Advent One: Being the Church Expectant

The liturgical scholar and theologian Laurence Hull Stookey wrote a series of books oft used in seminary classrooms. Among them is his book on the liturgical year, fleshing out the theological rationale for the rituals and practices common among many Western Christians. His book Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996) is especially helpful in dispelling many misconceptions or thin understandings of the ancient patterns of Christianity marking its days and years faithfully.

For example, when Stookey arrives at the Advent section, he observes,

The primary focus of Advent is on what is popularly called “the second coming.” Thus Advent concerns the future of the Risen One, who will judge wickedness and prevail over every evil. Advent is the celebration of the promise that Christ will bring an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God; the resurrection of Jesus is the first sign of this destruction of the powers of death, the inauguration and anticipation of what is yet to come in fullness. As such, the opening Sundays of Advent bring to sharp focus themes that in the lectionary system have been accumulating for some weeks; for as the lectionary year closes, the Gospel readings, in particular, deal with signs of the end. (Calendar, p. 121).

For many in worship this Sunday, it’s the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. Or, worse, it’s the Sunday when the local church should be just like the local radio station, expecting to open the hymnal to the “greatest hits”. Indeed, a liturgically observant worship planner comes off like Scrooge himself, explaining (hopefully patiently!) that the most popular Christmas Eve service hymns are indeed only for then. For now, enjoy the pondersome somberness of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, for “the primary focus of Advent” is about “signs of the end”.

The longer I have observed the Advent season, the more I love its contrary spirit, drawing us away from the immediate gratification brought on by Black Friday sales and sometimes challenging times of family gatherings or one’s first bout of “blue Christmas” depression. On the first Sunday, we hear texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament calling us to remember that the world is not measured by the “powers that be” but by the faithful witness of the Church anticipating, even as the texts of Advent gain another year’s distance from the first time such texts were heard and inspired hope among God’s people in captivity, oppression or just enduring the long doldrums of years turning into decades into centuries into millennia.

I would hope from the pulpits this Sunday that the Good Word of Advent’s first Sunday is heard. It will be a slower start than most expect, yet we need the time to ponder, to wait and to receive at God’s pace, not our own.

We need faithful Christians who do not rush by the needs of the many in our neighborhoods and nations and engage in ministries of compassion, justice, solidarity and peacemaking on grand and local scales alike. We need churches to rise up from worries about poinsettia placement and enter into the aching questions vexing the hearts of the first-time worshipper in the pews and welcome the stranger at our doors and borders.

Waiting for the Lord is not just fairytale talk for a Sunday morning four weeks before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This first Sunday of Advent is a time not to be the church complacent, but the Church Expectant, acting out in the here and now the fullness of the Gospel that shapes us.

Being a body of believers who is found not yearning for the “sweet bye-and-bye” but looking expectantly for the Lord to come and be involved in the here and now pain of the world as well.

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NOTE:  I share with gratitude what is likely the "last word" while in office for the retiring General Secretary of the American Baptist Churches/USA.   Rev. A. Roy Medley offers a powerful word about the current politics of Syrian refugee acceptance and resettlement.   LINK:  http://www.abc-usa.org/2015/11/24/general-secretary-medley-reflects-on-the-syrian-refugee-crisis/

Without a doubt, it is a good graceful word that makes perfect sense as a last public writing in this role as Roy retires.  (We're a small denomination, so anyone who calls him "General Secretary Medley" must be surely among the uninitiated or at least failed Baptist polity....)

The Confluence of Faith and the World Right Now

The liturgical observance coming up this Sunday is called traditionally "Christ the King" Sunday.   For most congregants, it's the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  And among a few churchgoers (and most certainly all clergy!), it's remembered that the Sunday after that will begin the Advent cycle, though the majority in the pews will dream this next week not of candles but Black Friday deals….

Any preacher aware of the headlines, however, will find this an odd time to think of civic festivity or sacred seasons.  The anxieties, fear and political posturing following the explosion of a Russian plane and the tragedies befalling Paris and other countries less covered by mainstream US media occupy the minds of many pastors and congregants.  The French President speaks of being "at war" after the attacks.  Within a few days, over thirty governors of U.S. states vowed no interest in Syrian refugee resettlement citing security and immigration screening concerns.  Social media posts continue to fill my Facebook feed with cross-posted news stories of persons being beaten or verbally harassed in retaliation for happening to be a Muslim, appearing to fit a stereotype in the attacker's mind, or otherwise somehow suspect.

