Forward Together

This is a stewardship sermon preached on November 8, 2015, reflecting themes that we've been covering in our discussion of Brian McLaren's book We Make the Road by Walking.

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; Philippians 2:1-13

The Hollywood depictions of Moses have never been that convincing, whether it’s Charleton Heston with a fake beard, or the cartoon version in the Prince of Egypt. To quote Frederick Buechner, if anything, Moses probably more closely resembled Teyve in Fiddler on the Roof after going ten rounds with a prize fighter. As Buechner writes,

Forty years of tramping around the wilderness with the Israelites was enough to take it out of anybody. When they weren’t raising heck about running out of food, they were raising it about running out of water. They were always hankering after the fleshpots of Egypt and making bitter remarks about how they should have stayed home and let well enough alone. As soon as Moses turned his back, the Israelites started whooping it up around the Golden Calf, and, later when someone named Korah stood up and said Moses ought to be thrown out, the motion was seconded by thousands. Any spare time Moses had left after taking care of things like that he spent trying to persuade God to be merciful to the people anyway. (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979, pp. 110-111).

Paintings on the ceiling of the Sala Superiore (1575-77)
Moses drawing water from the rock
Oil on canvas, 550 x 520 cm
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

The people of Israel were on a journey. And it was a difficult journey. In chapter ten of Brian McLaren’s book We Make the Road by Walking, McLaren writes that

we have much to learn from the stories of Moses and his companions. We, too, must remember that the road to freedom doesn’t follow a straight line from point A to point B. Instead, it zigzags and backtracks through a discomfort zone of lack, delay, distress, and strain. In those wild places, character is formed—The personal and social character needed for people to enjoy freedom and aliveness. Like those who have walked before us, we need to know that grumbling and complaining can be more dangerous than poisonous snakes or the hot desert sun. Like them, we must be forewarned about the danger of catastrophizing the present and romanticizing the past. Like them, we must remember that going forward may be difficult, but going back is disastrous. (Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking, New York: Jericho Books, 2014, p. 42).

For many years now, church theologians have been comparing the present situation of the church to the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness. In some ways, this metaphor works, and in some ways, it doesn’t. For instance, this sanctuary has stood in this location since 1900, and there are many of you who have been worshipping in this sanctuary regularly for 40 or 50 years or more. And if your name is Bud Davis, you’ve been here since 1945! You are rooted here. This is home. You don’t feel like you’re wandering around. In one of our small groups that is reading the Brian McLaren book together, someone was quite honest in saying that they didn’t feel like they’ve had a lot of wilderness experiences. So, the metaphor of the wilderness doesn’t work for everyone.

But where it’s more applicable, I think, is in trying to describe the landscape outside. This sanctuary and the worshipping community it houses has stood firm, but the surrounding cultural landscape has changed. The church no longer enjoys the place of cultural privilege it once took for granted. More and more people, particularly those under the age of 30, are claiming not to have any religious affiliation whatsoever. There are voices in the church expressing a certain nostalgia for the days when our sanctuaries were full to overflowing, and when Sunday was a day set aside for worship and rest.

But we cannot go back. Those days are gone. We have to find our way forward.

As one preacher writes,

The children of Israel, 3,500 years ago, were not naïve or gullible. Of all people they understood that God does not guarantee physical protection and safety. As they looked back on it from the perspective of history, their survival in the wilderness was nothing short of miraculous. But they were realists. People did get hungry and sick. People did die on the way.

Unlike the God marked by purveyors of the [Prosperity Gospel]—a God who promises to make you wealthy, healthy, and happy if you simply think positive, pray hard, “name it and claim it,”--the God they were learning to trust did not guarantee their health and safety and welfare. It was something deeper and more important than that even: a God who was with them on bad days and good days, a God whose loving presence in the very midst of darkness and suffering and death gave them power and stamina and courage to live on, a God who does not simply dispense good gifts but a God who pours himself out in love; [a God whom the prophet Isaiah compared to a mother who will never abandon her nursing child.] (from a sermon by John Buchanan, preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, September 28, 2008).

That’s a God unlike any other. And centuries later, when Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, he introduced an early Christian hymn by exhorting his hearers to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself.”

The Chilean author Isabel Allende was interviewed a few years ago as part of the NPR segment entitled, This I Believe. In that interview Allende said:

I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my twenty-eight-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms. There was nothing to do but cry and remember and to reflect on my journey and the principles that hold me together …

Paralyzed and silent and in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich. Paula had given her life away essentially. Gave her life to others, serving, helping, volunteering. When she died she had nothing—but a heart full of love.

