A Good Standing

1 Timothy 3:1-13

Ordinary 26

September 29, 2019

William G. Carter

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil.

Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money; they must hold fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them first be tested; then, if they prove themselves blameless, let them serve as deacons. Women likewise must be serious, not slanderers, but temperate, faithful in all things. Let deacons be married only once, and let them manage their children and their households well; for those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

The topic today is leadership. What kind of leaders should we have? If you have paid attention to the news, you can read into this matter whatever you wish. But Paul is talking about leadership in the church.

The apostle must have been pretty old at the time because he mentions church offices that took a while to develop and become widespread: “bishops (or “overseers”), deacons,” and later in the letter, “elders.” The young Christian movement called the “church” had developed to the point of becoming an organization with forms of hierarchy. That took a while. So we think this letter came late in the New Testament.

In our Presbyterian preliminary principles, we hold that any association of Christians can decide how to organize themselves. Church organization is not “one size fits all.” The people who are governed must decide how that will work.

Years ago, I was reminded of this when our presbytery asked me to moderate the Session of a small church nearby. We opened the meeting in prayer, approved the minutes, and then I asked for a report from the Christian Education committee. The elders around the table began to laugh. “We only have thirty-five members,” they said. “We don’t have any committees.” Sure enough. They made all their decisions in the parking lot, and I, as the visiting moderator, was there to rubber stamp whatever they had already decided.

Likewise, we Presbyterians have never thought much of bishops. Paul and Timothy may have had them in their churches, but we don’t. Bishops move your preacher to another church about the time they are learning your names. Bishops tell others what to do, a top-down model, while Presbyterians make decisions as a group. The issues are decided on the floor, and then voted upstairs to reach a broader constituency.

But to hear Paul talk about bishops doesn’t sound all that interesting. Bishops? Do we really care about bishops? Well, maybe.

Paul says if you’re a bishop, you should not be a drunkard. Likewise, the deacons should not indulge in too much wine. Now, why do you suppose he had to say that?

Or there’s the repeated warning that neither bishop nor deacon should be greedy, that church leaders must not be in love with money. Hmm… do you think that’s a problem? You tell me. How about Joel Osteen, that television evangelist in Houston? Does he really need a 17,000 square foot tax-free mansion with three elevators?

And what about the recent financial reports about Liberty University and its president, Jerry Falwell, Jr.?  Under his leadership, the school has been buying up an enormous amount of real estate with the money it receives from its students.[1] Not only that; the Baptist has been photographed in Florida dance clubs where alcohol is served. Say it isn’t so.

The topic today is leadership, Christian leadership in the Christian church. What kind of leaders do we need? Paul has his list of character traits: temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, gentle, not quarrelsome, and above reproach. And he says, “married only once.” It’s a line that causes divorced leaders to flinch, especially if they had their hearts set on serving as a bishop in Paul’s church.

It’s also a line that kept at least one single person from agreeing to serve as a deacon. She said, “How can I serve as a deacon if I’ve never been married only once?” Good point.

The sense of that text is in the old King James translation, where it declares bishops and deacons should be married “to one wife.” Ah, that makes it much clearer! The rule is about fidelity and faithfulness. If you’re not faithful at home, how can you be faithful to the flock? If your home life is not well ordered, you will almost certainly make a mess of the church.

This is important. One of the most painful conversations that I will ever remember was on the front porch of a summer conference center. A man from Florida told me why he left his church and would never go back. His pastor was a very prominent preacher and a good friend, he said. He was well spoken, well loved, well paid - - - and then the voicemail recordings surfaced. The text messages were posted on a website.

It seems he had a string of lady friends in addition to his third wife. All the women found out about one another. When the church authorities found out and confronted him, he immediately quit the ministry to avoid taking responsibility and blamed the authorities for what he had done. It was settled with a lot of hush money, but everybody knew what happened. The elder said to me, “I’m never going back to church ever again.”