Perhaps right now is the best time for the Church to hear the texts, sing the hymns and offer prayers  focused on Christ the King Sunday with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday around the corner.  For the former, we celebrate Christ as a benevolent, peaceable ruler, not aloof but alongside the suffering of the world.  The marks of pain and suffering are to be found readily on the glorified Resurrected One, so why not call the Church be summoned and even chastened into action and solidarity with the suffering people of the world?   The refugee, the stranger, and the person who we define in oppositional terms to ourselves (and our sense of safety and security) is indeed said to be the Christ walking to us, yearning for our welcome.

In turn, the civic holiday of Thanksgiving should remind us that the majority of U.S. citizens are themselves the descendants of a multitude of nations, races and ethnicities.  We are a plurality of ideologies, theologies and moralities.  There is no one singular American archetype, even as our culture and politics tend to privilege the Euro/white, male and affluent as the arbiters of the status quo.  The celebration of Thanksgiving is a reminder of civic pride as well as a reminder that our nation's history is built upon ideologies that have their shadow sides (i.e. colonialism, Manifest Destiny and no small dose of American exceptionalism).   A refugee or immigrant should be welcomed, as our forebears themselves were welcomed. 

As I noted on my Facebook status earlier this week, I try to move in the midst of these troubling times with profound sorrow for the hurt and the anger and the violence occupying our minds and fueling our fears.  My family name (Hugenot or Huguenot) is synonymous with religious conflicts between Christians.  I am the descendant of immigrants who arrived in the US from France in the 1830s.  Subsequent generations moved across the country as it developed and opportunities for a better life beckoned.  I humbly suggest we start looking beyond present day panic and welcome the stranger, the refugee and the "other" at our door.

Thus we are living into the positive side of the Thanksgiving civic holiday.  And at Sunday morning worship this weekend, we are hearing of the true Kingdom/Reign and how to ensure our Ruler knows us when coming to separate those who lived the gospel ways of compassion and care from those who chose to live as if nobody else mattered.  

Affirming the ministry of the many not the one

Members of the congregation gather around
to lay hands and bless their newly called lay pastor
at the South New Berlin Baptist Church (NY).

Part of my work involves celebrating the "big moments" in the life of a local church or a pastor's ministerial journey. Recently, I was asked to represent the ABC New York State Region at two installations of local church pastors. One pastor is in the midst of the Lay Study program and serving in a rural central New York congregation where he grew up. Another pastor attended seminary as a second career student and was called in recent months to serve as a pastor shared by two congregations in the Adirondacks.

Here are some thoughts I have shared with these recent churches celebrating the call of a new minister and the commitment such work takes for the part-time pastor and the many called to be "church".   (NOTE:  In both cases, I contextualized these remarks to reflect the individuals being called to these churches and celebrating unique strengths of their respective congregations.  This version is reset for a general audience readership.)

Often, we talk about ministry as a vocation, a calling to sacred work, particularly in the case of a minister who is ordained and spends her life serving the needs of Christ and the Church. Alas, the word “vocation” was not meant just for the ordained pastor. Indeed, every Christian is called to be a minister, and we Baptists affirm the priesthood of all believers. Yet in practice, many churches become accustomed to the priesthood of the believer, that is, the pastor who is implicitly or outright told “do the ministry for us”.

Understanding that pastors do suffer from a habit of taking on more than they should (or taking on everything but Sabbath and rest), the pattern becomes problematic, and very little ministry gets done, as it is left increasingly to the “one” rather than the “many” working together.

I give this cautionary tale at the outset to remind us of why when we talk of God’s call in our midst, it is not just to those who go and study to be a minister of the Gospel. This word on vocation is for the whole people of God, for we are all gifted uniquely and particularly for furthering the gospel. Each of us has something to add to the work of the ministry. From the pulpit to the person in the back pew, each of us has a vocation, a calling, to serve God and make the gospel known. Some of us may be ordained to this work, dedicated and set aside to a lifetime’s worth, but no Christian is without a call from God to serve in some manner in a way where those gifts of the Spirit are active and engaged in ways that serve God and neighbor alike.