Allende continued:

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential. Because of Paula I don’t cling to anything anymore. Now I like to give more than to receive. I am happier when I love than when I am loved.

She concluded:

Give, give, give …..what is the point of having experience, wisdom, or talent if I don’t give it away? What is the point of having wealth if I don’t share it?” (Isabel Allende in This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007, pp. 13-15).

The challenge for us on this wilderness journey is to discover for ourselves what is truly essential. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we, too, are always one generation away from extinction. We cannot simply assume that this church will always be here. The only way to assure that this church will be here when the job is eliminated, or the diagnosis comes, or the baby is baptized, or the wedding is celebrated, or the mother dies…

The only way there will be a church school for your kids to learn how to navigate in life when there are too many choices, too many pressures, and too many temptations…

the only way to reach out to all those served by our deacons…

the only way we can continue to provide ministry and witness to hope …

is to keep on supporting as generously as you can this church, which is here to share good news with needy people, to offer consolation in times of despair, to lift up the love of God when people feel bereft of love, to provide shelter and hospitality in the name of Christ when people have no shelter through the winter night.

The only way all of this can keep on going is if you and I take the risk of being generous: of committing a portion of our income to the weekly support of this church.

The Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has estimated that at any given time during a church stewardship campaign, 26% of the people are annoyed. That statistic may actually seem surprisingly low. 

But setting aside any annoyance for the moment, what we are trying to do here is to tell a story. That’s why we presented a narrative or visionary budget this year. It details how we hope to move “forward together” in worship, in Christian Education, in fellowship, in evangelism, with our facilities, and in mission.

We are trying to tell a story. This is why we’ve been inviting church members once a month to share their story of how this church has transformed them and why generosity is so important. If you’ve missed any of these heartfelt testimonies, you can go to our church website and read them in our Pres-Notes newsletter. You’ll find stories shared by Bob Whitton, Peggy Martin, Sharon Ballen, Don Coe, Sue Hassett, Heidi Cambareri, Bill Pelletier, and Joyce Dupee, each of them sharing their personal stories about the difference this church makes.

Today we dedicate our estimates of giving for 2016. If you’re not quite ready to do that today, we invite you to consider doing so in the next few weeks.

The challenge before us, those of us who love this church and what it does in the world, those of us who want to follow Jesus, who aspire, literally, to have the same mind in us that was in him, the one who emptied himself—the challenge before us, is to take stock, to decide what to take along with us on the journey, and to trust the goodness and faithfulness of God, in the good times and the not so good. (paraphrased from the conclusion of the John Buchanan sermon).

That is the challenge!

And yet, it is also a gracious invitation to discover that we truly own what we give away—our wealth, our love, our lives—and that in letting go, emptying self, you and I become fully alive.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

Reimagining the Ten Commandments

Many of you have heard of Judge Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He was reelected to that position in 2012 after having been removed from that same position nearly a decade before during the controversy about displaying the Ten Commandments in the Alabama State courthouse. That particular display of the Ten Commandments weighed 5,280 pounds, or just over 500 pounds per commandment.

When the monument was finally removed from the courthouse in 2004, Judge Moore would take it with him to rallies wherever he went, transporting the mammoth display on the back of a flatbed truck. Each time he removed the monument from the truck, he had to use a five-ton crane, and the crane would buckle visibly under the weight.

One preacher jokes that while it is true that Jesus once chided the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, surely, a two-and-a-half ton statue was overkill. (Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in The Christian Century, March 7, 2006, p. 17).

But the real problem with the monument was not its ostentatious size.

The real problem with the monument was that it did not include the most important part of the commandments. It omitted the part that says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” In Jewish tradition that part is so vital that it is actually considered the first commandment, while in our Reformed Protestant tradition, it is usually considered the preface. But calling it a preface does NOT make it an optional preface. Without that powerful affirmation that I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, the Ten Commandments is nothing but a list, or a prop for a Mel Brooks movie on the History of the World. 

Here's a popular illustration of the Ten Commandments. Alas, notice how this illustration also omits the most important part, the affirmation that "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."

Preacher and writer Tom Long points out that many people think of the Ten Commandments as weighty burdens or encumbrances placed on our personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are convinced that at the heart of each commandment is a finger-wagging “thou shalt not.”