In a recent New York Times article titled, “Why People Hate Religion,” Timothy Egan calls out the issue.[2] It’s hypocrisy, especially among the leadership. We know what that means: it’s pretending to be something you are not. It’s parading your virtues when you are not a virtuous person. It’s purporting to love Jesus and then hating the people whom he loves. It’s looking for Bible verses to justify cutting food assistance to the poor.

By the way, we are never going to find verses like that in the Bible, even if we wrench them out of context.

There is great wisdom in Paul’s ancient advice to the church. Should we have leaders who are temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, and gentle? Yes! Of course! Our leaders are called to be consistent with the Christ they are following. I hope that’s not too much to ask.

But just to be fair, there’s no reason to restrict these expectations of our leaders. We should expect good character and consistent behavior of one another. Others should expect these things of us, all in the name of Christ.

It is all too easy to put leaders up on a pedestal, a half-step above the crowd. All that does is to make them an easier target. It also sets them up for a greater fall. None of us have perfected the temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, gentle, and faithful life. Nope. That’s why we need Christ to pick us up when we fall, to help us to continually improve. Indeed we are forgiven; that is the essence of the Gospel. But forgiveness doesn’t let anybody off the hook. We are called to lives of increasing goodness and generosity.

So I wish Paul could have mentioned that, too. He seems to give us a scorecard for selecting our leaders. There have been occasions when a nominating committee asks someone to be a church leader and points toward this chapter in 1 Timothy 3. There have been many situations when the candidate looked it over and said, “I’m not that good.”

To that, I reply that the life of faith is the school of character. Perhaps we might surprise ourselves if we step up when the need arises or the invitation comes. The first qualification of taking on a big job is feeling disqualified. If we serve with our feet on the ground, we will not fly off in some vain fantasy. Sometimes we can actually grow into the leadership role once we become leaders.

There’s a new book by David Brooks that some of you have recommended to me. It’s called The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. It follows up on a previous book on The Road to Character. The irony, Brooks tells us, is that when he wrote the book about character, he didn’t really know what character is.

As the book on character soared to the top of best-seller lists, his life was falling apart. A 27-year marriage crumbled. He thought he has a lot of friends, but the friendships were an inch deep and those people evaporated. He had now realized that his climb to become a nationally syndicated columnist and best-selling author had poisoned his own character. “I was aloof, invulnerable, and uncommunicative,” he said, in all the relationships that mattered.

By his account, he had had to fake his way through a lot of interviews. He understood the importance of a strong personal character – but only from a distance. Brooks successfully climbed the mountain of personal success, only to discover it wasn’t the mountain that mattered. What was far more important was climbing the second mountain: the mountain of commitment to others, a deeper vocation of service, a consistent faith in something greater than his own ego, and the building of an interdependent community.

I have just started the book, but I can already tell it’s an important one. So I commend it to you – The Second Mountain by David Brooks. (New York: Random House, 2019)

And I can already hear a few echoes of the advice Paul gives through Timothy to all of us: Don’t be puffed up with conceit. Don’t fall into condemnation and disgrace. Be well thought of by outsiders. Most of all, serve well. For the good leader knows, “It’s not about me; it’s all about them.” How can my leadership be an act of service?

So I think about these things and hope you will too. We are called by Christ to live honestly for the benefit of those around us. If we are called to leadership, it is a blessing – but only if it becomes a blessing for those we serve.

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

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[1] See the recent expose in Politico: https://t.ly/GOZEm

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/trump-religion.html

Praying for All

1 Timothy 2:1-7

Ordinary 25

September 22, 2019

Commissioning for Worship Through Service Weekend

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

In a gathering of church kids, I was once asked my favorite chapter of the Bible. Without hesitation, I replied, “Psalm 117.” It caught everybody’s attention. They didn’t know that one. Somebody quickly looked it up, and then looked at me curiously.

Here it is, my favorite chapter of the Bible, Psalm 117:

Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!
For great is his steadfast love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever.
Praise the Lord!

They looked at one another. “That’s your favorite chapter? Why do you like Psalm 117?” I’ll bet some of you know the answer: because it’s the shortest. It’s only two verses long.