So a sense of call for all congregants is especially important as a church involved with a bi-vocational pastor (that is, one who is part-time in active ministry and the other part is a matter of earning income elsewhere to help make ends meet for their household). The pastor was called to serve as your pastor, yet the call of God on each of you has not gone away once the pastor arrived on the scene. Your gifts to help the ministry and mission of this church flourish are needed and also, the church could not reach its higher potential if it was just left up to the “priesthood of the one”. All of you are called into this, especially now and in this model of ministry.

So you are here today not only to affirm your pastor’s gifts for ministry. You are here today to affirm to one another and to your pastor that you will be committed to the work of the church. You are installing a pastor as well as holding one another in prayer and accountability that you too will help with the ministry. A pastor cannot do much alone. None of us can. Indeed, hear the good news that the Lord has sent workers into the harvest fields, and the answer to your prayer of “Who will do this work?” is already answered in you, and you, and you, and you, and the pastor as well!

Let this day be a celebration of a new pastor who will care, teach and lead, yet also a day to celebrate that you are learning to live in a way that harkens back to the earliest days of Baptists. Our earliest generations of forebears did not have a largely well heeled, educated clergy. No, the early Baptist preachers, hymn writers and missionaries may have been closer to “bivocational pastors” in training and a sense of vocation. So, you are being the best of your past as you move into your future.

And futher more, the bivocational ministry is not a matter of one doing what they can part-time (or being at least paid a part-time wage with full-time service given to them). You are claiming your congregational identity as a partner in ministry with your pastor. You are claiming to God and these witnesses from other churches that you intend to be more committed and more involved in the life of this church, even as active attendance, financial resources and volunteer time to serve are at a thinner margin than most can remember.

Bivocational ministry is about calling. What is God calling you to do with your pastor and one another? Bivocational ministry is about commitment. Are you really ready to live within a model of ministry that asks for “believers” than “a believer” being that priesthood? Bivocational ministry is about collaboration. Are you ready to share of your own unique giftedness to help others learn and grow so that they too may join you in discovering the Gospel in all its fullness? 

Book Review: Baptists in America

Kidd, Thomas S. and Barry Hankins.  Baptists in America: A History.  (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).  ISBN # 978-0-19-9977536.  $29.99.

 

To attempt a book on the story of Baptists in the United States is in itself a challenge.  Among themselves, Baptists will be quite aware of what separates and differs, and many of us will find the interpretation of past events a matter of contention.  Fewer will be dedicated to foster intra-Baptist (internal) relations, though that number seems to be growing in recent decades.  To tell a story of Baptists in this country, as well as any global history, necessarily opens up long-held wounds and rivalries.   Indeed, when mentioning this book had been received for review, more than a few Baptist clergy colleagues asked how certain angles of the history were told or expressed concern that there might be “southern” bias when discovering the authors are faculty at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.  Yea verily, the divides between “North” and “South” are felt still among Baptists.

 

I admit I pick up any Baptist polity or history text with similar wonderings, though I have learned over the years to be an appreciative reader of any Baptist identity resource.  While it may not be written from a perspective I readily embrace, each text reveals a little more of the bigger patchwork quilt that Free Church ecclesiology encourages.   Also, I have long appreciated the work of Barry Hankins, who has written perceptively about the rascals and charismatic figures of early 20^th century evangelicalism including his book Jesus and Gin (St. Martin’s Press, 2010).  His co-author Thomas Kidd offered a great text in recent years, exploring the issue of religion and the American Revolutionary period (God of Liberty, Basic Books, 2012).

 

Taking up the task of writing a text, Hankins and Kidd acknowledge that they are themselves Baptists of differing perspectives from one another.  With such awareness of the personal and political dimensions of writing history, especially to be read by other Baptists, they offer an insightful short history of the Baptist movement.  Marginalized at their beginnings in colonial times and quite influential and prolific by the late 20^th century, Baptists are woven into the political and social fabric of American history.  One can appreciate how Baptists spent the last four centuries, reflecting the growth and development of the United States as well as sometimes improving or bedeviling the public square with the particular mindedness of various Baptist luminaries who were intent on keeping the Gospel at the forefront of their engagement with society.

