Tag: progressive christianity

Beyond Frightened, Terrified, Disbelieving, and Wondering

by Bill Lyons

This sermon was preached at First Congregational UCC in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Year B Easter 3, Sunday April 15, 2018. The text is Luke 24:36b-49

Oh, to have listened to the conversation in the upper room that afternoon.

The morning before our story took place the stone from the tomb in which Jesus had been buried was found rolled back and the tomb empty, the body gone. The women who made the discovery claimed that when they went to anoint the body two men in dazzling clothes announce that Jesus was raised from the dead. The women told their story to the other followers of Jesus who were hiding in the house where they’d eaten Passover with him, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”[1] On the chance that the women had gone to the correct tomb and that it had in fact been violated, Peter ran to the grave and indeed, found the site just as the women had described it.

Later that same Sunday, two of Jesus’ followers were walking to Emmaus when they met a fellow traveler. The conversation turned to the events of the last few days about “Jesus of Nazareth, who [they believed] was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how [their] chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 [how they] had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”[2] The traveler explained how everything that happened was necessary according to Scripture, and in they invited Jesus to spend the night with them. During the evening meal, when the traveler blessed and broke the bread they suddenly realized this was no stranger but Jesus himself! But just as quickly as they realized the truth, Jesus vanished.

The next morning they rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the others in the Passover room their experience. When they got their they learned that Jesus had also appeared to Peter. 36 While they were talking about [all of] this, Jesus himself stood among them and said…, “Peace be with you.”[3]

As you can imagine, 37…the whole group was startled and frightened, [beyond frightened – terrified] thinking they were seeing a ghost! [4]

So Jesus invited them to apply the ancient world’s test for ghosts.

  • He invited them to look at him carefully – Not just for their eyes to register him, but for their whole beings to perceive him with understanding. (v. 39)
  • He invited them to touch him, to check extremities (most easily, hands and feet) for bones, make sure that a person’s feet were touching the ground. (40-43)
  • He showed them his teeth were able to consume food. Eating with them meant he was really human! (vv. 41-42)
  • He explained the sacred writing to them in ways that opened their minds to possibilities about him and about themselves they had not considered or even imagined before. (vv. 44-47)
  • He declared them to be witnesses of what they’d seen and heard with him

When we try to find ourselves in the story we immediately relate to the disciples.  We are ourselves followers of Jesus. In this story the followers of Jesus are described with words like frightened, terrified, disbelieving, and astonished or wondering. It’s easy to find ourselves in those descriptors.

Brennan Walker, 14, woke up late Thursday morning and missed his bus to Rochester High School. The teen, without a phone after his mother took it away, decided to knock on a person’s door in Rochester Hills for help, FOX 2 Detroit reported.

“I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady’s door. Then she started yelling at me and she was like, ‘Why are you trying to break into my house?’ I was trying to explain to her that I was trying to get directions to Rochester High. And she kept yelling at me. Then the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the gun, I saw it and started to run. And that’s when I heard the gunshot,”

Brennan’s mom, Lisa Wright, said, “We should not have to live in a society where we have to fend for ourselves. If I have a question, I should be able to turn to my village and knock on a door and ask a question. I shouldn’t be fearful of a child, let alone a skin tone.”

Lisa Wright said she was at work when received the call about her son. Her husband is currently deployed in Syria.[5]

There is plenty of terror to go around in Syria. If not from the atrocities committed by the Asad regime then by the illegal acts of war committed by the Trump administration. Open Doors, a non-profit that for 60 years has worked in the world’s most oppressive countries empowering Christians who are being persecuted for their beliefs tells us that in Syria 22% of the 899,000 Christians have experienced violence and 86% have experienced pressure in their church, national, community, family and private lives over their religious beliefs. In areas controlled by Islamist militant groups the numbers are higher. But the main perpetrators of persecution of Christians are extended family members.

My own fear escalated with the news of US attacks on Friday. My son-in-law is deployed with the Air Force in the middle east.

And if we are honest, we still wrestle with bodily resurrection of Jesus. After thousands of years of Christian witness and in spite of the witness of our sacred texts, some of us wonder. Some of us, like the disciples in that upper room, are disbelieving.