And yet it is one of the largest texts of the whole Bible. Did you hear what it summons? “Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol God, all you peoples.” It’s an invitation for everybody. All nations, all peoples.

In the same way, our brief passage from 1 Timothy goes by quickly. But don’t miss how big it is. Repeatedly the apostle Paul speaks of “everybody” and “all.” Everybody in the human race has one mediator between them and God and it is Jesus. This Jesus is the one who has given his life as a ransom for all. No one is exempt from the reach of God's love. No one is excluded from the embrace that God offers.

I have known people who have a hard time with that. I remember the old cranky priest who lived a few blocks up the street from my first congregation. I don’t remember his name, but I remember what he said. He proudly reported how somebody knocked on his door and asked for a gift of food. The priest looked at him and said, “Are you a member of my congregation?” The man said, “No,” to which the priest said, “Get your foot off my porch.”

I suppose if you are trying to protect the holiness of God from getting tarshished, that is one option. But the more biblical approach, the Christ-like, is to offer love and mercy to all. To everyone.

Paul is reminding us of the scope of God's salvation. It is greater than one tiny single soul or even one needy person. Paul's Jewish Bible never offered such restriction. No, in his Bible, the great visions of salvation have to do with the redemption of the whole world. The wolf will lie down with the lamb, the fatling and the ox together, the little child in his meekness shall lead them all. The mountains of pride are brought low, the valleys of despair are  lifted up. All flesh shall see the glory of God. This is big.

So we never can restrict how far God can reach, and that’s what Paul says in today’s text. So after today’s benediction, some friends will stitch together quilts for the homeless downstairs. When they finish one, they pray that the one receiving their quilt will know that he or she is loved. They are not dispensing these quilts nearly to the Presbyterians. If anyone needs a warm sleeping bag, here it is.

Everyone.  All. That is God's great desire, to save everyone. To bring all to a knowledge of the Gospel truth. It is God’s deepest desire to embrace every one of heaven’s children, beginning with those the world might otherwise deem unworthy.

So this is the grand purpose we undertake today. We step beyond the safe and careful walls of a church building to be God's people in the world. As someone says about the text from 1 Timothy,

God is at work doing saving work – calling all human beings to their full humanity, summoning worldly rulers to their proper place for justice, healing the estrangement between humanity and God. (Tom Long, p. 63)

We pray for that. We work for that. Not much more needs to be said today. Even if the message is short, it’s still enormous. God is calling us to take part in the saving work of heaven here on earth. Do what you can. Pray, pray, pray. And get to work on the matters for which you are praying.

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

What Grace Can Accomplish

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Ordinary 25

September 22, 2019

William G. Carter

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

When new people get involved in the church, one of the troubling discoveries is who is sitting around them. Church people clean up pretty well. But when you find out who they actually are, it can be upsetting.

Eagles fans sit in the same pews with Steelers fans, and maybe a Patriots fan even got in without a ticket. You may have noticed this is a purple church (just look at the cover of our hymnal). That’s because red and blue are singing out of the same book. Within this room there are all ages, all genders, right-handed and left-handed, tall and short. But the question I have is this, “Who wants the apostle Paul to be in the same church with them?”

It’s not just his first century views. Some of us can forgive him for his assumption that the institution of slavery would always continue. A lot of us observe his views on the roles of women were shaped by the time and culture when he lived. Even his perspective on human sexuality was influenced by the fractures and abuses that he saw in his own time. Paul never left behind the Jewish formation of his soul; that’s who he is.

But it’s more than all of that. What troubles a lot of people is his past. Paul killed Christians, and now he is one. Anybody who gives that a serious thought will flinch.

Some would say, “That was then, this is now.” Give him some room to wake up and change his ways. Look at what he has done: traveling around the Mediterranean world, starting churches, preaching Jesus as Lord, persevering through conflict, and keeping in touch with all of his letters. He is a remarkable man.

But do you want him to sit in your pew?