 

The book traces a variety of stories and events familiar to many Baptists, yet the authors take the opportunity to highlight the ironies of history’s unfolding.  Caught up in the crossfire of Revolutionary battles in upstate New York, one town’s Baptists find themselves of divided political loyalties, with some defecting to the arriving British forces.  In turn, some are forced by the British to take up arms against their fellow congregants (p. 53).  Missionaries to the Cherokee tribes in Michigan find themselves struggling to learn the language of the people, and then they scramble to keep connected to the tribes as they are uprooted and forcibly relocated to other parts of the country.  The zeal of mission is confronted by the machinations of governmental policies and the brutality of the Trail of Tears experience (p. 107-10).  Disturbingly over the passage of time, some Baptists will forget their roots as a persecuted minority and become part of the Establishment with implications religious and political alike).

 

Kidd and Hankins explore efforts among some Baptists to enforce doctrinal and creedal standards. As a minister within the American Baptist Churches/USA, I knew of the difficulties experienced in my denomination’s early 20^th century battles over fundamentalist/modernist views.  The co-authors revisit the source material, bringing arguments from long ago into sharp relief, demonstrating how the divergent perspectives among some Baptists are a hard won reality.  Such tussles over biblical interpretation and the autonomy of local churches continue to flare up within ABCUSA circles just as equivalent battles continue within other mainline Protestant polities).  Certainly, the growth of fundamentalism among Southern Baptists could have taken root just as easily within the Northern Baptist Convention (now ABCUSA) if it were not for some quick thinking on the convention floor and a broader sense of the criterion for being counted among the faithful.  

A People of the Last Word (Revelation 21:1-6a)

A few saints never make the official lists
 yet keep the Church and even you and me
honest before God and neighbor alike.

Graphic novels are a big seller in bookstores.  Most often the titles you find will be the more familiar adventures of Batman, the Avengers, Superman and other spandex clad super heroes.  But look more closely, and you will find a variety of works by illustrators who are telling an unique story, blending the conventions of a novel with a comic book.

Among these more unique graphic novels The Book of Genesis.  Long time comic book readers might be surprised to find out the illustrator is the “underground comic” artist R. Crumb, whose body of work makes an odd statement indeed to add the title of “bible illustrator” to his resume.  Crumb spent the past four years drawing the book of Genesis, taking care to read biblical scholarship to develop his take on Genesis. 

Surprisingly, for such an iconoclast, Crumb offers a fairly earnest depiction of Genesis, demonstrating his skill as an artist as well as the complexities of the actual text of Genesis.  For a book about God, creation, and humanity’s “origins”, Genesis does not R. Crumb’s help being controversial.  On its own, Genesis is a challenging set of tales replete with human failings, violence, and an “R” rating.  Sacred stories are closer to our lives than we sometimes want them to be.

On the other end of the Bible, we encounter a story of “the End”.  Ironically, some folks tend to sugarcoat Genesis, yet people tend to remember the Book of Revelation more for its violence than its scenes of great hope.  I grew up in Kansas churches that loved the rainbow over Noah’s ark yet lived in fear of Revelation’s scenes of “the End Times”.  (You would not believe some of the books I found in shopping mall Christian bookstores growing up out in the Midwest….)  

The book of Revelation is filled with stories of the nations of the world going into disarray, armies battling, and Evil’s forces battling it out with the heavenly powers.  To say the book of Revelation tends to be inscrutable and difficult to understand is an understatement.  Nonetheless, if you read the whole book, you see a different story at work, not like the version of Revelation you might hear preached about on many AM radio stations in parts of the Midwest and the South.  The violence, the battle between forces above and below, all of this is in the text, yet a powerful theme resounds throughout: not of fear, but of hope.