And like them, our joy in Christ is not grounded in human experience, but in our faith. That’s the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is rooted in our circumstances. Joy is grounded in what lies beyond our circumstances.

It was joy that flooded over me in Washington, D.C. on Palm Sunday weekend as I watched 800,000 people – the largest convergence on our nation’s capitol in history – most of them young people, commit themselves to creating a different future for our land. And tears of joy welled up in my eyes as I listened to Maya and Cecil from this congregation, and 11 other teens from around the Southwest Conference share what they experienced and learned and were going to do when they got home about the national sin of gun violence. It was truly joy watching and listening to them. The circumstances in which they walk into school everyday stole any happiness from the moment. The positive emotions I felt were held in tension with the possibility that any one of those teens could find herself or himself or themself in the midst of America’s next school shooting on the next day they walked into class.

It’s easy to find ourselves identifying with the disciples as they are described in our text: frightened, terrified, disbelieving, and astonished or wondering. But as post-Pentecost Christians looking back at these resurrection narratives, we are more than disciples of Jesus.

We are Jesus in this story. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.[6] We are the living body of Christ in our world. Together – the you in this verse is plural – we are the resurrected Christ in our world.

That means our joy in the Living Jesus pushes us beyond the fright, terror, disbelief, astonishment and wonder of our circumstances to do the things a back-from-the-dead Jesus does in the world. Our text invites us to 5 activities in our world as the Living Body of Christ. Over and over again we read about the earliest church doing these 5 things as the Living Body of Christ in their world. And we need to be about these same 5 things in our world if we are going to fulfill our calling to be the Living Jesus for our world.

  • Invite the world to LOOK at us.

LOOK at the life-giving Power of God at work in and through us. Look at how the life-giving power of God is leading us into the glorious new life of God’s continuing testament – God is Still Speaking – into the glorious new life of extravagant welcome, into the glorious new life of changing the world by changing lives.

The living Jesus wants to show himself to our world, and the world needs to clearly see the Living Jesus when they look at the Body of Christ.

  • Invite the world to TOUCH us to let them know we are real.

They need to touch be touched by a living Body of Christ, to know that we have substance and that we are for real, to touch our bones if you will, our spine of justice and our hands of love, our feet that are solidly planted on the goodness and health of our earth.

  • Invite the world to eat with us.

We need to let the world experience our humanity. Not just that we eat the same food they eat, but that we share our food with them. Let our voice be the voice that calls people to their place at the table – the table of privilege, the table of power, the table of equity.

  • Invite the world to a deeper understanding of the Scriptures.

Progressive Christians aren’t just political liberals with a religious vocabulary. We are the moral voice of the prophets rekindled. Continuing testament, extravagant welcome, and changed lives is what our sacred texts tell us God has been up to from in the beginning. The Bible is concerned with more than human beings going to heaven. As Jesus did that day after his resurrection, let us open the world’s minds to possibilities about God and about themselves they had not considered or even imagined before.

  • Invite the world to be witnesses to the Living Jesus in their midst.

The witness of the world to the Church in their world has not always been flattering or what our God would hope people would be saying about us. We need to acknowledge that, repent, and let the world bear witness to our dying to our old selves and our rising to walk in newness of life (Rom 6). Tell your transformation story. Invite your neighbor into a transformational relationship with Christ and his Church. And celebrate the transformational stories of people changed by the Good news of Jesus. Let the w of terror and fear the Living Body of Christ showed up among them and brought them joy.

Beloved, the living Jesus wants to show himself to our world, and the world needs to clearly see the Living Jesus when they look at the Body of Christ. Our world desperately needs a moment when a living Jesus enters the room with an invitation to wholeness and an offer of peace! As the body of Christ we are that Jesus and this is our moment if we will take it. You may have come here as a disciple of Jesus. Let us leave here as the Living Body of Christ in the world. Amen.

