Sermon, "A Way Forward: A Quadrilateral," Philippians 4:8-9, Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon 2/10/19

Philippians 4:8-9, Matthew 22:34-40

A Way Forward: A Quadrilateral*

Some of us have been gathering each week to read and reflect together on a book called, Holy Contradictions: What’s Next for the People Called United Methodists (editor: Brian K. Milford.) The book is a collection of seventeen essays, all written in response to this question: “How might United Methodists bear witness to graceful and mutually respectful ways of living in the Wesleyan tradition amid the enduring disagreements about same-gender relationships and related church practices?” As part of our time together, we started by going over some guidelines for having holy conversations. After all, we see “unholy” conversations at work in the world all the time. We live in a world right now where we feel like we can’t talk to each other. We assume things like “if you believe this, then you must also believe that,” and that means you must be such and such kind of person, and I can’t possibly be friends with that kind of person.

Can we talk about things differently in the church? In a world where we’ve started to disengage and close ourselves off when we disagree with someone, or alternately when we shame and degrade anyone who doesn’t share our point of view, is it possible to do things differently? I think we can. And so in our study group, we’ve set some guidelines for holy conversation. We’ll try to listen, and not always jump to speaking, and to listen carefully to what others say, and not misrepresent their views. A good way to check this is to say, “I heard you saying” and then try to rephrase your conversation partner’s point of view. And then if they say that you didn’t quite hear them right, listen while they rephrase it. Make sure you understand, even if you don’t agree. We’re trying to use “I” statements when we share. Instead of saying, “You said this” or “They think that,” we’re trying to see, “I believe, I feel, I think.” We’re owning what we say. And we’re remembering to speak with love and kindness about people, and to remember that we’re talking about “people” and not “issues.” When we talk about “issues,” we can sometimes speak in careless ways. When we remember that when we’re talking about same-gender relationships we’re talking about people who are beloved to God and us, we remember to speak with care and love.  Hopefully, the church is a place where we can talk about things that are hard, things that make us uncomfortable, things where we know we might disagree with the folks sitting near us in the pews, and talk differently than folks elsewhere might talk.

In this sermon series, we’ll be thinking together about The United Methodist Church and same-sex relationships and the future of the denomination, but it is really about more than that. It’s about how we understand God, how we read scripture, how we figure out what God is saying to us, and how we live as beloved community when the way we do those things - understand God, read scripture, and hear what God is saying - differs significantly. We’re talking about this now because at the end of this month, delegates from The United Methodist Church around the world will gather in St. Louis for a special session of General Conference. General Conference usually happens every four years, and it is where we make decisions as a denomination about what we believe and how we structure our church. But this month is a special session of the General Conference, meeting for the soul purpose of figuring out if there is a way forward for us in light of the fact that we have, across the denomination, some significantly different understandings of scripture, and how we interpret it, and what conclusions our interpretations bring us to in relation to same-sex relationships, inclusion in the church, marriage, and ordination.

We have to be able to talk about hard things sometimes. In a way, we are endeavoring to answer for the congregation the same question as the book from our study group poses. “How might United Methodists bear witness to graceful and mutually respectful ways of living in the Wesleyan tradition amid the enduring disagreements about same-gender relationships and related church practices?” This sermon series isn’t about trying to convince you of a particular point of view, or telling you the “right” answers. Instead, we’re going to be focusing on better understanding how we interpret scriptures, and how we relate to each other, and love each other when we don’t see eye to eye. I do want to be clear, as we talk, about some things that I think are “givens,” things you can count on for sure. I love you, and God loves you. God loves you no matter what your “side” is, and no matter whether your side is “right” or “wrong.” God loves you if you are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and God loves you if you are heterosexual. God loves you if you can’t wait to talk about these things for the next few weeks, or if you wish we never had to talk about things that make us uncomfortable! And, importantly, the church - this church, and the church universal - the church belongs to God, and God will continue to have a task for us, for the world, will continue to call us to make disciples and be disciples of Jesus regardless of what is decided at General Conference.

So, where do we start, as we seek to understand our own hearts and minds, each other, and above all, what it is God is leading us to know and do? One of our tasks as disciples, according to our Book of Discipline, the book of order and rules for structuring our denomination, is to ask: “What can I say that is faithful to scripture as it has been passed down through tradition, and that makes sense in light of human experience and reason?” (paraphrase of Book of Discipline, 81, by Dawson) In our Wesleyan heritage, that is, following the teachings of the founder of the Methodist movement led by John Wesley, we United Methodists say that we turn to four sources to help us articulate our faith - a quadrilateral. Wesley never used the word quadrilateral, but students of Wesley’s over the generations have turned to this model as a way to help us remember and think about the sources of our theology. We believe that “the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.” (Book of Discipline, 82) Scripture, tradition, experience, reason.

Along with Wesley, and with other Christians, we believe that scripture is our primary source for understanding. In other words, we start with the Bible. That’s our first place, the first place we look to understand what God is saying to us about how to be followers of Jesus in the world. So, studying the scripture is really important. But how do we figure out what the scriptures are saying? People have wrestled with this ever since there were scriptures to read, or even since there were sacred stories to listen to. How do we know how to understand what we read in the Bible?

“First, scripture is interpreted by other scripture.” (Dawson, emphasis mine.) We learn that it isn’t helpful to take a single verse out of context. We’ve talked about how knowing what comes before and after a verse or passage helps us make sense of what we read. And knowing when and where stories take place helps us understand. We also understand better when we see how a passage fits in with the major themes of the whole Bible. In our gospel lesson today from Matthew, the lawyer, a Pharisee, who asks Jesus a question asks Jesus to “interpret and prioritize scripture” for them. (Dawson) The lawyer’s motives aren’t the best - the Pharisees want to call Jesus out and somehow prove him wrong. But the results are good, for that audience and through the millennia. Jesus gives us a rule of thumb to guide us as we interpret scripture. When we read texts that are confusing, we can ask, “How do these words help us to love God and love neighbor?” John Wesley, you’ve heard me mention, talked about looking at “the whole scope and tenor” of scripture when trying to figure out what verses mean. For him, a guiding principle was that “God is love,” and so when he read other passages that were difficult to understand, he would hold them up against that guide - “God is love.” Any interpretation of the scripture that contradicted that guiding principle he felt was off-base. We are theologians, interpreting the scripture we read, using guides like the rest of scripture, and the way Jesus teaches us to prioritize the greatest commandments and read everything else in light of these teachings - love of God, love of each other.  