The end vision of Christianity is hope.  In the End God shall have the last word.  After much tumult, suffering and pain, the world described by Genesis shall pass away and a new heaven and earth, a new frame of reality, shall take its place.  Reading Revelation, the careful reader recalls T.S. Eliot’s poetic line:  “In my end is my beginning”.  The book of Revelation unveils the brokenness of our world and the transformation, the magnificent future, God alone shall bring about.  Revelation is a passionate book, calling the reader not to live in fear or speculation.  Rather, the Christian is encouraged to live in anticipation and hope.   We live as a people who already know what the last word shall be.  It will not be “anxiety”.  It will not be “fear”.  It will not be even “death”.  In the end, we shall hear “Behold, I make all things new”.  This is the story that Christians live by.  You cannot understand us without it.

Stories have a powerful way of shaping our lives.  Over the years, I still remember my Grandmother Hugenot reading the story of “Stone Soup”.  I have the book among my books, and I will never part with it.  The physical book is precious to me.  The story of “Button Soup”, a tale of a miser who learns to be generous by sharing of his abundance with his neighbors, is one that I claim as a “core story” I retain from my childhood.  I remember with great fondness my grandmother reading me many stories over and over, yet that particular story, a variant of “Stone Soup”, is the one that nestled down deep within me.  The story makes sense of the world, or the way the world ought to be.
  
 As a grownup, I find myself telling people another story, one that I find deep down in my bones just like “Stone Soup”.  You heard our lector tell that story to you a bit earlier, as told by the book of Revelation.  Where I tell this story as a preacher is less a matter of standing in a pulpit and more when I stand on a hillside.  It’s a quiet time when I tell this story.   It’s time for that final ritual up there among family and friends.  We have been telling stories already, sometimes told with rollicking detail during an eulogy delivered by a friend (clergy sometimes blanche at the stories of the deceased that get told at funerals).   Now it’s approaching time for that last word.  What will it be?

At the graveside, I tell one story.  It’s really the best one for times like these.  As the liturgy draws to a close, I am nearing the amen, but I still have this story to tell.  I say in the midst of the sadness and as that sense of finality hangs a bit thick in the air:
“We look forward to that time, when the one who has made us shall not leave us in the dust.  For as scriptures promise, there shall be an end to death, and to crying and to pain, for the old order has passed away”.

The Christian cannot speak of any other last word.  We sometimes forget when the anxieties of the day make us think things are otherwise contrary to our knowledge of the promised End.  Indeed, there are times when we lose sight of that which is promised, or we let another story take precedence.  Those who are able to stay the course, those who are able to keep “their eyes on the prize”, we have a word for these sort of folks:  saints.   The book of Revelation mentions saints quite frequently, the people who live a faithful witness on the earth, even in its broken down state, and once up in the heavenly choirs, just can’t stop praising the Lord.

The saints are those who live in this world with the same frailty and fallibility as any other human being, yet they are able to live a faithful and unshakable witness to Christ.  It does not happen overnight for these folks: the process varies, yet the result is the same:  people who are able to be the faithful and beloved of Christ.  They take the long view, knowing that God will have the last word, not the powers and ideologies of the day, or the belief that things will end in disarray or without meaning.  They see the world as a place where the gospel can indeed take root, no matter how tough and stubborn the soil appears to be.  The Baptist saint Clarence Jordan lived through the difficulties of mid-20^th century racism as a witness to racial reconciliation and peace.  Only a saint could take the long view, despite the many forces against him.  Jordan spoke prophetically when he observed, “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change”.  In other words, God shall have the last word, and it shall be one that is glorious and just.

Now the Church has various traditions and practices about counting the saints.  Some parts of the Church have quite a process to declare a person officially a “saint” of the Church.  The New Testament, though, takes a fairly broad definition of the term, depicting the saints of the Church as those who live a faithful life, one testifying to the gospel.  In other words, no list shall be ever exhaustive of the saints.  Saints are great and obscure alike.  Saints are plentiful, yet not all of them can ever be named adequately.  So, I want to make sure that we remember “All Saints” aright this day.  We are not just looking at the people known far and wide.  We are looking within the range of our own faith journey as well, recalling those saints who made the gospel come alive in your witnessing of their lives. 

Let us remember “all saints” this day, those who know how the story shall end, and remind ourselves that we are likewise called to be a people of the last word.

