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During
this morning’s services, we introduced Carl Gladstone, Lynn
Hasley and Jeff Nelson to the gathered congregations. All
three graduated from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
in mid-May. All three were commissioned for ministry by Bishop
Linda Lee at sessions of the Detroit Annual Conference later
in May. All three were appointed to the ministerial staff of
First Church, effective July 1, 2004. Jeff Nelson is no
stranger to First Church, having first appeared as a part of a
seminary class studying large local churches, then staying on
as a seminary intern and working during 2003-2004 as a
“private hire.” Carl and Lynn, however, were meeting the
congregation for the first time. The service included
introductions and congregational responses, affirming our
ministry together.
In
an article entitled “Sixty Five Reasons for Hope,” Ann
Svenungsen, who is the current president of the Fund for
Theological Education, rehashed a three-day event involving 65
young, diverse and gifted individuals on the cusp of their
entry into pastoral ministry. Near the end of the conference,
participants were asked: “Why would you encourage a young
person to become a pastor?” To which the first eager
respondent said: “Because of the power, the prestige, and
the awesome dating life.”
As
concerns power and prestige, ours is not a profession where
one is supposed to covet them…. or is likely to attain them.
Every time one of those surveys is taken that attaches popular
esteem to particular professions….you know the surveys I am
talking about, the ones that run the gamut from “most
admired” at the top to “least admired” at the
bottom….we clergy seem to be slipping.
As
concerns an “awesome dating life,” I suppose the jury is
out. I’ll have to confess that it worked for me. And who
knows what it will do for Carl. As for Jeff and Lynn, their
dating life began before seminary, ended before seminary, and
had darned well better not resume after seminary. For while
the bishop didn’t tell me to say that, Bridget and Gary did.
Moments
ago we welcomed Carl, Lynn and Jeff to the ministry of First
Church. As concerns formal education, they’re done now. As
concerns their first-ever appointments, they’re here now. As
concerns the evaluation of the Annual Conference (quite apart
from their present level of confidence), they’re ready now.
And as concerns the marriage of congregation and clergy….the
marriage that must take place if ministry is going to
happen….they’re ours now. As concerns their giftedness,
they are extraordinary. But as concerns their natures, they
(like the rest of us) are about as ordinary as they come. For
while God may need a few angels, God is unfortunately saddled
with a slew of mortals. Like them. And Rod. And me. Although
on most Sundays, Rod dresses more angelically.
We
clergy are so blessedly (and cussedly) human. One day Kris and
I were in the supermarket when we ran into a
parishioner….probably one of you. And you, looking at us
pushing a basket, said something like: “I never expected to
see you here. I mean, it never occurred to me that people like
you have to do things like this.” But we do. For while we
sing lustily about “the bread of heaven feeding us till we
want no more,” there is other bread we have to buy….and
toast….and butter….sometimes even to the point of slapping
some salami between the slices on the way to creating a
sandwich. And eating is only one of the earthy things we do.
So for any of you who might not have noticed, those of us who
have been called to speak of the Divine, aren’t. At least
not very often.
I
suppose one or two of you may have wondered why, when
presiding at the table of our Lord, ministers structure the
sacrament so as to be the first to partake of bread and cup.
Because each pastor knows himself (or herself) to be the chief
of sinners, don’t you see. We who, while presiding at the
Lord’s table may be golden of voice and nimble of fingers,
are nonetheless clay of feet. And we know it.
But
it is not news that we distance ourselves from pretense, pride
and pedestal. Forty years ago, along about the time I started,
clergy could be heard saying to anyone who would listen:
“After all, we’re only human. Our spouses are only human.
Our kids are only human.” Then darned if we didn’t begin
conducting ourselves in ways that proved it beyond anybody’s
doubt, including our own.
No
longer was the issue a glass of wine at a wedding reception, a
pantsuit in the sanctuary, or a cuss word during a work
project when the hammer missed the nail and hit the thumb.
Suddenly the issue was the lover we took, the spouse we
dumped, the money we embezzled, the altar boy we violated, or
the scandal we buried. It never occurred to us that people
were losing faith in church….faith in faith….even faith in
Christ….because they were losing faith in us (one lead story
on the eleven o‘clock news after another). So from those to
whom we said, “After all, we’re only human,” we began to
hear, “We know. We know.”
So,
with that as a context, I’d like to tell you a story. A very
old story. A certainly pre-Christian story. Which has nothing
to do with ministry, on the surface. But a great deal to do
with ministry, in the depths.
We’re
talking Abraham, here. Our ancestor, here. The first one to
hear a call, here. And the first one to pack the U-Haul and
move outside his comfort zone, here. Even though at the time
he did it, he was three times as old as Carl.