Another source for our understanding scripture and God’s call to us is tradition. The Book of Discipline describes tradition like this: “Christianity does not leap from New Testament times to the present as though nothing were to be learned from that great cloud of witnesses in between … Tradition is the history of that … environment of grace in and by which all Christians live.” (85) Tradition is a guide for us in that it “represents a consensus of faith” over time. (86) So, one way we figure out what God is saying to us is by looking at how followers of Jesus have interpreted the scripture over the years. We read in the Bible what the gospel writers and apostles had to say about scriptures from the Hebrew Bible. We can study what theologians in the early church from the 3rd and 4th century had to say about the scripture. We can read John Wesley’s notes on the entire Bible, and see his verse-by-verse comments from Genesis to Revelation. And we look to the tradition and wisdom of our own context too - what did we learn from grandparents and parents in the faith about God?

A third source is our own experience. When we read the scripture, we bring ourselves - we are one of our own sources for understanding scripture! We’re shaped by everything that’s happened in our lives. We’re shaped by where we live - whether in a small town or a big city or in the US or in South Africa. We’re shaped by our economic situation, by our genders, by our emotions, by our experience as children, or parents, or grandparents, by our occupations. Our experiences are why we “can read the same passage of scripture repeatedly over time and discover something new with each reading.” (Dawson) God can speak to us in new ways through our experiences, and help us understand the scripture. For example, John Wesley started supporting the licensing of women as preachers in part because of his experiences with strong women in his lives whose call by God he witnessed personally. His experience helped him read the scripture in a new way, and thus he shaped the direction of the church.

Finally, we interpret the scripture using the source of reason. We recognize that we can’t fully know God. God is beyond “the scope of human language and reason.” (Book of Discipline, 88.) But we also believe that God gave us sharp minds that we might carefully use reason to better understand God and the scriptures. We use reason to ask questions about faith and scripture. We use reason to organize our understandings. We use reason to test our findings. We use reason to making connections between scripture, tradition, and experience. We use our reason to help us bring science, philosophy, and nature to bear on our reading of sacred texts. The scriptures themselves prize sound reason. In Proverbs we read, “Turn your ear toward wisdom, and stretch your mind toward understanding. Call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding.” (Proverbs 2:2-3, Dawson)

The Book of Discipline, reflecting on these sources for understanding the scripture, concludes: “United Methodists as a diverse people continue to strive for consensus in understanding the gospel… while exercising patience and forbearance with one another. Such patience stems neither from indifference toward truth nor from an indulgent tolerance of error but from an awareness that we know only in part and that none of us is able to search the mysteries of God except by the Spirit of God. We proceed with our theological task, trusting that the Spirit will grant us wisdom.” (89)

We have not yet been able to come to a consensus in our denomination when it comes to how we approach human sexuality and in particular same-sex relationships. We draw on the same sources of understanding, but some of us are drawn more to tradition, and some to experience. Our faithful reasoning leads us to different conclusions, both in the church at large, and here in this congregation. When we think about LGBT persons and the life of the church, I may have a different perspective than you, and you may think differently than those in your family, or in your study group, or in your pew. “We are all theologians after all, all tasked with using scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to weigh what we believe to be faithful responses in the world today … My prayer … is that we would continue to lift up as our number one priority” the very things Jesus lifted up for us:  “the love of God and the love of one another – and that includes those who don’t agree with us. Our call as people of faith after all is to provide a welcome so vast and so radical that all might come to know and experience the saving grace of God lives.” (Dawson) Let us seek to be followers of Jesus, who, through our love of God and neighbor, are always inviting others to journey with us in grace. Amen.

* This sermon series draws on the themes, structure, content, and excellent work of Rev. Katie Z. Dawson, and the sermon series of the same title featured on her blog, Salvaged Faith. Used with permission. Any direct quotes from Dawson’s sermons are noted as such. Her series can be found at: http://salvagedfaith.com/2018/08/19/a-way-forward-25-cent-words/

"Ask the Pastor" Sunday "Sermon"

Sermon 5/27/18

Ask the Pastor

About Theology: 

I have heard it said that we are not to worry, as God has everything in control. I also heard that to worry about anything is a sin against God. However, being a parent...I just can't help but worry about how my children are doing sometimes. When they hurt, I hurt. Is worrying a sin?

Matthew 6:25-27: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”
I think this is the main passage where we hear in the Bible that we shouldn’t worry. I don’t think Jesus talks about worry as a sin per se, and I don’t think the passage is so straightforward as it might seem (as is the case with most passages!) Jesus is tying his words about worry back to his opening comments in this passage today about having more than one master. We can tell this because of how this section about not worrying starts. In our New Revised Standard Version bibles, we just get “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.” But the original Greek is even more specific. It says, “Because of this I tell you do not worry.” So the whole section reads: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other; or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Because of this I tell you do not worry.” So, in context, what does this passage mean for us, that because of not being able to serve two masters, Jesus tells us not to worry?
            When Jesus talks about worry, the word used is merimnate, which means more literally to “be preoccupied with or be absorbed by.” (1) When Jesus speaks of worry, he’s speaking of something that preoccupies us, absorbs our attention, takes our effort and energy and heart’s direction. In fact, in this way, Jesus is equating worry to something that’s very close to idolatry. Idolatry is when we take anything that is other than God, and give it the place of God in our lives. That is what Jesus finds problematic: when we give anything other than God what should be God’s place in our lives. Now, I think we still do this pretty frequently: give over God’s place to other things in our lives – and we definitely should always be careful. But what you say in your question: “When they hurt, I hurt,” sounds more like compassion than like giving concern for your children the place of God in your life. And compassion is something Jesus demonstrates all the time. He wants us to cultivate that feeling in fact, and extend it to all people, so that we are unsettled in our spirits whenever we see others hurting, and are moved to respond in loving action. 

