By Request: “How Should the Church Handle People with Grief, Illness, and Sadness in the Congregation?” - July 21, 2019

Text: Romans 12:9-15

I had a conversation recently with someone who had moved to a new city and was struggling with finding a church that was a good fit for her – a church where it felt like she belonged.  She was looking for a church where she agreed more or less with the theology, where the worship did not have to perfect but was engaging and authentic, and where there was a sense of community.  A place where she would find friends.

She told about visiting a church in her new city.  It was very high-tech, very efficient, it had upbeat soft-rock style music, and a message that was pretty simple, but fine, she said.  The thing about this church that was an issue for her is that nobody spoke to her.  Not a soul.  And as far as she could tell, they didn’t speak a whole lot to each other, either. 

Now I know that for some people, that might actually be a positive.   The idea of a church where nobody notices whether you are there or not can be appealing.  But most of us want church to be a community.  A place where we can find support and encouragement and understanding and help when we need it and a place where we can be a part of something bigger than us.

One of the questions in the Summer Sermon Suggestion Box was “How Should the Church Handle People with Grief, Illness, and Sadness in the Congregation?”  How do we relate to those in the church who are hurting?  It’s a good question, another excellent question.  And this question gets right at the heart of this issue of community.

I remember being at a pastor’s conference a number of years ago.  Dr. Molly Marshall, the president at Central Seminary in Kansas City and a longtime friend of Susan and me was the speaker.  She was talking about ecclesiology – that’s the theological term for our understanding of the church.  She was being purposely provocative, but she questioned whether the idea of the church as a family was actually a good image, a helpful way to think about the church.

I mean, think about what family means – about all that family entails.  If you are hurting financially, you might ask mom and dad to help out.  If you are sick, family members will be there for you.  They might come and stay with you after surgery.  They help you move in at school.  If you get arrested, they may or may not bail you out, but family is who you are going to call.  Your family will put up with your weird habits and eccentricities and even if you have serious differences – differences of opinion, differences of politics, differences of religion – you are still family.  You are still connected to one another.  Family members might drive you crazy, but they are still family.

Molly questioned the idea of the church as family because it may create unrealistic expectations.  If we think of the church primarily as a family, it may lead to disappointment. 

Well, Molly was playing devil’s advocate a bit, but some at the conference were upset that she dared to question the idea of the church as a family.  We talk about our church family and it carries great meaning.  But Molly was asking very important questions.  When we speak of the church as a family, what does that mean and what kind of expectations come with that?

I thought about the question that was suggested for this sermon and it occurred to me that we could really just shorten the question to, “How does the church deal with people?” - period.  Because at some point, we are all grieving.  We all face illness.  We all have times of sadness.  It is just part of life.

Following the death of his wife many years ago, Martin Marty wrote a wonderful little book that was a reflection on some of the Psalms called A Cry of Absence.  He speaks of two kinds of spirituality – a summery spirituality, characterized by happiness and praise and a warmth of spirit.  The summer season of the soul is a time of joy and hope and certainty. 

But there is another kind of spirituality, which Marty calls a wintry spirituality.  He notes that about half of the Psalms fit with this season of the spirit.  When death comes, when absence creates pain, in times of discouragement and worry and fear and foreboding, in times when God seems to us to be absent – these are winter times of the heart.  And Marty notes that we are all subject to these times.  They can come suddenly, without warning.  And for some people, the wintry season of faith is an especially long season.

So maybe the first thing to acknowledge is that when we ask this question – when we ask how should the church relate to folks who are hurting – is that we are not just talking about other people, we are potentially talking about ourselves.

We would all prefer those summery times of the spirit, but I am afraid that we have tried to normalize those times, for lack of a better word.  Or to set them as God’s ideal so that we can be a bit uncomfortable when others are not experiencing happy and cheery times in their lives. 

I think that whatever we are hoping for from the church, we want church to be a place where people are real.  Where we can be ourselves and where authenticity is valued.  That means that we are going to have to understand that at any given moment, a number of us are facing those wintry times of the soul.  Church should not be a place where we feel like we always have to put on a happy face.  It takes way too much energy to do that.  And if we can’t be real and honest with one another, then what’s the point?

Our scripture this morning is from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.  He says, “Love one another with mutual affection.”  The Common English Bible translates this as, “Love each other like the members of your family.”  It’s no wonder we hear all the talk of church family, because it is a Biblical image.   And Paul goes on to say, and I want to focus on this, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

As we think about how to relate to one another – those who are hurting, those who are experiencing a wintry season of the soul as well as those who are in that more summery season – these are helpful words.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, celebrate with those who celebrate, laugh with those who laugh, but also weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn, hurt alongside those who are hurting.

The question, I think, is “How can we best do that?”  The question of how to relate to folks who have experienced grief and illness and sadness seems to me to be asking for such practical guidance.  How do we go about the nitty-gritty work of being church to one another, particularly when people are hurting?

