in Paul’s letters, but I didn’t know where.   I searched … I ‘googled’ … I prayed …     I even received a copy of written instructions on this service from Herr Pastor in a letter to Diane last summer that said …
"I’ve mentioned to Clay one of the texts to use … "
"Geez Louise!" I thought, I’ve got to find this text.    Biblical texting has never been my forte.
It’s a good thing, though, we live in the Bible-Belt.       I decided to ask one of our elders up at Campbell Church, (where I live and serve in the Northern Neck) if he knew the text …   He thought of 1st Peter 3 … which speaks of husbands being "won over by their wives’ conduct." [3]          He was close …      But it was his wife that found the illusive text for me the next day.
"Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife." [4]
A great text, (finally discovered) – And wouldn’t you know my friend Neil would select one from which I’ve never preached or exposited … Of course, the context of this part of the great epistle (to those ‘cantankerous’ Corinthians) deals with the question of marriage, divorce and remarriage … And the issue of women and men joined in marriage with unbelieving spouses.
Here Paul is suggesting (as does the gospels) "that marriage is an aspect of Christian discipleship … "   (And) that "we order our lives in the church in a way that reflects the love of God." [5]    So, simply put … it stands to reason … that in marriage with those outside the community of faith, the wife could save the husband through the ‘power and lure of holiness’ [6] and vice versa.
But clearly, that’s not the case with Neil and his beloved Diane. They were both baptized and nurtured in the Church from their earliest days … through their courtship and long marriage they served the Lord.
So why the selection of this text … other than the fact that Neil believed what it said with all his heart … keen mind … and strength?
Here’s the eisegesis I would offer …
II
More than perhaps anyone I have known Neil Stevenson loved his wife – "My Diane" as he called his beloved of over 56 years.    And in his great mind, this lovely Midwestern girl – Diane Neal – he met in Tarkio, Missouri, when they both were students at the College there – did save this tall, good-looking, "son of a bricklayer" from Brooklyn.
And, at the risk of sounding trite, let me count (some of) the ways..
* She saved him … in that she brought out all that was the very best in this only son of Scot and Irish immigrants to a borough of New York.
* Diane saved him … from ever having to learn to cook …   Though Neil did wash a lot of dishes – in their home, and in the home of many of their friends.
* She saved him … from ever having to buy a car … though there was that Lincoln Continental (he loved to drive) and the Mazda truck (that for me, will be forever associated with him).
* She saved him … from ever having to manage the checkbook – or (in many cases) buy a house.
* Diane saved him … from the usual parental advice to their three lovely daughters … Heather, Holly and Heidi … when once he was told by Mrs. Stevenson … to "abdicate!"
* She saved him from boredom … every time the two of them danced the night away.
* She saved him … in so many ways!
I think I have a pretty good idea what he meant when my old friend selected this great text …
"The wife saves the husband … "
And who are we to argue with that (keen understanding of love and devotion) from a man who literally has seen the world.
His Diane, I feel certain, would say the same was true in her marriage – by notable elopement – to this boy from Brooklyn.
III
But with due respect to Neil and his wishes, I would like to move further … and suggest some ways – by God’s grace – salvation was demonstrated for us through Neil.
* The grandchildren (in their words of ‘Boompa’), their parents and Chaplain Baker have illustrated the ways so well … (far better than I could in these few words). Holly wrote of her dad, "As often as he was away serving our country, ne was never absent. His presence was undeniable; like a structure his tall straight shoulders from his Scot-Irish roots of bricklayers and ship builders." [7]
* He showed me the salvation God has wrought through ministry as a profession … visiting the sick in the hospital … the bereaved when loved ones have gone … pastoral conversations and insights with so many who knocked on his office or study door.
* Neil was ordained as a "Teaching Elder" by the UPNA8 … and expositing and teaching the Scriptures was his passion as well as his calling.
But he also taught us in so many other ways …     His courses for Christopher Wren – like the "Faith of our Founding Fathers" now taught in absentia … demonstrated the learned clergy and historian he was.
He was a writer of "epistles" – in the tradition of St. Paul – corresponding with those who knew him … offering pastoral comment on matters of Church and culture.   The postal system (of letters written in long-hand by Neil – with quill pen) will never quite be the same!
He was not one to give a hug!    Once, when a woman asked Neil …   "Are you a hugger, or a kisser?" Neil stood upright and replied …    "Madam, I’m a Presbyterian!"
And he had a gift for helping children – young and older – understand the faith.   His "Time with the Younger Church" here in worship was memorable.   His ability to see and explain the Bible – from the vantage of a child – was exemplary.
And, of course, Neil was very generous.
Neil would not take an honorarium for weddings or funerals.       There was one exception, as I recall.   Our son, Alec, had a new aluminum baseball bat – of which he was very proud. He had saved his money and bought it.   Always the baseball fan, Neil heard of Alec’s play on the diamond.
One summer evening Alec forgot to pick up his bat in the dugout after a ballgame … only to discover it was missing on our way home.   We raced back to the ball field, but alas the bat was gone. I happened to mention to Neil the tough lesson Alec and I both had learned from the experience. "These bats are expensive," I said.
Neil had a wedding the following day … after which he came by our house. He had an envelope with cash he had received as the officiating minister.    He gave me the envelope and said,
"Buy Alec and new bat."
I said ‘no’ …   But he insisted … and added,
"Don’t tell him who it’s from."
Again I protested that Alec needed to know. Neil smiled and said …
"You can say it’s from his Anonymous Benefactor.
Well, we kept Neil’s wishes on both counts …   We found a new bat for the boy and kept the name of the giver a secret.     But shortly thereafter, Pastor Neil received a thank note that simply began … "Dear Anonymous Benefactor … "
I would say more, of course, and perhaps when we mingle (not in a receiving line) at the reception to follow … .we can all share a few "Neilisms."     But the doctrine of brevity is Neil’s order of the day!
One of the last times I visited with Neil, I didn’t arrive at his hospital room until later on a Sunday night.    When he saw me at the door, a nurse was with him.   Pointing to me, he said to the nurse …   "My worst nightmare!"        His sharp wit was there to the end.
Sleep well, my dear friend … if eternal rest ever involves sleep … We long to see you again.

                    W. Clay Macaulay
                    Campbell Memorial Presbyterian Church
                    Weems, Virginia

1    Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture references are taken from The New Oxford Annotated Bible – New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), a translation by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1990.
2     Joshua 24:15b.
3     1 Peter 3:1b.
4     1 Corinthians 7:16.
5     Richard B. Hays, Interpretation: First Corinthians – A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 131-132.
6     Hays, p. 132.
7     Holly Hankins, a personal remembrance of her father,   November 2009.

YOU SAY YOU ARE A KING?