How do we sit patiently for God to show us what he has in store for us? (I am not a patient person, so this is difficult)

Oh boy – this is a tough one! I am not always very patient. And God’s sense of time is clearly so different than ours. You’ve heard me talk before about kairos and chronos. Chronos is the Greek word for regular time, but kairos is the word that means “just the right time,” or “in the fullness of time” or “God’s right time for action” we might say. When God acts in our lives and in the world, it is always in kairos time – at just the right time. I have seen what happens in my life when I try to force my timing onto God’s plans. I always planned, for example, to do my doctoral work at Drew, where I went for my seminary work, after I had been in ministry for five years. I would go back to school and get my PhD. It was my plan. I did not really consult God about this, to be honest. I just kept doing whatever I could, taking the opportunities I could to make this happen. It finally took a trusted advisor of mine at Drew asking me some hard questions about what I wanted to study to realize that going back to school wasn’t the right thing for me at that time. Later, years later, I went back to get my Doctor of Ministry – a different degree than I had planned at a different time at a different school, and it was so right then. I only hope that I can learn from past experiences to strengthen my patience by remembering that I can trust in God. I don’t think that means we have to be passive – sometimes when we are being patient, we can also be doing things that make our hearts and lives more ready for where God will lead us. And sometimes, I think impatience can be holy too! I think, for example, about the work of Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. Perhaps Dr. King was patient with God, but he was not patient with injustice, and he was not patient with white people who kept suggesting that he was trying to rush making changes. And I think that his call for us to be more impatient with injustice was a prophetic call. 

God's Sovereignty - I think folks would benefit from hearing something about this concept.  I have observed that those with deep faith when faced with life circumstances that are very difficult (parents of a child with cancer, losing a spouse at a young age, etc.) find comfort and acknowledge God's sovereignty. So, what is it? How does one come to claim it? What difference does it make?

This is a complicated question! Sovereignty, when we use it in everyday speech means “supreme power or authority” or “the authority of a state to govern itself or another state.” When we apply this term to God, we mean most basically that God is the supreme ruler, the supreme authority. To that basic premise, I think most Christians agree, but beyond that, there are some wildly different feelings about God’s Sovereignty. The crux of the dispute is about whether God, as supreme ruler, is controlling everything that happens in our world or not. Is everything determined? Is there a fixed outcome? Or do things happen that God is not controlling. We touched on these issues earlier this year in our “Why” series when we were asking about why suffering happens, and we were talking about the gift we believe we have of free will – God gives us the gift to make choices, even when they are choices that are not what God hopes for us, and even when those choices end up hurting ourselves or others.
In our Wesleyan tradition, we believe in the Sovereignty of God insofar as we’re talking about the ultimate triumph of good over evil. We believe that goodness triumphs, that love wins, that God’s redemption of the world cannot be stopped. But day to day, our Methodist heritage points us toward careful consideration of how we talk about the causes of the suffering we experience. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, deals with this by speaking about God as a loving parent. In his sermon “On Family Religion,” Wesley writes, “It is [God] that makes the grass green and the flowers grow; that makes the trees green, and the fruit to come upon them!  Think what [God] can do!  [God] can do whatever [God] pleases. [God] can strike me or you dead in a moment.  But [God] loves you; [God] loves to do you good.  [God] loves to make you happy. Should you not then love [God]!” So, is God sovereign? Yes, but we give thanks that God who could do anything chooses to love us, and choose to let us choose in return. 

About the Bible: 
What does scripture say about women leading/pastoring a church. I get asked this by some fellow Christians that believe only men should pastor a church.

        First, asking “should women be pastors?” requires us to think about how we interpret the Bible. We have to ask two initial questions to interpret passages that speak to women in ministry: what does the author of a text mean? Where they speaking about a specific situation or giving general advice? That’s part 1. So when Paul says things like that women should “keep silent” in churches, is he reacting to a particular situation he was encountering? He was writing a letter to the Corinthians and telling them a lot about how to be a better faith community, correcting a lot practices that weren’t building up the body of Christ. Was there some specific incident of women speaking up that had caused division? We can’t know for certain. We don’t have all the information. But we wonder. Notice – Paul doesn’t say there that women just shouldn’t be pastors, preachers. He says they shouldn’t speak in worship services. Even traditions that don’t support women as pastors usually incorporate women into worship leadership. If we’re basing no women as pastors on these verses in Paul, how can we let women be heard in worship at all? 
Part 2 is asking if something is contextual and bound by the cultural limits of the day, or if it is meant to be an eternal truth. For example, elsewhere Paul says that women shouldn’t have their heads uncovered, or wear gold, or wear braids. We’ve (in most traditions) decided that these were cultural instructions, rather than God’s eternal word on something. We wear braids, and gold, and have uncovered heads, and think nothing of it. How do we decide what is cultural and what is timeless? It’s not easy! We do it carefully, with study, with discernment, with prayer, with wisdom from people of faith, etc. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, said that we have to look to the whole scope and tenor of the Bible to interpret individual verses. So when an individual verse is hard to understand, we look to the main message of the whole Bible to figure it out.
         So what does the whole Bible tell us about women? That men and women are made in the image of God. That in Christ there is no longer male or female – Paul says that too. We ask: Are women preachers in the Bible? Well, who was the very first to announce the gospel, the good news that Jesus was not in the tomb but alive, the news that is the cornerstone of our faith? Well, of course, it was the women! The first messengers of the good news. Paul frequently refers to women who are leaders in his community in the early church. The Bible names several women as prophets. We see Deborah leading the whole military as a judge in Israel. Clearly, women have authority and can lead in a variety of roles, even if it was not common. 
         Women have been serving as full elders in The United Methodist Church for more than sixty years now, and as preachers for long before that. I think another way we answer this is by “looking to the fruit.” Under the leadership of clergywomen, is the gospel being preached? Are people meeting Jesus Christ? Are they becoming disciples? Are they growing in faith? I’d like to answer that with a resounding yes! 