I think about Jesus’ relationships.  Jesus was not afraid to show how he felt.  The shortest verse in the Bible in many English translations is a very powerful verse.  Does anybody know what it is?  “Jesus wept” in the King James - John 11:35.  The setting is that Lazarus had died.  Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha were good friends of Jesus.  We read about Jesus spending time with them in their home.  Jesus had received word that Lazarus was ill but arrived at their home after he had died.  And when he saw Mary crying, he began to cry.  He was weeping with one who was weeping.

One of the things I often hear when a person has experienced a loss, or is facing a difficult diagnosis, or has lost a  job, or gone through a breakup, or is deeply concerned for a friend or family member, is “I just don’t know what to say.”

When Jesus went to see Martha and Mary after Lazarus’ death, his tears said everything that needed to be said.  They expressed the concern of his heart.  I can think of occasions when my family has experienced hurt and loss.  I don’t remember much of what anybody said.  But I do remember folks who were there.  Maybe you have had that same experience.  Simply acknowledging what someone is going through and not acting as though nothing has happened communicates a lot.

“I’m sorry” is sometimes all that needs to be said.  I’m thinking of you.  I’m praying for you.  A nod, a smile, a simple acknowledgement of the pain.   A card or note or email can be express our concern, and it doesn’t need to be wordy.

You may have the opportunity to tell the spouse or child or parent of the one who is hurting that you are thinking of that person, but it is important to also express this directly to the person.  In other words, it is always better to talk to someone than talk about someone.  Rather than asking somebody else how Bruce is doing, ask Bruce.  When others don’t address your hurt directly but talk about you, it can add to the feeling of isolation.

Now, I know a lot of us feel awkward in dealing with difficult stuff.  We may be worried that the person will not want to be bothered, that they are too busy or that it will be too painful to bring it up.  Well, people have a way of letting us know what they need and letting us know if they really don’t want to have a conversation about it. 

If someone is grieving, to say the name of the one who has died lets the person know that their loved one is remembered  – people have expressed to me that they appreciate when others bring up their parent or spouse or child or other loved one in conversation.  To just say the name means that they are held in memory and continue to be important in the community.

Another way to care for those who are hurting is through practical acts of love.  Tangible expressions of concern.  Many years ago, as a Southern Baptist campus minister, I was informed that my job was being eliminated in budget cuts.  It was painful.  In retrospect it was probably a blessing because we were lousy Southern Baptists, but it didn’t feel that way at the time.

The day after I received this news, George Davis called.  He was an older minister, a wonderful guy.  He took me to lunch.  I don’t remember a thing he said but he there just to be there, just to commiserate.  This happened 28 years ago and George died 15 years ago, and I still remember it.

When there is illness or death, tangible things like bringing food or picking up somebody at the airport can mean a great deal.  We had a next door neighbor named Bill Dillon.  He was a Methodist but he was an OK guy anyway.  Bill had an illness and was in the hospital a couple of days.  I was mowing our yard anyway and Bill and Carols’ yard wasn’t all that big so I went ahead and mowed it.  It was a small thing, no big deal.  But I learned that to Bill it really was a big deal.  Such small acts can have a big impact.

This week Susan and I were talking to a friend who had lost her husband.  Susan asked her about things others had done that were meaningful.  She mostly just talked about people being there, about expressions of love, about people who brought in food.  And it was very interesting: she said she really appreciated when people brought a casserole along with a note saying what it was, because you don’t always know what it is.  I wouldn’t have thought of that, but that really is making concern tangible.

A couple more things.  First, there really isn’t necessarily a timeline on this kind of thing. Expressing concern a year after surgery or a cancer diagnosis or through a chronic illness or a death in the family is still a good time.   

What is said when a person has suffered grief or loss or a personal setback may not matter so much.  But what isn’t said really can matter.

Minimizing loss is not helpful.  “You’ll get over it in time” or “Don’t worry, there are plenty of other fish in the sea,”or other attempts to make the loss less than it is are best left unsaid. 

And likewise, attempts to explain the unexplainable are not helpful.  “God needed them more than we did” is not what a grieving person needs to hear.  It doesn’t make God look so good, either.

And then, we don’t need to know every detail about what a person is going through.  One way to care for those who are hurting is to respect their right to keep things private if they wish.  We don’t know everything about our family member’s health situation either.  Along these lines, we always ask if someone would like to be included on our prayer list.

Now going back to Molly’s argument: it is true that the church will not fulfill our every need.  The church is a human institution made up of flawed, imperfect people.  But it is also true that for a lot of us, the church can be closer than our blood family.

And here is the thing: I have observed that our actual families are not perfect either.  They can also disappoint us.

When we in the church can be real with one another – when love is genuine, as Paul puts it – and when we rejoice with those who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping – we as a church can truly help to see one another through those wintry times of the spirit.  And we can truly be family to one another.