For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be placed on the necks of a rebellious society. As Tom Long points out, for such an understanding of the Decalogue, a two-and-a-half ton rock sitting on a flat bed truck is a perfect symbol. We forget that the prophet Isaiah once chided the Babylonians for hauling their heavy idols on the backs of weary animals. If Isaiah had seen Roy Moore’s truck, he’d no doubt be worried about the springs and shocks. (Long, “Dancing the Decalogue”).

The Ten Commandments are not meant to be heavy burdens. They are instead a breathtaking announcement of freedom. Instead of thinking of them as ten burdensome commandments, we can think of them as a description of a life that is truly free.

Because the Lord is your God, you are free not to need any other gods. That’s the first rule.

The second—you are free from dehumanizing idols, and you are free to worship and adore the God who can never be reduced to a manageable size!

#3—You are free from those who would try to use God’s name to manipulate you.

#4—You are free to rest on the 7th Day. Did you hear that? You are free to rest!

#5—You are free from the prison of self-centeredness and you are free to honor your parents and your ancestors in the faith.

#6—You are free from the murderous cycle of violence, and you are free to live in God’s shalom (peace).

#7—You are free from the destructive path of adultery and you are free to live a life of faithfulness in commitment.

#8—You are free from the constant worry that someone is trying to take your stuff, and you are free to live off what God provides you.

#9—You are free from gossip and lies about your character, and you, in turn, are free to speak the truth in love.

And finally, #10—You are free from the never-ending cycle of always wanting more.

Do we live up to these freedoms perfectly? No. But these are the freedoms we are called to embrace. The old slavery of the past—to cherished idols, to destructive patterns of gossip--may be familiar, but we are called instead to embrace the road to true freedom. The late Fred Craddock, who was a wonderful preacher and storyteller, told the story of an elderly man whose only close friend was his dog. The love between them had deepened through the years. Now both had begun to feel the pain and burden of age. The dog, 12 years old, could hardly walk and was covered with an irritating rash. The elderly man lifted the dog into his arms and carried it to the car where it lay on the seat beside him on the way to see the veterinarian. From the parking lot the old man carried the dog gently inside.

“Can I help you?” asked the veterinarian.

The old man, still holding his dog said, “First, I must ask you a question. Do you love animals above everything else?”

The veterinarian replied, “Well, I love God first. Jesus says in Mark 12:30, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And of course a second command is to love thy neighbor as oneself. We must put these things first, and then we can think about the animals.”

“Then, I must go elsewhere,” said the old man as he moved to the door.

“Why? What is wrong” asked the vet.

“This dog is my friend,” explained the elderly man, “and I feel I can trust him only to the care of a veterinarian who practices what he preaches.” (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, pp. 16-17).

The commandments are not meant to be burdensome constrictions, as in, first we love God, then we love neighbor, and then we can think about the animals. A true love of God and neighbor would have freed the veterinarian to reach out to the man and his dog with empathy and compassion. That’s what true freedom looks like.

Who are the saints? Who are the ones we commemorate on this All Saints’ Sunday? They are the ones who walked the road before us, who walk this road beside us,and who will walk this road, each of them, all of them, showing us, by their example, what it means to live in true freedom.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

Questions: In our discussion of Brian McLaren's book We Make the Road by Walking, we've seen how the Ten Commandments are truly intended to be liberating pronouncements. Is this a new way of thinking about the Ten Commandments for you?

How important would you say that the pronouncement--I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery--is to understanding the Ten Commandments as a whole.

If God is all-loving and all-powerful, then why is there evil in the world?

From a sermon by Jack Cabaness preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Katonah on Sunday, August 2nd, 2015:

This morning we continue our sermon series entitled Questions from the Floor. This morning’s question is: If God is all-loving and all-powerful, then why is there evil in the world?

As the writer Frederick Buechner once pointed out, if we break down that question into three statements—(1) God is all-loving; (2) God is all-powerful; and (3) terrible things happen--then we can easily reconcile any two of those statements with each other, but we have a very hard time reconciling all three statements. Maybe God really is all-powerful but not all-loving, and that’s why terrible things happen. Or surely God is all-loving, but maybe God isn’t all-powerful, and that’s why terrible things happen, which is in essence the conclusion of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. But if we try to hold onto the notion that God is all-loving and all-powerful, and we acknowledge that terrible things happen, it’s difficult to reconcile all three statements.