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:43:16 +0000

The Reign of Christ/Christ the King Sunday

Text: The Gospel according to John 18:33-40

    Jesus is on trial for his life. In the gospel lesson, Jesus stands before Pilate, his life on the line, and we know how that story turns out. Why would anyone want to crucify a swell guy like Jesus? What had he done?
    Think about those mental images of Jesus you carry around in your head. Is there anything about that person that would cause anyone to do him violence? Remember what you have heard about Jesus, what others have taught you. Why would someone want to hurt him?
    There is Jesus, taking the little children into his arms and blessing them. Who could wish to hurt such a simple, gentle man?
    There is Jesus, teaching the crowds, pointing out the flowers growing on the hill and the birds eating their fill from God’s infinite goodness. Why would anyone wish to silence such a sweet teacher?
    There is Jesus, preaching to his disciples, telling them of the goodness of God and the wonders of the Kingdom. Why would anyone want to kill a preacher? No – don’t answer that!
    Think about this person Jesus, all you know about him. It is puzzling to consider reasons why he would be hauled into Pilate’s chambers with his life at stake.
    People come up with all kinds of explanations. Some regard Jesus as a revolutionary leader, a Jewish Che Guevara bent on overthrowing the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire in Palestine. That certainly would explain why the Romans would want to kill him, it doesn’t explain much of anything else about him, and historians and biblical scholars alike have found that explanation unconvincing.
    Jesus forgave sins, others say, he declared God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness to sinners, and by so doing he put himself in the place of God forgiving sins. For this blasphemy the Jewish rulers convinced the Roman authorities that Jesus should be executed. That explanation has been around the block a time or two and has undoubtedly added to Christian anti-Semitism, but it won’t hold up to the truth. The Pharisees shared Jesus’ hope of restoring sinners to the community; preaching forgiveness was one of their major themes. The Sadducees would have pointed out that forgiveness of sins was possible in the rites of the Temple. Jesus wasn’t crucified for proclaiming mercy and goodness and the love of God–they weren’t at stake. Why then?
    There is Jesus, taking the little children into his arms and blessing them and saying, "It is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs" (Mk 10:14). Jesus is talking about a kingdom. Children at that time didn’t have a share of any earthly kingdom, but he says, "It is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs." Jesus is talking about a different kind of kingdom.
    There is Jesus, preaching about the Kingdom of God, where those who are "first will be last, and the last will be first" (Mk 10:31) – which sounds pretty good if you are last, but if you are already first, how does it sound? When we talk about the last being first around here, people squirm and get irritated.
    There is Jesus, teaching his disciples to pray, "thy kingdom come." "Thy kingdom come!" – what’s wrong with this kingdom? – why do we need any other kingdom? – this kingdom serves us very well!
    So here is Jesus now, hauled into Pilate’s headquarters. Pilate asks him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"
    "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Jesus responds. Strangely, Jesus does not deny Pilate’s charge. He must know that he is flirting with danger. Kings are notorious for not tolerating other claimants to their throne. Jesus does not deny it, however, when Pilate asks, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He could just say, "Oh, I’m just a simple Galilean carpenter. I tell stories and heal a few people and preach around the country, that’s all." Jesus does not say that.
    What he says instead is: "My kingdom is not from this world" – if my kingdom were from this world, of this world, like this world, we would be acting quite differently, my followers and me, but as it is–"my kingdom is not from here."
    "My kingdom," he says, "my kingdom." Surely he is a king, that is the way kings talk, "my kingdom!," but his kingdom is "not from here," "not from this world." From where, then? A kingdom that is "not from this world" is no problem to anyone. It is "not from here," thus, it is innocuous, harmless, no threat at all, either that – either that or an ultimate threat – the threat of a kingdom standing above and in judgment of every earthly kingdom.
    Have you ever wondered why anyone would want to crucify a swell guy like Jesus? Why does anybody kill someone else? Because they are a threat to keeping what we want to keep; because they are a threat to getting what we want to get; because they stand over against what we want. Forget all those television detective shows and elegant British murder mysteries with their labyrinthine, complicated plots and intricate motives for murder. Read the morning papers instead. Look at the police blotters. A troubled teenager murders his parents: "They wouldn’t let me …” One man shoots another in a bar: "He was in my way . . .” The explanations sound so trivial next to the carnage, but that’s the way it is. The one who stands over against is a threat and must be eliminated.
    "Are you the King of the Jews?" Pilate asks, because there isn’t room here for any more kings. We have a king already; we are well satisfied with the kingdom we have made for ourselves. We don’t need all this business of the "the last will be first" and praying "thy Kingdom come," as if this kingdom were not already perfectly sufficient. What’s wrong with my kingdom anyhow?
    During the Second World War C. S. Lewis, the British writer carried on a lengthy correspondence with a young American professor. The young man wrote him about believing in God. He wanted to believe in God, he said, but he really wasn’t sure that he could manage that in face of all the intellectual objections. Lewis wrote him back, explaining that his approach to faith had been quite the opposite. Lewis said that he had hoped with all his heart that there was no God to which he was ultimately answerable. He didn’t want a God who knew him intimately and called his actions into question. What he wanted was what he wanted. After all, Lewis went on in the mid-1940’s, can you seriously imagine that Hitler or Stalin want to believe in a God who stands over against their own power? We can bring that up to date: can we seriously imagine that any dictator wants a God with an authority and a kingdom greater than their own? For that matter does any democratically elected ruler contemplate sovereignty more persuasive than the latest public opinion poll? Can we seriously imagine we want a God – you and I – who stands over against what we want?
    The writer of the book of Judges describes a time in the history of Israel, "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (Judges 17:6) Yes, when there is no king we get to do what is right in our own eyes. No eyes peer over our shoulders to question our conduct. No power or authority scrutinizes our priorities or requires anything of us beyond what is right in our own eyes. Such a kingless kingdom is very admirably arranged when you come to think about it. Who needs a king, after all? Who wants a king?
    Pilate evidently satisfied himself that Jesus was harmless enough. Pilate is no petty tyrant. He will let the people speak. He will bow to the majority. Playing to the crowd, wanting to give them what they want, Pilate offers: "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" What do you want? Pilate asks the milling crowd.
    "Not this man," the crowd shouted, "but Barabbas!" Lest we forget, John explains the alternative for us: "Now Barabbas was a bandit" he says tersely. “Now Barabbas was a bandit… a terrorist… a thug.” This is always the alternative. The choice is between the king and the chaos: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes." Not this man, not this "king," but Barabbas. Barabbas was a bandit. Barabbas was the kind of man who knew how to get what he wanted.
    We should like to have more alternatives. Can’t we negotiate? Isn’t there some middle ground between this king and the bandit?   Jesus said so many things we find winsome, couldn’t we just take those pleasant things and forget this difficult business of calling him "King?" How about if we accept his wise and moral teachings and toss aside this “kingdom” business? Can’t we do that? Once again, C. S. Lewis saw the dilemma so clearly. When we actually listen to the teachings of Jesus, what Jesus teaches is the kingdom. That is the great teaching. Lewis explained, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.” [1]
    Jesus was not crucified because anyone thought he was a great moral teacher. He was crucified because some people called him "King" and because he talked of a "Kingdom not from this world" and because he taught his disciples to pray, "thy kingdom come." When Pilate faced the Jerusalem mob he did not offer them the alternative of applauding Jesus as a great moral teacher. They could have the King or they could have Barabbas. There is no other choice.
    When they crucified Jesus they hung a sign on the cross, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," and they wrote that sign in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, so that no one could mistake the charges against him. We should not mistake them either. The indictment challenges every other loyalty we hold: loyalty to lesser kingdoms and lesser governments, even our sad, desperate loyalty to ourselves. Jesus’ followers were dispersed, but still they spoke of him and amazingly, still whispered the truth of his outrageous claim to the throne: "Jesus is Lord – King Jesus!"
    Unless you have been keeping time on the Mayan calendar for some time forget this nonsense of the world coming to an end in “2012.” As Christians we have a different vision of how our world’s story comes to its conclusion. On this last day of the Christian calendar we persist with this troublesome rumor: Jesus Christ is King. Celebrating the reign of Christ on the last day reminds us that the last day of history will finally demonstrate the truth of his claim to the throne. Today is Christ the King, but as the lesson from John reminds us, it is also Good Friday. Every day, whether we like it or not, is Good Friday, where we are faced with the choice between this One who comes telling of a "Kingdom not from this world" and Barabbas who assures us that we can be kings and queens to ourselves alone in a world where "all the people do what is right in their own eyes."
    "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?," Pilate asks, "or would you rather have Barabbas?"
    "Now Barabbas was a bandit," John reminds us. But it’s up to you. You decide.

1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins/Fontana Books, 1952), p. 52-3.

“Every Tear”