When
the story begins, Abraham has just learned two things. First,
he has learned that the elderly lady he loves (and with whom
he has been sleeping fruitlessly for more years than he can
remember) is going to have a baby. Second, he has learned that
a town with which he has had no prior intimacy or experience
is going to be destroyed. And the bulk of the narrative that
follows has to do, not with the former, but with the
latter….with Sodom and its doom, rather than with Sarah and
her womb.
The
storyteller is never more masterful than he is in these next
few paragraphs. God tells Abraham that complaints have risen
to his ears about Sodom….the word “complaint” meaning
“cry.” And, thanks to Gerhard Von Rad, we even know what
the complaint was. “Foul play,” that’s what it was.
So
what did the Sodomites do? Or what had they already done?
Well, not what you think. Sodomy is the common answer. Except
the Bible contradicts it. Check out Ezekiel 16:48, Isaiah 1:10
and 3:9, and Jeremiah 23:14, and you will discover that the
Sodomites are condemned for lives of pride and prosperous
ease, an abundance of food, and little evidence that aid or
hospitality has been shown to the poor and the needy. At any
rate, the fate of the Sodomites evokes the first-ever debate
between God and human beings about the interplay of judgment
and mercy. Which gives me some comfort to know that I am part
of an argument that has been going on for nearly four thousand
years.
I
suppose the initial question is: “Is Sodom guilty?” To
which, in verse 17, God’s answer appears to be “Yes.”
Yet in verse 20, God appears to be saying: “I’d better go
down there and check it out.” But Abraham’s concern is not
so much if the Sodomites are guilty, but what will
happen if they are guilty. Or, more to the point, what
will happen to the innocent minority if the majority are
guilty. Abraham can’t abide the thought that the innocent
might be caught up in the punishment of the guilty.
No,
that’s wrong. What Abraham can’t abide is the thought that
destruction should come to the people as a whole….to the
city as a whole….just because there are guilty people in it.
Notice that Abraham does not say to God: “Go ahead and wipe
them out, but use tactics of destruction that discriminate the
non-guilty from the guilty, so that the non-guilty are granted
immunity.” Nor does Abraham say to God: “Go ahead and
destroy the guilty, but first warn the non-guilty….tell them
I’m coming like Moses (even though Moses hasn’t yet
appeared in history’s timeline) to lead them out before all
hell breaks loose.” No, Abraham doesn’t say any of those
things.
Instead,
he says to God: “Look, I really have no reason to ask
this….no authority by which to ask this….no status that
gives me any right to ask this (given that I am but dust and
ashes)….but have you considered that there might be as many
as fifty righteous people left in the city? If so, will you
spare the city for fifty?” And God says that he will.
So
Abraham, emboldened by the fact that God is bargainable and
that concessions can be wrought from him….yet realizing that
he hasn’t the faintest idea whether Sodom has fifty who can
be counted righteous….says: “What if I’m short five?”
To which God says: “You’ve got your five. I won’t
destroy it for forty-five.”
Now
the juices of argumentation are beginning to flow. And whoever
among you says, “You can’t argue with God,” you need to
realize that Abraham was the first of many to do it. Job, of
course, perfected it. While I, in my humble but feisty way,
simply contribute to it.
At
any rate, Abraham (not having a clue as to the quantity of
righteousness in Sodom) bargains God down to forty….then to
thirty….then to twenty….then finally to ten. In response
to which God says: “Find me ten and I’ll spare, not just
the ten, but the city.” And to this day, when Orthodox
Jewish men meet daily for prayer, there must be ten. It’s
called a “minyan.” And if there are not ten, they do not
pray. Or they wait to pray until one of them gets on a cell
phone and calls Max (the relief prayer), whereupon Max drops
everything and drives down to the temple so that there will be
ten….thus enabling prayers to be raised.
Now
I said I was going to spin this text so that it lands on a
word called “ministry.” And the best way to do that is to
ask the three of you (this morning) to do what I do with every
text I read (every morning)….namely, insert yourselves into
it.
Which
you could do by substituting yourself for Abraham. After all,
he is the “called out” one in the story. He is the one who
talks with God in the story. He is the one about to have a
baby in the story (no, we won’t go there,
Jeff….shouldn’t go there, Carl….probably don’t want to
go there, Lynn).
I
could tell you to do what Abraham does for others in the
story. Abraham intercedes for them…. goes to bat for
them….advocates for them. I could tell you to do the same
for the “others” you will meet. I could tell you to make
their cases before men and before God. Even though that sounds
a little Roman Catholic, do it anyway. I could tell you to go
with them before the judges….go with them before the
doctors….go with them before their accusers. I could tell
you to go with them when people have wronged them….when life
has dumped on them….maybe even when churches have hurt them.