I enjoy reading the stories of Flannery O’Connor. She was a Roman Catholic, lived on a farm in Georgia, died early from lupus about 50 years ago. And she wrote outrageous stories from a southern town where women wore hats in church. They stitched their own dresses, wore white gloves, and implored their children, “You be good now, you hear?” By contrast, Ms. O’Connor filled her stories with “freaks and frauds,” and the properly righteous church was horrified.

As someone observes about her stories, “Most of them follow one basic Biblical narrative: St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Again and again, she depicts an event of searing violence in which divine grace shocks a hard-hearted, wicked, or selfish person into a moment of recognition. In this terrible moment O’Connor offers her characters a choice, a flash of self-knowledge, and an encounter with God that utterly burns away their illusions.”[1]

That’s all well and good. But do we want somebody like that in church with us?

Today we hear the apostle say, “Hey, remember me? Remember what I did? I was the one who organized a pogrom. I was the one who dragged Christians out of their houses and tried to eradicate them. Before I saw the light, that was me.” He calls himself, “the chief of sinners.” And one day, he comes into the church a changed man.

Maybe the one thing harder than welcoming someone like that is seeing his story as the shape of the whole Gospel. By Paul’s own admission, he was a religious bigot. He worshiped his own certainty and then claimed it was the will of God. He was so convinced he was right that his convictions blinded him.

Remember his story? A child of God’s covenant, trained as an expert in the Bible, he hears about people who are telling Jesus stories, how Jesus was put to a shameful death, how that death took away human sins, and how this Jesus is now invisibly alive. It angered him. It infuriated him. He was convinced this was all wrong. When another troublemaker appeared, a Jesus-follower named Stephen, Paul approved of killing him – and then led the charge to get rid of people like him, all in the name of God.

It was working – until one day, about noon, on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared to Paul and stopped him in his tracks. Jesus called him by name and said, “Why? Why are you doing this?” And the light of glory not only blinded his sight; it revealed Paul’s inability to see. There’s nothing more terrible than a moment like that.

Arrogance is exposed. Presumption unravels. Privilege is punctured. Cruelty is dismantled. Paul is a bigot and Christ calls him out. It all happened in broad daylight. Unable to see, Paul was led away by the hand and commended to the care of the same Christian people he had been trying to destroy.

Next thing you know, he’s back. He’s talking about Jesus. He’s praying to Jesus. He’s finding Jesus in the pages of his Jewish Bible. His reputation spreads. As he famously describes in one of his letters, “The one who was formerly persecuting (the church) is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” (Galatians 1:23)

The question persists: do we want someone like that in our church? The former bigot? The apologetic murderer?

Well, we don’t have a choice because God is the One who puts him among us. Like a risky shepherd chasing after a lost sheep, God in Christ rescues Paul, saves him from a life of destruction, saves him from himself – and this is the shape of the Gospel!

He says, “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord even though I was a blasphemer and a man of violence. I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly.” He didn’t have to straighten before God came; no, God just came. He was misguided, self-absorbed, arrogant, and independent. Then God intervened.

So he says to us today, in words we have heard many times, “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  Then he adds a few more winners, “to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost.” Something has happened to him from the outside, and it is changing him on the inside.

Now we can bless that from a distance and declare how good it is for God to interrupt the arrogant. The much harder thing is to look at ourselves in God’s blinding light. Sometimes during our weekly prayer of confession, I do a little self review. Fortunately for my self-esteem, a lot of our worship leaders rush through the silent prayer of confession. I am glad for that, because I don’t always like I what I see in myself.

And should I take the time for some honest self-review, like late at night when I can’t sleep, or in the aftermath of something horrible or hurtful that I’ve done, confession tastes like chewing on a piece of used charcoal. Not a pleasant experience!

It’s not just the childhood bullying of which I took part, nor the shadowy things I did as a teenager, nor adult maneuvers that I’m not going to tell any of you about. It’s also the deep-rooted resistance in my soul. It’s the way I push away God, the God who loves everybody and wishes them to flourish. Paul doesn’t have any moral advantage on me.

