A Perfectly Adequate Church

James 1:1-18

September 9, 2012

William G. Carter

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

My good friend Bill McSwegin is gone a few years now. When he was among us, he made his way around the churches to see how they were doing. That was the kind of job he had – pastor to the pastors, executive pastor to the presbytery. And he regularly used a phrase on Sunday morning to greet the preacher after the sermon. He came up with a twinkle in his eye, moustache twitching, and he said, “That was a perfectly adequate sermon.”

Perfectly adequate. What did he mean by that?

A perfectly adequate sermon – maybe that means the sermon you get today is as good as it gets. It fulfills basic needs, and not much more. The preacher showed evidence of wrestling with the scripture text, found a couple of nuggets worth sharing, did not trip over the tongue more than a half-dozen times, and wrapped it up in a suitable time frame. Perfectly adequate.

Remember the last time you went to a perfectly adequate restaurant. The menu was predictable. The food was served without much of a wait. The wine was not watered down. The service was competent. You were not hungry when you went out to the parking lot. Perfectly adequate.

Imagine saying to your friends, “I have perfectly adequate children.” What would that mean? I suppose it could mean a lot of things. They eat their vegetables. They keep their rooms clean. They manage low B’s on their report cards. Best of all, they remember your birthday.

So what would it mean to say we have a perfectly adequate church? Perhaps it suggests that a respectable percentage of the pews have somebody sitting in them. Most of those assembled look pretty modest; the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average. An adequate church has reasonable expectations. They know every Sunday is not a jazz revival. The notes of the first choir anthem of the season land where they should. The offering plates reveal a post-vacation bump. And everything goes along as it always does. Perfectly adequate.

Except it sounds a little different when Brother James says it. The phrase he uses is “lacks nothing.” The church “lacks nothing.” They have been through some testing. They show some endurance. They reveal themselves to be perfectly adequate. They “lack nothing.”

We know people like this, don’t we? His wife is sick. The diagnosis catches them by surprise. She needs critical care. He goes every day to sit with her, even though she cannot do much more than sleep. But he goes every day. Eight in the morning, he pulls on his jacket, takes the car keys out of his pocket, and drives down to her room. He does that every day for two weeks. She looks at him with silver eyes and says, “You don’t need to push it. I’m not going anywhere.” He smiles silently and takes her hand.

One afternoon the doctor stops in to say, “I think we see a turn for the better.” All those prayers have gotten them through the vigil. A few days later, they both return home, worn out but relieved. They are different people. They have gotten through.

James writes to Christians who have been slogging through it for a while. Not quite a hundred years, but they have stuck around through the bumps on the road and the boredom of the straightaway. He begins this collection of Christian advice by noting simply that faith can be lived without a heightened sense of drama. We don’t need a lot of wattage. Don’t need to bring in a bevy of excitable people (whom James calls “unstable”). Don’t need to chase after things that entice us; these, he reminds us, are empty temptations. No, says James. Stay the course. Keep your wheels on the road. We are perfectly adequate in our endurance.

This is the voice of stability. We see it in those people who just keep going. God works on them over time. Have you been to the anniversary dinner? People are honored for keeping long promises. There may be little about them that is flashy or exhilarating. Hollywood will never make a movie about their lives. Perhaps an unstable culture would consider them boring. But James seems something healthy, something steady, something that matures over time. And those around them are changed mysteriously for the better.

Endurance is the first sign of a perfectly adequate people, a perfectly adequate church. And to burrow down to a deeper level, what makes endurance possible is the ability to receive. It’s the spiritual ability that knows everything we need over time is offered as a gift from heaven. Perfectly adequate people learn to receive everything from God.

James says, “If anybody is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.” Later on in the book, he says, “Is anybody among you suffering? Go ahead and pray. Are any of you sick? Call for the elders of the church and have them pray, and the Lord will raise you up.” There is something important here. Prayer is the practice of dependency. We do not pray because we are competent. We do not pray because we are complete. We pray because we depend on God. We pray because it is God’s generosity that makes us adequate.

This is one of the great paradoxes of the spiritual life. The strongest Christian is the one who depends most on God. The most competent Christian is the one who prays for forgiveness every day. In a do-it-yourself, pull-yourself-up society, this doesn’t make any sense. But it is a profoundly Christian truth, uttered by Jesus as the opening line of the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the strong” – no, he doesn’t say that. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It reminds me of that Bible story from a few weeks ago. Jacob is running away after swindling his brother. Exhausted, he puts his head on a stone and goes to sleep. And what does he dream? A ladder extending between heaven and earth. And what’s happening on the ladder? Angels going up and coming down. There is a circular activity between heaven and earth.