These are marvelous ministries, these ministries called
“advocacy” and “intercession.” And when I started,
nobody told me how much I would need to do them or how good I
would become at them. Instead, I was told about listening,
accepting, empathizing and sympathizing. But nobody told me
about the need to make stuff happen. Which one does by putting
time on the line….money on the line….influence on the
line….one’s meager authority on the line….parishioners
who can open doors on the line….and yes, prayers on the
line. And if you occasionally have to argue with God to get
things done, the Bible will give you all the permission (and
models) you will ever need.
But
my primary concern this morning is not simply that you
identify with Abraham the intercessor, but that you identify
with the ten who are counted as righteous. Now if you ask what
“righteous” means, the definitions in the Old
Testament wander all over the map. But most of them boil down
to “people who are good” or “people who know God.”
In
response to the word “good” and its suggestion that the
primary ingredient of righteousness is behavior, I say behave.
That’s right, behave. Goodness knows, there are few better
things we clergy could do to rebuild the shattered confidence
of a public which has had its mind blown (not to mention its
heart broken) by our aberrant (and occasionally abhorrent)
behavior.
Quintillius
defined good public speaking as “a matter of a good man,
speaking well.” To which, were he alive today, he would add
“a good woman, speaking well.” And while we may disagree
about the nature of “the good,” would that we (as a
profession) were more diligent in seeking it. “Spiritual
formation” (the latest hot button for professional
Christians) may be individually challenging and inwardly
rewarding. But “character formation” (which has seldom
been a hot button for professional Christians) will win far
more of the disgruntled and disappointed back to church. Our
lives do not have to be prim, prissy, prudish or pious. But
they do need to be principled (along with exemplary). People
should want to live like us because what they see when they
look at us is someone who knows how to live well.
And
if the primary ingredient of righteousness is knowing
God….or knowing God in Jesus Christ….then that knowledge
should infect our personalities every bit as much as it
affects our activities. As clergy, our belief should be
radiant. It should look like it makes a difference in our
lives. We should live like it makes a difference in our lives.
If Christ has come that we might have life in abundance, for
God’s sake, let’s live abundantly.
Ours
is a better way. And if we believe it, people ought to be able
to see it in us. Why would anyone pay attention to what we say
if, after watching us closely, they can’t see what we
have…. don’t want what we have….and don’t feel that
their life would be better than it is if they had what we have
(because we don’t seem to have anything that differs from
what the rest of the world has).
Near
the end of a difficult day in the classroom, a third grader
sent a message from her little desk in the back of the room to
the considerably larger desk in the front of the room.
Unfolding and opening it, the occupant of the big desk read:
“Teacher, if you are happy, why don’t you send a message
to your face?”
Well,
what about our faces? If faith in Christ has really
transformed our lives, can anybody see it….sense it….feel
it….to the point that they desire it? Over the years, I have
been found wanting by some who have criticized the quantity
of my beliefs (because I don’t measure up to all the things
on their checklist). But, to this point, no one has ever said:
“Bill, I question the quality of your belief, in that
it does not seem to be doing all that much for your life.”
Hopefully, what you hear from me is what you see in me. And
what you see in me is what has seen me through….plenty.
“Be prepared at the drop of a hat,” says I Peter, to give
an account for the hope that is in you. But nobody is going to
ask you to account for something they can’t see.
So
to the three of you I say: “Show us something. Make us
curious. Make us envious. That we might be saved, by
imitation, from destruction.”
*
* * * *
Oh….and
one little piece of unfinished business from the text.
Remember how Abraham bargained God down to ten (“Will you
save the city, O Lord, if there are but ten righteous ones
left?”)? And God said he would.
Note
that God didn’t say: “Stop. That’s far enough. Proceed
no further. You’ve exhausted my patience. I’m at the end
of my rope.”
No,
God called no halt. Abraham simply walked away. So I ask you,
could the deal have dropped to five? Or three? Or one?
Well,
I can’t say for sure. But I know Christians who say that’s
exactly what happened.
Note: I am indebted to Gerhard Von Rad and his book, Genesis: A
Commentary. Much of my understanding of Genesis comes via
his translation and interpretation. I am also indebted to
William Willimon, chaplain of Duke University, and one of his
more recent books on the ministry entitled Calling and
Character. A number of people have begun to address the
subject of ministerial ethics, but Willimon does a wonderful
job in combining the issues of conduct and character with the
greater issue of our vocation (calling) to preach.
During
the last few lines of the sermon, I pointed at the five clergy
from First Church when I came to the number five….at the
three new ordinands when I came to the number three….and at
the cross when I landed on the number one.
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