How do we relate to folks who are hurting, knowing that is all of us at least part of the time?
With honesty
With compassion
With love
With grace, knowing that we are all imperfect and our efforts to care for one another are imperfect
With words and tangible actions – which are the only way people will really know that we care.

Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  Amen.   

By Request: "Explain Grace” - July 7, 2019

Text: John 1:14, 16-17; Ephesians 2:8-10

When I was in the eighth grade, we were having lunch in the school cafeteria.  I was sitting with Brian and Phil and Bob – we usually hung out together.  Some 7th grade girls were sitting at the next table.  I don’t remember exactly how it got started, but these girls threw some stuff at us and we returned fire.  It escalated a bit.  We’re talking food here.  It wasn’t an absolute no holds barred food fight – I mean, this wasn’t movie quality - but it was headed in that direction.

It was pretty well over, and I was taking my tray to the window to turn it in, when one of those girls came up behind me and whacked my tray from below and then ran.  She was trying to knock my plate and its contents to the floor.  I managed to keep it all from going everywhere, and I responded with righteous indignation.  It is possible that a still half-full milk carton went flying toward their table.  I can neither confirm nor deny that.

By this time we all realized it had gone farther than we really intended for it to go.  I looked around and hoped the teacher on duty had not noticed, but to be honest I wondered how she possibly could have missed it.

We went on to our next class – it was Industrial Arts with Mr. Elliott.  Shop class.  We were working on a project of some sort when a voice came over the loudspeaker.  “David Russell, please report to the principal’s office.”

This never happened.  Students just didn’t get called to the office like this.  If it did happen, it couldn’t be good.  Of course, all of the guys in class – this was shop class, I guess the girls were in home ec – everybody was, “Ooh, Russell, you’re gonna get it!”  I’m sure Mr. Elliott grinned too.

Now Oak Hill School, was a K-8 school.  For my first 8 years, Edgar C. Schiffer was the principal.  But in 8th grade, we had a new principal, Mr. Merchant.  Because he was new, he was a bit of a question mark.  But I could imagine him having a temper.  Throwing food in the lunch room is not something he would take lightly.  I made the long walk to his office, wondering how bad this might be.

Corporal punishment was still a thing.  Mr. Elliott, the shop teacher, and Mr. Jones, the math teacher, would give you an N (for needs improvement) on your report card for bad behavior, or you could take 1 swat with the wooden paddle instead.  If your behavior merited a U for unsatisfactory, you could take 3 swats instead.  Mr. Merchant seemed to be in the Mr. Jones-Mr. Elliott school of discipline and possibly tougher.  Of course, any number of swats would be preferable to calling my parents.

So I was seriously worried as I entered the office.  Miss Elsie, the secretary, was at her desk.  I expected an ominous and sober reception from her, but she was very happy, almost bubbly.  She announced the reason I had been called to the office: I had been chosen as a winner in the Ohio River Arts Festival poetry contest, and I would get to read my poem along with winners from other schools on the public TV station, WNIN channel 9.

I was stunned.  Not that I was a winner in the poetry contest, which was nice, but I was stunned that I had been summoned to the principal’s office and somehow my life had been spared.

I did not think of this episode in theological terms at the time, but this was an experience of grace.  I had received far better than I deserved.  I had received an amazing gift.

A few weeks ago, I asked for suggestions and questions and sermon ideas for this summer.  The very first slip of paper that I pulled out read simply, “Explain Grace.”  I don’t think you could find a more important word, a word more central to Christian faith, than grace.

Just think of all the words and phrases that are related to this word.  I know very little Spanish, but in Puerto Rico I found that just one word can go a long way.  That word is gracias.  It is a powerful word.

We say grace before meals, giving thanks for God’s gift.  We are grateful for someone’s help.  We are gratified by good news.  We offer congratulations to those who have done well.  We try to be gracious and offer welcome and hospitality to others.  If you want to express appreciation for good service, you leave a gratuity.  When our lives have been blessed, we may feel a deep sense of gratitude.  In each of these words there is a hint of this sense of receiving a gift.

There is a lot more.  If you are a musician, you may find music that contains grace notes.  They are not really essential – you might say they are gratuitous – but they add so much to the music.  And then there is a grace period.  If you are late with a payment or your library book is overdue, you may get a couple extra days.  Well, maybe not at the Ames library.

Publishers sometimes have a policy of gracing.  You subscribe to a magazine for 12 issues and they throw in an extra month or two for free, or gratis, hoping you will resubscribe.

There are also those words that speak of the opposite of grace.  If a person is lacking in grace, we might call them an ingrate.  Public figures who go through a scandal may experience a fall from grace.  A truly despicable person has no saving grace – they may even be thought of as a disgrace.  And then when someone is completely unwelcome, that person is persona non grata – literally a person without grace.

The idea of grace as a gift, as an unearned gift, is found all over the place in language and conversation.  And all of this hints at the theological meaning of the word.