As a preacher friend points out,

Overflowing generosity is the quality that describes the triune God. From God’s very being, all gifts of every variety flow freely and generously upon us. The usually somber John Calvin gushed that he “that he was ravished with astonishment” at the generosity of God, whose love knows no bounds and whose mercy is everlasting. (Have to love that phrase: “ravished with astonishment”!)[1]

We pray in our need, and James says, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” God’s generosity makes us adequate.

Beyond endurance, beyond dependence and receptivity, there is one particular gift that James encourages us to pray for. It’s the gift of wisdom. Wisdom. That is an unusual word. It’s not the same thing as intelligence. Some of us have met smart people who aren’t very bright. They park their car beneath a falling tree. Fred Craddock, the preaching professor, used to describe the student who got a 4.0 and missed the point. Or the expert in Bible Law who approved of Jesus when he said we should love our neighbors, but who really didn’t want to see a Samaritan as his neighbor.

When the Bible speaks of wisdom, it speaks of an applied knowledge. Wisdom is holding together the “knowing” and the “doing.” It is a gift of experience; go around the track a number of times and you learn how the track moves. Wisdom is a gift from God, a holy insight that stitches together the word and the deed. As James declares in his letter, “If people think they are religious and cannot bridle their tongues, their religion is worthless and they deceive themselves. Pure religion is to care for the needy in their distress.” The Word from above is expressed in the deed down below.

Have you known the person with that kind of wisdom? I think of the college professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, intelligent and well-read, as smart as they come, and his professional specialty was working against discrimination in any form. A successful Sunday School graduate, he went to seminary, aiming to become a preacher. But he quickly became disillusioned when the teachers in his Christian school were silent as his country got entangled in an unjust war. So he took that disillusionment as God’s call on his life to go in a different direction. He is smart, humble, and completely integrated.

I think of the woman who wears out her knees in prayer. She prays for the sick, she prays for the healthy, she prays for the people who don’t think they need it, and she prays for her pastor and his ex-wife. Every day she prays, and you can see it in the light in her eyes which never diminishes.

I recall the teacher, looking at retirement, wanting to stay active and do something significant with her life. So she gets dirty mucking out houses that were flooded down river one year ago today.

And I think of the internet photo that somebody sent me yesterday. It’s a picture of a restaurant receipt. A young couple with kids discovered that their meal was paid for. The donor wrote on their receipt, “Somebody once paid for our diner when we were young parents and it made a mark on us. The foundation of this gesture was good parenting. Keep up the good work. Time goes by so fast.”

These are glimpses of pure and unstained religion, lived out in Christian wisdom, holding together the Word and the deed. And should this happen among us, we would be a perfectly adequate church – enduring, receptive, and wise.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Roy Howard, http://www.saintmarkpresby.org/2012/09/sermon-september-2-2012/

Clap, Shout, Sing

Psalm 47

Jazz Communion

September 2, 2012

William G. Carter

Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. 
For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth. 
He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. 
He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.    Selah

God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. 
Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. 
For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm.

God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. 
The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted.

            It was a hot summer night in Saratoga Springs. It was thirty years ago this summer, but I will never forget the event. The outdoor performing arts center was bustling, in anticipation of the final act of the annual jazz festival. That’s a serious festival for hard core jazz fans – twenty-four concerts in thirty-six hours. The tourists fizzle out pretty early, and a few of my adventurous friends were sticking around with me to the bitter end. I was their ride home.

            We knew the final set was the highlight of the whole weekend. That’s how those festivals are programmed. Indeed it was an all-star cast: Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on bass – that was the all-star rhythm section for Miles Davis. On saxophone was the great Joe Henderson, and the trumpeter was a kid named Wynton Marsalis, still young enough to have an Afro. And if that wasn’t a great enough line-up, guitarist George Benson was scheduled to play and sing with the band.

The crowd was buzzing as the lights dimmed. It was going to be a great concert. To our surprise, a scruffy looking man wandered on the stage. He looked like the janitor. He wandered around for a minute. Maybe a stage hand. All of a sudden, he slipped off his shoes. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. Picking up a microphone from the piano, he started banging on his naked chest. He cupped his hand, and it sounded he was clapping. The rhythm was intoxicating. Then he let out a shout and started dancing around. He had a rhythm going. It was amazing.

Then he sang. He sang high like a trumpet. He sang low like a bass. Everybody laughed. We never heard anything like this. Who was it? The warm-up act? He was a one-man band, simultaneously singing all the parts, high and low, banging his bare chest, making an extraordinary joyful noise. In fact, nobody seemed to care when the rest of the band came on stage and began to play with him. The music finished and Herbie Hancock said, “Say hello to Bobby McFerrin. We just met a few days ago.”

