When Personal Concerns Are Swallowed Up In Wonder
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
We are a culture awash in personal problems. We feel ourselves existing in a hostile universe, burdened by anxieties, guilt, depression, and hopelessness. Wonderfully, much of the psychological impact of these demons is exorcised by medications recently discovered. Doctors can write prescriptions for medications that ease our anxiety, dampen our neurotic guilt, knock our crippling depressions to pieces, and banish our despair. This is an advance in medicine for which we ought to be quite thankful. And it is a time to assert that using these medications is a sign of strength and wisdom, not some concession to personal weakness or lack of faith. For life to be manageable, many of us will need to receive the benefits of these drugs, some for the rest of our lives.
To need these medications is as natural as requiring insulin or blood pressure medicine. We must avoid the voodoo health folks who claim that their untested remedies are better than synthetic drugs, for this is simply dangerous. The mother in Texas who drowned her five children might have escaped that terrible tragedy had she been encouraged to stay on her pharmaceutical medications.
But as wonderful as these medications are, they do not deliver us from "existential" concerns. These are the residues of normal anxiety, guilt, and depression that remain after modern medicine has delivered us to manageable stability, but we may still feel anxious, we may carry around some honest guilt, and we may feel depressed about life and the flow of history.
I
This is where serious religion comes in. Religion is in the business of dealing with these existential "dis--eases" that are beyond the rescue of modern pharmacology. A young student, full of pathological anxiety and fear, chanced by a rack of paperback books in a nearby college bookstore. One title caught his eye, A Great Time To Be Alive. It's author was Harry Emerson Fosdick, once the well--known preacher at Riverside Church in New York City. In reading those sermons on individual and collective life, his mood began to lift and he sensed that Fosdick was right: it was a great time to be alive. Years later the student discovered that much of his unrest was quieted by modern medical discoveries. But that little book of sermons also spoke to his existential turbulence so that he could manage the terrors from which he later received medicinal relief.
Serious and honest religion does a pretty good job of helping persons handle their existential anxieties, guilt, and depression. Sunday morning sermons abound in how to manage these ailments. As a young preacher, Fosdick writes that he discovered his congregation was bored by traditional biblical sermons. They just were not interested in what happened to the Hittites and Ammonites or the Jebusites. That was ancient history. But when he began to preach to individual and social problems, the congregation sat up and took notice. Much of American preaching adopted this sermonic style and called it "life situation preaching."
About the same time preaching was aided by the clinical pastoral training movement. Clergy received training in hospitals under the supervision of chaplains trained in the religious traditions and the newer insight from psychology and psychiatry. This training encouraged the clergy to reflect upon what they could learn from patients in the rooms and on the wards. One important benefit of this movement was that clergy learned about themselves, and considered how others perceived them. Many pastors were helped to deal with parishioners and situations that might have become instances of serious conflict and misunderstanding.
There are also many excellent books that deal with these human spiritual concerns. One of the best of them is Harold Kushner's Who Needs God? Rabbi Kushner combines a keen sense of our need for an intelligent faith. He gained fame from his earlier best seller, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? Written out of the anguish of his young son's death, Kushner offered a comforting response to the fact of evil. Dr. Gerald Mann of Riverbend Church in Texas has written other good popular religious books. He has shared some of his painful personal experiences, where he has been ministered to by sound religious faith. Many of the books by Marcus Borg are suited for solid personal growth as well as those by Bishop John Selby Spong. They speak to persons in all churches who find the traditional faith wanting, but who are still attracted to the faith.
Today we also have the creation of small groups within the congregation to meet the painful needs of people. While small group support is not new in the history of the church, they have taken on a new vitality in many places. Some of these focus on persons who are struggling with grief. The Stephen Ministries offers both group and individual support. Other groups are concerned about helping folks break out of addictions and others to free people from a destructive past. One pastor's congregation opened its facilities to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The pastor bragged that this was his Tuesday evening prayer meeting. Certainly gathering people in groups to find freedom and growth has been part of the church almost from its beginnings. But in our time this practice is finding a new dynamic and purpose.
II
Yet we seem to have so much of our religious effort in our personal concerns - my troubles, my theological questions, my spiritual growth. No one would condemn our efforts to meet these crippling personal issues in the church. The New Testament model of Jesus makes this clear. But the danger of allowing this focus to become the dominant concern intensifies an unhealthy individualism in modern western society.
The danger of the congregation concentrating exclusively on individual concerns is that there is still a residue of existential unease left over after all our demons have exorcised. We need to remind ourselves that our biblical forebears were in no danger from excessive individualism. They did not find the meaning of life in pursuing their personal agenda. Instead they had a sense of self that was grounded in something larger than themselves - namely the purposes of a wondrous God for the whole world. This is made clear in today's passage from Isaiah.
Biblical people knew of God's concern for personal woes. Take a walk through the Psalms and discover this. Our personal troubles are well addressed there. One person has claimed that if she were marooned on an isolated island and had only one book of the Bible, she hoped it could be the Old Testament Psalms.