It can cleanse us if we admit who we are. There have been times when I firmly believed that, as a male, I am superior. Fortunately two sisters, three daughters, and two wives have kicked that out of me. Yet arrogance takes other forms. Am I the only one here who has thought that people like me are better than people who are not like me? Or that buying a house in an overpriced suburb is superior to living in a struggling city?  

So here is Paul confessing how he believed that Jews like him were better than the new Christians. I go one better than that, thinking believing Christians like me are better than the Christians like Paul. I stop short of murder, but the arrogance still infects me. And this reveals who we are. Sin is more than what we do or what we neglect to do. It’s our chronic incompleteness, evident in our splintered life, and we never really outrun this.  

That’s why Paul says, “I am the foremost sinner!” Because he knows he is never going to be any better than that. He tries so hard to be so good yet falls so far short. As much as he has achieved, he remained unfinished. When I hear him like this, I breathe a sigh of relief, because it’s hard labor to dress up, put on white gloves, and pretend your own hands are not dirty.

In the thick of it all, here’s the good news: God works with all of this. God made us incomplete that we would depend on him. In perfect love, God made us imperfect that we might lean on him for help. And when we are at our weakest moral level, that’s precisely when God comes to us, chases after us, and offers to set us free from ourselves – that’s what sin is, my friends: it’s bondage to ourselves.

And God breaks in. That’s what happens on the cross of Christ, the darkest day of our species. God comes to us in Jesus and what do we do? We execute him in public between two thieves and gamble for his clothes. Yet in the mystery of eternal patience, God does not punish us for what we do. Rather, God releases us from the prospect of punishment and cancels our crime.

Then God raises Jesus from the dead to keep speaking to us through scripture, Word, and Spirit, and to keep working with us until we are free from ourselves, free to welcome the mercy of the Risen Christ. That’s when everything begins again.

This is the mystery of grace, that miraculous holy favor that comes before everything, lies beneath everything, and finishes everything. Life comes from God. Life will go to God. In between, we may as well live for God and no longer be captives to ourselves. That’s the Good News.

I was trying to think what I might say about this, and then we had a baptism of a baby last week. Did I ever tell you what the Episcopalian priest Robert Farrar Capon said about baptizing little babies? “It’s brilliant,” he said, because baptism announces the grace of God before, during, and after our sins.

As Capon says it, “Babies can do absolutely nothing to earn, accept, or believe in forgiveness; the church, in baptizing them, simply declares that (in Christ) they have it. We are not forgiven because we made ourselves forgivable or even because we had faith; we are forgiven solely because there is a Forgiver.”[2]

Take heart, my friends. Our unfinished lives are Christ’s opportunity. We can stand because his grace is beneath our feet.

(c) William G. Carter   All rights reserved.

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[1] “Reading Flannery O’Connor for the first time,” Catholic World Report, 5/20/2016. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/05/20/reading-flannery-oconnor-for-the-first-time/

[2] Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans)  p. 141

The Aim of Instruction

1 Timothy 1:1-7

September 8, 2019

William G. Carter

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my loyal child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith. But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions.

The big yellow buses are running again on my street. When I passed by the bus stop at 8:15 the other morning, there was a lot more activity than the day before. All the kids were dressed up for school. Some of them had new backpacks. Most of them were chattering and laughing, even if it means the summer is over. With a new school year beginning, there is a lot of excitement in the air.

Our kind of Presbyterians believe strongly in public education. That’s one of our trademarks. Wherever we established a church, we built a school. It is one way we invest in the public good. A good education unlocks the hidden treasures in books. It introduces the students to a larger world than they knew existed, and it provides skills so they can function and flourish in society. It teaches how a government runs – or how it is supposed to run – and it cultivates public responsibility. All of that is good. Very good.

Learning starts early. By the time you get to kindergarten, someone will show you how to tie your shoes or at least to pull the Velcro shut. You learn the letters and how to combine them, the numbers and how to count them. There are also the basic manners: how to share, the importance of blowing your nose, and the essential words of “please” and “thank you.” The lessons fill in the lapses of what you didn’t learn at home, and they teach you how to function as a fellow human being. These are good things. Very good.