The request this morning was to explain grace, which as it turns out is not an easy thing.  The more I thought about this, the more this seemed like it may as well have been a request to explain something like quantum mechanics.

Philip Yancey wrote an excellent book with the title, What’s So Amazing About Grace? In the foreword, he wrote,

Grace does not offer an easy subject for a writer.  To borrow E. B. White’s comment about humor, “[Grace] can be dissected like a frog, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”  

Yancey said that he would be mostly telling stories, that he would rather convey grace than try to explain it.

The theology to try to explain the concept of grace can be tortuous.  There are atonement theories that try to explain how Jesus’ death on the cross provides salvation, the mechanics of grace if you will.  As far as I am concerned, many of these theories do more harm than good, and they certainly don’t look like the God we see revealed in Jesus.

By the Middle Ages, Christian faith had come to be very transactional.  In terms of salvation, a person needed a sufficient amount of merit, based on good works, and the Church at times exploited the uncertainty people felt about whether they were good enough.  Martin Luther reacted to this and helped to set off the Protestant Reformation.  The Reformers focused on faith, not works.  “For by grace are you saved by faith, not of works.”  (And to be fair, the Catholic Counter-Reformation that followed turned more toward faith.)

The bywords of the Reformation were sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura.  Faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone.  We are justified solely by God’s grace.  We do not earn our salvation.

Some of the theological underpinning of the Reformation came from John Calvin.  Among other things, Calvinism speaks of total depravity – we are completely unable to do any good at all by ourselves – and irresistible grace.  Don’t you love that?  If a person is among God’s elect, they will not ultimately be able to refuse God’s grace, said Calvin.  Not everyone agreed with Calvin’s views, of course, and a competing theological system that places greater emphasis on human free will, on our cooperating with God’s work of grace, is called Arminianism. 

Well as I said, the explanations can kill the thing.  I’m guessing that few if any here are wondering about atonement theories and Reformation theology, but I could go on and on about this stuff, so if you are actually interested in it, let me know.  We could have a theological discussion group or we could just go get pizza.

But I suspect that this may not be what someone wanted to hear when they wrote, “Explain Grace.”  So let me share what seems most important to me.

Maybe the best story in the Bible to think about God’s grace is the prodigal son.  You probably know the story.  The son asks for his inheritance – which is tantamount to saying, “I wish you were dead.”  The father for some reason complies.  The son runs off and spends it all on wild living.  When the money was gone, so were his friends, and he winds up with a job feeding pigs to survive, which is as low as it gets for a Jewish kid.  And then we read that he comes to his senses.  He decides to go home and beg for forgiveness.  Knowing he is unworthy to be called the man’s son, we will ask to work as a servant at his father’s house.

But before he even gets to the house, the father throws all propriety aside and runs out to meet the boy to welcome him home.  Before the son can apologize, the father says, “My son who was dead is alive!  He was lost and now is found!”  And he throws a huge party to welcome him home.

That is God’s grace, loving us and welcoming us no matter what.  The grace of God means that there is nothing you can do to make God love you more.  And there is nothing you can do to make God love you less.

How many people are starving to hear that?  How many people are thirsting for that kind of grace, that kind of love and acceptance?  How many people are facing difficult lives and long to be offered just a bit of grace?

Grace is a free gift, an undeserved gift.  But like any gift, it is up to us to accept it.  There is one theological term that may be helpful.  There is something called Prevenient Grace.  Basically, it means grace that goes before us, grace that was there before we even knew it.  Everything is a gift, and even the ability to accept the gift is itself a gift.

Our mission team arrived in Puerto Rico on a Saturday.  We got to the church where we were staying that evening.  The people at that church were very nice, very gracious, and we thought we would worship there the next morning.  I mean, it would be a short commute, about 30 steps.  But we were told that we should go to the church where we would be working, maybe 15 miles away.  So we did.  The music was lively and although I didn’t understand many of the words, I enjoyed it.  Then came the sermon, and it was translated.  The pastor had a very different theology than me, but I decided to overlook that and take it in as a sociological learning experience.  But the pastor and the whole congregation were clearly so happy that we were there.  They were so welcoming and they prayed for our team during the service.

After church we were going to go out to eat and then go to a beach.  It was our free day.  We were asking the worship pastor about a good place to eat.  We wanted to go to the kioskos, a collection of food places by the beach, but we thought it would be too crowded on a Sunday at lunchtime.  He said, No, I’ll take you there, follow me.  We followed him.  We got there and it was packed.  He got out of his car and said, you can park right here.  It was in the grass, beside a little garage.  I was driving the 15 passenger van and after 3 or 4 attempts I backed into the spot.  And then he took us to this open air restaurant.  It was very nice.  We asked but he said he was busy and couldn’t stay and eat with us.

The waiter was so helpful and so attentive, explaining everything.  The owner was very appreciative that we were there on the island to help.  It was a little pricier than I had envisioned, but we all had a very nice meal, a wonderful meal.  Some of us had mofongo, a Puerto Rican dish that is both delicious and fun to say.  We lingered and visited and it started to get to where we were not going to have much time at the beach.  I asked the waiter if he could bring our checks.

