Emphasis Preaching Journal

'Tis the season to measure up, sum up, and own up. While most sanctuaries will not be bursting at the seams on this day, few congregants can escape the meaning that catches up with us in the interim between Christmas and Epiphany. Certainly, in the days ahead the bills for the Christmas revelry will come due and many of us will find that there is more distance than we want between our resources and the Christmas we enjoyed. Many of us will find ourselves haunted by irresponsible behavior that will be making a regular appearance on our credit card statements for the next few months. Some of us will be wondering what we have left undone in the old year that will catch up with us in the new year. Others of us somewhat more optimistically will see the coming year as a blank slate to be responsibly filled by the resolve to do better this year than last. Perhaps it is a good thing that there are all of those football games on television on New Year's Day to help some of us escape from the heavy weight of all this responsibility. The revelers may be on to something, for if you think too much about it, New Year's Day can be even more overwhelming than Christmas and certainly something that has for the masses more gravitas than Epiphany.

Where is the good news in this? I feel my basic protestant genes kicking in. "Forgive us for the things we have left undone, do not overwhelm us with the things that we might do, save us from the consequences of having overdone." I hear voices from the past urging me on to ever greater heights of responsible behavior. "Clean your room" has been transformed into "clean the environment." "Clean your plate" has become "clean your plate of super-size portions and unnecessary food additives." "Clean behind your ears" has been replaced by "clean up your sexist, politically incorrect act."

This is not to say that something has not been gained here. As a matter of fact much has been gained, yet it also seems that something may have been lost here, as well. It seems that this emphasis on my activity, however warranted, has put some distance between me and God's activity. I suspect that if by some strange quirk I was actually able to keep all my new year's resolutions the kingdom still may not be ushered in. Probably it would bring in a harvest of self-righteousness, a belittling of the less disciplined, and fear and trepidation at trying my hand at the next round of resolutions. Frankly, I would rather be watching football than having such thoughts on New Year's Day.

This is far from the renewal and hope that John Wesley found in his Watch Night service for the first Sunday of the new year that reads in part: "Dearly beloved, the Christian life, to which we are called, is a life in Christ, redeemed from sin by him, and through him consecrated to God. Upon this life we have entered, having been admitted into that new covenant of which our Lord Jesus Christ is mediator, and which he sealed with his own blood, that it might stand forever. On one side of the covenant is God's promise that he will fulfill in and through us all that he declared in Jesus Christ, who is the author and perfecter of our faith. That his promise still stands we are sure, for we have known his goodness and proved his grace in our lives day by day."

The flaw in much of our new year's thinking is that we focus more on what we have done or will do than on what God has done and can do. Like Wesley's service, each of the texts do not focus on human activity, indeed the texts suggest the futility of much human effort and the belief that divine actions form the basis for any hope we have in the year to come. The texts bring relief and clarity around what we are not responsible for in our lives. The Hebrew text speaks of the ebb and flow of life that God has set. The Revelation text reminds us that if there is going to be anything genuinely new under the sun it will come from the hand of God. The gospel lesson reminds us that getting past the final judgment has less to do with getting it right than receiving the God who has gotten close to us in some surprising ways.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
This passage must surely be one of the most recognizable and familiar pieces of scriptures. Few ardent secularists or eager atheists can have gone far in their development without having been exposed to these words. Certainly it beautifully names one of the more familiar aspects of the human condition whatever one's theological orientation, "The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?" As a statement of human prospects it certainly seems quite a come down but it comes close to the frustrations of life that we all experience.

This passage is eloquent testimony to the truth that, whatever one's theological convictions or resources, none of us can completely avoid this part of life. Life is like that! From time to time we feel this truth more or less. One thing is certain: none of us can avoid these feelings.

However, many of us feel that somehow we have failed if we do have these feelings, or that if the reality of human futility emerges we will be paralyzed. I doubt that many churches put this experience on the agenda of the official board meeting, let alone see the sharing of such feelings as an opportunity to advance the kingdom of God.