So I’m thinking this week about learning, and specifically what we must learn in order to follow Jesus Christ.

Certainly there’s some overlap. It’s good to share, important to read and think, and a good practice to wipe your nose. Yet there are also some distinctions. One of my education professors taught that public education equips us to live in public. It’s all about socialization and fitting in.

By contrast, the purpose of a distinctively Christian education is not to make American citizens. It is to make people who are capable of following Jesus. It is making souls who will resemble Jesus in what they say and how they say it, who will care about the things that he cares about, and who will love the otherwise unlovable people that he loves. To follow Jesus is to live as he lived, and as he lives again today.

The life in Christ is a life free from the addictions to possessions and hatred. It is to stand with the neighbor as a fellow soul on a journey, a fellow soul who could really use a friend. To live as Jesus is to befriend rich and poor while remaining indifferent about whether they are poor or rich. To learn Jesus, so to speak, is to persist in discerning the right thing to do and to do it, even if everybody else is doing something else. It is to forgive others when if they drive nails through your wrists. It is to soak every moment in prayer.

How do we learn these things? For some people, it’s enough to just read the book, the Good Book, the Bible. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the Bible is a thick book. Many homes have Bibles that never get opened. So we need more than a Bible; we need a tribe.

The apostle Paul, old and rickety yet experienced, is writing to young buck named Timothy. He is writing as a member of the Christian tribe to one who is newer, younger, and less experienced. With the first paragraph of the letter that we heard, as well as the letter that immediately follows it, Paul passes along some embodied wisdom. It’s wisdom that he’s learned the hard way, which is the only kind of wisdom that sticks.

He knows there are plenty of other voices out there whistling in the wind, and not merely the voices of the surrounding culture. The Christian movement is new. They have had experiences of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, but they haven’t figured out the right words to speak of Trinity. They heard Paul declare Jesus was coming back very soon, but they are getting tired of waiting.

They are anxious to build the Jesus movement and grow the church, so anxious that they’ve dragged people into church leadership who don’t know an introit from a benediction, people who haven’t given up all their bad habits yet, people who will get upset that church attendance will goof up their weekends and holidays.

I recall the new believer in my first congregation. He was full of enthusiasm, so full that it made him a standout, and they immediately made him an elder. Imagine his dismay that year when he realized December 25 would fall on a Sunday, and the rest of the elders had no intention of cancelling worship. “But Christmas falls on a Sunday!” he protested. “We have to cancel church.”

One of the old-timers said, “Bob, Easter falls on a Sunday, too, but we never cancel for that.” This is the wisdom of the tribe.

When I heard the apostle Paul write some of these words, I tried to imagine what he was addressing. For instance, the very first full sentence of the letter after he says hello: “Timothy, I want you to stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.” What was that all about?

And then Thursday’s mail brought a slick flyer from some group I’ve never heard of, purporting to explain how the end of the world is going to unfold. Oh, those people have always been around, cherry-picking Bible verses out of context, gluing together some elaborate scenario in coded language, rather than loving their enemies and working for the reconciliation of the world.

Suddenly Paul’s words came back into focus: “they occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.” Ah yes, the wisdom of the tribe! All the so-called “hidden knowledge” and ungrounded conspiracy theories will not lead anybody to follow Jesus or to love the people that he loves. Paul calls this “meaningless talk from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”  

So what are we talking about? We are talking about following Jesus, the real Jesus, the Jesus who forgives the ignorant people who put nails in his wrist and forgives the religious people who were egging them on. We are talking about learning how to live like the Christ who lives abundantly, always a work of three steps forward and two steps back, yet still stepping forward as we are able.

That’s why we come on Sundays. That’s why we study and rehearse and eat together on Wednesday church nights. That’s why we keep these hallways and meeting rooms hopping with activity. It’s why we go out to serve the neighborhood two weeks from today. It’s why we welcome all people to the study and service of this Presbyterian part of the greater Christian tribe.

Paul says it well: “the aim of such instruction is love.” He’s talking about the love of Christ, love that is lived out in lives like yours and mine. This is a work in progress, a lifelong pursuit. And he declares, it “comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.”