Bobby McFerrin

The music started here. It moved to here. Ninety minutes later, as we left for the three hour drive home, that was all we could talk about. Our jazz heroes were great, but we had never heard anybody make music like Bobby McFerrin. People have been talking about him ever since. As Newsweek magazine later said about him, “He sounds, by turns, like a blackbird, a Martian, an operatic soprano, a small child, and a bebop trumpet.” The guy could do it all – clap, shout, and sing.

            That memory brings me to the poet of Psalm 47. Clap, shout sing: those are verbs of that Bible text. Verbs are the muscles of Scripture. They do the heavy lifting. And when verbs jump into a room, they invite us to do what they are doing. Clap, shout, sing! Each verb from the Psalm uses human muscles to its work. Can we do them one at a time?

            Clap! It doesn’t say “applaud” It says “clap.” That’s different. “Applause” is what you do for somebody who stands up front and does something for you. “Clap” is how you participate in the rhythm with your own hands. In Hebrew, the verb is “ta-KAW.” It also means “blast,” as in to play the trumpet.

            Shout! It works best with a fist in motion, as if we are fist-bumping the clouds. Let me hear you do it: shout! Shout is not a whisper. It demands breath and force and exuberance. When the Psalms say, “Make a joyful noise!” this is the verb that the Bible uses.

            Sing! The verb comes with a tone – let me hear your tone: sing! There’s a lot of individual expression in that verb. If two or more do this at once, we have instant harmony. In the Psalm, there are five “sings” – sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. To sing is to make melody with your voice or with a musical instrument. The verb does not specify. Singing happens in a hundred different ways.

            Do you have those verbs memorized? Clap! Shout! Sing!

            Psalm 47 offers with this visceral, three-fold invitation. Clap – Shout – Sing! These three muscle words remind us that Christianity is not a spectator religion. We don’t watch from the bleachers – we participate. We don’t come to consume entertainment and decide whether or not we like it. Oh no – we are the ones consumed. To use Paul’s words, we present our bodies as living sacrifices. We come in worship, presenting skin and bone and breath.

A lot of us are Presbyterians, so the question is inevitable: why all the noise? The Psalm is ready with an answer: because God is the ruler. God rules over the earth, God rules over the nations on the earth. God rules over everybody and everything, and then some. The poet invites the human race to join in a celebration that takes place beyond this planet. God’s rule is a cosmic reality. All the “fake gods” and minor league deities are exposed as shams; the one God over all is proclaimed.[1]

It is an exhilarating invitation. And it can be dangerous. The joyful praise of God threatens the powers and principalities on this small planet. Just last week, seventeen people were murdered in Afghanistan by the Taliban. What was their supposed crime? They attended a dance party with loud music. The Taliban didn’t like that and condemned them to death.[2]

            Joyful noise can stir up trouble. It reminds me of that scene from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. After an impossible winter, the land of Narnia begins to thaw. Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure, is coming into the land, and the White Witch, the commander of the winter, is losing her grip. She comes upon a group of animals who are rejoicing at the change of seasons, and she explodes. She can’t handle it! She doesn’t want Aslan to affect anybody so positively. She waves her magic wand and turns the party into stone statues.[3]

            I’ve known people like that. They have an issue with joy. Especially around children! “Sit down and be quiet!” they proclaim. “Stop laughing. Put a lid on it. Settle down.” In other words, become as buttoned-down and repressed as the rest of us.

            We have been doing this annual jazz service for twenty-one years. Every year, I hear about somebody else who can’t quite fathom what this is about. They say to somebody in the grocery store, “You have jazz in your church? Really? How do you get away with that?”

            One lady said, “Well, the minister is a jazz pianist.”

            “Oh, I’ve heard about him,” was the reply. “And people put up with that?”

            Well, I suppose if she would rather go to a sedate, boring, stuffy congregation full of stone statues, I can suggest a few. What interests me, though, is that joy is a fundamental quality of life. We were created to enjoy God. We were created to enjoy what God gives to all of us. We were created to enjoy each other. Clap – shout – sing – it’s all an expression of this joy. And if anybody tries to shut this down, they are not acting on behalf of God.

            Jesus came walking into our world, just as Aslan came into the land of deep winter. One of two things happened when Jesus came to town. Either people got well, and began to flourish, and began to rejoice – or somebody tried to shut him down. Now, tell me – which is the work of God? Bringing people to the fullness of life, or trying to stifle the joy of God’s kingdom?

            If you put the question that way, there are only three ways to respond. Remember? Clap! Shout! Sing!

            Some of us make jazz. Others of us make apple pies. Still others paint pictures or draw with chalk on sidewalks or climb to the top of a mountain and sing when they get there. All of this is a human response to the truth that God rules over heaven and earth. This is God’s world. It is populated with God’s creatures. And all of them, in their evolving complexity, are expressions of God’s joy.

            Let’s wind it up one more time: clap – shout – sing. Our joyful noise is an echo of God’s joy. Nothing less than that!

