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It was,
as I remember it, the winter of '64 ... which slid, ever so
slowly, into the spring of '65. I was in New Haven, Connecticut,
finishing my final year in Yale Divinity School. I was also
a Methodist waiting for an appointment. My first appointment.
Not that I was alone in my anxiety. Even though Yale was intentionally
inter-denominational, there were a couple of other Methodists
on the floor ... Jim Bortell of Illinois and Ivan Burnett
of Mississippi. Which explains why most nights, along about
ten o'clock, we would go to the refrigerator in the basement,
dish ourselves some ice cream, and spend the next half hour
speculating on where we would be appointed (and what it would
be like, once we got there).
Eventually,
the word came to us all. I was heading for Dearborn as an
associate. Jim was going to Monmouth, Illinois as an associate.
And Ivan was being assigned to a little church in Grenada,
Mississippi as pastor in charge. Theologically and politically,
Ivan was the most conservative of us all. But going back to
rural Mississippi in the summer of '65 ... with the word "Yale"
screaming from the pages of one's resume ... was the kiss
of death for a preacher. So they got him quick. They got him
good. And they got him out. Whereupon he resurrected his career
as a Navy chaplain, retiring from the military and the ministry
... not that one ever "retires" from the ministry
... a year ago June. Meanwhile, Jim and I press on ... happily
and fruitfully ... in Normal, Illinois, and Birmingham, Michigan,
respectively.
I can't,
for the life of me, remember whether Jim wanted to start his
career as an associate. I know I didn't. I wanted to jump
right in and preach every Sunday. I didn't care where ...
or to how many. I just wanted to do it ... by myself ... on
my own ... full bore ... no backup.
But my
district superintendent, the late Herb Hausser, had other
ideas. "Bill," he said, "you're a great talent.
But you are a raw talent. And if you can conceive of God as
speaking through a church bureaucrat, this is what I hear
God saying to me (about you): `Send him to a church where
he can touch the most, while being mentored by the best.'"
Which is how I became the fourth pastor on a four-pastor staff
in Dearborn ... overseeing all of youth ministry ... all of
children's education ... all of adult education ... doing
my share of the pastoral work ... while preaching almost never.
But Herb was right in one sense. Dearborn was where I needed
to be ... doing what I needed to do ... watching who I needed
to watch. Ironically, my first boss (and he was my "boss"),
Fred Vosburg, now lives into his nineties in the same retirement
complex as my folks. In Dearborn, of course.
You have
heard me say, on more than one occasion, that the mid-sixties
were wonderful years to be alive and in ministry. We had great
youth groups at Dearborn First. In fact, there are six ministers
in our Conference from those youth groups, currently giving
great leadership to our denomination. Those teens were filled
with passion, wrestling with tough issues and making hard
decisions, all the while singing songs of faith and freedom.
There was never a Sunday night that we didn't sing for 20
minutes or more.
All of
which came back to me, just two weeks ago, when Julie said:
"Let's go to Meadowbrook and see Peter, Paul and Mary."
Given that Julie's musical tastes run to a little bit of "classic,"
a little bit of "rock" and a whole lot of "country,"
I wondered: "What does Julie know of Peter, Paul and
Mary?" But she knew enough to want to know more. So we
went. And we loved every minute. Big crowd. Great night. Good
singing. Easy listening. This is their 40th anniversary
year. Talk about feeling old. But they had some new stuff
... as if we came to hear the new stuff. Which we didn't.
Most of us came to hear the old stuff.
And they
did it all. Midway through the first set, they sang "Where
Have All the Flowers Gone?" And they closed the second
set with "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in
the Wind." Whereupon they offered an encore of "This
Land is Your Land" that brought our voices out, our hands
together, the house down, and the evening to a close.
But it
is what Julie said on the way home that interested me. "I
knew a few of their songs," she said, "but now that
I've heard them, I can see why so many people were moved by
them. Fifteen minutes more and I'd have gotten right on the
bus ... to go anywhere ... and stand for anything. They really
get you out of yourself and into caring about the world."
To which I said: "You've got it. That's how we felt.
At least that's how I felt. Which was why the mid-sixties
were such great years to be alive."
It got
ugly, of course. By the late sixties, it got awfully ugly.
I don't know if you can blame the war for that. But a lot
of people did. Some got angry. Some got shot. A whole lot
dropped out. A whole lot more turned on ... pharmacologically,
I mean. And the "drug thing" crashed the party and
(unfortunately) never left.
