September 21, 2003
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Last week began a series of sermons on the
core values identified by our General Minister and President elect, William
Chris Hobgood. I affirm these core values and I trust they are affirmed by you.
Remember a core value is a value that defines us, it lets people know who we are
and what is important to us. The first core value of our faith, the one from
which the others flow is that Jesus Christ is Lord. If members of the Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ) and of this congregation can claim that core value,
we can handle every thing else. Another core value for us as members of a
denomination and as Christians is that we are each invested in the ministries we
each do. Seven and a half years ago you called me to be the pastor of this
congregation and I said yes --- gladly, completely, confidently yes. In that
call was an expectation that while I am the pastor, we are all in this church
together and each one of us does the work of ministry. We
are people brought together in families and by choice who are doing ministry
together. The old understanding is that we are part of the priesthood of all
believers. For the Disciples of Christ, that means that lay people in our church
direct and order much of the ministry of the church.
We are part of what I like to call the vocation of the
baptized. That is, it is not ordination, as important as that is for me, for
Joy, or for others who have felt that particular call that makes us
servants of God. Rather it is our baptism, our volunteering to die and rise
symbolically with Christ that makes us servants of God and one another. Our covenant, our holy, sacred agreement that we will worship
together, nurture each other, and reach out to others, pray for our members,
friends, this church and ourselves makes us better together. It helps us to get
at the heart of the matter about who we are as spiritual people. I read
somewhere recently that our spirituality is that place where our relationship
with God intersects with how we live our lives. In our spiritual gifts class, we
are talking about how our gifts of teaching, administration, wisdom, vision,
planning, mercy, and other gifts help us do all we can for this church.
Selfish ambition will isolate us and leave us feeling alone. A sense of
covenant will bring us together. According to the letter from James, the church then and the
church now must do all it can to avoid being caught up and separated by what
hinders our working together for the glory of God. We must do all that we can to
let go of what James calls jealousy and selfish ambition. As I agree with James,
I want you to know that I believe in healthy self-interest and ambition that
helps us to do all that we can to help ourselves and our families and those
people and groups we value. It is in our self-interest to do so, because we
benefit when the people and institutions we care for prosper. But understand
that self-interest and selfish ambition are not the same. Scott Turow, an attorney and novelist wrote a book about his
first year in law school called One L, which is how first year students
at his school were identified. He tells the story of watching law students in
the library studying, doing research, and diligently taking notes – it was in
their self-interest to do so. But some of some of those same students would not
just read, study, and take notes on the assigned reading. If they were reading
from reserved books, the ones they could not take out of the library, they would
on occasion tear the pages out of the books, thus preventing other students from
reading them. That is selfish ambition. We are called upon by God to act wisely, but selfish ambition
can cause us to act outside our best selves in ways that are unwise. We want
what someone else has and will do all that we can to get it, for some that means
criminal behavior. For most it means living beyond our means and driving up high
interest credit card debt. It is peer pressure when we are young, it is keeping
up with the Joneses when we are adults. The problem is that while we are
yielding to pressure and going broke trying to keep up, we have no idea who the
people we are trying to keep up with are trying to keep up with and the vicious
cycle continues. It is like being
on a treadmill whose speed we do not control. What results from trying to move
at a pace we did not set is chaos, it is stress, it is not good. It makes us
turn inward and forget that we are called to be servants of God and of the
world. James is concerned with the church still holding on to
worldly views of power and importance. “The Christian community should not
provide another forum for human jealousy and ambition to work themselves out.
James warns his audience not to think they can claim a wisdom they do not
possess (Interpretation
Series. First and Second Peter, James and Jude. Pheme Perkins.
Louisville: John Knox Press, 1995, p. 122). Jeremiah Wright tells the story of a family that was so
concerned about themselves that they refused to pray for anyone else. The man of
the house’s prayer would often be, “God bless me, my wife, our two children,
us four, no more”. We can be thankful that God is not a zero sum God with a
limited amount of blessings to go around. It is not the case that if God has
blessed you, then God has fewer blessings to distribute to the rest of us. God
is neither stingy nor selfish like that, and God does not call us to be selfish
like that. God wants us to be wise. To act without adequate wisdom becomes as it is in Mark a
conversation about who the greatest disciple is. Remember we do better ministry
when we put our gifts and skills and talents together. A side discussion about
who is better or who is the greatest and favorite gets in the way of those
gifts. Jesus and his disciples are making their way to Jerusalem
when Jesus tells them for the second time that that when they get there, he will
be put to death and after three days he will rise from death. In this moment it
is just Jesus and the twelve, passing through Galilee. This is private time for
them, it is as if they are on a walking retreat, spending quality time with each
other. “This is a special moment for the disciples. Like corporate worship or
church school today, it is a moment of withdrawal from the crowd designed to
help Jesus’ followers understand the journey” (Interpretation
series. Mark. Lamar Williamson, Jr. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983,
p.168). The journey will not be easy. These disciples really do have
an important role to play in the gospel story. They hold a mirror up to us, so
that we see ourselves in them. “Called and commissioned by Jesus, given
special instruction at various points in their association with Jesus,
privileged to share intimate moments in his ministry, they nevertheless
consistently get bad press. They say inappropriate things. They keep children
away from Jesus. They are anxious when they should be sleeping and sleeping when
they should be anxious. Continually they misunderstand what Jesus is teaching
and doing” (Texts
for Preaching – Year B. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, p.519). Even now, Jesus is telling them is more than they can absorb,
but they will not ask Jesus what he means. We are like that sometimes. We
don’t get it, we do not understand, but we will not ask questions. I want us
to ask because just like the disciples, what we expect and what we know can be
different. The disciples expected a savior to defeat the Romans and restore
Israel. They knew that Jesus understood himself to be a Messiah who serves and
who shows his followers how to serve with love and compassion. So while the
disciples don’t always catch on, especially when Jesus talks about death on a
cross, one writer reminds us that “the cross was a scandal in Jesus’ day and
in Paul’s day. We are always tempted to ‘make a detour around the Cross’.