But the biblical God has more in mind beyond comforting our sufferings and confusions. Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls us to be "a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness." In the wonder and audacity of such a vision, our personal distresses are often swallowed up in wonder and awe. Isaiah says that Israel's purpose is to be a light to the nations, meaning that individual concerns not related to the larger purposes come in second.
At a high school commencement service a young man remembers the pastor saying that the secret of life is to lose ourselves in a cause that is bigger than ourselves. Many commencement speakers, then and now, have made this same point. We have an insatiable need to live in larger terms than our own fulfillment, or prosperity, or even our survival. It is hard to ignore a comment by Karl Menninger, co--founder of the Menninger Psychiatric Institute in Topeka, Kansas. When asked his advice for someone fearing the onset of nervous collapse, he said he would tell the person to get out of his house, and find someone or some cause that needed him.
III
There is something diabolical about offering personal salvation in Christ apart from commitment to the cause of Christ. It would be a misreading of the Apostle Paul to think that we are saved apart from all other persons and even the entire cosmos. This is the gist of what Paul is getting at in a passage like, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves" (Romans 8:22--23a). Salvation is more than the bits and chunks of individual persons finding God as a consolation for human miseries. It is being lost to ourselves, only to really find ourselves in the claim of God.
Dr. Albert Outler, editing the works of John Wesley, said that Christians who glory in Wesley's Aldersgate experience as the center of Wesley's conversion have missed it. Traditionally, Wesley's salvation is said to have happened on the evening of May 24, 1738, at a prayer meeting sponsored by the Moravians in Aldersgate Street, London. In Wesley's Journal he wrote that his heart was "strangely warmed" as someone was reading from Luther's "Preface to the Book of Romans." Wesley said he sensed the forgiveness of God in a profound way, and he began to pray for his enemies. This Aldersgate experience soon became the standard description of the Methodist understanding of conversion. Methodists were expected to have this same experience.
But Outler says Aldersgate did not settle Wesley's spiritual turbulence. His Journal tells of continuing moods of depression and confusion. Outler argues that the real moment of saving grace came after his friend, George Whitefield, asked Wesley to take over his outdoor preaching ministry to the coal miners. Such a service began at four in the morning before the miners went down into the pits to do their grimy and dangerous work.
With much reluctance, Wesley agreed. Even though Wesley felt preaching should only be done in the setting of a church, he went. Outler says that from this somewhat distasteful experience, Wesley became a more stable and focused person. His own personal troubles were lost in his concern for the pitiful life of those miners. He still would have his moments of anxiety and depression, even years later. But his personal troubles were swallowed up in the conviction that God had called him to do something for others. We might take our cue from Wesley, and the Hebrew Bible Isaiah who makes the same claim. The Israelites were dared to subordinate their personal crises to the greater work of what God would do for the world through their nation. Likewise, the good news is that our own personal traumas become manageable by responding to God's awesome aims where we forget ourselves in joining God in caring for others.
To need these medications is as natural as requiring insulin or blood pressure medicine. We must avoid the voodoo health folks who claim that their untested remedies are better than synthetic drugs, for this is simply dangerous. The mother in Texas who drowned her five children might have escaped that terrible tragedy had she been encouraged to stay on her pharmaceutical medications.
But as wonderful as these medications are, they do not deliver us from "existential" concerns. These are the residues of normal anxiety, guilt, and depression that remain after modern medicine has delivered us to manageable stability, but we may still feel anxious, we may carry around some honest guilt, and we may feel depressed about life and the flow of history.
I
This is where serious religion comes in. Religion is in the business of dealing with these existential "dis--eases" that are beyond the rescue of modern pharmacology. A young student, full of pathological anxiety and fear, chanced by a rack of paperback books in a nearby college bookstore. One title caught his eye, A Great Time To Be Alive. It's author was Harry Emerson Fosdick, once the well--known preacher at Riverside Church in New York City. In reading those sermons on individual and collective life, his mood began to lift and he sensed that Fosdick was right: it was a great time to be alive. Years later the student discovered that much of his unrest was quieted by modern medical discoveries. But that little book of sermons also spoke to his existential turbulence so that he could manage the terrors from which he later received medicinal relief.
Serious and honest religion does a pretty good job of helping persons handle their existential anxieties, guilt, and depression. Sunday morning sermons abound in how to manage these ailments. As a young preacher, Fosdick writes that he discovered his congregation was bored by traditional biblical sermons. They just were not interested in what happened to the Hittites and Ammonites or the Jebusites. That was ancient history. But when he began to preach to individual and social problems, the congregation sat up and took notice. Much of American preaching adopted this sermonic style and called it "life situation preaching."
About the same time preaching was aided by the clinical pastoral training movement. Clergy received training in hospitals under the supervision of chaplains trained in the religious traditions and the newer insight from psychology and psychiatry. This training encouraged the clergy to reflect upon what they could learn from patients in the rooms and on the wards. One important benefit of this movement was that clergy learned about themselves, and considered how others perceived them. Many pastors were helped to deal with parishioners and situations that might have become instances of serious conflict and misunderstanding.