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:49 +0000

All Saints’ Day

Text: The Revelation to John 21:1-6
The Gospel According to John 11:32-44

      The Bible is full of promises, so many promises. At Christmas we read Luke’s story, how the sky was filled with angels singing the promise of joy and the promise of peace. So many promises. The promise of forgiveness. The promise of God’s love. On All Saints’ Day we remember especially the promise of everlasting life but there are so many promises.
      Of all the promises of scripture, however, none is more extravagant than the words we hear in Revelation: God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Every tear. Revelation echoes Isaiah’s hope: God will wipe away the tears from all faces. Every tear from all faces. That’s a lot of faces. That’s a lot of tears.
      Someone has said that the human being is a lachrymose creature, that we are distinct among the many species because we are able to cry. I do not know that we are necessarily so unique, but the word lachrymose certainly rings true, meaning we "inclined to shed many tears."
      So many tears. So many kinds of tears.
      We may most acutely feel tears of loss. Those we loved are gone from our presence. Though we may have faith that they are kept in the safekeeping of God’s embrace, we miss them. We can celebrate here in worship our deep conviction that they are in God’s presence, but given the choice, we frankly would prefer to have them in our presence. Thinking of them, hearing their names in the deep recesses of our hearts, we cannot help ourselves, and quick tears push up into our eyes.
      For some of us the loss has not yet scarred over and remains an open wound, and our tears are tears of grief. The losses we endure remain so much present with us that we continue to find it unimaginable that it has actually happened. We walk into a room expecting to see her, we pick up the phone anticipating his voice, but the silence and absence only mock our sense of their presence. We ache with the grief of it all and tears stain our faces. So many tears.
      We all find ways of managing our tears and being surprised by the new ones that life squeezes from us.
      We cry tears of pain as the world works its way with our bodies. We skin our knees, cut our fingers, wrench our wrists. Or perhaps nothing happens except the passing days, but we feel the passing days in our bodies. You pick up the casserole dish you’ve picked up a dozen times but this time the arthritis stings in your wrist and tears leap into your eyes and you drop the silly thing on the floor. Our bodies become disobedient servants, refusing to carry out the trash. Once elegant coordination abandons us, and we find ourselves lurching from place to place, and in our frustration, the tears come and we don’t know what to do with them. You work in the yard Saturday afternoon and wake up Sunday morning feeling like you’ve been mugged in the night. Better to laugh about it, I suppose, than to cry, we have so many tears.
      We cry tears of heartbreak, too. Dreams die in their own peculiar way that dreams die, but their death is as real and painful as any other death. Things we had hoped for never happen. The plans we made didn’t turn out. We prayed and we prayed, and the prayers were either answered "No" or not at all. Promises are made and broken. The friend you counted on most wasn’t a friend after all or at least not the way you thought and at least not one who could be counted on. The love you gave was never returned but it came back to you anyhow, more than a little bruised and beaten up. Life has a way of cheating us all before it is over. People wonder if we dare say such things in middle of worship, but God knows so very well that when our hearts break open, the tears flow out.
      Jesus went to the town of Bethany where his friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived, except that Lazarus didn’t live there anymore. He had died while Jesus was away. Mary and Martha said to Jesus, "Come and see," and they showed him Lazarus’ tomb. "Come and see," is a pretty good way to think about prayer in tough times when hearts break: "Come and see"—look at this, Lord! Look at it! It was Lazarus’ tomb they wanted Jesus to "Come and see." The Bible says, "Jesus began to weep." If from nothing else, this would be enough to establish his humanity, once and for all. "Jesus began to weep." He was and he is human, that is to say: a lachrymose creature, prone to shed many tears. So many tears.
      There are other kinds of tears as well. Sometimes great beauty moves us to tears. The organ rises and rises and maintains the enchantment rising and rising, and it cannot go higher and it does, and you burst into tears for no explainable reason other than the sheer wonderment and beauty of it. At the end of a play as all the confusions are made clear and oppositions are reconciled and lovers are reunited, you didn’t expect it but you feel moisture on your cheeks.
      Friendships give birth to their own kinds of tears. Try sometimes to tell a friend how much his or her friendship matters to you, but don’t try to do it without tears. The tears come—why?—because that seems to be the way friendships are. Only a friend can be trusted with tears.
      We cry tears of joy. Joy breaks through to amaze us, and we know instantly that it is joy by the way tears erupt over our cheeks. How strange that we should shed tears both in the face of great tragedy and great joy, but we do. They are not the same kinds of tears, of course. The physiological mechanism of tears may be the same, but we know that tears of joy are different. While other tears taste salty, tears of joy taste sweet. Tears of joy are our treasure.
      Tears of joy are so rare that they are especially precious, and therefore we are by no means ready to have God wipe those tears from our eyes. No. But so also precious are those tears of loss. We are not ready to have our tears of loss and grief wiped from our eyes because, well, they’re all we have left. They are our keepsakes, souvenirs of love that endure beyond death and loss.
      Wipe away every tear from our eyes? If at first that sounded like a wonderful idea, giving the matters second thoughts, but as we thing about it, we are by no mean so certain we want them wiped away. Our tears may pain us, but they are our tears, mementos of our loss, companions of our friendships, and heralds of our joy. They are priceless treasures because they betoken everything that is rich and good in life. If we cry over our losses, we have at least have known something splendid enough to cry over. If we cry over our heartache, at least we have hearts capable of breaking. Our tears are too precious to be casually brushed away. Anyone who has ever wept knows that.
      The Gospel according to John reminds us, "Jesus began to weep." Only one who knows the infinite cost of tears can be trusted with our tears. Jesus knows what it is to weep, and he knows the extravagant costliness and gentleness of wiping tears away. God wipes the tears from our eyes only so that we may see something more precious even than our tears.
      God knows the value of tears, the cost of tears, the infinite price of tears, though sometimes we must wonder. There is something about tears that can make you feel so all alone. And certainly without God. Some people are irritated by tears, afraid of tears, ashamed of tears, but God does not look upon our tears with fear, shame or annoyance.
      God knows the value of tears, the extravagant price tears go for in human life, and therefore God is uniquely qualified to offer comfort and with the gentlest of hands to wipe away the precious tears that bind us together.
      People inevitably complain about preaching so solemn a sermon on while we have such young people are listening. Shouldn’t we protect their innocence from the hurts life inevitably brings? "What do they know about tears?" you may wonder. But they know. They know about fear and heartbreak and sickness and even death. Yes, they will learn more, and God grant them many days and nights in which to discover the inestimable value of tears. But they know about tears already. They need to know alsothe promise of God that God will wipe away every tear—not as a way of disposing of our tears—but with the gentle hand of one who knows what it is to weep humanly, with the grace of one who knows the true, extravagant, final value of our tears.
      The promise is that God intends more for us than we have yet seen: a reconciliation and a glad reunion for which our earthly tears are only a hint and promise. If we cry in the last few minutes of the movie when lovers are reunited and all is forgiven and the ending is happy, those tears are the truest token of what God finally intends for us. Our tears, then, are not only filled with memories of the past but full of the future God plans for us. Tears of loss anticipate a final reunion. Tears of pain foretell an even greater healing. Tears of friendship foreshadow something more wonderful yet. Our tears of joy are only the barest hint of what God would have us receive in the happiest of all endings that John points to in the conclusion of the Revelation.
      All the tears on all the faces, God will wipe them away so that we may see with utter clarity the vast inheritance God promises us along with all the saints.

Celebrating the Extravagance of God

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:19 +0000

The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Meaning of Membership: Celebrating the Extravagance of God

f. demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the church
g. responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others
h. living responsibly in the person, family, vocational, political, cultural, and social relationships of life.
i. working in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human fulfillment.

Text: The First Epistle of Peter 2:4-10
The Gospel according to Mark 13: 32 – 14:9

      At an Officer’s Retreat eighteen months ago elders and deacons wondered how to make more explicit what it means to be a member of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church.
      We are engaged in so many more mission activities. One summer not long ago, after we had commissioned one more group of mission trip workers, a worshipper said, "We didn’t use to do this sort of thing." He was right: we didn’t use to have so many mission trips and service projects, and we didn’t use to spend time in worship to ask God’s blessing upon members journeying forth. More and more Williamsburg Presbyterian Church members are embarking on service projects and mission trips, and we thank God for that, and we pray for their service in worship.
      More and more we are trying to form a caring congregation. This is not the kind of intimate parish where the pastor knows everyone’s name and their aches and pains. But we do care and we are trying to build a community of care, and that involves more and more people acting as the agents of God’s care. Our Board of Deacons does a fabulous job of this, but lots of people are involved. We’re asking more of members.
      The elders and deacons wanted to articulate the understanding of membership expressed in The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church, and as I planned this year’s preaching almost a year ago, preaching a series of sermons about membership seemed a good idea. Well, I’m almost finished with this series, so this is hardly a time for second thoughts.
      The portion of The Book of Order that deals with membership is entitled "Membership as Ministry." In our consumer driven society we may naturally be tempted to believe that ministry is what we receive as a benefit of membership – "Membership has its privileges," as American Express reminds us – but in the Presbyterian Church "membership" is understood "as ministry."
      The Book of Order explains:
    A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his Church. Such involvement includes
a. proclaiming the good news,
      "Proclaiming the good news" may be what we come to church to hear but not do. We assume it is the preacher’s job to proclaim good news and members’ to listen.
      That is not how the Scriptures think of church membership, however. Peter tells his flock: "you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people" – and why are you "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation"? Peter goes on: "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9). The Presbyterian Church places "proclaiming the good news" as the first responsibility of members of the church.
    The task of proclaiming the good news is telling the truth about our lives. We may not know everything but we do know the one who has "called us out of darkness into his marvelous light" and we can at least show others something of that light.
      Membership means taking an active part in shaping and strengthening faith. We do not come by faith the way we shop for blue jeans, we come to faith the way an athlete comes by strength and speed, by practice. Discipleship involves a discipline, so The Book of Order goes on with the next two points, which are:
b. taking part in the common life and worship of a particular church,
c. praying and studying Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church,
      Membership may appear to be a simple matter of having one’s name on a roll, but membership biblically understood means that you show up and exercise your membership in Christ by worshipping and by spending some time treading through the Scriptures and pushing the serious weight of "the faith of the Christian Church." It takes some getting used to, it takes some practice.
    Karen Armstrong, in her new book, makes it perfectly clear, "Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same ways as an appreciation of art, music or poetry must be developed." [1]
      Presbyterianism asks members to be "involved responsibly" – I prefer to say "involved responsively," responding to what is happening. We respond to what God is doing: calling us, equipping us, challenging us.
      God has equipped us as powerful, creative persons. We are invested with talents and power to make a difference. The God we worship is not a stingy, withholding God, but a God who extravagantly endows human creatures so that, like God, they may create things. We serve God by the way we use our creative ability, and The Book of Order tells us that membership involves:
d. supporting the work of the church through the giving of money, time, and talents,
e. participating in the governing responsibilities of the church,
      Given the glorious talents and powers God has invested in human life we have to ask ourselves: "Will we use our power and talents for good or for evil, to serve others or to serve ourselves?" Christian discipleship is practice in the art of losing ourselves.
      To take membership seriously we recognize that we are not welcoming customers in the door, consumers to be appeased, but that we are engaging powerful men and women who have enormous gifts and talents.
We are discipling gifted people, people with power and amazing talents. Money is power, and a powerful measure of our faith, as our Stewardship Campaign reminds us.
      When we commit our financial power to the work God is trying to accomplish through Williamsburg Presbyterian this is not some fundraising appeal tacked on to the spiritual business of being a church member. Our giving is very much at the heart of the matter.
    In our worship we say The Apostles’ Creed. That is not so an accomplishment as the goal of our faith, the direction in which we head. If you have difficulty believing one or more parts of the creed, don’t let that trouble you overmuch. If you continue to hang around here in our worship it will become clear. In the meantime, if you want to know what you believe: look at your calendar; look at your credit card statement; examine your cancelled checks. They will tell you what you believe. Tell me – what causes your heart to beat faster, what lifts your mind soaring, what brings tears to your eyes, what work employs your hands – and I will tell you what you believe.
    Faith is not as spiritual as we might think. It is incarnational: it has to do with bodies, with heart and minds and tears and hands: hands building houses and hands serving meals and hands holding music and hands ringing bells and hands holding hands and hands writing checks.
    If faith is about our souls, faith is also very much about our bodies. We are meant to live out faith, to put ourselves into it. The Book of Order goes on with its description of membership by speaking of new life:
f. demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the church,
g. responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others,
h. living responsibly in the personal, family, vocational, political, cultural, and social relationships of life,
i. working the world for peace, justice, freedom and human fulfillment. (The Book of Order, G-5.0102)
God calls us to "a new quality of life."
      When the angels burst out of the darkness and shatter clouds over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve they sing of "good news of great joy for all the people." They do not pass out a diagram of a new religion to whip everyone into shape; they do not propose an agenda for making everyone Christian and therefore everyone the same. The angels sing – they do not preach or propound or propose – they sing of "good news of great joy for all the people."
    These three things are at the heart of this "new quality of life" God gives us to share with others: good news; great joy; for all the people. We can work in "world for peace, justice, freedom" not because we think history is naturally inclined in that direction but because we believe Jesus Christ is Lord of history also and his victory will be made complete. Such a conviction gives us hope and an irrepressible joy, and as disciples of Jesus Christ we are convinced this hope and joy are contagious.
    It was an ordinary Monday morning last March at the train station in Antwerp, Belgium. Suited businessmen arrive in the city for work. A group of school girls on break sit on the floor looking at a map. Travelers wait for their trains to be announced and the public address mutters the familiar messages one expects at a busy train station. Then, through the public address system comes the voice of Julie Andrews singing "Do, Re, Mi," an anthem so familiar that since the release of the movie "The Sound of Music" in the 1960’s that one can scarcely imagine a tribe so primitive or a location so remote that they have not heard it and likely sung it. Travelers hurrying through the station look up puzzled: this is unusual but with so much of our lives lived accompanied by Muzak hardly remarkable.
    A young man with two little girls walking across the central area of the station suddenly drops their hands, throws his own arms up and begins to dance. One of the little girls walks around him curiously then begins to dance with him. Two others join their dancing, then two more. The six of them dance to the edge where a crowd begins to gather and all of a sudden the six become twelve dancers.
    People in the crowd are astonished: their jaws drop; a woman covers her mouth in surprise; faces light up with smiles and with – dare I say – joy.
    Meanwhile the dozen have become sixteen and then twenty four and more and more people are joining the dance. The tempo changes and down the stairs of the Antwerp train station comes an avalanche of little girls, as if every dance studio in Belgium had poured out it students from the floor above.
    This is too much for one man who strides away as quickly as he can lest whatever craziness is happening might infect him, but another man who looks like he hasn’t smiled in years watches and before the camera pans away you can see his face beginning to thaw and something like the beginnings of a grin cracking ice.
    A man in a dark business suit sways with the music then puts down his briefcase to join the dance. He knows the steps; he’s in on whatever this is that is happening. On the other side of the crowd a woman is dancing. She doesn’t know the steps and hasn’t rehearsed but she can hear the music and see the dance and she wants to be part of it.
    Before it is all over more than 200 people are dancing in Antwerp’s central train station. You can see this yourself online: just search for "Sound of Music Train Station."
    It is fascinating to read the responses of people who have discovered these online and left comments.   One person said wistfully, "Why does this sort of thing never happen to me?" Our world longs for hope and joy but scarcely has a vocabulary to articulate that hunger. Another wrote, "I wish I could have been part of it" (and so do I).
    I was intrigued by one person who wrote that this event in the Antwerp train station was a Christian conspiracy concocted by the church for whatever nefarious reasons the church has for doing things like that. Although this person was obviously hostile to the church, it’s been along time since I’ve heard spoken a greater compliment to the church.
    As a matter of fact the event was a promotion by a Belgian television station planning a remake of "The Sound of Music" and looking for someone to play Maria.
    The church had nothing to do with it, but how marvelous that someone would think that the church was capable of generating so much hope and joy? I only wish more people were suspicious about the church and every member of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church for that very reason.