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

[1] Laurence Kriegshauser, Praying the Psalms in Christ (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2009), 113.

[2] http://news.yahoo.com/17-afghans-beheaded-insurgent-attack-party-105555181.html

[3] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 1950) 127.

The Verse on the Cake

Romans 12:2

August 26, 2012

William G. Carter

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

            In one of his stories, Garrison Keillor took us back to Confirmation Sunday. Thirteen young Lutherans were being confirmed in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Pastor Ingqvist lined them up in the front of the sanctuary and asked questions that had baffled theologians for years. They passed the exam, took communion, and went home to eat chuck roast and drink their first real cup of coffee.

            Over at the Tolleruds, they had a confirmation party for young Lois. She sat at the head of the table, a lanky girl, four inches taller than last year. A quiet girl, prone to blushing, she is having a few doubts about God. Big Confirmation service that morning, but now she wasn’t sure.

Just the other night, she sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. It was some kind of violent show. She didn’t know what it was. Men were punching one another and shooting machine guns. Irrational fear came over her. This could happen here, she thought. She prayed, “Oh God,” but all she heard was the echo in her head. It was as if the world was under the control of dark powers and prayer wasn’t going to do any good. Lois had felt her faith slipping away.

Meanwhile the family was getting ready to cut the confirmation cake. It had a scripture verse inscribed on the top in blue frosting, the very verse that we heard a few minutes ago:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.

It was a really big cake. That’s a really big verse. Here it is once again:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.

            Over the years, a lot of Christian people have memorized that verse from the letter to the Romans. It makes a very important point. There is a difference between this world and God’s Kingdom. There is a distinction to be made between the values of the world around us and the values of the Gospel. They are not the same. They do not automatically overlap. The show on television with its fearful violence is not the world that God created. It is the world that turned away from God from the very beginning.

            The apostle Paul reminds us of this truth in the very first paragraphs of this letter. God created this world in love and generosity, yet the very people who were made in God’s image forget to say thanks. God gave us everything, yet we turn away and live as a world unto ourselves. This is the diagnosis of the letter to the Romans.

When people do what comes naturally, generations of selfishness and violence have shaped their behavior. At the end of chapter one, Paul gives a long list of grim human habits: wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, pride, rebellion, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness. This is the stuff let loose in the world. We see it every day:

I don't like the way she looked at me. I am suspicious of her. I don’t like the way he is driving his car. I’m going to show him what I think of him. I think I could make a little more money if I did not report everything I’m supposed to do. I wonder what her kiss would be like. I’m getting a little bored. I can’t stand his success and how everything comes to easily to him. I’m going to fix that.

The “I’s” have it. Paul says, “Don’t be conformed to that stuff. Don’t let anger and resentment shape you. Be different. Stand out. Let the Gospel change you.” Become like Jesus Christ. That’s what this Roman letter is all about; it’s not merely about the diagnosis but the cure. Jesus is not wicked. Jesus is not greedy. Jesus will not slander. Jesus will not damage somebody’s body nor murder their soul. Don’t be like the world at its worst. Be like Jesus Christ.

In case we wonder what that means, we have the rest of Roman letter. Paul gives a much longer list here in chapter 12:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

. . . and the list goes on a ways after that. The hinge upon which all this turns is the verse on the Lake Wobegon confirmation cake: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed . . .”

            So I have been thinking about these things. I’ve been reflecting on the verse on that cake. Because it occurs to me that, these days, it’s harder to live as a Christian in America than it was one hundred years ago. All through this summer, I’ve been reflecting on the many changes that have occurred since this congregation began in 1912. As this sermon series winds up, we take a minute to name some of the changes:

• The family unit has diversified.
• The outside world has gotten both smaller and bigger.
• Consumer urges trump relationships.
• The culture has lost its theological vocabulary.
• The church’s voice has been increasingly sidelined.
• Churches are redefining an understanding of professional leadership.
• Society is breaking into more divisive factions.
• And we no longer have much of an attention span . . . (Squirrel!)

            This is a map of where we live. This is the context of our mission field. We have to swim in these waters or else we will sink. There is no desert island where we can retreat beneath the coconut tree. There is no secret rapture to snatch us away. We are called to embody the love of Christ in this place, in this neighborhood, at this time in human history.  

            What it all suggests to me is the Christian congregation has to become an alternative community. In a world where people are beaten up and bruised, we must be a community of profound respect and deep hospitality, all in the name of Jesus. In a culture that worships the mighty and shames the fallen hero, we open our arms to forgive and welcome all whom Jesus loves. In a society that loses its way, we announce that Jesus is the Way, the Only Way; his mercy, his peace, his call to love God and neighbor is the road we travel.