Yet it is often the sharing of such feelings that can be the beginning of growth. While no church finds this easy, no church avoids the times when all feels like vanity: the perfect pastor turns out to have feet of clay; on close examination the popular pastor turns out not to have met the needs of everyone; there is the sudden discovery that things have gone smoothly because people have been guilted and bullied into keeping inline with the congregational program. Ecclesiastes would understand. There is, "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance." No, we are not responsible for avoiding such moments in congregational life. Can people get as close as they do in congregations without having to go through such moments? Can a marriage go without times to weep and laugh, mourn and dance, times to speak and times to keep silence, even a time to love and a time to hate, and time for war and a time for peace? Can we grow in wisdom and stature as Jesus did according to Luke, without times in our lives to break down as well as build up?

So what is your plan for the new year? Like the preacher of Ecclesiastes, "I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with." The year ahead will probably include the pleasant as well as the preposterous, the promising as well as the pernicious. It would be nice if we could discern the when and the where of such moments in our lives before they happened. The author of Ecclesiastes knows better, "He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."

God has placed human beings in quite a predicament -- able to experience all the ups and downs of life but unable to have enough knowledge to steer a course around some of the most serious downs. It is not our responsibility that we find ourselves in the midst of such a dynamic. Yet, while we cannot discern the big picture we can create healthy responses to our context -- create a community of faith that can fellowship and pray its way through all aspects of life, develop relationships that affirm that the ebb and flow of life is part of us all, seek to understand how God is speaking through the best and the worst of times. We are not responsible to avoid all the seasons of life but we can respond ably to what life might throw at us.

I am told that it is hospital emergency room lore that in the midst of crisis the first pulse rate you take is your own. Perhaps the first thing we need to do in the year before we take on more responsibilities is take our own pulse to see how we are responding to the pulse that comes in the season and times of the world.

Revelation 21:1-6a
There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth and there is nothing that you can do about it. This is quite a claim and has always been greeted with a good dose of skepticism. Such things should not be treated lightly. Yet, more often than not, history has come down on the side of those who saw a new heaven and earth. No one on the day of the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision could have envisioned a south that would be sending multiracial delegations to congress and electing black governors. No one looking at the great Mahatma Gandhi would have suspected that one of his legacies would be that India would bring into the middle class a number equaling the entire population of the United Kingdom. A child of the cold war, I still rub my eyes in disbelief at the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the Beijing stock market. If anything, history has come down on the side of wiping away many tears, eliminating the death of hope, and making things new in ways people never imagined.

Much death, sorrow, pain, and mourning has been released by those who claimed that it was they, not God, who make all things new. The world is littered with the tragic results that come from those who found themselves getting nowhere by backing the arrival of some utopia, (literally nowhere). If history is filled with the possibility of a new heaven and earth breaking in, it also has an uncanny way of stymieing the efforts of those who claim they are responsible for the new heaven and earth. The peculiar institution of slavery and segregation comes toppling down, a thousand-year Reich lasts only twelve years, scientific socialism proved to have been so flawed in its hypothesis that its walls came tumbling down in less than 75 years.

The theological lesson to be learned here is that we are called to be open to the new heaven and earth that is in store but we are not responsible for creating them. This does not come easily for many church folk. They often behave as if their primary task is to be responsible rather than to be open and responsive.

This past summer, I had the opportunity to undertake interim ministry training for clergy interested in serving in the role of pastors seeking to lead a congregation through the opportunities that develop when a pastor leaves a congregation. Some of the training I received confirmed what I have long observed. Many congregations in such a time feel the keen responsibility to get through that time as quickly as possible: Choose a pastor just like the last one, choose one that is exactly the opposite of the last one, choose a mature one, choose a young one, and in general solve this problem as quickly as possible with a minimum of disruption.