Annetje talks about covenants in the Bible, ending with this: The Davidic Covenant is the one I am really confused with. I am not going to be belabor the details. I know that it an unconditional divine promise with King David to establish and maintain the Davidic dynasty on the throne of Israel. At what point was the covenant with David made? Why was the covenant made with David?

There are many covenants in the Bible, from Genesis, through the time of Jesus. A covenant in the Bible is an agreement – with legal overtones – between two parties, and primarily between God and God’s people. In the covenants of the Bible, God says to an individual or group: if you promise to do this ________, I will do this _________. The this of our part is almost always that we promise to follow God and God’s commands and God only. In return, God promises different things. To Abraham, for example, God promises that his descendants will be more numerous than the stars. God is always faithful to covenants made, but humans don’t have a very good track record. The biblical record shows that we often break our covenants. God responds to our covenant breaking in anger, frustration, and sadness, but God always wants to try again.  
God’s covenant with David comes shortly after David solidifies his kingship. David has his house, and now David is about to build a temple for God, a house for God, since to this point, the law, the tablets of God’s commands for the people, which represent God’s presence and are stored in the ark of the covenant, to this point they’ve been kept in a tent. David wants something more permanent. But God isn’t interested in that. God has always been on the move, God says, and is doing just fine without a house, thank you very much. 
God continues, promising to David to give the Israelites a time of rest, and promising that David’s line will be established forever. Why does God do this? Well, this is hard to answer! It’s hard to know why God would make this promise in the first place. Frankly, David is not more holy than any other figure in the Bible. He makes a lot of mistakes, and he can be spiteful, and he acts in selfish ways that hurt others more than once. But the Bible does show that David seeks to be faithful to God’s commands. He listens to God, and worships God, and serves God. So that might be part of the why. Of course, it is not always descendants of David who end up ruling Israel. But instead, as Christians we understand that God is faithful to the covenant through Jesus, who the gospel-writers take great pains to show us is a descendant of David. The reign of Jesus is eternal, not bound by any earthly limited-time kingship. Again, why does God do this? As usual, the answer seems to be grounded in God’s love for us. For our good, of course, God sends Jesus and gives us a ruler of heaven and earth who will never fail.   

In the New Testament Jesus promises everlasting life, but don't see this in the OT - is this a promise in the OT too?

*I answered this question without specific notes. 


About Ministry: 
What is your least favorite task of being a pastor?

        There’s not a lot that I truly dislike that’s part of my work as a pastor. Maybe spending long hours at meetings where we feel like we aren’t getting anything “done” and where we leave frustrated – I imagine you all don’t like those either! 
         I also am, at heart, a conflict-avoider. I’ve worked really hard to be better at managing and confronting conflict when it is necessary for a healthy church. But I really hate it when people are in conflict, especially when people are hurting each other and being hurt by each other. I don’t like it when something that I have to do or say or some decision I have to make as pastor will cause hurt and pain. So, I try not to avoid conflict, but I also try to find ways to manage conflict that can be nurturing. 

My question is do you personally share in the joys and hurts of your church members? How has your experience and education as a pastor factored into this? Do you need to distance yourself at times to renew your pastoral strengths and skills? 

Yes, absolutely, I share deeply in your joys and hurts. It is one of the most sacred parts of being a pastor that I get invited into peoples’ lives in such a deep way. People share their highest highs and lowest lows with me, and it is the absolute most holy part of being a pastor. But it is also true that to lead as pastors when people are in crisis, we have to also be able to set the emotions aside in some ways, in order to be able to comfort, lead, share wisdom, help with discernment. I know that nurses and doctors and counselors go through this kind of struggle too. There is a difference, I think, between practicing compassion, the deep-gutted responsiveness to the lives of others that Jesus calls us to, and making the experiences of others into my own. The time I spent in a program called Clinical Pastoral Education, CPE, where I interned as a chaplain at a hospital, was key in helping me do this. 
So, yes, self-care is so essential! Jesus models this, finding time to pray, or be with his closest disciples. I give thanks that you all are so supportive of my vacation time, my renewal time, my days off, my time going to continuing education events or spent with colleagues. These times renew my spirit and give me strength to share in all that you experience. 

1. When did you know that Jesus spoke to you to ensure your Faith was strong enough to make Him a true part of your life? 2. - Test of Faith? What obstacles did you overcome that strengthened your Faith? 3. - With all the hypocrisy in the world, now and throughout life, what did you do to ensure His word was meant to be shared... through you? 4. - How do we as disciples or followers of the Christian Faith ensure that our honest life fulfills our duties as members of the United Methodist Church? 5. - What is your favorite bible verse?