We were all floored when he said, “There’s no charge.  It’s all taken care of.”  We had arrived wanting to work, wanting to give, wanting to serve, but this church that had been without power for close to 6 months, that had suffered from the storms and had many members move away and not return had paid for our lunch, and it was not an inexpensive lunch.  It was an expression of grace, and as we each offered grace to the other, our differences seemed a lot less important as the week went on. 

Offering grace to another person is more than giving them a break or trying to be understanding toward somebody who is going through a tough time.  I mean, it is that, but it is more.  It is realizing the gift we have received and sharing that gift with others.  It is knowing that at some level, we are all broken people.  It is living not by a ledger sheet, figuring out who owes whom, but living in God’s wild and wonderful economy.

Grace is when fraternity guys just show up to help us rake leaves.  Grace is having a family emergency and your professor says, you need to be home, we’ll figure it out later.  Grace is having a brother-in-law you disagree with, and you love him anyway.

Grace really can’t be explained fully, because it is not a completely logical idea.  Our explanations can make it transactional, and it’s not.  For me, grace means that God’s love follows us and finds us and embraces us.  Our calling is to live in God’s grace and to share the gift.  Amen.

By Request: “How Do People Get Called to Ministry?” - June 23, 2019

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 12:2-7




Note: this summer, sermon topics will come from questions and suggestions submitted by the congregation.  This is the first in the "By Request" sermon series.

 
We live in a culture in which we are largely defined by what we do.  And by what we do, we are talking about our job.  We meet someone and they ask us, “What do you do?”  They are not expecting us to say, “Well, I play golf, I read books, I visit the grandkids, I watch Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday nights, I make scrambled eggs every morning.”  No, that is not what they are asking.

Our culture is very focused on the work we do, and for many people, it defines us.  It is who we are.

On our mission trip to Puerto Rico, our team met together each evening and had a devotion, and then we debriefed – we talked about what we had experienced that day.  And one of the comments, by more than one person, was that it was refreshing to take a break from our regular job and not to be asked by people, “What do you do?”  That question was not at the top of the list of what people there were interested in.

I was asked about our church, I was asked about my family a couple of times, but mostly I was asked, “Why did you guys come here?  What led you to come to Puerto Rico to help us?”

One of the questions that I found in our Summer Sermon Suggestion Box was, “How do people get called into ministry?”  It is a question about vocation.  But as I start, I realize that not everybody looks at work or vocation the same way that we do as Americans.  It is not such a defining chracteristic for everybody.

Now I guess I would start with a little definition of terms.  We really need to know what we are talking about when we say “ministry.”

We have come to have a very professionalized view of ministry.  We call it “The Ministry.”  But I’m not sure that is especially helpful.  What I have sometimes noticed and sometimes experienced is that people look at a clergyperson as a professional who is hired to do the work of ministry on behalf of a group of a congregation.   But that is not an especially Biblical, or for that matter a historically Baptist view.

Two weeks ago, 14 people from our church went to Puerto Rico.   On such a trip, and especially entering into a different culture that speaks a different language, with the work we would be doing and the place we were working and staying and the food we would be eating all unknowns, most of us were a little uncertain if not a bit apprehensive.  We were tentative about the whole thing.

But the people there were not at all tentative.  As far as they were concerned, we had been sent by God.  We had come all the way from the mainland just to help them.  This was a huge deal.  And do you know what they called us?  We were missionaries.  Missionaries!  We had not necessarily thought of ourselves in that way.  We thought of ourselves as church members going to Puerto Rico to do some work, to help out people who needed help, but no, we were missionaries. 

Here is the deal: we are all called to ministry.  Every Christian is called to ministry.  It is what Christians do.  It is what followers of Jesus do.  So right off the bat, we need to have a more expansive view of ministry.  Ministry is done by Sunday School teachers and deacons and choir members.  Ministry is when you help a person in need, or offer a kind word, or give of yourself for the sake of someone else sacrificially.  Ministry is when you share the love of God.  In Puerto Rico, they understood - we were missionaries.  The challenge sometimes is for us to own that. 

I remember the song we sang the Sunday before we went on the trip to Puerto Rico, when we met at McFarland Park.  We sang it again this morning.  Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you.  Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.  We have been as Christ to one another.  I have observed many of you ministering to each other, truly being a pastor to one another and to me as well.  In Puerto Rico, we were serving the people there, but there were also those times when they served us – with kindness, with graciousness, and with rice and beans and Mofongo.  

There is a mutuality abut ministry.  We are all in this together.  We are all Christian Ministers.  The first thing I would say in response to “How does a person get called to ministry?” is that we are all called to ministry.  Ministry is what Christians do.  You get called to ministry by deciding to follow Jesus.