[1.] Karen Armstrong, The Case for God ( New York: Knopf, 2009), p. 8.

Building the Church

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:35 +0000

The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Meaning of Membership: Building the Church

d. supporting the work of the church through the giving of money, time and talents
e. participating in the governing responsibilities of the church

Text: Second Samuel 24:15-25
The Gospel according to Mark 12:38—13:2

    "What are human beings that you are mindful of them?" the psalmist asks God, then goes on to answer the question, "You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands."
    Small wonder then that we are fascinated by our human capacities: the power we are given to accomplish things, the talents we are given that amaze us, our capacity to make things happen, to make a difference. We imagine all sorts of possibilities and in our imagining all manner of things become possible.
    Perhaps no where are our fascinations and imaginations more colorfully enacted than in superhero comics and movies and television plots. Superheroes are people with extraordinary powers and unexpected gifts.
    Some superheroes are born gifted. Superman is born on the planet Krypton where superheroes are the norm. Hellboy is a demon born in hell, initially summoned by the Nazis, but raised by the U. S. Army in New Mexico to be a good guy. Others superheroes are born on earth but with X-genes, a mutation providing inexhaustible diversity of talents, and Charles Xavier gathers these for his force of X-Men, which includes women, by the way.
    Some superheroes are born but others learn and train their way into power and ability. Batman wasn’t born a crime-fighter but had to master the Bat-skills necessary to combat evil. Green Arrow practiced the longbow to be the finest archer since Robin Hood and he packs an array of hi-tech arrows.
    Some superheroes are super precisely because of their mastery of technology. Iron Man created his powered armor suit, Captain America is given an indestructible shield, Wolverine has his long adamantium claws.
    Given such extraordinary powers and astonishing talents one might assume that that anyone could recognize a superhero, but that is not the at all case. Superman is really Clark Kent, "a mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper"; Batman is Bruce Wayne, who bats around Gotham City as a playboy socialite and philanthropist; Captain America is actually an Army private, Steve Rogers—all quite ordinary appearing people until you know them. Mystique, one of the X-men, can look like anyone—she’s a shape-shifter who could be the person sitting next to you in the pew.
    Gifted with such powers and talents, superheroes face many adversaries and many threats and many dangers. One challenge these superheroes must face is the perennial question: "Will this superhero use this power for good or for evil? Will this talent serve people or will this powerful creature simply serve itself?"
    In this respect superheroes are just like we are. This is a question each person must answer. As a matter of fact it is a question we ask when we receive new members into the church of Jesus Christ. We ask:
    Do you turn do you turn from the ways of sin and turn to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?
      Will you be faithful members of this congregation of the people of God,
giving of yourselves in every way, and thus fulfilling your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?
    We understand that membership in the Presbyterian Church is meant to engage fully the powers and talents that God has given us. "You have made them a little lower than God," the psalmist sings about you talented, powerful human creatures. But what are you going to do with that?
    To be a member of the Presbyterian you have to come to terms with "will you use your power for good or for evil?" and "will you use your power to serve God and God’s people?"
    This October I am preaching a series of sermon on "The Meaning of Membership." What does it mean to be a member of the Presbyterian Church?
      We have come to recognize that the social meaning of membership in a church as it is conventionally understood in 21st century is very much at odds with the theological meaning of membership expressed in the Scriptures.
    Conventionally understood, church membership is a simply a religious form of consumerism. Wise shoppers on the Christianity aisle in the religion superstore may choose from a wide variety of church types and sizes to enhance their lifestyle. No one size that fits all, so careful shopping is necessary. Kenneth Woodward, the religion editor of Newsweek magazine describes our generation as "an age of mixem, matchem, saladbar spirituality." Woodward cites a contemporary pilgrim who declares, "Instead of me fitting a religion I found a religion to fit me." [1] And isn’t that what a church is for, to serve us? Religious faith is an attractive and useful addition to the good life. Church membership should enhance our lives.
    All of this makes perfectly good sense until we actually read the Scriptures and hear the voice of Jesus Christ. We may think of faith as an appealing addition to life and membership as life-enhancing, and they may be, but its central passage the Gospel of Mark tells us:
    [Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? (Mark 8:34-7)
The Gospel of Mark knows nothing about membership, it only knows about discipleship: "If any want to become my followers," Jesus says. For Mark what your life needs is not an attractive addition of religious faith or the enhancement of church membership, what your life needs is losing: "those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Understood in the light of what Jesus has to say in the Gospel of Mark, church membership is practice in losing our lives.
    I don’t need a religion to fit my life, I need to lose my life and when Christ gives me new life the fit and the fashion will be utterly different from what I thought I wanted and needed. If I come to church to get what I want I will never get anything better; I will never get better; I will simply have found some pious, religious ways of serving myself. And the self, Jesus tells us, is precisely what we need to lose in order to find a real human life.
    God loves us too much to give us what we want; God loves us so much that God gives us what we need. C. S. Lewis said it well in a passage we studied last Tuesday night: "God gives what He has, not what He has not: [God] gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not." [2] God does not trade in the false happiness we assume is the best we can get.
    Accommodating itself to our consumer driven, customer appealing, McDonalds-Walmart bought-and-sold society the contemporary church speaks less and less about the truth of God and more and more about marketing the church. Church growth specialists and anxious denominational administrators try to persuade us the church is the product we have to sell.
    Theologian David Wells reminds us the truth is otherwise:
        The fact is that while we may be able to market the church, we cannot market Christ, the gospel, Christian character, or meaning in life. . . . Neither Christ nor his truth can be marketed by appealing to consumer interest, because the premise of all marketing is that the consumer’s need is sovereign, that the consumer is always right, and that is what the gospel insists cannot be the case. [3]
    Those who would market the church would attempt to make us believe that the purpose of church membership is to build us up; the Scripture tells us exactly the opposite: that God has given us powers and talents so that we could build up the church of Jesus Christ.
      The gifts [Christ] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-3).
Given the glorious talents and powers God has invested in human life we have to ask ourselves: "Will we use our power and talents for good or for evil, to serve others or to serve ourselves?"
      We ask new members, "Do you turn do you turn from the ways of sin"—do you want to lose that life—"and turn to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?" and find a new way of life in Christ.
      We ask them about the power and the talents that they have been given: "Will you be faithful members… giving of yourselves in every way, and thus fulfilling your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?"
      To take membership seriously we recognize that we are not welcoming customers in the door, consumers to be appeased, but that we are engaging powerful men and women who have enormous gifts and talents. Thus, The Book of Order, in its description of membership in the Presbyterian Church, which it titles "Membership as Ministry," describes that membership involves:
d. supporting the work of the church through the giving of money, time and talents
e. participating in the governing responsibilities of the church
These questions assume we are dealing with gifted people, people with power and amazing talents. Money is power, and a powerful measure of our faith, as our Stewardship Campaign reminds us.
    It is as if we were to ask, "God has given you so much—what are you going to do with all that?"
    Please understand: when the Scriptures speak of building up the church they are not talking about the construction of an institution so much as building a force for accomplishing God’s purpose, the instrument of God’s work, a service of God’s glory and honor. That is a task worthy of our power and talents. And the church needs our power and talents.
    Especially in the eastern United States thousands of downtown churches struggle with declining memberships, declining budgets and old, crumbling buildings. Members of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston moved out to the suburbs long decades ago and hospitals have grown up around it.
    In late August the phone rang at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Dan Barry of The New York Times reports;
      …this caller, a priest, had a singular request. He said that the Kennedy family — that would be the Kennedys of Hyannis Port, Washington, the world — wondered whether the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who had died just hours earlier, could be said at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Would that be all right?
      The Rev. Philip Dabney, the associate pastor, was stunned. All he had done was answer the phone, and now his life had changed. "I said, ‘Sure,’ " he recalled. "I was so taken aback. But you know how grace works."
Do you know how grace works? "Soon Father Dabney was working out the details with the senator’s aides." It was late August. Our Lady of Perpetual Help has never been able to afford air conditioning. No problem, said the aide: "We’ll send over several industrial fans."
    And the sound system was really not very good, installed years ago. No problem: "ABC, the television network, will be on it."
    And things are kind of a mess, "the sidewalk in front of the church was in the midst of being repaired." No problem: ‘one of the aides said, "It’ll be fixed." "By the next morning, Father Dabney said, "they were laying the cement."’
      Here came a crew to spiff up the lamp posts and trim trees. Here came another crew to wipe away anything unsightly on brick. Remember that graffiti along St. Alphonsus Street? Gone, as if by divine intervention. [4]
That is the form divine intervention frequently takes in our world: enlisting human powers and talents to make a difference.
    We have the powers and talents to make a difference. God has given us these powers and talents. The question before us remains: what will we do with them? That is the stewardship question.
    As you probably have guessed, all that information about superheroes required me to go online for some fact checking. [5] Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are old friends, but I wasn’t so familiar with the X-men. How many X-men were there? Four, eight, a dozen? I discovered that the X-men number in the hundreds, all sorts of dazzlingly talented mutants able to accomplish the most amazing feats. And the diversity is astounding. You have Islamic X-men and gay X-men and Jewish X-men and Nightcrawler, a German Roman Catholic.
    In my research I was surprised to find among the X-men a devout Scots Presbyterian. In Scotland she is Rahne Sinclair but among the X-men she is known as Wolfsbane. Her particular X-mutation gives her a wolf’s senses of smell, hearing, and sight of a wolf, not to mention the agility and strength of a wolf, but she can also transform herself into a wolf, or a werewolf or any possible degree of variation between being a human and a wolf. Wolfsbane may sound frightening, but have no fear: like other members of the Presbyterian Church she has committed to use her power for good, to serve others and not simply serve herself.
    It may surprise us to think of a Presbyterian X-man and a Presbyterian superhero, but it really shouldn’t. We come here each week to worship and surround ourselves with the most lavishly talented and powerful people. God has made us that way, "a little lower than God, and crowned [us] with glory and honor," and God wants us to use all our powers, all our talents, all our gifts to give glory and honor to God.

