Being What We Are
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Being What We Are
The fact that you are here in church this morning instead of at home sleeping in or reading the newspaper says something about your religious commitment. But it's also true that you could have chosen to go to church today without coming here specifically. For many of you, this is not the nearest church building to where you live. In fact, several of you drive past one or more other churches on your way here.
I am delighted that you have come here of course, but it is a fact of modern times that you have a selection of churches -- each having distinctions in worship style, preaching, fellowship, youth activities, and so forth -- from which to choose. And there are folks who do change churches. Something happens they don't care for in one congregation and so they stop attending there and start attending elsewhere. Church-shopping also occurs when people relocate. They may sample several of the congregations in their new area before settling on one. We can understand that, and some of us here have ourselves done some church visiting before uniting with this congregation.
But are you aware that for most of the time the church has been in existence, such choices were not possible? For the first 1,500 years of Christianity, Christians in any given area would all have belonged to the same Christian body; the idea of shopping for a church was unknown. There were some differences in churches from one political territory to another, but within the area governed by one ruler, there was one church. Most Christians in those times felt that they could only be loyal to a ruler who shared their beliefs in God, and so within each political division, there was only one church. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century that things began to change.1
Because we have all grown up with the multi-church model, it does not seem unusual to us, but in terms of church history, it is a fairly recent development. Most of us today also don't think in terms of which church is right; rather, we are more likely to think about which one we prefer, and that is a way of saying that different churches present different models of Christianity and different approaches to worship. To some degree, the plethora of denominations that we have today developed because people became passionately committed to one way of "doing church" over another.
The differences from one church to another -- and also the changes that take place within individual churches -- remind us that that there is no absolute pattern as to what a church should be. And, because of that, sometimes we may find ourselves wanting to make the church into something different from what it is.
What got me thinking about this was today's reading from 1 Samuel. In last Sunday's sermon, we read about Samuel as a young boy hearing God's voice and receiving the news from God that he was to be the new spiritual leader of Israel. In today's reading, Samuel is an old man, and in the intervening time, he has been a good and faithful spiritual guide for the people. This was still the time when Israel had no king or central government, the period of the judges, when individuals were called by God to lead the people as needed.
One of the several differences between judges and kings was that when a king died, his son automatically succeeded him to the throne. When a judge died, there was no automatic succession by anybody. In fact, sometimes the tribes went several years with no one in the judge role. God called no one to it until there was a need, such as the threat from an enemy.
Samuel had served a triple role in Israel, for he was a priest, a prophet, and a judge. Now that he was growing old, however, he departed from the normal practice and appointed two of his sons as judges in a southern region of the land, probably as a kind of training ground for them to be ready to step into his sandals when the time came. Unfortunately, they proved to be corrupt, though it is not clear that Samuel was aware of it.
In any case, some of the elders of Israel saw what was developing, and came to Samuel and told him, "You are old and your sons do follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations."
Samuel did not approve of this idea at all, not because his sons would be out of a job, but because he saw it as a rejection of God as Israel's ultimate leader, a conclusion God himself offers to Samuel as the old man prays about the matter. So Samuel tries, unsuccessfully, to argue the people out of it. But the elders insist, "We are determined to have a king over us, so that we might be like other nations." God tells Samuel to do as they say, and in the next chapter, a man named Saul is chosen to be Israel's first king.
The point we do not want to miss from this incident is that from the beginning of the Hebrew people, God's intention was for them to be a unique nation, one that was under his direct governance. That's why when human organizers were needed, God called people be leaders of moment, but not kings to reign over the nation as on ongoing line. In telling Samuel that they wanted to have a king "like other nations," these elders were saying they wanted Israel to be something that God had not intended it to be.
In the New Testament, the church is the new Israel,2 so the church, too, is intended to be in a special relationship with God and not like other institutions and manifestations of the general society. But just as those ancient elders wanted Israel to be like other nations, something it was not intended to be, so too we sometimes want the church to be something other than what the Bible calls it, the body of Christ.
Sometimes the things we want the church to be seem to be for the church's own good, and perhaps sometimes they are, but it's not always that easy to tell. Back in the '70s when I was in seminary, one of the ideas that was gaining traction was that the church should operate more like a counseling center, as a place for people wounded in the fray of life to come for comfort and healing. We pastoral students were urged to study the techniques of psychology and be prepared to see people for extended courses of therapy sessions.