Having said that, I understand the deeper intention of the question.  How does a person wind up being a pastor or a career missionary or a chaplain?  How is someone called to be an ordained clergyperson?

Well, it is not a one-size-fits all situation.  There are those dramatic calls to ministry when a person’s life takes a sudden turn and God’s call is obvious and inescapable.  We read about the call of the prophet Isaiah in our scripture earlier.  Or you have Saul, blinded on the road to Damascus.  It is overwhelming and powerful and God leaves no doubt about it.

For a lot of people, however, the experience is different.  How did Jesus call the disciples?  “Come, follow me.”  That was about it.  No big pyrotechnics, just an invitation to follow, an invitation to ministry.

Speaking for myself, I was minding my own business as a chemistry major with thoughts of law school, perhaps, but I spent the summer after my freshman year of college working at Ridgecrest Conference Center, which is basically the Southern Baptist Green Lake.  I worked with about 150 other college students, and that summer had a big impact on my life.

I came back for my sophomore year at Evansville and as a result of that summer experience, I got involved in campus ministry back at school.  It was through participating in the Baptist Student Union that I started to feel drawn toward ministry.  Not as a pastor, initially because – my goodness – who would want to do that, but maybe as a Campus Minister, working with college students.  And the sense of call grew from there.  It came about gradually, and it came as I was involved in ministry.

It works like that for a lot of people.  There are an awful lot of second career ministers out there.  They may be active and involved in their church, maybe they teach Sunday School or work with the youth or visit people or serve on the church board or go on mission trips, and through those experiences of ministry, they begin to discern a call to full-time vocational ministry.

Now I grew up hearing, not infrequently, that a person had to be dragged kicking and screaming into ministry.  “If you can do anything else, then do it.”  The language was of “surrendering to the call to ministry.”  Like you are throwing up the white flag and saying, “I can’t fight it anymore.  I give up.”  I’m not sure, but some preachers may have talked that way in order to make themselves seem special and above everybody else.

I have no doubt that it works that way for some people – it certainly was that way for Biblical figures like Paul - but that is not the only authentic way to be called to ministry.  Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers and a Presbyterian minister, wrote maybe the best advice I have ever heard about vocation.  I’m going to read this passage from Buechner:

(Vocation) comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a (person) is called to by God.

There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this.  The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.  If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b).  On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

In other words, what do you love to do that really needs doing?  That is where God calls you. 

Now, I am aware that there are an awful lot of people who have to work in jobs they do not necessarily enjoy.  We have to earn a living.  We have to pay the bills.  In many cases our vocation, our real calling, may be outside of our paying job.  But that does not make it any less of a calling. 

One more thing I need to say about the call to ministry – whether as a career or simply as part of your life as a Christian - and that is the role of the community.  Some of you may have gone on the mission trip because you were encouraged by someone else to do so.  In fact, every single person who went was encouraged to go by the amazing generosity of the church, who made the cost within reach for everybody who wanted to go.  The role of the community can’t be understated.  Some of you may be serving in ministries in our church or in our community because someone said, “I think you would be good at that – will you think about serving there?

As Baptists, ordination is the confirmation by the church of God’s call to a person.  The point is not to have a vast divide between clergy and laity – we are all God’s ministers – but ordination is a setting apart for a specific form of service.

I want to tell you about George Truett.  Truett was a law student who joined a Baptist church near the college he attended in Texas.  The church discovered his teaching and speaking abilities and so they elected him to be the superintendent of the Sunday school.  When the pastor was away he would often speak at worship services.  Church members were so sure of his gifts and calling that they urged him to enter the ministry.  He wasn’t really sure.  He was studying to be a lawyer.  But at a Saturday meeting at the church, the congregation insisted that he was called to ministry.  They pressed their case with him and then they ordained him - the next day.  This was their idea, not his.

Well, it was a different time.  Truett became pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and famously gave a sermon from the steps of the U.S. Capitol arguing for complete religious liberty and absolute separation of church and state.  Historically, that was about as Baptist as you could get. Years later, when Baylor started a seminary, it was named the George Truett Seminary.   I love the story of George Truett because the role of the community in discerning God’s call can be so important and so powerful.

So – how are people called to ministry?  In one sense, you don’t have to think about it too much: if you are a Christian, you are called to ministry. 

In the sense of serving in ministry as a career, the call really begins as we exercise our first call to ministry.  It comes as we listen for God, as we pay attention to our lives, and as we ask, “What do we most want to do that he world most needs doing?”  The call can come and the call is confirmed through the encouragement of the community, who may see something in us that we do not see in ourselves.

And while it may happen dramatically, in my experience it more often happens more organically.  Experiences of ministry like leading a Bible study or going on a mission trip or volunteering with Music Camp or taking part in Youth Sunday - can help to steer us toward further experiences of ministry.

People of all ages, men and women, are called to ministry.  God may even be calling someone just like you.  Amen.