If I understood my training correctly such "quick-fix" approaches are usually a disaster. Feeling responsible, the congregation rushes past being responsive to what God might do in an interim time to help the congregation assess its strength, weaknesses, history, relationship, and future. Seeking answers, congregations rush past being responsive to the questions that might open them to what God is doing.

Often I find couples in the midst of counseling feeling terribly responsible for the mess they may have made of their lives -- responsible to be on top of things so they already figured out what to do before they come for help -- reaching for the quick fix that will bring about a new heaven and earth in their lives. Few and far between are the couples who seek to be responsive to what wisdom and stature God might bring out of their lives in the journey, together or apart.

What is ahead in the new year? On the one hand who knows, on the other hand the good news is I see a new heaven and a new earth. The good news is that we are not responsible for it but it can wipe away many tears and the death of hope will be no more. The good news is that though we will not be responsible for the new heaven and the new earth we can be responsive to its coming. It is a done deal. "Then he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.' "

Matthew 25:31-46
As I write this, I have just finished placing a book order for Naomi Klein's Shock Capitalism. I understand that this will expose me to 560 pages of text that was two- and-a-half years in the making. However, reviewers and blurbs reassure me that as a result of my labors I will be wiser, more thoughtful, and better able to hold my own at dinner conversations. All this comes on the heels of reading Thomas Friedman and Jeffery Sachs as well as others who promise visions of economic justice and wisdom.

This is not to say that each of these works don't deliver on their promises in some way. Certainly, the new year will bring plenty of opportunity to delve into the latest analysis of where we have gone wrong and how we might go right. Sometimes I ask of myself why I do such things as trying to keep up with this kind of stuff. In all frankness, I think it is because of the voices that I heard growing up and still hear, "Craig, you are responsible for understanding your world and you have been blessed with the capacity to understand some of this stuff. You are responsible!" The most devilish voice is the one that says the bigger the book the more understanding will come my way.

I naturally bring a great deal of skepticism to the idea that getting the kingdom into our midst comes down to getting these sixteen verses right. No, it couldn't come down to just these. That would be irresponsible; we all know that the world is far more complicated than just these few verses. How can you get away with assembling the nations without sufficient political theory, appropriate social analysis, and adequate historical awareness? Yet, the claim is that what we have here is the final judgment and that to pass muster we must come to terms with these verses.

It is all too irresponsible for my taste. Actually, the nations in the story do not come across as terribly responsible. We know nothing of their economic systems or their political ideology or their military status. Believe me, when the nations assemble on this planet it is highly irresponsible not to know these things. I cannot fault those who make their living knowing these things.

Despite the clear judgment that there is much merit in knowing such things, the final judgment is not that we met our responsibility in knowing such things but how well we related to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, and the prisoner. Did they give you the willies? Did the sick make you so anxious that you were reduced to pleasant conversations about the weather across the hospital bed -- anything to take your mind off of the fact that you could not fix them? Did the naked remind you that you are clothed in arrogance and ignorance? Did the prisoner draw attention to how you are bound to lifestyles that impoverish the planet? Did these things so upset you that you took your fears out on them, absented yourself from relating to them as human beings, so that you set your sights on making the most of what you have rather than relate to the least that do not have?

To paraphrase the text -- when was it that we did not take care of business? It was when we did not take care to relate to these as full human beings, did not allow their lives to touch ours, and did not take care to visit even if all we could offer was a presence that could only share their misery. My hunch is that we do not pass muster no matter how responsible we behave if we cannot relate to the least among us as a basis of our actions.

Application
One of the great dangers of religion is compulsive moralism that either leads the moralizer to feel hopelessly inferior or endlessly superior. Jesus certainly saw that in the religion of his day as it whipsawed people between a sense of cleanliness and an unwholesome feeling of impurity and impure thoughts. Martin Luther spent nearly a lifetime hung up between these two. As a child, this aspect of religion so reared its head in my life that I could not imagine religion as anything other than meeting your responsibilities and making sure that others met their responsibilities. Such convictions had a way of delivering on the middle class goods of high SAT scores and good incomes. Yet there was still a hole in one's soul.