These are good words to rally us as we begin the fall season at the Church on the Hill. They are excellent words on a day when we welcome two new friends to the tribe, enjoy new voices in the choir loft, and baptize one more precious child of God. It’s all about love – the love of Christ for every last one of us.

Let’s keep growing into that love with a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.

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

A Little Less Than God But Still Hungry

Ecclesiastes 2:1-14, 24-26

A reverie on the music of Charlie Parker and the human condition

Jazz Communion 2019
9/1/19

William G. Carter

It was a busy night at Billy Berg’s nightclub, especially for a Monday in early December. The Hollywood club was packed with movie stars, raconteurs, hipsters, and glitterati, all of them leaning forward to hear a new kind of jazz.

While America fought a World Ware on two fronts in Europe and the South Seas, there had been another revolution brewing. The pop music of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman lifted the spirits of a nation at war, but a small group of creative souls declared that music boring. So they sped up the tempos, stirred dissonance into the harmonies, and created new melodies that had sharp angles in them. They called it “bebop” or “rebop” or simply “bop.”

People in California had never heard anything like this. So Billy Berg was doing something slick when he invited two New York revolutionaries, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, to bring this new music to his club for an extended engagement. They were the Bee’s knees, the cat’s whiskers, the fox’s socks, and the crème de la creme. In fact, that’s how the beboppers talked.

So it’s opening night in Hollywood. The lights go down, the announcer steps up to the microphone, and Dizzy counts off the first tune. It’s thrilling, it’s fast. But where’s Charlie Parker?

At great expense, Billy Berg had hired Dizzy to bring a quintet to California. He paid for travel and rooms. There are five musicians onstage, but Charlie “the Bird” Parker is not one of them. It seems Dizzy had hired an additional musician, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, to fill in the band. The Bird had a reputation for not showing up. Or at least, not showing up yet.

While the band performs, Bird is backstage in the dressing room. He’s just finished polishing off a huge meal of Mexican food, the Deluxe Comida Conquistador dinner: tacos, enchiladas, tamales, tostadas, black beans and rice, guacamole and two kinds of salsa. There are three empty beer bottles on the counter. Bird wipes his beak, gives a quiet belch, and then orders a second Deluxe Comida Conquistador dinner. “While you’re at it,” he says, “find me a bottle of whiskey.” The band will have to keep going without him. Bird’s still hungry.

Dizzy Gillespie is accustomed to this behavior. That’s why he hired a sixth musician for his quintet. When the second set is almost over, Bird pushes back the empty plates and bottles from his second Mexican banquet, straps on his saxophone, and wanders out to the back of the club. As the musical set builds to a furious climax, suddenly there’s a flurry of saxophone notes. The nightclub air bursts into musical flame as Charlie Parker hurls his notes into the atmosphere.

The tune explodes, then concludes, the crowd leaps to its feet in applause, the musicians nod in appreciation, and Dizzy murmurs to Bird, “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again.” He knows full well it could happen again tomorrow.[1]

You know, there’s a great risk in playing jazz. You set the tempo and step out on a tightrope. It’s not music for those who want to play it safe.

There’s a greater risk in playing jazz in church. Some onlookers might be drawn like moths to a flame, believing this is edgy and cool; they might not come on a regular Sunday, but they’ll come for something like this. Meanwhile, the pious and upright regulars fear a holy God might blast the whole thing to bits.

For me, the greatest risk of all is playing the jazz of Charlie Parker in church because that great musician had a complex and complicated life. Spiritually speaking, he was a mess. In all kinds of ways, he was a failure as a grownup. He was charming yet manipulative, brilliant yet caustic. Bird blew up every relationship in his life, including his friendship with Dizzy Gillespie.

The gig in Hollywood was cancelled prematurely, partly because of Bird’s stunts. And when Dizzy and the others flew back to New York, Bird never made the flight. He had cashed in his plane ticket to buy a few fixes of heroin. That addiction had enslaved him since the age of fifteen and would last until his death from cirrhosis and alcohol-induced pneumonia at 34.

