December 5, 2017
 
 
 
 
 RECTOR'S PEN
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Led by the Holy Spirit,
St. John's mission is to inspire people to grow into the heart and mind of Christ by engaging together in worshiping, serving, and spiritual formation.

 
 
 
 
 

The Rector’s Pen

 
 
 
 
In this week’s column I reflect on Father Ted’s Dec. 3rd sermon, and on the challenges of being a preacher—and a listener--in the world today.


Father Ted preached on Sunday and his sermon included thoughts that have been brewing in and between us in conversation for months. If you couldn’t be in church and would like to listen to his sermon, you can do so by visiting our website: http://www.stjohnsboulder.org/index.php/worship/listen-audio-files and clicking on the link “December 2017”.


Ted+ began by reminiscing about the first days of his ministry when he was told by a parishioner: “Here’s what you need to do at St. John’s.  You need to comfort the afflicted, and you’ll find many of them here.  But you also need to afflict the comfortable.  And there are many of them also at St. John’s.  There are a lot of folks here who need a wake-up call because they are too comfortable with the way things are.” Ted was surprised by those words but never forgot them. Indeed, I think they are the bases between which any priest moves continually each day in the course of carrying out his or her ministry.


Ted observed that in Sunday’s gospel reading (Mark 13: 24-37) Jesus’ admonishment to “stay awake” could be construed as a message of affliction or one of comfort, and he imagined that most of us would prefer the latter:

“I wouldn’t be surprised to discover,” said Ted, “that most of us prefer the softer side of Jesus, the side where he is being compassionate, generous and merciful, the side where he is breaking bread with outcasts and sinners, healing the sick and infirm, and proclaiming good news to the poor.”


“But that is just one side of his ministry.  The other strand of Jesus’ ministry is his prophetic condemnation of the economic, political, and religious authorities of the day, whom he criticizes whenever and wherever he sees injustice, particularly when it involves hurting the poor and the vulnerable.  It was especially when Jesus spoke truth to power that the authorities became incensed and wanted to be rid of him.  And because Jesus didn’t shrink back from saying what was in his heart, and what he knew to be right, it was inevitable that he would be killed for his teachings and way of life.”


Then Ted wondered aloud “whether comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable are mutually exclusive activities or, rather, are two sides of the same coin, [and] which of these aspects should be emphasized on a typical Sunday morning?” It’s a question preachers all over the church have been wrestling with the last couple of years—more-so than usual. Many people come to church on a given Sunday exhausted by the incivility, polarization, and violence they witness during the week, and at church they hope to receive a few words of comfort and peace that offer some relief and help them transcend the incessant noise and worries of the world. It is a very valid thing to expect from one’s church.


Other people come to church seeking to be inspired and empowered to go out and confront and heal the division and hatred around them. Their hearts burn to work for justice and they seek from church a prophetic voice and a sense of guidance that will help them put their Sunday faith into weekday action. This is also a very valid thing to expect from one’s church.


We’re all different personalities at different places on our spiritual journeys. God sets some of our souls on fire to “wade into the fray” and work for justice and peace, and God inspires others of us to help heal the world in very different and perhaps less visible ways. (Furthermore, what any given person comes to church seeking can change from week to week, for life itself changes constantly.) Preaching that one group finds inspirational can turn off others as too political. Preaching that another group finds deeply comforting can taste like Pablum to those hungry for the prophetic voice of Christ.


It is a no-win situation, so where is Christ in it, and where do we go from here? I think Christ is in it calling all of us to stretch beyond ourselves, beyond the spheres in which we most comfortably live. I think of the almost-60-year-old muscles I am called upon to stretch in yoga, and I note that while the act of deep and sustained stretching is often quite uncomfortable (sometimes skirting the edge of painful), the resulting in-flow of oxygenated blood to places previously dormant is so well worth the effort. The “aliveness” and wholeness I feel in my body lasts for hours. Might deep and sustained stretching of ourselves theologically, spiritually, or emotionally yield similar fruit? I think of Jesus’ words in John 10:10: “I came so that [you] might have life and have it more abundantly.” Perhaps Jesus came, in part, to breathe into us, to oxygenate our souls—something that he doesn’t do to us but with us whenever we are ready.


I think the current state of our world asks four things (you may well be able to list more) of us, both we who preach and we who listen:


I think we’re all being invited to cultivate a greater sense of humility and wonder: wonder, that there is this energy of God called the Holy Spirit, who is actually present in the church, and who knows each one of us, and knows us well; and humility that reminds each of us that what we may think we need to hear and what the Spirit thinks we need to hear can be quite different.


I think we’re all being invited to cultivate a greater sense of charity, of generosity of spirit. We can begin by being aware that the Spirit is a co-creator in the writing and delivery of a sermon, and a co-receiver in how that sermon is heard by the listener. I think of the prayer (and hymn text) where we ask:
“God be in my head and in my understanding, God be in mine eyes, and in my looking, God be in my mouth, and in my speaking, God be in my heart and in my thinking.” If we pray or sing this with intention then we cannot be surprised when God the Holy Spirit responds by acting in us!


We cultivate charity or generosity of spirit when we acknowledge that the Spirit may be speaking a clear and ringing message to someone in the pews who needs desperately to hear it, and today that “someone” may not be us. Even when we find this to be the case, even if the sermon doesn’t feel 100% relevant to our particular circumstance, is there some word or message of value we can nonetheless take away as a gift?


I think we’re all being invited to cultivate a greater ability to be broad-seeing, to acknowledge that the world and the church we inhabit today are very different from those we inhabited even five or ten years ago. When you consider that in the last decade alone things like Twitter, Airbnb, drones, and iPads have become part of our everyday culture it makes sense that sermon content is also going to be somewhat different if it is to be relevant. And yet, along with being contextually contemporary, sermons should be a vessel that carries ancient tradition and writings forward into the present time. Said another way, in order to be relevant, sermons must have one foot in our ancient roots and one foot in contemporary culture. We cannot preach by standing only in the past.


I think we’re all being invited to cultivate a greater theological awareness and theological agility. By “theological awareness” I mean what Ted pointed to when he said “Jesus both comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.  He does so out of his deep love for the people he serves.  It’s easy to understand his love when he heals, feeds, welcomes the stranger, and affirms the faith of the people he ministers to.  It’s perhaps more difficult to discern his love when he is speaking prophetically…or when he rails against the injustices of his day.  But his purpose is not to make us fearful but to wake us up to see the brokenness in our relationships and to motivate us to bring about social justice and reconciliation. Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, I believe, are two sides of the same coin, two ways in which Jesus demonstrates his love for us.  It would have been hard for him to do anything less and still be faithful to his mission to reveal the depth and breadth of God’s love.”


By “theological agility” I mean the strength to hold two opposing truths in tension, to be able to hold in our palms a single coin that has two very different sides. It’s in that place of tension that growth happens—that our souls expand. It’s not always a comfortable place to be. It can even skirt the edge of painful. During a particularly challenging yoga class recently I told my instructor that my favorite part of class is when she says “just three more deep breaths.” She laughed, delighted, for she understands how hard it can be to cultivate agility in anything.


Why bother? Why go to the trouble to cultivate agility, awareness, generosity, humility, and a broader way of seeing? As Ted observed on Sunday, “some situations call [for the preacher to deliver] primarily…words of comfort and solace, and other situations demand that we speak prophetically.” As we listen to a sermon our hearts need to be open to whichever sort of message the Spirit elects to offer us, having faith that the Spirit—the life-bearing breath of God— is always moving us toward greater aliveness.