         I would say I still don’t know if my faith is “strong enough.” I relate to the man in the scriptures who says to Jesus, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” When Jesus talks about faith in the Bible, he says that even with a little faith, faith like the size of mustard seed, that even that little bit of faith is enough to do amazing things. 
         But when I think about faith and my role as pastor, I think about two things: When I was exploring my call to ministry, people would sometimes give this advice – “If there’s anything else you can possibly do, do that.” What they meant by this, I think, was that you should only follow a call to ministry if it is something that is calling to your whole heart, life, and being. If it is sort of a toss-up say between being a pastor and being a teacher – become a teacher. I think they meant this to indicate the seriousness of the work of ministry, but also to help me figure out my call. I think, in some ways, for me, being a pastor was the only way I could continue to explore my faith and grow in my faith. I couldn’t imagine a life where I was doing anything else but spending my whole heart and life trying to figure out everything I could about God and Jesus and the meaning of life, to be grandiose but totally honest. 
         When I was in seminary, at the end of my first year, I had what I would call the closest I’ve ever come to having a crisis of faith. This is a pretty cliché time of seminary to have a faith crisis – I hate being cliché, but apparently I was not immune. In seminary, professors challenge you on pretty much everything you hold to be true about God and God’s work in the world, which is so necessary if you’re going to be a pastor, I think, that testing of your faith, the deepening and broadening of it. One of my professors in seminary casually mentioned – not even in class, but at a dinner with some students – that he didn’t believe in heaven, at least not in traditional terms. He was not the first person I’d heard say this, but for some reason, I was just knocked off my feet by his words, devastated, really, because despite considering myself a person who reflected deeply on scripture and challenged myself, I had just never really wrestled with my own thoughts about heaven. What did I believe about eternity and why? Eventually, wrestling with this question, my faith became stronger because I finally had to reckon with the fact that there were things that I didn’t and couldn’t know about God and God’s ways. What I can rely on is God’s goodness, and my faith that whatever God has in store for us is good. So I can wonder, always, but I don’t have to worry. I’m a work in progress on that though. 
         Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, said that we are simultaneously saints and sinners. The church and world will always be full of hypocrites. But the best place for us, hypocrites and sinners, is in the church. As Jesus says, those who aren’t sick have no need of a doctor, and those of us who are perfect – who believe we are perfect – can have trouble finding room in our life for Jesus. So yes, church is a great place to come to be surrounded by saints and sinners all at once. We come, I hope, because we know we need God. And we come so that we can be accountable – to God and to one another. We don’t practice our faith alone, but always in community. It is never just us and God, but us and God and neighbor. 
         My favorite verse is John 10:10. This became my favorite verse one summer in high school. I felt like I “discovered” it. I thought it was just so fantastic that Jesus wants us to have a full life, an abundant life. We can get awfully focused on the thou-shall-nots of the Bible, and less on what we are called to do, and the joy that Jesus wants us to experience.

Sermon, "Theology at the Theatre: The Sound of Music," Philippians 4:4-13

Sermon 11/19/17

Philippians 4:4-13

Theology at the Theatre: The Sound of Music

I’ve talked to you before about the first sermon I ever preached, back when I was a college student, and I preached at my childhood church on the parable of the rich fool, the parable where the wealthy man decides to build bigger barns to keep all of his stuff, where Jesus warns us against believing our lives are all about our stuff. But although that was the first sermon I ever preached, it wasn’t the first sermon I ever wrote. I had a written a sermon a few years earlier, while I was in high school. That same pastor who nurtured my call to ministry and let me preach while I was in college had also allowed me to plan an entire worship service a few years before for the youth of the church to lead. I organized everything, and assigned all the parts, and I wrote the sermon – I just assigned the sermon to someone else to preach. I was far too nervous to do the preaching myself. So I wrote the sermon for my friend Becca to deliver. I don’t have a copy anymore, I don’t think, of that sermon, which I remember was handwritten, not typed, unless I tucked it somewhere in the pages of my journal from that time. But I remember my text: It was this passage that we’ve shared today from Philippians 4. And I chose it in particular because I was so taken by verse 8: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” See, I grew up in the era of the great movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and the word “excellent” was used frequently in a slang style to denote everything that was particularly awesome and wonderful. And the idea that the Bible was telling us we should spend our time thinking about “excellent” things was very appealing to my young mind.

Indeed, Paul does tell the Philippians to be grounded in thinking about excellent and praiseworthy things in their lives, and his short letter is our focus for today as we conclude our series “Theology at the Theatre” with a look at The Sound of Music. The apostle Paul visited Philippi, a city in what was the Eastern part of Macedonia, now Greece, during what we call his second missionary journey, somewhere around the year 50 AD. The church in Philippi was one of the earliest established Christian communities. Paul’s letter to them is written some ten years after his first visit to them. The letter is written while Paul is in prison, although since Paul was imprisoned many times during his ministry, it is hard to determine during which time in custody he wrote these words.[1] Some scholars, however, point to the awareness of his own mortality in Philippians to suggest that Paul wrote this during one of his later imprisonments before he was executed.

            The word “rejoice” appears 7 times in the four short chapters of Philippians, which is a pretty high rate of frequency, especially compared with the rest of the New Testament. It isn’t just a nice word choice, it’s a definite theme that Paul chooses – he calls us to rejoice. This call is notable because Philippians is also filled with a deep awareness on Paul’s part that the span of his life is probably short. He reflects on his sufferings, on his work in Christ, on his love for the Philippians, and on the aim and purpose of his work. While some of Paul’s others letters are instructional, chiding, teaching, Philippians is more of a letter to loved ones whom Paul misses and from whom Paul receives comfort and encouragement as much as he gives it.

            He tells the Philippians, “For [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (2:8b-9a) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (2:14) Grounded in this sentiment, in this longing, and in this reflection on his suffering in service to sharing the message of Jesus, we come to our reading for today.

            “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” Paul does not mean his words to be meaningless or trite, not filler or fluff. Truly, despite the adversity he has faced as a follower of Jesus, he is full of joy, and calls others followers of Christ to the same deep joy. “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

            Paul says he rejoices because of the consistent concern and support the Philippians have shown for him. Indeed, they are one of the few places from whom Paul has accepted financial support for his work in ministry. But, Paul concludes, he has learned to be content with whatever he has. He has known what it is to have little, and known what it is to have plenty.  And in whatever circumstance he finds himself, Paul concludes, “I can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens me.”