I suspect that our way of relating to the new year is rooted in asking what responsibilities we have failed to meet in the old year and resolving to meet them in the upcoming days, as well as taking on new responsibilities. All have probably contributed to the impoverishment of our faith. This might be the day to consider what we are not responsible for and how we can create positive responses and be responsive to what God is doing in our lives in the year to come.

Alternative Application
Matthew 25:31-46. One of the most chilling moments in ministry comes when the seminary professor blows away years of what you thought was thoughtful reflection on a text by pointing out how you have fundamentally misread the text. This is particularly chilling when done in public in front of your colleagues. The gospel text is particularly vulnerable to such a moment.

There are those who assert that poor, naked, hungry, sick, thirsty, stranger, and imprisoned represents the church. Oh, no! You can feel the air running out of the balloon of social action. While I don't think that the air entirely runs out of the social-action ministry based on any interpretation of this text, I do believe that the more restrictive interpretation does have something to offer.

We do spend a great deal of time confessing the sins that the world commits as opposed to the sins that come as part of the package of being church. Perhaps this day is the one to begin acknowledging and addressing those sins. Indeed, what we might have to offer to the world is less our accounting of its sins than the confessing of our sins as a model of healing.

Judging by what happens to many in our churches who are strangers, the mentally challenged, those whose weaknesses are nakedly exposed, or those who thirst and hunger for a deeper religious experience, and those who are imprisoned by their reputations, the more restrictive understanding of this text may help us become the kind of community that can be a blessing to the world.


Preaching The Psalm

Psalm 8
"What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them...?"

Verse 4 of this psalm traverses centuries of theological questing in a single phrase. Its simple, stark question strips away the layered tradition and addled pretense, and goes right to the core of a fundamental human struggle.

It goes something like this. If, God is God -- if this God is the Creator; the one -- if this God created everything including worlds and things we have yet to imagine, then what are we? The existential question looms larger than a Samuel Becket play. Indeed, as the psalmist puts it, why should God be mindful ... of us at all? And truly, the question has merit. The sheer magnitude of the concept of a Creator God sets the writer back on heels of humility and conjures up intermingling scenes of confusion and wonderment.

But in these days of robotics and nano-technology things seem somehow different. As we step into the uncharted territory of interplanetary travel, cloning, and other strange scientific adventures, we no longer see ourselves in the same light as this writer saw (him)self. Today, when global communication comes with the click of a mouse; when world economies are intertwined, and the very ground upon which we stand is changing, the truth is that humanity is not so easily awed as once it was. As we watch creation falter in the face of human activity, the thought occurs to some that perhaps God isn't so great after all.

And herein lies the crux of the issue for people of faith in this so-called post-modern day. Perhaps it can best be voiced, not by a statement, but by a question -- this question: What becomes of people who lose their sense of awe? In this psalm, that sense of amazement and astonishment at the width and breadth of the reality of God is palpable. It brings on a powerful sense of thankfulness and gratitude as the author lets a slow breath escape in simple, powerful language.

Without awe, without a sense of wonder at something or someone much larger than ourselves, we run the serious risk of trying to play God. Without awe, arrogance moves in and makes itself comfortable. Without awe, ice caps melt. Without awe, genocide slips by unnoticed -- unattended. Simply put, a people without awe are dangerous, and we have become that people.

One can't help but wonder what it might take to recapture a sense of awe; to read this psalm with an open and vulnerable heart. It's certainly worth a try. Read it. One more time with a contrite and broken heart (Psalm 51:17). Maybe, just maybe, we might reclaim the childlike sense of wonder and joy to which Jesus called his followers (Matthew 18:3), then and now.