"FBC History: Doing Good" - June 17, 2018

Texts: Mark 12:28-34, Galatians 6:7-10

The powers that be had it in for Jesus.  They continued to ask him questions, intending to trap him.  Is it lawful to divorce?  Should we pay taxes to Caesar?  By whose authority did he do these things?  They gave him grief for healing on the Sabbath – as they saw it, he was breaking the prohibition against work on the Sabbath.  The questions and criticisms went on and on.  And then they came up with this wild question for him: Let’s say a woman marries a certain man and her husband dies.  Then his brother marries her, and he dies.  And on and on until seven brothers have all married this woman, and all of them have died.  The question is: who will she be married to in heaven?

It is a contrived question, of course, and it was asked by the Saducees – who did not believe in resurrection.  In their mind this question would reveal how silly the whole idea of resurrection was.  But Jesus handles it very well.  It is a pointless question to ask because the life to come will not be like this life, Jesus says, and God is God of the living, not the dead.  But simply asking this question set off heated arguments between the Pharisees, who believed in resurrection, and the Saducees, who did not.

An onlooker – a scribe, someone well versed in the law – saw that Jesus had handled his critics and hecklers and opponents with aplomb – that he had answered well.  This is interesting because in Mark, the scribes, maybe even more than the Pharisees, are the ones who really want to bring Jesus down.  But this scribe, seeing that Jesus knows a thing or two, asks a sincere question – a question that an expert in the law might be especially interested in.  What do you say is the greatest commandment?

Jesus does not evade the question, as we see happen so often.  He gets right to it.  “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  If you had to boil Christian discipleship down to its most basic level – if you had to describe Christian life in a nutshell – this is it.  Love God and love your neighbor.

But here is the thing: it is not hard to find Christians, folks who claim to be following Jesus, who seem to find all kinds of ways to not love their neighbor, and justify it by saying that their actions are a part of their obedience to God.  Just this week we have seen the spectacle of a government official justifying the forced separation of children from their parents who have come to this country seeking asylum by turning to scripture.  It is not the first time that someone has blamed unloving, uncaring, horrific attitudes and actions on God.

Then, as now, we can try to be selective about whom we have to be compassionate toward – about which neighbors we will choose to love.  This was actually a real live question in Jesus’ day.  First-century Judaism had boundaries with specific rules about how Jews should treat Gentiles and Samaritans, how men should relate to women, how priests should relate to everyday Israelites, and so on.  These rules were considered vital to social order and not just socially appropriate, but a religious duty.  When it came to loving your neighbor, you needed to be a little discriminating. 
Which raised the question, “Who actually counts as my neighbor?”  This question led to Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus turned the question around and asked, “Who acted as a neighbor to the person in need?”

Loving God, loving your neighbor.  This is the bottom line of following Jesus.  As we look at our history as a church, one of the themes that emerges is that this is a church that has expressed love for neighbor, that has valued “doing good,” as our text from Galatians puts it.

Last Sunday, we remembered our church’s move to Campustown, among other things, and thought about the faith of those who went before us.  This morning I want to think about the ways that this church has been a force for good – not just in the lives of members, but in our community and in our world.

The church had always had a heart for others.  From the beginning it was one of the most generous churches in the Iowa Baptist Convention - a strong supporter, both in dollars and in participation, of mission work.  The church especially saw the campus as its mission field and reached out to students.

Beyond ministry with students, I am impressed with the ways the church has sought to do good – to love our neighbors – in the community and in the world.  Last week we played a recording of a prayer offered at the Groundbreaking Service for this church.  Part of the prayer was that this church might know no barriers of race, no barriers of nation.  In 1949, this was no small thing.  At that time and before that time, the church had members who were people of color, but that was not the case in a great many churches.

Shortly after moving to the building here on Lynn Avenue, we hired Elza and Arturs Zvirbulis as our sextons – they were the custodians and caretakers and lived in rooms in the basement.  They were from Latvia and were displaced persons from the war – they were refugees.  They were placed here by Church World Service, the relief agency of which American Baptists are a member.  We are still involved with Church World Service when we walk in the CROP Walk or put together Hygiene Kits on our Day of Service.

Later, in the 1970’s, we sponsored two families from Laos who were refugees.  This concern for immigrants and refugees is part of our tradition as a church.   

This morning I want to tell you about some more of our church’s efforts at doing good over the years.  Some of you haven’t heard this before, and some of you know it better than I do.  But over the years, First Baptist has made a real mark on the community as we went about loving our neighbor – doing good.

In 1961 the church started the Ames Community Nursery School.  This was the first nursery school in Ames.  A few years later, after the federal Head Start program started, we became the very first Head Start site in the state of Iowa.

In the early 1960’s the first conversations were held about beginning a retirement community in Ames.  Rev. Stan Borden was a key person in those conversations.  Eventually, Northcrest Retirement Community was opened in 1966.  We have official and historic ties to Northcrest and are glad to have a number of members who live there.  Northcrest is part of our legacy of doing good.