            Today we turn our attention to The Sound of Music to think about a life of rejoicing in the midst of great struggle. The Sound of Music is a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The story is set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938, the annexation of Austria by Germany on the brink of World War II. The musical opened in 1959, and it was adapted into the classic movie in 1965.[2]

At the start of The Sound of Music, Maria is a postulant (questioner) at the Nonnberg Abbey, preparing to become a nun. She sings about regretting leaving the beautiful hills where she was brought up. She doesn’t seem to be fitting in to life at the Abbey. She and the Mother Abbess speak together, talking together about the things that bring them joy when life is difficult. (“My Favorite Things”) Mother Abbess tells Maria that she should spend some time outside the abbey to decide whether she is really ready for the monastic life. She will serve as governess to the seven children of a widower, Captain Georg von Trapp. He and Maria grow close and fall in love, even as she helps him heal his relationship with his children. But she’s frightened by her feelings, and heads back to the abbey.   She says that she is ready to take her vows and become a nun, “but the Mother Abbess realizes that she is running away from her feelings. She tells her to face the Captain and discover if they love each other, and tells her to search for and find the life she was meant to live.”[3] Of course, as all this is happening, we also see the rise of Nazism in the background, and watch Maria and the Captain resist being caught up in Austria becoming a part of the Nazi regime, instead fleeing the country secretly.

The song that Betsy sang for us today, “Climb Every Mountain,” comes both at the beginning and the end of the musical, words that encourage Maria to follow her true calling, even if that means not become a nun, and words that reflect the von Trapp family’s calling to resist the rise of Nazism, even if it means leaving their homeland. The lyrics are simple but poignant: “Climb every mountain. Search high and low. Follow every byway. Every path you know. Climb every mountain. Ford every stream. Follow every rainbow 'till you find your dream: A dream that will need all the love you can give every day of your life for as long as you live.”

The real life Maria von Trapp reflected in her autobiography that she was sometimes mad at God, even on her wedding day, because she truly had felt called to become a nun, and it was hard for her to reconcile the new path of life she was taking with what she first believed to be God’s call. But, she said, she ended up experiencing more love than she had ever known, and she believed that she was following God’s will for her life.[4] Her years at the abbey, she said, "were really necessary to get my twisted character and my overgrown self-will cut down to size."[5] The Sound of Music is a fairly light-hearted musical, but the real-life events on which the musical is based were times of true hardship and struggle for Maria, her family, her nation, the world. Maria remained grounded in her faith, committed to following God’s will, and able to find deep joy in life in the midst of everything she experienced.

            What about you? Is your life filled with joy? Paul calls us to rejoice in the Lord always. How can we manage such a thing? This past week in our Disciple Bible Study, we talked about the book of Galatians and the freedom we experience in Christ that enables us to live a life of love and service, not out of obligation, but in response to God’s love and grace at work in us. I shared with the class words that are a part of the prayer of confession in our communion liturgy. We don’t often use the full formal liturgy, but the language in meaningful and insightful. We pray, “Free us for joyful obedience through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That phrase “joyful obedience” can seem to be a contradiction. But actually, it is so descriptive of the life in Christ of which Paul speaks. Despite challenges of every kind, Paul lives a life full of rejoicing because he has such confidence that he is following God’s will, living out the gospel of Christ, and grounding his life in the most meaningful things he can. He knows his true purpose, his true calling, and that brings him a deep satisfaction, a deep joy that transcends the sufferings and struggles he encounters.

            This week, we celebrate Thanksgiving. I hope that we are giving thanks, rejoicing for our life in Christ in ways that are deeper than giving thanks for the delicious food we might eat, as yummy as pumpkin pie might be. May our hearts be filled with the joy that comes from knowing that our lives are built on the solid foundation of a life of discipleship in Christ. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

           

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[1] “Epistle to the Philippians,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Philippians.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Music

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/winter/von-trapps.html

Sermon, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Disciples: Purpose," Philippians 3:12-16

Sermon 1/19/14

Philippians 3:12-16

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Disciples: Purpose

            Today we are starting a new sermon series called: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Disciples. Last week we celebrated a renewal of our baptismal covenant, as we were reminded of God’s promises to us in our baptism, and we also reaffirmed our vows – vows perhaps someone else took for us once, on our behalf, before we could even remember, or vows we took for ourselves – maybe when you were a teen or maybe as an adult when you reached some significant point of decision in your faith journey. As we reaffirmed our baptismal covenant, we said these words: As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness, that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

            For the next several weeks, we’re going to examine each one of those commitments, Prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. But today we begin with a broader question, with the main question in fact: purpose. Then, after we look at each of the commitments individually, we’ll ask ourselves what it means for us, for our congregation, because of our purpose, and because of all those things we’ve considered, and so we’ll talk about commitment, and ask ourselves what commitments we’re ready to make.

            As many of you know I spent this past week working on my Doctor of Ministry research, writing my first chapter in my project. The first chapter is just the Introduction and Rationale. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but it sets the tone for the work. In the chapter, explain why I chose my research focus and what I think I will learn from my research both personally and professionally, discuss any biases I bring to the project and define any major terms I plan on using. My research is primarily related to the concepts of charity and justice, for example, so I had to define what I mean by those terms. I also had to define what I mean by mission. Do I mean mission like a mission statement? Like missionaries who work to announce the good news? Like a mission trip where people help build a house? Like our mission committee where we talk about what service projects we want to do? So I explained that in my paper, mission would refer to purpose. When I talk about mission in my project, I’m talking about the purpose of our lives and the purpose of the church. You’ve heard us talk about the denomination’s mission statement, our purpose statement: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And back in October, I shared with you my understanding of that mission: Our mission is to keep announcing the same good news Jesus announced: of God’s kingdom, as we also keep working to change our lives so that our values are God’s values. The mission of the church is working to invite others to come alongside us as together, following Jesus, we reorder our lives so that what’s most important to God is also most important to us.