Well, you can immediately see the value of that idea. Faith and healing have always been deeply connected, and there was a good bit of psychology behind many of Jesus' teachings. The problem with this idea was that it took people who had been called to preach, bolstered them with a couple of counseling courses, and sent them out with far too little training and experience to effectively provide extended talk-therapy. Those few pastors who found they had an aptitude for therapeutic counseling and took the time to get the extra education necessary to do it, also found that providing such extended counseling didn't leave many hours for other pastoral work. Many of those pastors eventually found counseling centers where they could work full time at it and not also serve a church.
Most pastors value what we learned about psychology. It has seeped into our preaching and influenced how we function in many pastoral situations and helped us in the brief counseling we do. But in the end, we had to conclude that the church could not be largely a counseling center and still be the church. We had to say, "No," to the plea -- similar to that of the elders of Israel who wanted to turn their nation into a monarchy like other nations -- to "make the church like other places that give counseling."
In the '80s, pastors heard the proposal to "make the church like a business." We read books such as, In Search of Excellence, that described how the best businesses in America accomplished their tasks. We were urged to apply the same principles to the church. I even heard it suggested that pastors should think of themselves as CEOs of their congregations.
We learned some good things from all of that. In my own case, looking at business principles made me less patient with committees that go on and on carrying an assignment but never having much to show for their work (or in some cases, their lack of work) and has given me a bias for results-driven efforts. But when we stepped back and really looked at the matter, we remembered that businesses of necessity are driven by their bottom line. No matter how much they may want to care for their people (who are often impersonalized as "human resources"), if it comes to a choice between the well-being of employees versus the well-being of the bottom line, the bottom line is going to win. In the end, we had to say, "No," to the plea to "make the church like a business."
In the '90s, the church heard the plea to make the church more like the entertainment world. We should have services that can be called "contemporary," to which we bring little rock combos to lead us in singing praise choruses, and project high-impact visual images on screens hung in our sanctuaries. This was to reach people who either won't come to traditional services or who do come but emotionally drop out while they are there.
We have learned valuable things from this experiment. We have added some excellent new music and songs to our repertoires and loosened up some of the stiffness that had dominated worship. We have become more conscious that not everybody responds to one mode of worship, and we have enlarged our view of how God can be worshiped and praised. But in the end, which we have not quite reached yet, we will have to say, "No," to the plea to "make the church like the entertainment world."
Those are three examples, but hardly the only pleas the church has heard. Among the others are:
¥
Make the church like a political-action coalition.
¥
Make the church like a fraternal organization.
¥
Make the church like a social work agency.
¥
Make the church like a retreat center.
¥
Make the church like a school.
Not one of those ideas is bad, and there is room in the church for elements of every one of them. But in the end, just as Israel's best route would have been to remain a unique body not like the other nations, so the church's best route is to remain what Christ calls us to be, his body in this world.
You see, Israel got its monarchy. But even the best of the kings that came along in that line -- David -- was not free from monopolistic urges, and the worst of the kings -- Manasseh -- was practically a drum major leading the people against God. Long before the Old Testament closes, the kings are gone and the people are under Babylonian and then Persian rule. In exile in Babylon with their monarchy destroyed, the Hebrews begin to learn again what it means to be God's chosen people. As they recall God's covenant with them and how that had played out in the past, they begin to regain the sense of their unique identity -- that they live on the promises of God.
The church is the successor to that. Jesus called us to be his body in the world. At the very least, that means faithfully proclaiming the news of God's salvation, teaching the scriptures, performing deeds of mercy, and following the example and teachings of Jesus. Our identity is that we live on the promises of God. We should remember that in the final analysis, the reason Israel could make its unique contribution to religion was not because it had kings like other nations, but that it had prophets as the other nations did not.3
We can always learn some techniques from the other institutions, occupations, industries, and fields of endeavor around us, but we need to always resist calls that want to change our identity as the body of Christ. We will not make our contribution to the world through how much we are like the other realms, but through how faithful we are to what Christ calls us to be. It is only in that way that our contribution will be, as Jesus described it in the New Testament, "the pearl of great value," that which a person will give up everything else to gain.
As members of Christ's church, we share in the unique identity as people of God. When we realize how unique and blessing-laden that identity is, we have all the more reason to value it, and welcome others to be part of it.
____________
1.ÊSee Essentials of Christian Theology, William C. Placher, ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), pp. 221-226.
2.ÊSee, for example, Romans 9:6-8; 1 Peter 2:9-10; and Galatians 3:29.
3.ÊThis observation is from The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 2, p. 920.