Just witness the popularity of the ‘prosperity gospel’ which promises not a
cross, but a Rolex” (www.lectionary.org/mark/o3-09-21,
p.2). They say, “name it and claim it, God wants you to be
wealthy, and in fact, no wealth, means that you have no faith.” Jesus really
says, “measure your faithfulness by your trust in me and in your willingness
to follow my teachings and to serve God’s people.” Wealth is alright, it is
good, probably great to have all that you need and more. But neither wealth nor
poverty have anything to do with our salvation. For people of great means or of
few means, and for all of us in between, what matters is our eagerness to serve
God and Jesus Christ and we do that so much better together than when we try to
do it alone. When they get to Capernaum, the home base of Jesus and of
Peter, they come to a house let’s say it is Peter’s house. Jesus says,
“Guys, I noticed you all talking in an excited way while we were walking. What
were you talking about?” Of course Jesus knows, but he does not say that he
knows and the disciples are too embarrassed to say what they were talking about
on the road. No one will speak up and say, “we were arguing about which one of
us you like best – which one is the greatest disciple, who you trust most, who
will sit next to you in the restaurant and in the meeting places.” There must
have been days when Jesus looked at these twelve and thought to himself, “what
was I thinking?” The good news for the disciples then and for us now is that
Jesus never stopped teaching his disciples and the lessons he taught them are
still available to us. So confronted with the ambition of the disciples, he sits
down, calls them to come close, and he talks to them. Whoever will be first, or the greatest, or the most
important, will be last of all and the servant of all.
Then to make his point, Jesus picks up a child. Now if we are in a house
and there are children running around, it is not at all unusual for us to hold
them, and touch them, and to pay attention to them. But in Jesus’ time,
children were not held in such high esteem. So it is significant that he chooses
to make his point by embracing a child. “It
is not the child’s naiveté or innocence or trustfulness that is highlighted
here, but the child’s lowly status, as one always under the authority of
another and without rights. A chain of relationships is forged: welcome the
little child in my name and you welcome me; welcome me and you are welcoming no
less a one than God. A fellowship of hospitality is established between the
little child, Jesus and God. “Where the disciples have argued about greatness and with
it, of course, power they are directed by Jesus to open their arms to the
powerless. What would happen if the church could begin to think and act this
way? (Texts
for Preaching,
p. 520-521). Here is what can happen. We can extend hospitality in
Christ’s name. We can work together with other churches and groups on matters
of concern to us. After all we are an ecumenical church. We know we are
strengthened when we work with other groups like BREAD as we seek justice for
all in our community, Church Women United as women find ways to study and act
together, and the Columbus Metropolitan Church Council as different
denominations worship and work together. The truth is that we already do so much together. We share
the anxieties of our times: we are in a time of war, we are concerned for the
health and well-being of our families. We are in an uncertain economy; 47 of the
50 states are in deficit as is the federal government.
Our personal finances are uncertain, the same is true in congregations. I
know of very few congregations that are not in deficit situations, many much
larger than ours. If people are struggling financially and if churches are
struggling, is there any wonder the institutions and ministries we support are
struggling? What can we do? The answer is not to pull back, but to put our best
energy to what is important. So we see the value of nurture and outreach,
evangelism and education, worship an workdays. In addition to sharing our anxieties, can we agree to
continue doing other things together? Can we heighten our desire to be faithful
Christians. Can we come to love this church so much that we want what is best
for it, and truly know our spiritual vitality is linked to its vitality. We
place a high value on diversity, not just in terms of race, or orientation, or
income or age, or length of membership here. We place a high value on
relationships, which is why shared meals and fellowship are so important here.
We are better together because Christ has reached out to us
as surely, securely, and as joyfully as he reached out to that little child. As
he does, we are reminded that the disciples who don’t always get it, can also
inspire us. It is true that “if we become discouraged by seeing our own
thoughts and actions reflected in the disciples, we can take heart that they
were reclaimed following the resurrection and set by Jesus to a new task”
(Texts for Preaching, p. 519). It is our task too, and we do it better together than when
we act on our own. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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