But I
left ... after four years in Dearborn ... to take a 700 member
church. Whatever could the Bishop have been thinking to appoint
me to a 700 member church? The year was 1969. And I have been
doing the "establishment thing" ever since. Has
my life changed? A lot! Have my looks changed? Come on now
... is the Pope Catholic? Has my calling wavered? Strangely
... hardly. Has my mind changed? Not all that much. It was
pretty well grounded, then. My positions were pretty well
formed, then. I would be willing to go back into my "barrel"
and re-preach the first sermon I delivered from the pulpit
of that 700 member church ... when I was finally on my own.
And I wouldn't feel apologetic or embarrassed by words I wrote
31 years ago. Oh, I'd tidy up the verbiage. I write much better
sentences now. And I'd update the illustrations. I stay far
more current now. And I'd plug in the insights I have gained
from keeping my eyes in the books (new books) and my ears
to the ground (your ground). But I'd preach it. And you wouldn't
be totally able to dismiss it.
Still,
in the midst of all that I have added (you have to keep up,
you know), and the little that I have subtracted (some things
are just stupid to hang on to, you know), there have been
a few shifts more seismic in nature. How many? Darned if I
know. I only started thinking about this a couple of weeks
back. But, at the moment, I can clearly identify four. One,
concerning society. Another, concerning theology. A third,
concerning church. And the last, concerning Bible.
Let's
start with society. In 1965, I thought it was far more "fixable"
than it has turned out to be. Concerning the great problems
of the time, I really thought that "every day in every
way, we could make things better and better." Which was,
of course, the mantra of the Social Gospel Movement in the
early part of the twentieth century. And what killed the Social
Gospel Movement (along with its belief in the inevitability
of Kingdom-building progress)? World War II and the Holocaust.
That's what killed the Social Gospel Movement. For that's
when theologians and preachers rediscovered how utterly perverse
human beings can really be.
I was
four when the last of the concentration camps was liberated.
And I was just turning five when we dropped the bomb. Besides,
people said that as bombs go, this was a good bomb. Maybe
even the last bomb. So why shouldn't I have thought at age
25 ... in the summer of '65 ... that our songs and my sermons
could make an immediate and recognizable difference? After
all, evil named would lead to evil exposed ... would lead
to evil addressed ... would lead to evil lamented ... would
lead to evil repented ... would lead to evil corrected ...
would lead to evil eradicated ... would it not? So where was
I wrong?
Well,
in the summer of '65, I hadn't fully accounted for the power
of sin ... personal sin ... corporate sin ... institutional
sin ... any sin. As a reality, I was agin' it. But as a concept,
I never named it. Because as a word, I didn't like it. "Sin,"
I mean. It had too many images I wanted to leave behind ...
like revival preachers, sawdust trails, sweaty tents, those
kinds of images.
But I
have learned over the years that people sin ... repeatedly
and mightily. They sin when they're off by themselves (in
little groups of one or two). And they sin when they cluster
together (in bigger groups like 30, 300, 3001 or 2.6 billion).
And I've learned that most of the sins have more to do with
power (grabbing it and keeping it) than with sex (doing it
and abusing it), even though most of you would guess otherwise
(given that it's safer to talk about sex than power).
But I
was totally bummed (not to mention intellectually chagrined)
when Scott Peck dared to suggest in his second book, People
of the Lie, that there were a few individuals he had met
in his therapeutic practice who could be explained by no other
word than to say that they were "evil." I found
that abhorrent. Still do, at some level. But I have met three
or four such people (who I can explain with no other word
than the word "evil"). And while three or four are
not many, they have been enough to shake my idealism.
There
is an age-old conundrum which asks: "Is the world essentially
a white chessboard with black squares, or a black chessboard
with white squares?" Today, I'm almost afraid to ask
the question, given that someone will read "race"
into it. Still, as conundrums go, I'll stick with my assumption
that the world is white and the squares are black. But there
are a lot of squares. And not only do they continually move,
but they cast some mighty big shadows.