But the most important part of Chapter 1 is that I have to state my research question and my thesis. What question am I asking, and what is the answer I’m going to try to prove in my paper? Any of you have written a paper will remember being taught that you must have a thesis statement that you can prove. And you have to state your thesis right up front, as soon as possible: what’s your purpose for writing the paper? What’s it all about? In my draft project proposal, my advisor said my proposal read too much like a sermon – occupational hazard – and that I needed to get to my thesis sooner. Right away. As I write each chapter in the weeks ahead, everything I write must point back to my thesis. The instructions for the paper are clear – I must constantly loop back to my thesis, and my chapters have to support that my thesis is on target. Everything else I write, no matter how long, how many words, is just a kind of evidence for what I say on the very first page. Like a mission statement, my paper must have a purpose, a thesis, and everything else hinges on that.

             Today we read a text from Philippians, a letter written by the apostle Paul to Christians living in what was a wealthy city in the northern part of Greece, written while he was imprisoned under house arrest in Rome or Ephesus. In our passage for today, Paul has just explained that he’s seeking to know Christ and the power of his resurrection by sharing in Christ’s suffering and become like Christ in death. Paul reasons that you can’t claim the resurrection of Christ unless you’re also willing to take up the cross with Christ. That’s the goal Paul is talking about when our text begins: he is pressing on toward this goal, and he seeks it because he wants to know Christ, even as Christ knows him. “But this one thing I do,” he says, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Listen, I’ll admit to you that sometimes the apostle Paul drives me a little crazy. He tends to be a little arrogant, a little boastful. In fact, earlier in this very chapter, Paul says something like: “I’m not gonna boast about my spiritual pedigree, although if anyone had the right to boast, it would certainly be me with the great background I have – but I’m totally not boasting about it.” That’s the Beth paraphrase right there. Paul gets a little full of himself sometimes, and I find myself rolling my eyes. But Paul, I can’t argue, from the moment he becomes a follower of Jesus, from that moment on Paul is incredibly clear about his life’s purpose, and he was clear about how what he thought was God’s purpose in the world. And then, he was clear about what that meant for how he needed to respond, to act, in light of his purpose. And then, he did it. He carried out his purpose with intense devotion and drive and commitment even when it meant imprisonment and eventual death. He was passionate about making sure as many people as possible knew about Jesus and he worked fervently to remove the barriers that others were trying to put up that would keep people from committing to a life of discipleship. Paul had a thesis statement for his life, and he spent the rest of it supporting that thesis. He knew his purpose, and he lived his live on purpose. I admire that a great deal. I aspire to be so clear and directed.     

            I wonder if we are as clear as Paul. Do we think we understand God’s purpose? Do we know our life’s purpose? What is your purpose in life? And then, if we know our purpose, how are we responding, living our lives, in light of that, and in light of God’s purpose for us? Sometimes we talk about doing things “on purpose” or “on accident.” My mother likes to talk about meeting with her life insurance agent when she was still working as a nurse. The agent talked to her about an “accidental death” policy. She joked, “Well, if I die, it sure won’t be on purpose!” He didn’t seem to think it was very funny! When we do something on purpose, we claim responsibility for it. If we say we did something “on accident,” often we’re trying to let folks know that we aren’t responsible for whatever happened. Sometimes, though, I worry that we live our whole lives in sort of an “on accident” mode, never being intentional enough to claim responsibility for how are lives are turning out. We say we have a direction or purpose or set of beliefs that guide our lives, but we don’t state our thesis very boldly, or our life’s supporting paragraphs never seem to loop back to that these statement, or worse, our supporting paragraphs disprove our thesis, showing that whatever we claimed as our purpose was just empty words. We wander through life a bit accidentally, hoping that we’ll also accidentally end up following Jesus. It doesn’t sound like a very good plan, does it? That model wouldn’t make for a very successful research paper, I’m sure, and it doesn’t really sound like Paul, who says, “But this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the call of God in Christ Jesus.

            What is your goal? What is your purpose? And how can you expect to reach the prize without aiming your life purposefully in that direction? I have homework for you this week – and that’s to think about what your purpose statement is. What’s your mission statement? What’s the reason your life matters? I know – that’s a pretty big assignment, the meaning of life and all, and I don’t expect your final answer. Just think of it like a first draft, that you’ll get to revise and revise. The purpose of Elizabeth Quick is to – what? I encourage you to write down what you come up with and carry it with you through the course of this sermon focus of ours. It will be your thesis statement, of sorts, and like with any good essay, we’ll make sure that the supporting paragraphs of prayer and presence and gifts and service and witness that we write together over the next weeks support our purpose. But we have to start with our thesis. What’s your purpose? Your mission statement? If you’re feeling bold, I’d like you to share it with us – the rest of the congregation. Make a copy on a notecard or send it to me via email or facebook – get it to us somehow. You don’t have to put your name on the copy you share if you don’t want to. But I’d really love it if you’d share it with us. Here’s my working thesis: I’m Elizabeth Quick and my purpose is to help announce, in word and in deed, the good news: God’s reign is here, and God is turning things upside down, so make God’s values your values, and follow in the way of Jesus. That’s my purpose. In the weeks ahead, I want to get very specific about whether the supporting paragraphs of my life really hold up my thesis. Can I prove that my thesis true by the way I’m living life? Can you?

            “But this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the call of God in Christ Jesus.” Amen.

Sermon for First Sunday in Lent, "New Arrangements: Old Rugged Cross," Philippians 2:1-8

Sermon 2/17/13

Philippians 2:1-8

New Arrangements: The Old Rugged Cross

            This Lent, our worship theme is New Arrangements. Pastor Aaron and I chose some traditional Lenten hymns, and we will sing one each week during Lent, but we’ll also hear an alternate arrangement of the hymn. Sometimes we’ll hear special piano music, sometimes a special anthem or a soloist, sometimes a recording, but always a variation of some kind on the traditional hymn. In this Lenten journey, as we prepare ourselves to travel to the cross with Jesus, we find ourselves in a season of contemplation and reflection. I was trying to find just the right image to accompany the theme to use on our church facebook page and in our powerpoint presentations during worship, and I was asking for suggestions. One of my pastor friends suggested using a blueprint image, with furniture that could be rearranged in a room. I really like her concept.