            As we approach our second century, I hope we can be the kind of congregation where strangers stumble upon us and say, “I didn’t know there was a group of people actually like this.” The evidence is in our freedom. We can be free from the ongoing damages of an angry world. Free from the fractures of incivility. Free from the self-absorption of modern life. Free to be neighbors, sisters and brothers, and friends. Most of all, free to be Christ-followers. Intentional, committed Christ-followers.

            The Christian life does not happen without change. “Do not be conformed – but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Our invitation is to come before God to have our minds changed. And Paul does say our minds. The Greek word for “mind” includes the combined abilities of perceiving, understanding, feeling, judging, and recognizing goodness (Strong’s Concordance). A renewed mind is full of insight, not merely crammed with disconnected information. A renewed mind integrates all our multiple intelligences. A renewed mind seeks after God. A renewed mind directs muscles and bones to serve the global neighborhood.

Needless to say, a renewed mind is renewed. It is not stale, stuck, or stodgy. It is alive, constantly growing, and open to wherever God is leading.

            And I have to say, God is leading our congregation into the future. For well over a year, our Christian Education leaders have reviewed their own program. It wasn’t working. Classes were small. Attrition was high. Teachers were discouraged. There was not ample time to have an adequate class. Frankly, a lively church like this was dragging along a limping education program. Something different needed to be done.

            And why not? Sunday Schools have not been around forever. Historically the Sunday school did not actually happen on Sundays in most places in America until the 1930’s.[1] Here, our Sunday School really began to grow in 1951, during the Baby Boom, under the leadership of a young man named Jim Spann. That was 61 years ago, and a lot of those Baby Boomers are entering retirement. Things change. It’s a different world.

            But our commitment to Christian growth has not changed. So in a few weeks, we are moving virtually all of our education classes to Wednesday nights. We are going to begin with a simple meal for anybody who tells us they are coming to eat. Every week, it will be good for us to eat together, and everybody is welcome. Then we have full one-hour classes for disciples of every age. For those who want to sing, they can stick around after that to sing, or to ring bells, or to continue the fellowship and the friendship in other ways. The classes will be all about following Jesus; that’s our curriculum.

It’s going to be exciting. A dozen or so confirmation kids will meet here every Wednesday with the rest of us. At the end of the year, I think we should give them a big cake inscribed with a Bible verse. For children’s classes, we are going to a rotation model. That simply means it is going to feel like Vacation Bible School every week. There will be an adult class on faith and life, with current topics and Bible studies. I will be working directly each week with a new class open to younger adults called TAGS – Talking About God Stuff.

All of this is being planned by committed volunteers while we search for a full-time church educator. We have people working hard to make this happen – because they know the Christian faith is a growing faith. It’s a learning faith. It’s a faith that keeps working on us until we become more like Jesus.

Isn’t that why we are here? Of course it is: to have more people becoming more like Christ. This is the ongoing Christian journey. It is God’s way of transformation. That, as they say, reminds me of a song – the very next song which we will sing together:

Faith begins by letting go, giving up what had seemed sure,
Taking risks and pressing on, though the feels less secure;
Pilgrimage both right and odd, trusting all our life to God.

Faith endures by holding on, keeping memory’s roots alive
So that hope may bear its fruit; promise-fed, our souls will thrive,
Not through merit we possess but by God’s great faithfulness.

Faith matures by reaching out, stretching minds, enlarging hearts,
Sharing struggles, living prayer, binding up our broken parts;
Till we find the commonplace ripe with witness to God’s grace.[2]

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_school

[2] “Faith Begins By Letting Go,” Carl Daw. All rights reserved.

Squirrel!? No, That's God

Genesis 28:10-17 / Psalm 42

Weekend in the Woods @ Camp Lackawanna

August 19, 2012

William G. Carter

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’

“Squirrel!”  Anybody who saw the movie “Up” knows what that means. A pack of angry cartoon dogs are bearing down on an old cartoon man and a young cartoon boy. As the dogs prepare to pounce, they are distracted. In one voice, they cry out: Squirrel! And off they run in another direction.

We laughed in the movie theater when we saw the scene. We laugh because we understand. It’s not a description of dogs in the wild. People in America are more distractible now than ever before. If we are talking about the changes of the past 100 years of our church’s life, this is a big one.

Our attention span is shorter. Much shorter. Presbyterians used to sit still for forty minute sermons without any sermons. Not so any more. I’m often pushing the limits at eighteen minutes and 2200 words. And should a rodent run through the screened-in porch today, I might as well start over. Somebody yell “Squirrel!”

            The slightest thing can break our concentration. We’ve been trained that way. Reasonable discourses are reduced to sound bytes. Human stories are downsized to television sit-coms, interrupted every six minutes by three commercials. The availability of interruptions is constant. When was the last time you sat still for two hours doing only one thing? It virtually does not happen, not like it did a hundred years ago.