There are also many excellent books that deal with these human spiritual concerns. One of the best of them is Harold Kushner's Who Needs God? Rabbi Kushner combines a keen sense of our need for an intelligent faith. He gained fame from his earlier best seller, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? Written out of the anguish of his young son's death, Kushner offered a comforting response to the fact of evil. Dr. Gerald Mann of Riverbend Church in Texas has written other good popular religious books. He has shared some of his painful personal experiences, where he has been ministered to by sound religious faith. Many of the books by Marcus Borg are suited for solid personal growth as well as those by Bishop John Selby Spong. They speak to persons in all churches who find the traditional faith wanting, but who are still attracted to the faith.
Today we also have the creation of small groups within the congregation to meet the painful needs of people. While small group support is not new in the history of the church, they have taken on a new vitality in many places. Some of these focus on persons who are struggling with grief. The Stephen Ministries offers both group and individual support. Other groups are concerned about helping folks break out of addictions and others to free people from a destructive past. One pastor's congregation opened its facilities to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The pastor bragged that this was his Tuesday evening prayer meeting. Certainly gathering people in groups to find freedom and growth has been part of the church almost from its beginnings. But in our time this practice is finding a new dynamic and purpose.
II
Yet we seem to have so much of our religious effort in our personal concerns - my troubles, my theological questions, my spiritual growth. No one would condemn our efforts to meet these crippling personal issues in the church. The New Testament model of Jesus makes this clear. But the danger of allowing this focus to become the dominant concern intensifies an unhealthy individualism in modern western society.
The danger of the congregation concentrating exclusively on individual concerns is that there is still a residue of existential unease left over after all our demons have exorcised. We need to remind ourselves that our biblical forebears were in no danger from excessive individualism. They did not find the meaning of life in pursuing their personal agenda. Instead they had a sense of self that was grounded in something larger than themselves - namely the purposes of a wondrous God for the whole world. This is made clear in today's passage from Isaiah.
Biblical people knew of God's concern for personal woes. Take a walk through the Psalms and discover this. Our personal troubles are well addressed there. One person has claimed that if she were marooned on an isolated island and had only one book of the Bible, she hoped it could be the Old Testament Psalms.
But the biblical God has more in mind beyond comforting our sufferings and confusions. Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls us to be "a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness." In the wonder and audacity of such a vision, our personal distresses are often swallowed up in wonder and awe. Isaiah says that Israel's purpose is to be a light to the nations, meaning that individual concerns not related to the larger purposes come in second.
At a high school commencement service a young man remembers the pastor saying that the secret of life is to lose ourselves in a cause that is bigger than ourselves. Many commencement speakers, then and now, have made this same point. We have an insatiable need to live in larger terms than our own fulfillment, or prosperity, or even our survival. It is hard to ignore a comment by Karl Menninger, co--founder of the Menninger Psychiatric Institute in Topeka, Kansas. When asked his advice for someone fearing the onset of nervous collapse, he said he would tell the person to get out of his house, and find someone or some cause that needed him.
III
There is something diabolical about offering personal salvation in Christ apart from commitment to the cause of Christ. It would be a misreading of the Apostle Paul to think that we are saved apart from all other persons and even the entire cosmos. This is the gist of what Paul is getting at in a passage like, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves" (Romans 8:22--23a). Salvation is more than the bits and chunks of individual persons finding God as a consolation for human miseries. It is being lost to ourselves, only to really find ourselves in the claim of God.
Dr. Albert Outler, editing the works of John Wesley, said that Christians who glory in Wesley's Aldersgate experience as the center of Wesley's conversion have missed it. Traditionally, Wesley's salvation is said to have happened on the evening of May 24, 1738, at a prayer meeting sponsored by the Moravians in Aldersgate Street, London. In Wesley's Journal he wrote that his heart was "strangely warmed" as someone was reading from Luther's "Preface to the Book of Romans." Wesley said he sensed the forgiveness of God in a profound way, and he began to pray for his enemies. This Aldersgate experience soon became the standard description of the Methodist understanding of conversion. Methodists were expected to have this same experience.
But Outler says Aldersgate did not settle Wesley's spiritual turbulence. His Journal tells of continuing moods of depression and confusion. Outler argues that the real moment of saving grace came after his friend, George Whitefield, asked Wesley to take over his outdoor preaching ministry to the coal miners. Such a service began at four in the morning before the miners went down into the pits to do their grimy and dangerous work.
With much reluctance, Wesley agreed. Even though Wesley felt preaching should only be done in the setting of a church, he went. Outler says that from this somewhat distasteful experience, Wesley became a more stable and focused person. His own personal troubles were lost in his concern for the pitiful life of those miners. He still would have his moments of anxiety and depression, even years later. But his personal troubles were swallowed up in the conviction that God had called him to do something for others. We might take our cue from Wesley, and the Hebrew Bible Isaiah who makes the same claim. The Israelites were dared to subordinate their personal crises to the greater work of what God would do for the world through their nation. Likewise, the good news is that our own personal traumas become manageable by responding to God's awesome aims where we forget ourselves in joining God in caring for others.