One of my favorite preachers, Thomas G. Long, published a book a few years ago on the Problem of Evil, and he used the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat to explore what Christians can say about evil in the world as well as what we cannot yet say. I want to acknowledge at the outset that my meditation this morning draws heavily from his insights.

Tom Long's book is an extended meditation on the Book of Job.
The concluding chapter explores the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat.

The first audience for the Gospel of Matthew may have well have been a young, struggling Christian community in present-day Syria. They were trying to be and do what Jesus had taught them to be and do, and the results were frankly, mixed and discouraging. The culture around them was morally conflicted, and the church itself was turning out to be not so pure. Matthew’s community looked at a hopelessly conflicted world and church and wondered, “What’s the use?” Evil and good are all mixed together, seemingly intractably. How were they to understand this? How were they to understand the trustworthiness of God in such an environment? (Thomas G. Long, What Shall We Say?: Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 2011, p. 124).

            

The Gospel writer Matthew took a parable from Jesus, this parable about the weeds among the wheat, in an attempt to answer these questions. In the Parable the servants go directly to the Master of the Estate and exclaim, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?”

Thus, the first thing we learn about the problem of evil is that we have every right to go to God and ask for an explanation! Evil and suffering are wounds in creation, and a deeply Christian response is to turn to God in pain and protest. In the words of John Claypool, “There is more honest faith in an act of questioning than in the act of silent submission, for implicit in the very asking is the faith that some light can be given.” (John R. Claypool, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, as quoted by Long, p. 127).

The late John Claypool, a Baptist preacher turned Episcopalian priest, whose book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler is a beautiful and poignant meditation on the grief he experienced when his young daughter died of leukemia.

So, the first thing we learn is that we have every right to make our protest to God about the presence of evil in our world. In doing so, we refuse to legitimate evil, and we appeal to the honor of God by asking that God do something about it.

When the servants went to the Master demanding to know what happened with the weeds in the field, the Master replied, “An Enemy has done this.” It’s not the worker’s fault. It’s not the landowner’s fault, either.

The answer “An Enemy has done this” raises new questions, but it tells us that a Christian theodicy insists that God is not the author of evil. It is NOT God’s will that the innocent suffer, not even for some larger good.

Years ago, a young woman graduated from Princeton Seminary and received a call to serve a small church. Since the church was small, she vowed to visit everyone in the membership within the first six months. Near the end of that time, she had visited every family in the church except one. Some of the elders advised her, “Oooh, be careful there. They haven’t been here in a couple of years, and they probably aren’t coming back.”

But the young pastor had made herself a promise, and one day she knocked on the door of this couple’s house. Only the wife was home, but she invited the pastor in for a cup of coffee. They sat around the kitchen table and chatted. They talked about this, they talked about that, and then finally they talked about IT. And IT was the fact that more than two years before the couple’s young son had drowned in their backyard pool. “Our friends at church were very kind,” the woman said. “They told us it was God’s will.”

The pastor put her coffee cup down on the table. Should she touch that or not? She decided to touch it. The pastor said, “Your friends at church meant well, but they were wrong. It wasn’t God’s will. God doesn’t will the death of children.”

Surprisingly, the mother’s jaw clenched, her face reddened, and she said in anger, “Well, then, who do you blame? Are you blaming me? Are you blaming me for this? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no—I’m not blaming you, the pastor replied, now on the defensive. I’m not blaming you, but I’m not blaming God, either. God was as grief-stricken by your son’s death as you are.” But the woman’s face remained frozen in rage, and it was clear that this conversation was over.

Driving back to the church, the young pastor kept saying to herself, I shouldn’t have touched it. Why did I go there?

But when she got back to the church office, there was a message already waiting for her on the answering machine. “I don’t know where this is going,” the trembling recorded voice said, “but my husband and I want you to come out and talk to us about this. For two years we’ve thought that God was angry at us, but now we wonder if it’s not the other way around.” (story told by Long, pp. 131-132).

Despite the obvious risk, the young pastor was right to affirm that it was NOT God’s will that this child die. If not God, then how do we understand the words “An Enemy Has Done This?” In Matthew’s Gospel, the enemy is the Devil.