1. Kenneth L. Woodward and others, "A Time to Seek," Newsweek, December 17, 1990, p.50, 56.
2. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain ( New York: HarperCollins, 1940, 1996). p. 47.
3. David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) p. 82.
4. Dan Barry, "A Home to Prayers of Healing and Hope," The New York Times, August 29, 2009, A-13.
5. I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Wikipedia entries "Superheroes" and "X-men."

Exercising Faith

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:45 +0000

The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Meaning of Membership: Exercising Faith
"b. taking part in the common life and worship of a particular church
c. praying and studying Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church"

Text: The First Epistle to the Corinthians 12:12-27
The Gospel according to Mark 12:28-37

    A couple of years ago, in the ninth year of my service to Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, the Session was generous enough to grant me a summer sabbatical. My focus for this sabbatical season was reading in the discipline of the "Theological Interpretation of Scripture." A great deal had been published in this area in the past twenty years, catching up would doubtless increase my effectiveness as an interpreter of scripture for this congregation; it would be a good way to spend a sabbatical. Businesses and institutions increasingly provide sabbaticals for employees because the refreshment a sabbatical affords is good business. The notion of sabbaticals, taking a few months for study and reflection, may be a relatively new one but a great deal of study has been given to this phenomenon. The Lilly Foundation has paid particular interest to sabbaticals. They are troubled by the numbers of men and women who drop out of ministry exhausted and disillusioned, so Lilly offers grants for sabbaticals and provides resources for pastors. I had my studies pretty well planned but as I read The Lilly Foundation’s studies about sabbaticals I began to realize that my horizon was too limited. I committed to write at least three articles; they wanted me to stop and reflect about what God was calling me to be and do. I planned to fill my head with new conceptual schemes; they were concerned about my body. A sabbatical, they told me, was a perfect time to establish new routines of prayer, meditation and exercise. They suggested membership at a gym would provide more stamina, reduce stress and provide a sense of well-being. Membership at a gym! That sounded like a good idea. I discovered a gym not far from home. I dropped by. The people were nice. The gym was nice. It didn’t smell at all like the college gym or the "Y." It was an attractive place. It seemed to offer everything I needed and more than I could use. I joined. I signed the contract. I gave them my credit card. The manager introduced to the exercise machines and weight lifting apparatuses. I felt good about my decision. But then, after a couple of months I did not discover that I had more stamina, reduced stress or an increased sense of well-being. I went back to the gym and complained: I don’t have more stamina, less stress, more well-being, what kind of a rip off is this anyhow? You take my money each month on my credit card but I’m not getting any benefits!
    The manager smiled, nodded his head and explained very carefully, as if this were perhaps not the first time he had had to explain this, that in order to experience the benefits of membership—more stamina, less stress and increased well-being—one actually has to come to the gym on a regular schedule and spend some time on the treadmill and push around some weights. Signing a name on a contract and paying for the privilege of working out at the gym is not the same as working out at the gym.
    "Oh," I said, "I understand. I am familiar with something like that."
    I will grant you that my little story may be more than slightly exaggerated, but it may serve the purpose of shining light on the notion of membership. This October I am preaching a series of sermons on "The Meaning of Membership." I want to engage the Scriptures to understand what they might tell us about membership in the church of Jesus Christ. The challenge to us is this: when the Scriptures speak of "membership" they mean something vastly different from what we customarily think of as membership.
    The Book of Order describes "membership" in the Presbyterian Church and it goes on to describe the rolls that The Session is responsible for keeping: rolls of baptized members and active members and affiliate members and inactive members.
      The Scriptures know nothing about any of this. The Bible is quite articulate to describe discipleship, but it is almost silent about "membership." Church growth specialists advise us that building membership depends on homogeneity. People want to look around the church the same way they like to look in the mirror: they want to see people who look like them.
    I was surprised to discover that of all people, C. S. Lewis more than sixty years ago saw this problem clearly:
      At the outset we are hampered by a difficulty of language. The very word membership is of Christian origin, but it has been taken over by the world and emptied of all meaning. In any book on logic you may see the expression "members of a class." It must be most emphatically stated that the items or particulars included in a homogeneous class are almost the reverse of what St. Paul meant by members. By members he meant what we should call organs, things essentially different from and complementary to, one another, things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity. [1]
This is what the Apostle Paul is getting at when he says:
    Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body…. as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose… As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
C. S. Lewis goes on to explain:
      How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family. The grandfather, the parents, the grown-up son, the child, the dog and the cat are true members (in the organic sense), precisely because they are not members or units of a homogeneous class. They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. The mother is not simply a different person from the daughter; she is a different kind of person. The grownup brother is not simply one unit in the class children; he is a separate estate of the realm. The father and grandfather are almost as different as the cat and the dog. If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure. Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incommensurables. [2]
    Membership is not having your name on a church roll; membership involves a repertoire of responses to what God is trying to accomplish with us for the sake of humankind. A while ago I came across a wonderful book title: Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It. [3] We are all too well acquainted with "church membership for people who can’t be bothered to do it."
    Membership involves certain practices. When The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church describes membership it names the chapter "Membership as Ministry" and explains:
    A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his Church. Such involvement includes
a. proclaiming the good news,
b. taking part in the common life and
worship of a particular church,
c. praying and studying Scripture and
the faith of the Christian Church,
Membership may appear to be a matter of having one’s name on a roll, but membership biblically understood means that you show up and exercise your membership in Christ by worshipping and by spending some time treading through the Scriptures and pushing the serious weight of "the faith of the Christian Church."
    Woody Allen achieved some fame for saying, "Showing up is 80 percent of life. Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed." [4] "Showing up" is crucial. Show up in worship. Show up when you don’t feel like it. If you wait until it is convenient, you will never show up. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to worship, we will teach you. Yes, the sermon is tedious, but the truth it points to is vastly more profound than the poor preacher. No, the music here isn’t like what you have on your iPod, but we’re singing about things bigger than a little rectangle of technology. Of course worship is odd as can be, because nothing else in your life each week is like the worship of God. It takes some getting used to, it takes some practice.
    Karen Armstrong, in her new book, makes it perfectly clear, "Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same ways as an appreciation of art, music or poetry must be developed." [5]
      No religion’s truth is evident from the outside. Look through the windows all you like, you cannot grasp what is happening—sadder still, you cannot be grasped by what is happening. The deep truth of religious faith—whether it Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Islam—is not available to the casual observer. Presbyterianism asks members to be "involved responsibly"—we might say "involved responsively," responding to what is happening. We respond to what God is doing: calling us, equipping us, challenging us.
      Go to your Jewish neighbor’s Passover Meal. Listen. Drink the cup. Eat the matzo. If you come to the conclusion that has to do with people were once slaves in Egypt, you’ve missed the point. If you recognize, as a child at the Passover says, that we do this "because…[of what] the Lord did for me when I left Egypt," then you’ve got it, whether you are Jewish or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic or a Druid. Deep religious truth is not available as information, it comes by engagement.
    Having said that "Religion is hard work" and that it necessarily involves a repertoire of responses including worship, prayer, and studying the Scriptures and faith of the Christian Church, let me quickly warn: do not mistake Christian faith for simply what we do. Christian faith is not what we do, it is what God has done and how we respond to it.
    We worship because God makes authentic worship available. In the letter to the Romans Paul describes our human confusion in terms of distracted worship.
   Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles… they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:22-25)
There’s the problem: human creatures will worship whatever is attractive or powerful or practical, and this kind of worship will finally break our hearts. What can we do? Nothing. God breaks through our disillusionment and distraction to provide true worship for humankind, and at the conclusion of the letter to the Romans Paul summons the Hebrews Scriptures to call everyone to worship, Jew and Gentile, Presbyterian and Druid: "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him" (Romans 15:11).
      We don’t have to whip up some worship to find God. God has sought us and found us and offers us true worship; the question is: will we respond? Will we show up? It’s there for the taking; it’s there for making us authentically human, but how will we respond?
    The situation is something like this: Parents notice their child enjoys playing a computer golf game, so for Christmas Mom and Dad buy the child a set of golf clubs, arrange for lessons, provide a gift certificate of greens fees, but the child never moves away the computer, never swings the clubs, never steps into a tee box, never walks the fairways, never actually plays golf. The pretty imitation the computer offers is quite enough.
    The Apostle Paul announced it: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God" (2 Cor. 5:17-18). Everything has become new. We didn’t do this, God did it! We live a new life in Christ because God has made that possible. How we live it depends on how we respond to God’s gift.
    At the gym the other day I was clomping away on one of those cardiovascular machines—the kind that have a book rest where you can read a book or magazine—and I noticed the young woman next to me was reading her lesson, preparing to teach a Sunday School class. Now there’s heart exercise for you: not only do you get cardiovascular benefit, you get a heart shaped by God’s Word, the kind of healthy heart God hopes for. It is written: "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart."