The fact that you are here in church this morning instead of at home sleeping in or reading the newspaper says something about your religious commitment. But it's also true that you could have chosen to go to church today without coming here specifically. For many of you, this is not the nearest church building to where you live. In fact, several of you drive past one or more other churches on your way here.
I am delighted that you have come here of course, but it is a fact of modern times that you have a selection of churches -- each having distinctions in worship style, preaching, fellowship, youth activities, and so forth -- from which to choose. And there are folks who do change churches. Something happens they don't care for in one congregation and so they stop attending there and start attending elsewhere. Church-shopping also occurs when people relocate. They may sample several of the congregations in their new area before settling on one. We can understand that, and some of us here have ourselves done some church visiting before uniting with this congregation.
But are you aware that for most of the time the church has been in existence, such choices were not possible? For the first 1,500 years of Christianity, Christians in any given area would all have belonged to the same Christian body; the idea of shopping for a church was unknown. There were some differences in churches from one political territory to another, but within the area governed by one ruler, there was one church. Most Christians in those times felt that they could only be loyal to a ruler who shared their beliefs in God, and so within each political division, there was only one church. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century that things began to change.1
Because we have all grown up with the multi-church model, it does not seem unusual to us, but in terms of church history, it is a fairly recent development. Most of us today also don't think in terms of which church is right; rather, we are more likely to think about which one we prefer, and that is a way of saying that different churches present different models of Christianity and different approaches to worship. To some degree, the plethora of denominations that we have today developed because people became passionately committed to one way of "doing church" over another.
The differences from one church to another -- and also the changes that take place within individual churches -- remind us that that there is no absolute pattern as to what a church should be. And, because of that, sometimes we may find ourselves wanting to make the church into something different from what it is.
What got me thinking about this was today's reading from 1 Samuel. In last Sunday's sermon, we read about Samuel as a young boy hearing God's voice and receiving the news from God that he was to be the new spiritual leader of Israel. In today's reading, Samuel is an old man, and in the intervening time, he has been a good and faithful spiritual guide for the people. This was still the time when Israel had no king or central government, the period of the judges, when individuals were called by God to lead the people as needed.
One of the several differences between judges and kings was that when a king died, his son automatically succeeded him to the throne. When a judge died, there was no automatic succession by anybody. In fact, sometimes the tribes went several years with no one in the judge role. God called no one to it until there was a need, such as the threat from an enemy.
Samuel had served a triple role in Israel, for he was a priest, a prophet, and a judge. Now that he was growing old, however, he departed from the normal practice and appointed two of his sons as judges in a southern region of the land, probably as a kind of training ground for them to be ready to step into his sandals when the time came. Unfortunately, they proved to be corrupt, though it is not clear that Samuel was aware of it.
In any case, some of the elders of Israel saw what was developing, and came to Samuel and told him, "You are old and your sons do follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations."
Samuel did not approve of this idea at all, not because his sons would be out of a job, but because he saw it as a rejection of God as Israel's ultimate leader, a conclusion God himself offers to Samuel as the old man prays about the matter. So Samuel tries, unsuccessfully, to argue the people out of it. But the elders insist, "We are determined to have a king over us, so that we might be like other nations." God tells Samuel to do as they say, and in the next chapter, a man named Saul is chosen to be Israel's first king.
The point we do not want to miss from this incident is that from the beginning of the Hebrew people, God's intention was for them to be a unique nation, one that was under his direct governance. That's why when human organizers were needed, God called people be leaders of moment, but not kings to reign over the nation as on ongoing line. In telling Samuel that they wanted to have a king "like other nations," these elders were saying they wanted Israel to be something that God had not intended it to be.
In the New Testament, the church is the new Israel,2 so the church, too, is intended to be in a special relationship with God and not like other institutions and manifestations of the general society. But just as those ancient elders wanted Israel to be like other nations, something it was not intended to be, so too we sometimes want the church to be something other than what the Bible calls it, the body of Christ.
Sometimes the things we want the church to be seem to be for the church's own good, and perhaps sometimes they are, but it's not always that easy to tell. Back in the '70s when I was in seminary, one of the ideas that was gaining traction was that the church should operate more like a counseling center, as a place for people wounded in the fray of life to come for comfort and healing. We pastoral students were urged to study the techniques of psychology and be prepared to see people for extended courses of therapy sessions.