As Tom Long writes, "perhaps the devil is best imagined not literally, as some demonic figure             lurking in the shadows, but as a symbol of a deep theological truth—namely, that the evil we experience in history is more than the sum of its parts and transcends logical explanation--the horror of the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the massacre at My Lai—none of these forms of evil can be fully accounted for by political, anthropological, or psychological explanations . . .To say that the enemy is the devil is not to revert to pre-scientific fairytale images but to say through the ancient language of Scripture that evil has a cosmic, trans-human reality. Evil is not just a failing; it is a force. (Long, pp. 134-135).

With the knowledge that an enemy has sowed the seeds of evil in the field, the servants ask the Master, “Do you want us to gather the weeds?” In other words, do you want us to fix it? The landowner’s response is swift, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

Tom Long tells the story of a woman he grew up with in South Carolina in the early 1950s. She was stricken with polio as a child just a few years before Jonas Salk perfected his vaccine. She is in her sixties now, her body still twisted by the virus that attacked her in her childhood. She makes her way awkwardly on crutches. But the moment she enters a room, the level of grace is elevated greatly. She lights up with joy every place she touches. She is a college professor and an artist, an accomplished human being with profound gifts. Now, what about the evil she has endured?

Do we think that God gave her polio?

No, a thousand times no!

Did God put polio in her life do give her a beautiful soul?

No, a thousand times no!

Do we think that her soul has been formed by this? Yes.

Tom Long writes, "If someone handed me a magic wand now and gave me the power to change anything about her past, to pluck up the weeds from the wheat, I think I would want to wave it and banish the polio, make it so she never suffered from that disease. But to tell the truth, I really wouldn’t know where the limits of my wisdom were. She is a beautiful and radiant human being, and I wouldn’t know what to take away from the personal history that brought her to this place. In short, I might want to fix it, but I lack the discernment to do so. (Long, pp. 138-139).

If the servants in the parable are not allowed to gather the weeds, then what is the response to the problem of evil? Or to ask the deeper question, what is God doing about the problem of evil?

What the parable suggests about God is that God’s way in the world is not to go into the field and immediately start whacking away with a machete.

Right after this parable, Matthew includes two more short parables from Jesus. He tells a story about a tiny mustard seed that eventually grows into a giant bush that provides shelter for the birds. And he tells a story about a woman taking a little bit of leaven, or yeast, and how it leavens the entire lump of dough. Together, these two tiny parables suggest that God’s ways in the world are hidden, perhaps sometimes frustratingly slow, but nonetheless effective and ultimately victorious.

More and more, I am convinced that God’s way in the world is the way of non-coercive, persuasive love, persuading us to do the right thing in response to the evil we encounter, as best we understand that right thing, to carry on our ministries of compassion and caring as a witness to the final triumph over evil that God is bringing about.

When I was growing up in El Paso, Texas, our next-door neighbor Mrs. Vaughn, a first grade teacher, would spend the late afternoons on her hands and knees in her front yard, uprooting little tiny weeds, before they had a chance to get very big. In El Paso, we didn’t just have dandelions, we also had these tough, prickly desert weeds that were meant to discourage thirsty critters from taking a bite, and they definitely discouraged me from ever touching those things with my bare hands.

Sandbur, a notoriously prickly desert weed

 Mrs. Vaughn would uproot the prickly weeds when they were no more than an inch high. She would painstakingly go over her entire yard on her hands and knees, painstakingly combing through the Bermuda grass with her hands, uprooting all the infant weeds she could find. The whole process was so laborious that she could never weed more than a tiny square section of her yard each day, but the next afternoon she would be at it again.

Mrs. Vaughn is now in her mid-90s. She lives with her son in San Antonio, Texas. Through the years she did her best to nurture her husband through the deep depression he could never shake, and she did what she could to support a daughter-in-law who lived with breast cancer for over a decade before passing away a few years ago.

In deep faith, she patiently prays and waits as God’s own loving hands comb through the grasses of her long life and ours, ultimately uprooting every cause of evil and suffering, in anticipation of a great harvest and homecoming meal.

And we will see that the fire fueled by the weeds is excellent, and the flour that the wheat makes is excellent, and when the harvest finally comes, the owner of the field will call us all together—farmhands, reapers, neighbors, and break bread with us, bread that is the final distillation of that whole, messy field, and we will all agree that it is like no other bread we have ever tasted before, and that it is very, very good. (This imagery is suggested in a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Live with the Weeds” in The Seeds of Heaven, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990, 2004, pp. 36-37).

May our communion bread this morning be a foretaste of the good things to come.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.