[1] C. S. Lewis, "Membership," in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 1949, 1989), p. 163-4.
[2] Lewis, "Membership," in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 1949, 1989), p. 164-5.
[3] Geoff Dyer, (New York: Vintage, 2004).
[4] Woody Allen, The New York Times, August 21, 1977, D-11.
[5] Karen Armstrong, The Case for God ( New York: Knopf, 2009), p. 8.

Proclaiming the Good News

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:18 +0000

The 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time and World Communion Sunday

The Meaning of Membership: Proclaiming the Good News

Text: The First Epistle to the Corinthians 11:17-26
The Gospel according to Mark 8:27-33

    People sometimes ask where the sermons come from. Most sermons arise from studying the Scriptures: Presbyterians believe in biblical preaching. We do not read the Bible in isolation, however, and reading together we learn from each other. I learn from elders and deacons of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church. Their thoughtfulness and encouragement has shaped this sermon series.
    In our recent Officers Retreats elders and deacons have been thinking a lot about "the meaning of membership," hence the title for this sermon series. The Book of Order teaches most what membership in a Presbyterian Church means, but elders and deacons believe that we need to do more to make that teaching explicit. In these sermons I will be trying to do that.
    When The Book of Order begins to describe membership in the Presbyterian Church the first thing it says may surprise us:
    A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his Church. Such involvement includes:
    a. proclaiming the good news,
      (The Book of Order G—5.0102)
     "Proclaiming the good news" may be what we come to church to hear but it probably is not what we come to church to do. It is the preacher’s job to proclaim good news and members listen, or so we may think. About once a week I receive a phone call from a member of a search committee for a Presbyterian Church asking if I might know of someone qualified to be their next pastor. Invariably they are looking for an effective preacher, someone to proclaim the good news. That’s the preacher’s job, and many church members feel they have done quite enough showing up on Sunday to listen!
    But that is now how the Scriptures think of church membership. Peter tells his flock: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15). And the Presbyterian Church places "proclaiming the good news" as the first responsibility of members of the church.
    The task of proclaiming the good news is telling the truth about our lives. In a recent book Tom Long explains:
    Christians believe that we cannot tell the truth, not the whole truth, without talking about God, and if we cannot tell the whole truth, we cannot be fully alive as human beings. [1]
    We don’t just say things we already believe. To the contrary, saying things out loud is part of how we come to believe. We talk our way toward belief, talk our way from tentative belief through doubt to firmer belief, talk our way toward believing more fully, more clearly, and more deeply. [2]
    In short, we are always talking ourselves into being Christians. [3]
    Of course, we cannot speak of all God means. Of course, we don’t quite know how to begin or what to say. Of course, it is a mystery. But we have found something or we have been found, and only as we speak of it do we begin to understand all God intends for us. We discover the abundant life God means for us to have not in silence but in speaking, even stammering.
    We complete our joy by telling others. If you think you are alone in not quite being sure what to say, listen to the first verses of the First Epistle of John as John stammers out what he can say:
    what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life . . .we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us . . .so that our joy may be complete (1 John 1:1-4).
That our joy may be complete we stammer out what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched, and what has touched us in ways we can scarcely say—that our joy may be complete.
    God knows we don’t know what to say. God knows we don’t live the fullness even of the life we have been given. God knows we betray not only God but even ourselves. But this by no means disqualifies us from telling what we have seen and heard and found.
    For five years David H. C. Read was a British Army Chaplain in a World War Two prisoner of war camp. Out of his wisdom and experience, he declares: "The one disqualification for [God's] service is the conviction that we are just the people [God] most needs." Read further explains: [Proclaiming good news] . . . is primarily God’s business, and what [God] needs from us is our ignorance to be enlightened, our impotence to be empowered, our emptiness to be filled. [4]
    One of the things we discover is that we know more than we know we know. We are well aware of the problem of people saying more than they know, but sometimes we know more than we dare to say. A few years ago I visited my daughter in London. While she was still at work I had settled in and was out on the sidewalk walking, being recharged by the electricity of being in that big, amazing city. I walked down Regent Street to Piccadilly. At the light a woman with an American accent turned to me to ask if I might give her directions to Fortnum & Mason, the legendary London department store for luxury goods. I laughed and explained that I was an American tourist myself and had just got off the plane! We both had a good laugh, two silly American trying to find their way around London, and then stood there together waiting on the traffic light. It’s a long traffic light at that intersection and I began to think: my daughter had taken me to Fortnum & Mason a few years before; it was in an area that looked very much like this. "Wait a moment," I said to the woman, "I think Fortnum & Mason is just down the street there. I think it’s that building with the baby blue front." I could not explain to her how to get around on the underground or find her way to Buckingham Palace, but this much I did know and this much I could say.
    A half century ago D. T. Niles, from Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), was an internationally known Christian evangelist. Niles came up with one of the best definitions of "proclaiming the good news" that I know. "Evangelism," Niles said, "is just one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread."
      On this World Communion Sabbath/Sunday we find bread here at the Lord’s Table. I want you to notice what an odd thing it is we do here. So often I delight in pointing out that the Apostle Paul was really a Presbyterian at heart, but this passage from First Corinthians is utterly un-Presbyterian.
      Presbyterians insist that before we come to the Lord’s table there must be the proclamation of the good news lest participants misunderstand the meaning of the meal. Paul believes that the meal itself is a proclamation of the good news. He writes: "as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes."
      What did Paul mean by that? I can’t read the old apostle’s mind but as we come to eat and drink in this place it seems to me that several truths are being proclaimed.
    The first truth is obvious. We are hungry. Our being here announces our hunger but because we are so able to take care of ourselves and our hunger our being here also proclaims the truth that we do not live by bread alone. We could be at McDonalds having an Egg McMuffin or at the Williamsburg Inn with Eggs Benedict, but we are here because our hunger is deep and extraordinary.
    Our eating and drinking proclaims that we are not self-sufficient. So much does our culture applaud self-sufficiency and autonomy that it becomes a form of worship. We know we are not self-sufficient, however adept we may be in the skills of this world, but that we live "but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Even as we recognize that we are not self-sufficient, we recognize the utter sufficiency and extravagant generosity of the One with whom we have to do, one who cares enough to feed us at this table.
    We come here giving thanks for all God has done. We learn the language of thanksgiving and praise, and the very use of such extraordinary language points to a truth so enormous that no one can fully speak of it, a thought that provides me a good place to end the sermon.
    The Apostle Paul would remind us that the real sermon is the good news you proclaim "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup."