            These days we have the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. It replaces hyperactivity and neediness with the psychological inability to concentrate on much of anything. A lot of us are so inflicted. It’s the world we live in – and the world that now lives in us.

            Andy and Donna Kepler recently returned from a weeklong seminar in western New York. The topic was something like “Human Identity in a Digital World.” Scientists report that the internet is affecting our brains and the ways we function. Neurons fire differently because we have a dozen windows open on our computers. And our gadgets tempt us to tweet and log-in all the time. There are churches out there who have decided to swim along, and the people in the pews tweet their prayer concerns while the preacher is working.

            Of course, not everybody is swimming along. One of our elders asked me to stop text-messaging when we are in meetings. Apparently my distractions are distracting her. She’s got a point. And all of this could not have been imagined a hundred years ago.

            What has happened to us? It seems that all of life has accelerated. Everything runs faster. We cram more activity in our days, brag about our busyness, then groan about how tired we are. In the midst of this reckless abandon, we process an enormous amount of information every day.

            Imagine a time when you had to walk to school or walk to work. Think back to when the only news you received came from the morning newspaper, the evening broadcast, and the neighbor at the back fence. Now we are swamped with information on Russian punk bands, drone attacks in northern Pakistan, and the latest pictures of Lindsay Lohan going shopping. There is an earthquake in Indonesia, wildfires in Spokane, and political cartoons on Facebook. We may be more connected to the wider world, but we are more distracted from everything by everything.

And in the middle of our distractions, we can no longer discern where God is in the middle of our lives. Where is God lurking? Where is God nudging us, or speaking to us? We can be so distracted that we no longer ask.

That ancient story of Jacob can be a help. Jacob is the family crook. He is on the run, having stolen his father’s blessing from his twin brother. Esau, a hard-working and hairy he-man, was understandably upset when he discovered his fair-haired brother had taken what we legally his. Jacob had split for the hills. He had a good start, but he knew Esau would be chasing him down.

One night, Jacob found himself in the boonies. It must have been pretty close to here. There was no cell phone coverage, no television reception, and the G.P.S. system was not working so well. He was so exhausted that he fell asleep, and put his head on big rock for a pillow. And then he had a dream: there was a ladder to heaven. Angels were coming down it. Angels were going up on it. Constant circular motion between heaven and earth.   

Then to his shock and surprise, he saw God. God was not hiding behind a cloud up high. God was right there, speaking the same promises that he had given to Jacob’s father, and to his grandfather. God was present in the dark night, completely inhabiting his dream. Jacob could outrun his brother, but he could not outrun God. God knew him by name. God promised to protect him. God declared for him a safe return to home. God’s promise and presence were there all the time, but Jacob had been too busy to know it, too preoccupied with his own maneuvers, too consumed with his own affairs.

God stands at the center of all the noise and distraction of our lives. Like Jacob, we never outrun our God. But we often declare we are too busy to pray. Or too busy to read scripture. Or too much on the move to revisit the quiet center where God still speaks. Even if we do sit still, even if some preacher lays a spiritual guilt trip on us, we may settle down for a few minutes and then, “Squirrel!” And off we go.

One of the skills for becoming a spiritual person is the skill of paying attention. Learning to let go of the distractions. Focusing on the things that matter most. Listening for the Voice of love.

It might be enough to get outside more. To sit in the woods. Do you ever do that? The early Christians spoke of God’s two books – the book of Scripture and the book of nature. We learn about God from each of these two books. Sit on a rock and watch the world happen around you. Sink into nature’s rhythm and take a long, loving look at what’s real. It’s a good idea, and we have the opportunity to do that in a place like this.

I’ve been trying myself to go for a daily walk. Sometimes I convince myself that I’m too busy. But the days when I walk, I notice more life in the crack of pavement than the speeding tourist ever sees. God’s creative power is all around us. Hidden in the fierceness of nature, there is a deep and profound Love. It’s almost as if God is calling out to us from behind the tree, or singing to us from the babbling river, or inviting us to dance as the wind whistles through the trees.

Pay attention to these things, and we begin to listen for God. Like the Psalmist, we long for God more than anything else. All of our deepest desires are really a hunger for God. When we dart from one website to another, what we really want is for God to come and fill us. Our thirst may be misdirected, but what we want most of all is to drink deeply from the stream of mercy. We were created with a God-shaped hole. Every one of us. We will fill this vacancy with anything we can find – but only God can satisfy us. We find God by seeking God.

There is so much more than be said about this spiritual practice of paying attention. But too many words can be a distraction. I hope you take some time to be still, to sojourn by the river or walk among the trees. And I offer you a poem from Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a Russian hermit who lived alone in a log cabin for twenty-five years.