Well, you can immediately see the value of that idea. Faith and healing have always been deeply connected, and there was a good bit of psychology behind many of Jesus' teachings. The problem with this idea was that it took people who had been called to preach, bolstered them with a couple of counseling courses, and sent them out with far too little training and experience to effectively provide extended talk-therapy. Those few pastors who found they had an aptitude for therapeutic counseling and took the time to get the extra education necessary to do it, also found that providing such extended counseling didn't leave many hours for other pastoral work. Many of those pastors eventually found counseling centers where they could work full time at it and not also serve a church.
Most pastors value what we learned about psychology. It has seeped into our preaching and influenced how we function in many pastoral situations and helped us in the brief counseling we do. But in the end, we had to conclude that the church could not be largely a counseling center and still be the church. We had to say, "No," to the plea -- similar to that of the elders of Israel who wanted to turn their nation into a monarchy like other nations -- to "make the church like other places that give counseling."
In the '80s, pastors heard the proposal to "make the church like a business." We read books such as, In Search of Excellence, that described how the best businesses in America accomplished their tasks. We were urged to apply the same principles to the church. I even heard it suggested that pastors should think of themselves as CEOs of their congregations.
We learned some good things from all of that. In my own case, looking at business principles made me less patient with committees that go on and on carrying an assignment but never having much to show for their work (or in some cases, their lack of work) and has given me a bias for results-driven efforts. But when we stepped back and really looked at the matter, we remembered that businesses of necessity are driven by their bottom line. No matter how much they may want to care for their people (who are often impersonalized as "human resources"), if it comes to a choice between the well-being of employees versus the well-being of the bottom line, the bottom line is going to win. In the end, we had to say, "No," to the plea to "make the church like a business."
In the '90s, the church heard the plea to make the church more like the entertainment world. We should have services that can be called "contemporary," to which we bring little rock combos to lead us in singing praise choruses, and project high-impact visual images on screens hung in our sanctuaries. This was to reach people who either won't come to traditional services or who do come but emotionally drop out while they are there.
We have learned valuable things from this experiment. We have added some excellent new music and songs to our repertoires and loosened up some of the stiffness that had dominated worship. We have become more conscious that not everybody responds to one mode of worship, and we have enlarged our view of how God can be worshiped and praised. But in the end, which we have not quite reached yet, we will have to say, "No," to the plea to "make the church like the entertainment world."
Those are three examples, but hardly the only pleas the church has heard. Among the others are:
¥
Make the church like a political-action coalition.
¥
Make the church like a fraternal organization.
¥
Make the church like a social work agency.
¥
Make the church like a retreat center.
¥
Make the church like a school.
Not one of those ideas is bad, and there is room in the church for elements of every one of them. But in the end, just as Israel's best route would have been to remain a unique body not like the other nations, so the church's best route is to remain what Christ calls us to be, his body in this world.
You see, Israel got its monarchy. But even the best of the kings that came along in that line -- David -- was not free from monopolistic urges, and the worst of the kings -- Manasseh -- was practically a drum major leading the people against God. Long before the Old Testament closes, the kings are gone and the people are under Babylonian and then Persian rule. In exile in Babylon with their monarchy destroyed, the Hebrews begin to learn again what it means to be God's chosen people. As they recall God's covenant with them and how that had played out in the past, they begin to regain the sense of their unique identity -- that they live on the promises of God.
The church is the successor to that. Jesus called us to be his body in the world. At the very least, that means faithfully proclaiming the news of God's salvation, teaching the scriptures, performing deeds of mercy, and following the example and teachings of Jesus. Our identity is that we live on the promises of God. We should remember that in the final analysis, the reason Israel could make its unique contribution to religion was not because it had kings like other nations, but that it had prophets as the other nations did not.3
We can always learn some techniques from the other institutions, occupations, industries, and fields of endeavor around us, but we need to always resist calls that want to change our identity as the body of Christ. We will not make our contribution to the world through how much we are like the other realms, but through how faithful we are to what Christ calls us to be. It is only in that way that our contribution will be, as Jesus described it in the New Testament, "the pearl of great value," that which a person will give up everything else to gain.
As members of Christ's church, we share in the unique identity as people of God. When we realize how unique and blessing-laden that identity is, we have all the more reason to value it, and welcome others to be part of it.
____________
1.ÊSee Essentials of Christian Theology, William C. Placher, ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), pp. 221-226.
2.ÊSee, for example, Romans 9:6-8; 1 Peter 2:9-10; and Galatians 3:29.
3.ÊThis observation is from The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 2, p. 920.