[1] Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), p. 5.
[2] Long, p. 6.
[3] Long, p. 7.
[4] David H. C. Read, Go and Make Disciples (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978), p. 97.

Worshiping in James’ Church

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:34 +0000

Text: The Epistle of James 5:12-20

    We’ve been reading the Epistle of James the past several Sundays. People have told me that they have enjoyed our studies in James; people have told me they have found James helpful; people have told me they haven’t enjoyed James but thought James was exactly what we need most to hear.
    Such comments are encouraging: I’m glad that the Scriptures matter. But those kinds of comments are also discouraging: it is clear that the church of Jesus Christ has not changed much in the twenty centuries since James wrote those words. Their issues are our issues; their problems are our problems. When a preacher has to interpret Paul’s teaching the Corinthians regarding eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols we have to negotiate some distance between cultures and centuries and even then it sounds remote. No such distance comes into play when we hear James saying "let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger" we do not wonder how his words can be relevant, we know.
    If you wonder why I can’t pry myself loose from matters of speech and how we use language, it is because from beginning to end of this epistle James is consistently concerned about our use of language in the Christian community.
    In the very first chapter he tells his listeners, "let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness" (1:19-20). If we are tempted to believe our righteous anger will manufacture right relationships, James promptly corrects us. If anyone thinks that their deep religious motivations will excuse abusive speech James is quick to declare: "If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues… their religion is worthless" (1:26). All of that is from just the first chapter and James is only warming up.
    In the second chapter James shames his listeners for the way they use language to discriminate against some people and flatter others. He parodies the welcoming a wealthy person dressed in fine clothes and laden with jewelry while a poor one is shown a corner of the floor in which to sit. If we tend to be obsequious in the face of money and power or if we expect the church to privilege our wealth and clout James shows us how silly we look. He’s not through.
    He turns toward preachers to say "we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes"(3:1-2). He wonders how Christians can use language to bless the Lord God and turn around and curse their neighbor who is nothing less than the image of God. It’s like a spring that sometimes bubbles up in fresh water, sometimes polluted water.
    James hears people in his church saying terrible things about each other and recognizes how destructive this is:
       Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law… So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? (4:11-12)
    James listens in on people doing business—"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money"—he shakes his head and tells them, "Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring" (4:13-14). Now there is a passage of Scripture whose truth has been spelled out vividly in the past twelve months! James tells them "As it is, you boast in your arrogance" (4:16). Their words broadcast their foolish overconfidence. They sound great on the surface: "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town… doing business and making money" but the utter bankruptcy of their language soon becomes apparent. The collapse of their confidence causes chaos we can readily recognize from the past year.
    James hears the muttering, the gossip, the rumors—can you imagine a Christian community overrun with gossip and rumors and muttering? The amazing thing about rumors is that they need not be true or even believable to do their work of raising suspicion and destroying community. Some people delight to start rumors, like a small boy setting loose a mouse at his big sister’s birthday party.
      "Grumbling" may sound harmless but "grumbling" is a theologically resonant word used in the Scripture to name what is subversive of God’s plan and destructive of the common life of the people of God. The children of Israel "grumbled" in their tents on the way to the land of promise complaining about Moses. Jesus’ opponents "grumbled" to complain: "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." When Jesus goes to the house of Zacchaeus people grumble. "Grumbling," defined theologically, stands in the way of where God is going.
      James tells them: "Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the Judge is standing at the doors!" (5:9). Judgment will come make no mistake about it, but neither make the mistake of thinking the judgment belongs to you.
    So, James tells us to "be quick to listen, slow to speak";

to not think we can use our anger to God’s purposes;
to not use language to divide and discriminate among people;
to not flatter the privileged;
to not curse our neighbor;
to not slander people;
to not speak arrogantly;
to not grumble;
to not judge.

Okay, James we know what we should not do, what should we do?
    Here at the end of his message James leads his listeners into the house of God, to the place of worship, where psalms are sung and prayers prayed, where vows are made and enacted, where sins are confessed and sins forgiven and people are reconciled. Here is the place where we learn to use language faithfully and truthfully.
    Nicholas Lash, a British Roman Catholic theologian suggests that we think of the Church to "be a school of philology, an academy of word-care." The term philology may conjure images of scholars pouring over dusty ancient volumes. Philology, however, in its most basic meaning is a love of words, the practice of :word-care." As Christians we speak care-fully: that is, we mean to speak words filled with care for each other. Here in worship we practice the grammar of God’s generosity. Here we learn the syntax of forgiveness. We learn how to pronounce good news.
    The story was told among the Hasidic Jews of Eastern Europe that disciples of a wise rabbi came to him to ask, "Rabbi, you teach us when we pray to say, ‘O God, you spoke and the world came to be.’ Rabbi, why should we not just say, ‘O God, you created the world?’ That would be simpler."
    The rabbi answered them, "We pray, "O God, you spoke and the world came to be,’ so that you may never underestimate the power of words to call whole worlds into being."
    By our words—the words we choose and the manner in which we speak them—we do call whole worlds into being. We speak and construct a habitable world where people can grow and mature in strength and wisdom, or we speak in such a way that our world is small and mean, offering no space to grow, no room for forgiveness.
    James begins with the matter of integrity in speaking: ‘let your "Yes" be yes and your "No" be no.’ Language can seem so complicated, so James trims our speaking down to two one-syllable words: "yes" and "no."
    For James it is "yes" and "no." "Sometimes" is so vague; "on the other hand," so wishy-washy; "maybe" hardly helps at all. ‘Let your "Yes" be yes and your "No" be no.’ That’s so simple, so elegant.
    But you know how it goes!
    Yes, we did say "yes," we said "I do," but that was years ago and things have changed and we have changed and what that "yes" really meant was "as long as things don’t change."
    Or: Yes, your honor we did make application and we did sign all the necessary papers and we did say "yes," because we really, really did want to adopt a baby, but that was 16 years ago, and she’s a teenager, and we’d really like to bring her back to return her. Our "yes" was more like a "unless it gets too difficult."
    Recent graduates have become familiar with this problem: Indeed, we did say "yes" to you following our extensive job interviews last March, but as a newcomer to this business you should understand that "yes" really means "maybe," and in this case not only does "yes" mean "maybe" but "maybe" means "no." So "yes" means "no." No, you do not have a job with our firm. We know that you are new to this business but we do hope you understand the technical jargon of our profession.
      If these are accepted business practices elsewhere, James will have nothing to do with them in the church. ‘Let your "Yes" be yes and your "No" be no."
    "Yes" or "no": not "sometimes," not "maybe," not "unless things change," because things always so change.
      James makes a distinction in his letter: we can either be friends of the world or friends of God. "Friendship" in the ancient world as in our world is what shapes our character in the most ultimate and intimate way. To be friends with the world and its values we speak to each other in a language where "yes" means "maybe" and "sometimes" and "unless things change." To be friends with God is to know the power of God’s "yes’ in which there is no exception, no equivocation, no evasiveness.
    You have heard me saying that Paul and James are not so different as they are often made out to be. Listen to Paul writing to the Corinthians:
      Do I make my plans according to ordinary human standards, ready to say "Yes, yes" and "No, no" at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been "Yes and No." For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you… was not "Yes and No"; but in [Christ] it is always "Yes." For in [Christ] every one of God’s promises is a "Yes." For this reason it is through him that we say the "Amen," to the glory of God. (2 Cor 1:17-20)
    For Paul as well as for James, here in the house of God, in this rehearsal hall that is our worship, we learn to say "Amen" to God’s "Yes" spoken in Jesus Christ. In worship we learn the vocabulary of faith and the grammar of grace. This is what James describes as he says:
    Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray… anointing them with oil… anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
    Friendship with the world and its values causes us to isolate the weak and sick and stay away from them; friendship with God invites us to draw near, to touch them gently with oil and to pray with them and for them.
      Friendship with the world gives us criticism and backbiting and fault-finding; friendship with God provides us with songs of praise and mutual support.
      Friendship with the world offers judgment and condemnation; friendship with God encourages us to confess our sins and forgive one another.
    Friendship with God is formed here in worship. We learn to speak the language of friendship with God.
    As the Scriptures are read and proclaimed we hear the gospel, the good news, of God’s "Yes" to us, and we begin to see how we might speak so truthfully, so gracefully to say "Yes’ to those we meet.
    Here we ask forgiveness and hear God’s announcement of forgiveness from the Scriptures. "The Lord is merciful and gracious," we are told and entering into the drama of forgiveness we are invited to live in ways that are also "merciful and gracious."
    We sing songs of praise, songs about the greatness of God with some size to them, because God did not fashion the human creator to whine and grumble and gripe, God created us for praise and joy.
    God made us to bless and to be a blessing. We try to do that in our worship. For many people "the passing of the peace" is an awkward time. Why wouldn’t it be? We need so much to be blessed. For so many people this is the one time in a week when someone will bless them. Curses are common as dirt, but blessing is so rare that we may feel embarrassed by our need to be blessed.
    In much the same way we may be embarrassed to speak such a blessing because our world has not taught us such a vocabulary and here in the church we are always learning the art of blessing, an art never mastered. We feel awkward speaking the words we are given.
    But that is precisely the point: God gives us these words and in our worship God rehearses us to be God’s people. The words are God’s Word, the script authored by God.
    Those words of blessing I speak at the end of worship—"The Lord bless you and keep you…" and so on—are words God gave to Moses to give to Aaron to give to Aaron’s sons and they have been given to us. God says with these words "they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them."
    That’s a half-hearted translation. God’s grammar here is unnecessarily and unreasonably emphatic. The verb form already supplies the subject but the rhetoric reiterates the subject so there can be no mistaking the One who provides power to bless, so there can be no misunderstanding the determination of the One who means to bless.
    The way to translate that should be "So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I, I will bless them," or "I, I myself will bless them."
      God knows how the words of blessing stick in our throats, God anticipates our awkwardness in saying such marvelous things, God knows how bereft of blessing we are, so God declares, "I, I myself will bless them."
    God promises that in our blessing God will bless. God promises that through the words we are given, the words we speak and the words that stick in our throat, and the words we scarcely dare to believe at all, God, God will bless.