Yet there was no greater saxophonist in the history of American music. None greater. Even John Coltrane thought so. Can you imagine holding together the paradox of such a life?

After Dizzy Gillespie quit and couldn’t take it anymore, Miles Davis started working with Charlie Parker. In his memoirs, Miles writes,

I never understood why he did all the destructive (stuff) he used to do. Bird knew better. He was an intellectual. He used to read novels, poetry, history, stuff like that. And he could hold a conversation with almost anybody on all kinds of things. So the (guy) wasn’t dumb or ignorant or illiterate or anything like that. He was real sensitive. But he had this destructive streak in him… He was a genius and most geniuses are greedy. [2]

So it’s an appropriate day to reflect on what it means to be human. To be a genius but greedy. To be talented yet needy. To be beautiful but broken. To be enormously capable and deeply flawed. Some of us might see a reflection of ourselves, and I’m here to tell you that’s OK.

We have heard two scripture texts that explain the human situation, as long as we hold them in tension. Psalm 8 offers the most affirming words in the Bible. "Who are we, Lord, that you pay us any attention?” The answer: you are children of the Most High, created in the divine image, endowed with holy creativity. 

As the Psalmist sings to heaven about the human family, “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 and put all things under their feet.” (Psalm 8:5-6) 

There isn’t a more noble description of humanity in all of scripture.

Yet, not far from the book of Psalms is the book of Ecclesiastes. A wise old sage reflects on all that he has spent his life scrambling to attain. He concludes, “It’s like reaching for smoke.” It’s been a vain and empty pursuit.

The poet says: I planted vineyards for myself, cheered my body with wine, and created a lot of headaches. I made a lot of money and it never made me happy. I enjoyed the “delights of the flesh” but I never knew love.  So I worked harder, surpassed all others, and did not deny myself any pleasure. Then I watched as it all turned to sand and slipped through my fingers.

A lot of people avoid the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. They say it’s a downer. I disagree. It’s an honest corrective to self-indulgence. It’s a reminder that life is not a banquet of chocolate cake; if you’re going to be healthy, you must eat the broccoli, too. 

Ecclesiastes is a hand raised in objection to the children of God who think they can live without limits, only to find themselves consumed by all the consumption. It is a word of wisdom for those tempted toward the foolishness of burning themselves out. It’s a well-placed Yield sign to those who thought they can speed past the warning signs of self-destruction.

There’s nothing new about this, for the Bible understands who we are. Earlier in the Jewish Bible, the people conspire to reach heaven by building a big tower; heaven laughs, the Tower of Babel falls, and the people end up all the more confused.

It’s not only in the Bible. There’s the old Greek myth of Icarus, who constructs wings of wax to fly into the sky, only to soar too close to the sun where the wax wings melt. Or there’s the more recent question posed by Michael Crichton in his story of Jurassic Park: So you have the technology to clone a tyrannosaurus rex, but why would you want to? What were you thinking?

If we hold all of this together, we hear the invitation to restraint, to build a more measured view of what it means to be a human being. Yes, we were created a little less than God, empowered, equipped, hovering near the pantheon of angels. But we are still hungry, hungry for something that a third Mexican meal or some other quick fix will not satisfy. It’s important to spend some time working through that hunger and to never allow it to overtake us.

At the same time, there is deep pleasure in claiming our dignity, reaching high, taking risks, and seeking enjoyment in the thick of hard work. For in the end, we can only conclude what the wise sage of Ecclesiastes concludes: that life is a gift, not an achievement, and we will endure only by the grace and mercy of the God who is greater and kinder than ourselves.

Let’s chew on this today, as the bread is broken, the wine is poured, and the band breaks into the blues. All of us have a hungry place in our souls. We try to fill it in a hundred ways and that never quite works. So maybe today it’s enough to simply lean back and be carried, to know we are loved, to welcome help from a really good friend, and to give something extravagant to the people around us.

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

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[1] The story is recounted by Ross Russell in Bird Lives! (New York: DaCapo Press, 1996)  

[2] Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 76-77.