When you pray, be like the mountain

  in stillness, in silence;

  thoughts rooted in eternity.

  Do nothing; just sit, just be;

  and you will harvest the fruit of your prayer.

When you pray, be like the flower

  reaching up to the sun;

  straight stemmed like a column.

Be open, ready to accept all things without fear

  and you will not lack light on your way.

When you pray, be like the ocean

  with stillness in its depths

  the waves ebbing and flowing

Have calm in your heart, and evil thoughts will flee of their own accord.

When you pray, remember the breath

  that made us living beings,

  from God it comes; to God it returns.

Blend the Word and prayer with the flow of life

and nothing will come between you and the Giver of Life.

When you pray, be like the bird,

  endlessly singing before the Creator

  its song rising like incense.

Pray like the turtle dove and you will never lose heart.[1]

May I suggest that we conclude with a time of silence?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Quoted by Esther De Waal in Lost in Wonder: Rediscovering the Spiritual Art of Attentiveness (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 53.

Sorted

Matthew 13:47-50 (25:35-46)

August 12, 2012

William G. Carter

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

             That’s the kind of parable Jesus would teach, after hanging around with a group of fishermen. He draws upon their daily work, as they cast large nets into the Sea of Galilee. “God’s kingdom is like a wide fishing net that catches every kind of fish.”

            Experience says this is true. Look around this room: there are all kinds of people here. All kinds of people. Do you know how rare that is?

Last Thursday night, I celebrated my wife’s birthday by taking her to Philadelphia for a preseason football game. Two of our daughters went with us. It was a great night for football. I have to tell you, the Steelers second-string looks almost as good as the Eagles’ starting line-up. At seventy dollars a seat, I’m glad the players looked pretty good. Troy Polamalu even had his hair pulled back in a pony tail.

The night would have been perfect, had it not been for the fan two rows behind us. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She was nasty. When the opposing team played well, she cursed them. When her own team played poorly, she used profanity. When the referee made a call she did not like, she started singing, “Three blind mice.” She was impassioned, insulting. She was not interested in athletic competition. She wanted annihilation. When I got the courage to turn around and look at her, I saw a short grizzled woman with an angry face. For three hours straight, whatever occurred on the field, she told the entire stadium what she thought about it.

That’s the situation we are in, you know. The over-amplification of the individual. The megaphone on every opinion. The assumption that my way is the only way, that I’m entitled to obliterate you because I’m right and you are wrong, just because I say so.

This is an odd ideafor Presbyterians, I suppose. We come from a reasonable tradition. Our whole government is based on the principle that the pursuit of the truth is a community activity. We seek God together. And should we differ, we pray, we discuss, we stay in communion, and we put it to a provisional vote so we can move forward. That’s the Presbyterian way: we respect every voice, and we listen for God in the majority of voices.

But even among our national flock, I’ve noticed recent breakdowns. Sometimes there are strident voices bullying those who do not agree. Winning becomes more important than being together. On the last night of this year’s General Assembly meeting, I watched online as commissioners nitpicked at one another 11:30 at night. I shut down the computer, went to bed, and later heard that people badgered one another until a quarter of two in the morning, all in the name of Jesus.

This loss of civility is a dramatic change over a hundred years ago. Presbyterians, like everybody else, can be a feisty bunch. Our Scottish forebears settled their early disputes with swords and blue war paint. But at least they eventually build a civilized approach to church life with dignity and mutual respect. These days, there is much more division in our society and precious little respect.

I would commend to you a book called The Big Sort by news reporter Bill Bishop. He has studied voting patterns, community demographics, and spending habits, and concludes that Americans are clustered against one another in alarming ways. These days we are told there are Red States and Blue States. People tend to migrate to communities that “feel right,” where the people surrounding them are mostly in agreement. Gone are the days when the three major television networks provide a central narrative for the nation. The conservatives tune in to Fox News and the liberals watch MSNBC. There is hardly any middle ground, and most people listen only to what they want to hear.

Have you noticed this? As Bishop writes, sometime in the 1960’s,

The old systems of order – around land, family, class, tradition, and religious denomination – gave way. They were replaced over the next thirty years with a new order based on individual choice. Today we seek our own kind in like-minded churches, like-minded neighborhood, and like-minded sources of news and entertainment. (These) like-minded, homogenous groups squelch dissent, grow more extreme in their thinking, and ignore evidence that their positions are wrong. As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in . . . and the politicians exploit this.[1]

I realized that a few months ago when I heard my friend Matt Cartwright was running for Congress. He’s an attorney in Scranton. I know him from years ago in the Rotary Club. I wanted to find out more about his positions on the issues. So I looked up his website and found out more. Then I discovered that I can’t vote for him – Congressional District 17 has been wildly redrawn. The politicians have gerrymandered the district to ensure that they will win the next election.