Taming the Tongue

Patrick J. Willson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:12:29 +0000

Text: The Epistle of James 3

    James is not encouraging. He is not encouraging to preachers and teachers. He says "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." James means that they are judged by God, but we certainly recognize no shortage of people willing to sit in judgment.
      James is not hopeful about our human capacity to control our language. He admits, "Every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed… but no one can tame the tongue."
      Do we need more evidence of the wildness of the human tongue than what we have heard this week? This passage from The Epistle of James could not possibly be timelier. Whether it is from the halls of Congress or the worlds of sport and entertainment we have watched the incendiary power of speech. At first I was hesitant to say anything about those events this morning lest trade on publicity or embarrass someone, but it dawned on me that was precisely the problem: these people rejoice in the publicity and cannot be embarrassed. They assume they live in a world where they can say anything and anything they say will only magnify their reputation. James recognizes this for what it is: "How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire."
    The fire burns out of control and James is not at all encouraging about controlling the blaze. He simply notes: "All of us make many mistakes," but a better translation has it, "We all fail in many ways." [1.] James shakes his head.
    James was known to many as James the Wise of Jerusalem. Calling him "James the Wise" people recognized that he was a teacher in the wisdom tradition of Israel. The wisdom taught people how to discern the difference between wisdom and foolishness, and one of the great differences is how wise and foolish people speak. The Book of Proverbs notes:
      Do you see someone who is hasty in speech?

There is more hope for a fool than someone like that. (29 20)

The Book of Proverbs knows there are times to be silent:

    When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
    but the prudent are restrained in speech. (10 19)
     One who spares words is knowledgeable
     one who is cool in spirit has understanding. (17 27)

The Book of Proverbs wants to teach us the value and beauty of language:

A word fitly spoken is like
apples of gold in a setting of silver. 25:11

But:

Rash words are like sword thrusts.12 18

They can cut you; they can even kill you. The wise teacher of the Book of Proverbs notes:

The mind of the wise makes their speech judicious,
and adds persuasiveness to their lips. 16 23

The teacher of Proverbs wants people to learn the ways of wisdom and judicious speech; James the Wise of Jerusalem, however, is not encouraging. Part of the problem is that we fail to recognize the fires we set with our tongues. We aren’t aware of a problem; we can’t hear ourselves.
    About twenty years ago. I was standing on the front porch of Shades Valley Presbyterian Church in suburban Birmingham, Alabama and preparing to greet people after worship.
    A small nicely dressed lady with silver hair, stalked up to me and I could tell she had a purpose. She stood in front of me, crowding me a little and began to tell me that she had not liked the sermon. Twenty years later I have no recollection of the sermon, only of her not liking it and her going on at length how she did not like it, and furthermore: the sermon was too short.
    As I tried to wrap my mind around that I looked around for rescue. The sheer numbers of people leaving worship usually prevent long conversations, but no one was coming through the front doors of the church.
    She shifted gears to tell me how lazy the associate pastor was, how he hadn’t done much in the seven years he had been there and had done even less in the eighteen months I had been there.
    That was a conversation I would not enter. I do not to talk about staff that way. I speak frankly in staff conferences and will discuss such matters soberly with the personnel committee or administrative ministry, but I was not entering that conversation, so I smiled and wondered where everyone was.
    Again she shifted gears to say that the way our Director of Christian Education dressed was an embarrassment to Shades Valley Presbyterian Church and her hairstyle was a disgrace! It was the 1980’s and she had one of those punk cuts, about a half inch long and a long rat tail running down the back of her neck dyed a different color. She had a lot of issues.
    I became more and more uncomfortable, not really knowing what to say, and she went on to complain loudly about several other things I don’t recall and then she ran out of steam. She walked away with a spring in her step as if she felt really invigorated by having gotten all that said.
      I staggered to the huge white double doors of the sanctuary. As I opened the door I was greeted with howls of laughter. Everyone had been waiting in the sanctuary. They weren’t about to leave. This was the best show in town. Without either of us realizing it, this lady had been speaking directly into the lavaliere microphone located precisely at the level of her mouth. Her complaints had been broadcast all through the sanctuary to the horror and amazement of those gathered.
    An elder, a wise old bird, declared: "Oh, if we could only hear ourselves the way we heard her!" Oh, if we could only hear ourselves!
    James would agree. If we could only hear ourselves, what then? James knows how powerful the human tongue is but James knows also that we do not know how to control that power and that we seldom recognize the power of the tongue. Here is the power of a great horse and all that energy guided by a small bit in its mouth. Here is a great ship on the sea whose enormous weight must be harnessed to the winds, but all the power is steered by a tiny rudder.
    The tongue has the power to bless and it has the power to curse, and all too often we aren’t paying attention to the power of our speech. We do not recognize the power.
    Our C. S. Lewis class on Tuesday night has gotten started with Lewis’ autobiography. Remembering his father Lewis writes that "he had been a public speaker long before he became a father. He had for many years been a public prosecutor. Words came to him…" Lewis describes his father: "He was far too manly and generous to strike a child…. He therefore relied wholly on his tongue as the instrument of domestic discipline." With the power of speech he could intimate his young sons, but a grownup C. S. Lewis says of this, "I speak of it the more freely since I inherit it." [2.] Lewis knew how to win an argument, how to muster the power of words to make his point, how to conscript rhetoric to provide his victory. Biographers of C. S. Lewis note how formidable he was in argument and how many victories he won, but they also note how much he lost in the process and what the cost was, well beyond words.
    If only we could hear. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!
    Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was among the first researchers to study our death and dying, and in her later years she tried to study life after death. One of her hypotheses—and let me swiftly point out this was her hypothesis, not the teaching of the Christian faith—was that after our death we get something of an instant replay of our life, only we are able to see our life as it really was, without our illusions and prejudices, and we are also able to recognize the effect we have on others. The way we view this instant replay is either heaven or hell.
    I can think of no worse damnation than viewing again all my impatience with my children, all the stupid things I said when I was uncertain and afraid, all the things for which I cannot forgive myself.
      What if we could hear again those harmless wisecracks we so generously offered the world and could trace the corrosive effect they had on others?
    If we would only hear ourselves now, if we could only see the effects of our tongues, we would be different. This should be different, James says. He may not be very encouraging, but James at least knows this is not the way it is supposed to be.
      With our tongues "we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so." We are made to be different than that. We are fashioned to be a blessing. That is the vocation given to Abraham and Sarah back at the beginning of God’s story with humankind.
    God calls Abraham and Sarah and tells them: "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." The vocation of the people of God beginning with Abraham and Sarah is to be blessed and to be a blessing.
    That is our job.
    If you want the job of being a critic and expressing fully your personal opinion, the place to apply is a newspaper or magazine or you can start a blog.
    If you want a job where you must carefully keep track of the scores and declare winners and losers you need to go into sports announcing.
    If you want the job of being right all the time you need to go into politics.
    The job God gives us is to bless, to bless God and to bless our neighbor. As we are blessed by God, so we share that blessing and by our blessing "all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (And for those of you who have been fascinated by the similarities between Paul and James: the Apostle Paul makes this very same claim in his Epistle to the Romans. I just don’t have time to go into that in this sermon!)
    If you watch Food Network you know they are always highlighting favorite restaurants. I keep waiting for them to notice one of my favorite places. It’s the Burger King on the far concourse of the Detroit airport. One autumn I was flying through Detroit, making connections to Kansas City and the only place on the far concourse was a Burger King. The line for Whoppers and fries snaked around four or five times, but it was moving. As I neared the front it became obvious that the three Asian gentlemen in front of me had only the slightest acquaintance with English. They tried to order and the two bright, twenty-ish kids behind the counter were the very soul of patience. They listened, tried to repeat the order; they pointed to pictures on the big electronic menu; heads nodded, it was taking awhile. "Oh, for God’s sake!" said the man behind me. One of the young men taking orders looked up with a smile: "Don’t you worry Sir! We’ll get your order in just a moment, and we’ll get you to your flight on time." The two young men went back to trying to understand, smiling, encouraging the three Asian gentlemen. You can go to very expensive, really elegant restaurants and not get hospitality like that. I hope they got what they ordered. I got my Whopper, fries and Coke, went to the cashier, paid for my lunch, and as the cashier returned my change, she said to me: "The Lord bless you and keep you on your flight." I was stunned. "And…and…uh the Lord bless you," I stammered out. I went and sat down to eat, and there, in the midst of that ordinary day I felt like I could have flown to Kansas City by myself.
    Words can build or destroy, can encourage or dishearten, can bless or curse.
      I don’t know what church that woman belonged to, but it was a church that had empowered her to bless. I recommend the Burger King in the Detroit airport; I can’t wait to go back there again. Wouldn’t you want to eat at a place like that? Wouldn’t you want to belong to a church like that? Don’t you want Williamsburg Presbyterian Church to be a church like that? You and I are given the gift of language to make it so.

[1.] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 253.
[2.] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1955), p. 38.