Lent is a time when we try to open up our lives for God’s rearranging. Are we open to God coming into our lives and rearranging everything? It doesn’t always mean that God needs to throw out the furniture or knock down the walls or demolish the house altogether – although we need to be honest with ourselves and with God when we do need that. Will we let God rearrange our lives? We might have good contents to offer, but the way God pictures our lives is so much different, so much more than we’ve settled for. Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite poets, writes, "When you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture, and that everything needs just a little cleaning - and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and you see that there's a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you're going to have to start over from scratch." (2) Being a Christ-follower, we declare that we are ready to open our lives up to God, to be examined thoroughly by God's probing eyes, to rid our lives of sin, wrong-doing, injustice, and failure to love God and neighbor. When people decide to “give up” or “take up” something for Lent, I see it as a way of making some room in our lives, changing things around, so that God can create some new arrangements in us. What are you doing that signals to God that God is invited in, not just to redecorate, or freshen up the paint in your life, but to make some major renovations?

            Today, we’re starting our New Arrangements theme by focusing on the Old Rugged Cross. You can see crosses everywhere these days. You can find cross tattoos or cross jewelry. The cross you’ll see me wear most often is one that is more ornate than my typical style, but it was a gift my grandfather gave to my grandmother when they started dating, and was worn by my grandmother, mother, and aunts when they got married, so it is particularly special to me. Churches are adorned with crosses, some simple, but some quite ornate. Crosses on bumper stickers and billboards, crosses made out of every imaginable material. There’s a certain poignancy, irony, that the cross is portrayed in so many ways when it was actually an instrument of execution. It’s an irony that we’ll explore again when on Palm Sunday this year we find crosses fashioned out of palm leaves. The primary purpose of the cross, of course was as something used to put people to death, including Jesus, the Christ. But our understanding of resurrection, our understanding of Jesus’ victory over that very death with life leads us to see the cross transformed – not a symbol of execution, but a symbol of forgiveness, salvation, and re-creation. Still, sometimes I wonder if our frequent use of the symbol of the cross leads us to forget the impact of its meaning. Do we lose sight of the cross by our very frequent use of it? This fear, fear of losing sight of the meaning of the cross, was actually what motivated George Bennard to write The Old Rugged Cross in 1913.

According to the Christian History Institute, George Bennard was struggling with personal problems that were causing him a great deal of trouble and anguish. In his suffering, his mind returned again and again to Christ's anguish on the cross. This, he thought, was the heart of the gospel! The cross he pictured was not ornate, or pretty, or gold or silver. It was "a rough, splintery thing, stained with gore." "I saw the Christ of the Cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption," he said. “The more I contemplated these truths the more convinced I became that the cross was far more than just a religious symbol but rather the very heart of the gospel.” Bennard wanted to put this theme, these thoughts, to music. The History Institute writes that, "In a room in Albion, Michigan, Bennard sat down and wrote a tune. But the only words that would come to him were "I'll cherish the old rugged cross." He struggled for weeks to set words to the melody he had written.

As a Methodist evangelist, Bennard was scheduled to preach a series of messages in New York. He found himself focusing on the cross. The theme of the cross grew increasingly more urgent to him. Back in Albion, Michigan, he sat down and tried again to put together the words. This time the lines came. He later shared, "I sat down and immediately was able to rewrite the stanzas of the song without so much as one word failing to fall into place. I called in my wife, took out my guitar, and sang the completed song to her. She was thrilled!" On June 7, 1913, according to his own account, George Bennard introduced the new hymn in a revival meeting he was conducting in Pokagon, Michigan. "The Old Rugged Cross," soon became one of the top ten most popular hymns of the twentieth century." (1)

I keep coming back to Bennard’s words about wanting his hymn to give the sense of the gospel coming off the page, taking form, and acting out redemption. Our scripture today is from Paul’s letter to church at Philippi, and Paul is encouraging the Philippians to be of the same mind as Christ. That’s a lofty goal, isn’t it? But Paul clearly expects these Jesus-followers to do just that – try, in every way possible, to be like Jesus. “Make my joy complete,” he writes, “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” He goes on to talk about what he means by the mind of Christ: Jesus, though he could call himself equal with God, though he was in the form of God, instead, Jesus surrendered any power, any advantage he had, emptied himself, took the form of a slave, became one of us, lived a life of deep humility, and obeyed God’s direction even when that direction led to Jesus’ death on a cross. This is what Paul wants us to model. When God asks to rearrange our lives, we’re not being asked to do anything that God did not already do in Christ.

George Bennard didn't want a pretty cross, a soft and delicate cross, because he didn't want to lose sight of what the cross signified. Jesus told us that to follow him, we must take up the cross, the cross which symbolizes the difficult, life-sacrificing journey that Jesus ultimately had to make to be faithful to God's call. The Old Rugged Cross is a reminder to us that the faith we claim is more than a tradition into which we are born, more than a gathering of friends once a week. The life we choose is one that sets us apart if we are faithful to Jesus' teachings, one that invites God in, to take our lives, and make them new creations, new arrangements. And as Bennard penned in his tune, we cherish this old rugged cross - the symbol of peace, the symbol of obedience and challenge, the symbol of glory, the symbol of humility, the symbol of the life we choose in Jesus Christ. Amen.

(1) Williamson, Marianne, as quoted in Pulpit Resources, William Willimon, for August 15th, 2004, pg 30.

(2) Christian History Institute, http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/DAILYF/2002/06/daily-06-07-2002.shtml