“Set an Example for All the World to See”
Craig
Anderson
Brookside
Community Church
Matthew
5:13-16 January 13, 2002
If I were
you, I’d be worried about having a 56 year old minister completing his 13th
year of ministry at your church. In a
similar situation a friend of mine said that he was anxious about becoming too
comfortable in a comfortable community.
Same here. But this is a twin
problem: comfort and complacency. After
you’ve lived in a house for 13 years, don’t you stop noticing its flaws? Remember the wallpaper you once meant to
change in that upstairs bedroom? Do you
even see it anymore? Do you care? Complacency.
A study of
long-term pastorates by the Alban Institute, while decidedly in favor of the
benefits, warns that the longer the tenure, the less likely a minister will get
frank and honest feedback.
Reinhold
Niebuhr provides a flip side for this feedback theme. Niebuhr, a fabled mid-twentieth century theologian, wrote in a
diary during his time in a Detroit parish that he understood why there are so
few prophetic voices in the pulpit.
Ministers grow to love their people, warts and all, and also become
reluctant to criticize. When published,
that diary was called “Leaves From the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.”
Another
minister half lamented, “where ever the apostle Paul went there was a
riot. Where ever I go, they serve
tea.” Comfort and complacency are twin
dangers in church and ministry. One can
start to believe that the lesson to take from the story of Jesus calming the
storm is “don’t rock the boat.”
56 and
13. If I were a woman news anchor, I’d
be gone by now. Indeed I got a little
nervous when the word I heard about a substitute minister, was that he was a look-alike
for a young Kirk Douglas and had nice buns!
So what are
we to do? It only seems fair to
ask. If I were you, I’d be
worried. I know I am. At 56 and 13, what’s energizing me? What dreams do I have? What visions do I hope we’ll pursue? These are my responsibilities as minister
and leader aren’t they? To dream and
envision. To try to discern where the
Spirit of the Holy is calling us to go.
I spent some time reflecting on this during my study leave last
summer. With a new year, new members
and an annual report due, let me share some of my thoughts.
It seems to
me in a nutshell, that the question is “what kind of church do we want to
be?” Surveying the landscape, there are
many options, not all of them positive.
It is hard for us to imagine, but with around 300 members we are in the
70th percentile of all UCC churches. That is, we are not a small church, and not even in the middle,
but moderately large compared to others.
New Jersey continues to close UCC churches; with only half of the
remaining ones being viable, and maybe only half of those actually thriving: 13
out of 52, including us. Looking across
the spectrum of denominations there are many churches which resist doing what
we have done for a long time, like ordaining women and gays, using inclusive
language and taking the Bible seriously, but not literally.
There are
also a host of negative stereotypes surrounding churches: images whose
existence has been aided and abetted by regressive and aggressive practices
within the church itself. Churches can
come across as rigid, other‑worldly, judgmental, misogynist, homophobic,
dogmatic, anti‑body, and anti‑intellectual. One major result is that at least half of
your friends and neighbors belong to no church or religious organization at
all. And who can blame them?!
It is no
wonder that newcomers who do show up, ask: “what kind of church are you?” My hope and dream is that we will answer
that we are trying to be a different kind of church: a church striving to
counter the negative stereotypes. A
church which sets “an example for all the world to see.”
Isn’t this
part of our call? Part of what Holy
Spirit summons us to be: an example? A
positive example of a church like it oughta be? In this vein, consider the aphorism which may lie at the deepest
stratum of the many layers of tradition represented in today’s reading from
Matthew. There are five instances where
words like these were recorded in first century Christian communities. Strip away the editorial accretions and maybe
Jesus actually said something like:
Set an example for all the world
to see.
And then maybe he illustrated what he meant, saying:
The lamp
does
not go under a basket
but upon a stand
does not go down in the cellar
but out in the entrance.
Which is to say, if Dominic Crossan is right, that Jesus
challenged his audience of peasants, quite improbably, to reach beyond their
lives within “the confines of small village life” to live “a lifestyle that
will serve as a light for all the earth.”
Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God, was not simply a matter of
words, “not just an idea, but an event, not just a vision but a program.”
If when
Jesus calmed the storm, his counsel was “don’t rock the boat,” then how shall
we explain why he was executed? Comfort
and complacency: safe, middle of the
road cups of tea, seem not to have been his style. So if we are going to be a church like it oughta be, then it
seems to me as if Spirit is saying take some risks, take some stands. Dare to be radically conservative: preserve what Jesus really lived for; died
for.