 

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Lk 24:11). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Lk 24:19–21). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

[3] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Lk 24:36). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

[4] Tyndale House Publishers. (2013). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Lk 24:37). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

[5] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/14/michigan-teen-misses-bus-gets-shot-at-after-asking-for-directions.html

[6] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (1 Co 12:27). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

A Plea to Progressive Pastors: Stay Put.

by Kenneth McIntosh

Once in awhile I get asked by acquaintances in my town, “How are things at the new church?” The question comes because I’ve served two congregations in Flagstaff, and folks who haven’t seen me in a few years still think of First Congregational as ‘Ken’s new church.’ I don’t qualify that phrase ‘new church’ when I answer, because I likewise think of First Congregational as my new church. And yet…when I look at the plaque on the sanctuary wall, listing  the pastors who’ve served here, the longest tenure on record is five years, and I’m almost to my fourth year, so I’m actually one of the longer-tenured ministers at this church.

Historically, five years is not a long pastorate. In the 17th and 18th centuries, ministers were expected to answer a call to service and then remain at the parish of their calling until death. One of my favorite spiritual writers from antiquity, Thomas Traherne, said : “It is no small matter to Dwell in community or in a congregation, and to convers there without complaint, and to Persevere Faithfully in it until death. Blessed is He that hath Lived there well, and Ended Happily.”

A millennium before Traherne, one of the greatest influences on Western Christian thinking, Saint Benedict, added a fourth vow to the monastic calling. Monks were already expected to take vows of purity, simplicity and obedience: Benedict added to that ‘stability.’ He explains in his monastic rule: “We vow to remain all our life with our local community. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning the practices of love: acknowledging one’s own offensive behavior, giving up one’s preferences, forgiving.” There’s universal wisdom in Benedict’s appeal.

This call for continuity in one’s place is especially vital for Progressive churches in our time. James Wellman, Professor and Chair of Comparative Religions at Washington University, recently published a blog with the provocative title Is there a Future for Progressive Christianity? on Patheos.  I am sorry to say that Professor Wellman’s research leads him to answer in the negative.  Surveying the landscape, he finds precious few growing Progressive congregations. His take on decline is interesting: he notes that the most influential and successful Progressive ministers are leaving local congregations to pursue careers writing and speaking in other venues. Examples are Rob Bell and Brian McLaren (of course there are exceptions to this—i.e., Molly Baskette ). Wellman points out that Progressive Christian leaders seem more enthused about spirituality –in-the-world than they are about churches as institutions insofar as it’s easier to be successful as a speaker/ writer-at-large than as pastor of a local congregation.

There’s a real allure to this way of thinking. My editor keeps pointing out that while church attendance in America is declining, there’s increased demand for our books on spirituality from a Christian perspective. Why not leave the ecclesial sinking ship and focus on a broader audience? One of my closest friends in spiritual leadership has left working in churches and has no desire whatsoever to return to such employment, finding it much easier and more rewarding to be a speaker-and-writer at large. And another (possibly related) trend: while congregations are declining, the demand for chaplains in the workplace is currently growing, which explains why a number of my previous fellow pastors are now working full time as chaplains. For ministers who remain committed to local parish ministry there is a draw to seek greener pastures in other pastorates. I’m sympathetic: some of them have ‘pastor killer’ churches that are impossible situations, and some are burnt out casting themselves against the granite of congregations unwilling to change.

And yet, there is need for pastoral longevity in local congregations.  Thom Rainer points out that the average US pastor stays less than five years, and lists reasons why transitions are not good for churches (his research is not limited to Mainline churches, but I believe these observations nonetheless apply to Progressive congregations): Six Reasons Why Longer-Tenured Pastorates Are Better.

Most pastors would welcome a magical ingredient that would help their to prosper, yet they may overlook the simplest ingredient for success: stability. It’s a repeated observation—and one I confirm from two of my four experiences as minister—that one’s ministry deepens and becomes more effective after year five at a church. It can be tough to stay in a difficult situation, but it’s rewarding not only for the minister’s personal growth but also for the benefits to the church. In our rapidly changing Post-modern world, the ancient admonitions of Saint Benedict and others may be truer than ever: inasmuch as we can, we Progressive pastors need to stay put.