But, in
addition to society being less fixable, I have also discovered
that the riddles of faith are less solvable than I thought
in 1965. Over the years, I have had to make my peace with
the fact that I may never know a lot of the things I do not
presently know. Some of those are profoundly doctrinal. Like
the Trinity, which I sing doxologically and comprehend scholastically,
but can't really say I understand internally. And like the
Atonement, given my comfort with the idea that the death of
Jesus on the cross is personally beneficial (yes, I believe
he died for me), coupled with my discomfort with the idea
that Jesus' death is Old Testamentally sacrificial (as in
the idea that God required Jesus to die for me).
And then
there's my friend John Stuart, who claims that when he dies
... and if he sees God ... he wants to unfold his fingers
and show God a malignant tumor. Whereupon he will say to God:
"Explain this." As for me, I doubt John will get
an answer in this life and may not get an answer in the next
one, either. But he will get "the next one." Life,
I mean. Not answers.
As concerns
the church, I have learned that all the social and political
engineering will not, in and of itself, usher in the Kingdom.
Most people ... especially most clergy people ... believe
it will. In the mid-sixties, I believed it would. I was one
of the self-identified "young Turks" of the denomination.
For a few years we met in the basement of Fourteenth Avenue
Church (down in the shadow of the ballpark). Which was probably
appropriate given that, at any given time, there were about
14 of us. We were going to plan, plot and politic to advance
people who shared our agenda ... although we didn't call it
an "agenda," we called it a "vision" ...
into Conference positions and key local church pulpits. Once
there, we would leaven the loaf, sweeten the pot, and do all
measure of wonderful things which (from our perspective) would
become obvious to one and all ... as to their aptness and
rightness ... once we were in a position to do them.
And the
fact of the matter is, we were incredibly successful. Two
became bishops. One is currently a seminary president. Half
a dozen became district superintendents. And two or three
of us wound up as tall steeple preachers. What's more, I still
believe in the rightness of our visions. But I repent the
audacity of our pretensions. The Kingdom is of God. And all
of the social engineering of this world ... which goes on
to this day ... will not bring it about. And may, if we are
not careful, actually retard it.
Finally,
let me say a word about the Bible. In 1965, I thought my job
was to explain and defend it. Neither of which I proved to
be much good at. Today, what I want to do is experience it
... and help you experience it. I want to read it so that
it reads me. And I want to preach it so that you and I will
wiggle around inside the text ... figuring out who we are
in the story ... so that hundreds of years will flake away
and the encounter between Word and We will be as fresh as
our morning orange juice. You and I can argue endlessly about
what we think the Bible is or isn't ... about where we think
its authority rests or doesn't ... and whether we think that
God's Word is multi-voiced or singular. But, with each passing
year, I have less and less interest in what it means to take
the Bible literally, and more and more interest in what it
means to take the Bible seriously.
Which,
as a preacher, is what I strive to do. The other day I happened
upon a bumper sticker which read: "If garbage collectors
and preachers went on strike the same day, which would you
miss first?" I winced at the comparison. What a blow
to my self esteem. For I know the answer as well as you do.
The garbagemen would be missed first. But, over time, I think
the clergy would be missed most. Because when your liverwurst
begins to smell, it's one thing. But when your life begins
to smell, it's another. Take the preachers away for very long,
and the stench of our lives would be unbearable. Therefore,
I no longer apologize for anything I preach. Not only it is
a word about life and death. It is, to those who are perishing,
a word of life and death.
So I keep
doing it ... here ... there ... wherever. It's who I am. And
it's what I do. Remember when Kirk Gibson, after being out
of baseball for nearly a year, signed on for a second stint
with the Tigers? Many questioned his ability. Even more questioned
his sanity. But Gibson bore all the "why come back"
questions politely, before citing Muhammad Ali's classic response
when someone asked him why he was going to climb back in the
ring again. Ali's answer: "A boxer boxes." Well,
a preacher, preaches.
In something
that has become a bit of a signature text for me, the Apostle
Paul writes: "Woe be unto me if I do not preach the gospel."
I suppose Paul is saying: "This is so much a part of
who I understand myself to be, I can't not do it." Which
is how I feel about what I do. And you are marvelously kind
to let me do it here. For which I thank you.
*
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Note:
This sermon was preached on the weekend of my 60th
birthday, accounting for the fact that it is somewhat biographical
in nature. My use of the word "Methodist" in the
opening paragraphs reflects the fact that we did not become
"United Methodists" until 1968 ... or three years
after I accepted my initial appointment. The oblique reference
to 3001 in the section on sin identifies the membership goal
of First Church which is "3001 by 2001."
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