My vision
for our church in Brookside is that we will take Jesus seriously. Since discovering what has been called the third
quest for the historical Jesus in general, and the scholarship of John Dominic
Crossan in particular, I have been re-energized. Ten years ago, I was running out steam. I didn’t know what more to say and was tired of saying it. Then Crossan published his “Historical
Jesus,” and I participated in a seminar he led at Kirkridge near the Water
Gap. I have been trying to be a
companion with Jesus ever since. It was
like renewing an old friendship from childhood as an adult, the same but
entirely different. Complacency and comfort are twin temptations at 13 and 56,
but Jesus is a challenging, in-your-face kind of companion. “A peasant with an attitude,” Crossan
says. If Jesus got strung up, then I
guess the least a 21st century congregation can do is risk a little
comfort in the richest county in the richest country in the world.
Not long
after getting tired of saying the same old stuff, I also began to discover and
rediscover some alternatives to an orthodox set of standard Christian beliefs
which don’t seem credible or intellectually honest to me anymore. Indeed isn’t it the case for many of us,
that we can no longer speak the faith language of our childhoods with
integrity? To name only two reasons, it
is difficult to believe in light of Darwin and the Holocaust, in an omnipotent
God out there pulling strings to direct personal fate and history down
here. Are we not among a fairly sizable
group of people who are no longer satisfied with what is drawn from the well of
old religion? There are however,
alternatives to stale orthodoxy: compelling ways for a congregation to express
wonder and awe and to bow before mystery in the ordinary. My dream is that our congregation will
continue to search for ways to articulate a faith which is responsive to 21st
century realities.
Heading off
now in a different direction, in recent years a group of my colleagues and I
have run a series of retreats for UCC ministers in NJ. The connecting thread, has been the
revitalization of local churches, and we’ve learned a lot from Nancy Ammerman’s
book, Congregation and Community.
Borrowing from ecology, Ammerman suggests that every church occupies a
niche in its local environment. As a
community changes, so a congregation must either adapt or become extinct. What’s obvious for all to see in our area,
is that the number of families with children at home has increased. Just drive by the schools and see the new
construction. As a church we have been
responsive to these changes, and can boast the largest church school and most
active youth program of any of the local, mainstream, protestant churches. All to the good, but only part of the niche
story.
For nearly
half of this church’s life we have been affiliated with the United Church of
Christ. On one of our clergy retreats
Harry Taylor helped us rediscover, and encouraged us to reclaim the progressive
heritage of the United Church of Christ.
Thanks to Harry, we in Brookside too have been celebrating that ours has
been a pioneering denomination: one
with a lot of firsts. First to ordain a
native American, a woman, an African-American, an openly gay man. We were leaders in the movement to abolish
slavery and to reconcile the insights of Darwin with faith. We were active in
the civil rights movement and published the first inclusive language
hymnal.
Not so
comfortable with recent firsts: with the ordination of gays, with inclusive
language? It’s always discomforting to
be first, to be out front. It’s risky
being pioneers: going against the
grain; including those others exclude.
But isn’t there a niche for pioneering congregations in the larger
ecology of churches: a sub-species, if
you will, which is trying to be different?
Trying to follow the lead of the Spirit. Trying to be radically conservative of the practices which got
Jesus into such terrible trouble, but which remain such a source of challenge
and inspiration?
My hope and
dream is that we will continue to occupy a pioneering niche in our community,
and that we do so more boldly. We’re
known for our youth ministries, and also for our ministries to community. Suppose now that we attempt to more fully
embrace the diversity which is coming to our neighborhoods, just as surely as
it has come to our nation. White
Christian families, with a mom and dad, 2.2 children, a dog, cat and gerbil,
are being joined by single parent families, gay couples, Asians, Hispanics,
households without children, and Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. What if we gave up exclusivistic claims to
Jesus having all the religious truth?
What if we welcomed everyone at God’s table, not just those like us, not
just those who presided in the past, but a new cast of characters? What if we took even greater care at being
inclusive? What if we became a more
worthy example of church, and took our light out of the cellar and set it in
the entrance? Why not seize our
pioneering past and boldly explore a new future? Isn’t there a place, a niche, for a church like that in this
community, in this world, in our hearts?
Let’s set an example for all the world to see. That’s my dream.