Again in the 1960’s, a Jewish Congregation was forming in Ames, but had no place to meet.  We offered our lounge and they met here on Friday nights for several years.  A few years ago, the Jewish congregation celebrated their 50th Anniversary and recognized First Baptist for our assistance in getting started.  Not every Baptist church has had a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah party held in its Fellowship Hall, but we have.

In the early 1970’s a group of young radicals – people like Jenna McCarley and Johnnie Hammond, along with Bill Belli and others had this this idea of helping people in the criminal justice system.  They started with the idea of doing something to help those coming out of prison but wound up trying to help keep people from getting there in the first place.  It was called the Committee on Criminal Justice, and later became the Center for Creative Justice.  Either way, it’s CCJ.  It started with a $10,000 grant from American Baptist Churches.  Unlike every other county in Iowa, and most every other county in the US, lower level criminal offenders in Story County can receive probation through a non-profit entity – CCJ.  These are people who otherwise would not have any supervision.  They meet with their Parole Officer, they may be required to take a class, they work on making good choices and getting their lives together.  It’s not glamorous, it’s not easy, but CCJ has made a real difference in the lives of untold number of people in our community and beyond – and those people have gone on to be productive members of society.  It helps everybody.  This is part of our legacy of doing good.

In more recent years, we have had a part in starting Ames Ecumenical Housing, which provides housing for low-income seniors in our community.  We were a part of starting Good Neighbor Emergency Assistance.  If you need help with rent or paying your utility bill, instead of going around to every church in town trying to cobble together the resources, a person simply goes to Good Neighbor, which represents many of the churches in the community working together.  And the name – Good Neighbor – is no accident.  This is a way of living out Jesus’ call to love our neighbor.

I could go on about our work with Habitat for Humanity, or about a group who meets each month to knit prayer shawls and gives them to people who could use them as a symbol of our care and prayers, or about individuals from our church who volunteer in all kinds of ways, doing good and caring for neighbors.  Or about students and others who give up their spring break to go and build a ramp for a woman in a wheelchair in Tennessee or go and build a fence around a playground for kids in Kansas City, or who go to Oklahoma and work at a children’s home for Native children.

I could go on and on, but it might start to sound kind of braggy and self-congratulating.  And I don’t want it to sound that way at all.  Because we have not always done so well.  We have had times in the life of our church in which we did not excel at doing good and loving our neighbor.  There have been those times when it was a lot easier to give a few dollars than to get personally involved.  And to be fair, one congregation can’t do everything.  One person can’t do everything.  We have to make choices, and sometimes they are not the best choices.

In the 1960’s a motion was made at a deacon’s meeting to have women begin serve communion.  I’m not sure if women were in that meeting, as at one time had deacons and deaconesses, which eventually all came to be called deacons.  At any rate, there was this motion – and it died for lack of a second.  I imagine there was some tension in the room.  It was not our proudest moment.  A few years later, we decided differently, but we have had more than a few of those times when we did not get it right.

So we are far from perfect. But the big picture is that we have this great legacy of doing good.   The problem is, life is a long haul, and there is a choice to be made every single day.  Will I love my neighbor today?

It can be a grind sometimes.  People talk about compassion fatigue, and it is real.  How do we, as followers of Jesus, continue what can be the hard work of loving our neighbor and doing good?

I heard a powerful story the other day that is appropriate for us on Father’s Day.  Daniel Grossman is an ER doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.  A year ago, he was a terrible accident on a mountain bike that left him paralyzed from his mid-abdomen down.  Today, he is back at work, although his life has changed drastically.  A lot of what he now does is physically difficult and draining – he has had to learn to do things in new ways.  Many patients are shocked to see this man in a wheelchair as their doctor.  But it has made it easier for patients to open up to him.  When he tells them they will be facing a difficult road, they know that he has traveled that road himself.

His parents, in their 70’s, are both recently retired college professors.  They spend a considerable amount of time and effort helping their son.  On a recent broadcast of NPR’s Here and Now, Grossman told about the moment that he apologized to his father.  His parents had been traveling in Europe.  They came to Minnesota to stay with him for six months.  He said to his dad that he was sorry, that he knew this is not what his parents had in mind for their retirement. 

For the first time, his father teared up and then became almost angry.  “Don’t ever apologize to me again,” he said.  “This is what I signed up for on the day you were born.  This is my role as a father.”

His father cared for him because that is what fathers do.  We are called to love our neighbor, and we do so because that is what Christians do.

Paul writes in Galatians, “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.  So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”

How do we do it?  How do we not grow weary in doing good?  It is a choice that we make very day.  And it becomes who we are.  We have been blessed by God.  God loves us always and no matter what.  As we experience that love and share that love in our community, it overflows so that we may love our neighbor.  Loving God and loving our neighbor are connected.  Loving our neighbor is one of the ways that we love God.  As followers of Jesus, loving our neighbor is simply what we do.  Amen.