In such a divided, parceled-out society, where do we learn how to live together? How can we have a true, deep experience of community? How do we work out our differences? How do we pursue the greatest common good?

A hundred years ago, that may have been an issue, but Americans still had a shared dream, that if they worked hard, and worked together, they could advance in each successive generation. As I have often noted, the new American dream seems to be to make enough money that you don’t have to deal with your neighbors, and can arrest them for trespassing if they walk across your lawn.

I am haunted about this change in our society, this rampant division and its segregation. I believe it is a mission field for the church. If Christian people believe that every person is a child of God, that every human being is endowed with God-given dignity, then the Christian congregation must be a place where people respect one another. Where they don’t bludgeon one another with intractable opinions. Where differences are honored – and a higher righteousness is pursued.

And it begins with the clear call of Scripture to be our brothers’ keepers, to be our sisters’ caretakers. We have to find ways to get along even when we disagree, because the world outside our door is not getting along at all. The first sign of God’s kingdom is a Christ-centered community where people care about one another. It is the challenge that we must keep working out.

            I recall the stories about Paul Lehmann, a scholar who taught Christian ethics in the last generation. He taught at Princeton Seminary, and some lesser schools like Harvard and Union. He was a personal friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he took on the fear-mongering of Senator Joseph McCarty. He was a great man.

            Professor Lehmann used to teach his students that the best way to deal with your opponents is to listen carefully to what they say, and then restate their position in such an unbiased way that they can say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I believe.” In other words, you respect them. You earn the opportunity for them to respect you. Then you work together to discern what you have in common, and where you agree to disagree. The purpose was not to win the argument, but to build a relationship.

            Do you have any friendships with people who disagree with you? Unlike the general cultural consensus of a hundred years ago, post-modern American life wants to segment and divide. And the Christian faith calls us to live together, to work together, to seek the public good – and let God sort out the complexities of who we are and what we are not.

            I think I have a number of friends with whom I disagree on this or that. A friend named Beth recently said, “Life is complex. People are complex. We are not an issue or a side in an issue, we are stories, shaped in a multitude of ways. We are shifting sand. We are growing and changing always. Let's not put each other in categories.”

That’s why the parable of Jesus is so striking. “The kingdom of heaven is like a wide net that catches all kinds of fish.” All of them are in the net together. It is only at the last moment when they are sorted. Before that moment, all divisions are premature. They have to co-exist. Yet the moment finally comes when the good fish are sorted from the bad fish.

Jesus is not commenting on the quality of the tilapia in the Sea of Galilee, which grow to pretty much the same size. He was a carpenter, after all, not a fisherman. But he was assessing the final catch, much like he does all throughout the Gospel of Matthew. God is preparing for the final sorting-out, he says.

Remember his big story on the final separation? “When the Son of Man shall come, he shall divide those on his right from those on his left, the sheep from the goats.” And how will he divide them? On the basis of how they treated their neighbors. Did they welcome the stranger? Feed the hungry? Clothe the ragged? Visit the sick and the prisoner? Did they show basic human compassion and sympathy? Or did they walk by, in neglect and self preoccupation?

The Bible points to a final sorting-out that God shall accomplish. The good shall be separated from the bad, the righteous from the evil. The life we have here and now is a long rehearsal for that final restructuring. Either we receive the people that God puts into our lives or we don’t. Either we love our neighbors and work for their benefit, the same way God loves us, or we don’t. Jesus sets the example and then watches to see what we do with the time we have.

And lest we think this is easy, we hear him make the sad observation that, “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). It really does matter how we treat one another, how we welcome those who are both similar and different to us. When Christian people do this, they are a sign of God’s will for the whole human family.

Maybe that’s why a Catholic church got serious about welcoming strangers. They call themselves the “Our Lady of Lourdes Community.” I don’t know where they are, but I want to join up with people like them. Here is what they print as their words of welcome:

We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, yo no habla Ingles. We extend a special welcome to those who are crying new-borns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.

We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli or like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket. You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up or just got out of jail. We don’t care if you’re more Catholic than the Pope, or haven’t been in church since little Joey’s Baptism.

We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps or if you don’t like “organized religion,” we’ve been there too.

If you blew all your offering money at the dog track, you’re welcome here. We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.

We welcome those who are inked, pierced or both. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down your throat as a kid or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake. We welcome tourists, seekers and doubters, bleeding hearts … and you! [2]

            Do you know the most powerful word in the human language? It’s the word “welcome.” Welcome. Welcome to the kingdom of God. Welcome to the community where you want to belong, and where they want to take you in. Welcome to the arms of Jesus Christ, your friend.

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[1] Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009) 39.

[2] Anonymous source, now making the rounds on the internet.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.