A Powerful Witness to Power: Malala Yousafzai

Earlier this week, my wife and I attended a documentary featuring Malala Yousafzai, recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.  Malala was recognized for her contributions to education and educational access as a right for all children.  The Nobel Committee notes, "for [her] struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education".  

The documentary "He Named Me Malala" tells her story as a child growing up in Pakitstan's Swat Valley region.  The daughter of a father who valued education greatly and a loving and supportive mother, Malala flourished in her educational pursuits.  Yet, the bitter irony of her upbringing and developing passion for education coincided with the ascendance of the Taliban and its deepening influence around the region.  Soon, girls and young women were being discouraged to attend school and cease their studies. The Taliban's local leader preached an increasingly hostile message about women's education with schools being bombed with increasing frequency and any dissident voices being named in daily radio broadcasts and often hurt or killed on the street or attacked in their home.

Like many prophetic voices, Malala discovered her potential in the midst of such crisis.  She drew strength from her namesake, a late 19th century Afgani woman who rallied her people against the British colonial forces.  Malala's namesake demonstrated great bravery, even as it put her life in danger.  Malala became a frequent speaker and blogger about children's education and the right of all children--male and female alike--to receive access to education.

In October 2012, a Taliban assassin shot Malala while on a school bus along with two other young women.  Malala was sent for emergency surgery, however, the danger to her life from further attacks as well as the needed advanced medical care soon found Malala in Birmingham, England.  The international outrage further raised the profile of Malala and other women in communities where education and other basic rights were being abridged by ideologies, religious and otherwise.

The documentary shares Malala's story to date, weaving documentary crew footage with various speeches and ceremonies where Malala offers her powerful words against inequality and the great potential of children and youth if they are able to access education.  She visits refugee camps, schools in remote villages around the world and brings their voices as well when asked to visit dignitaries and other world leaders.  She is also shown to be a mischievous sister to her two brothers as well as a young woman struggling to navigate various cultural values and religious expectations as the family lives now in the United Kingdom yet yearns to return home to the Swat Valley.

The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize is certainly a great accomplishment for a young woman.  Without a doubt, many more honors and many more years of speaking truth to power for the vulnerable and marginalized are surely in Malala's future!

About her best-selling biography:  "I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban" (Little Brown, and Company, 2013) http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malala-yousafzai/i-am-malala/9780316322409/

About the documentary:   Visit its website and view the trailer:  http://www.foxsearchlight.com/henamedmemalala/

HE NAMED ME MALALA (PG13)

An intimate portrait of Malala Yousafzai, who was wounded when Taliban gunmen opened fire on her and her friends’ school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The then 15-year-old teenager, who had been targeted for speaking out on behalf of girls’ education in her region of Swat Valley in Pakistan, was shot in the head, sparking international media outrage. An educational activist in Pakistan, Yousafzai has since emerged as a leading campaigner for the rights of children worldwide and in December 2014, became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.  89 min.  PG13

Lessons in Power (Mark 10:35-45)

                All of this sounds so familiar:  the disciples have an internal scuffle about the pecking order among them, and some barely veiled jockeying for position takes place.  Who among us the greatest?  Which one of us gets the choice seat by Jesus’ side?  Haven’t we already dealt with this story a few times over of late?
                You can rest assured, if you have been here most Sundays lately the gospel readings have tread down similar paths.  In Mark, chapters 8 through 10, the narrative prepares to move into the critical days of Jesus drawing near the fateful time in Jerusalem, and three times Jesus predicts what will unfold.   Each time, the same pattern occurs:  Jesus predicts his passion.  The disciples miss the point.  Jesus gives a corrective word.   The repetition might seem a bit redundant however we see in each instance, the disciples are not quite ready to embrace the fullness of Jesus’ discipleship.  Jesus asks them to follow a path that is not easy. 
                As the old hymn asks, “Are you able,” said the Master, “to be crucified with me?”  The response to Christ comes from disciples the hymn calls the “sturdy dreamers”, the ones who will say yes to a life shaped by a cross-carrying, gospel attuned life.  Unfortunately, for the disciples in Mark’s gospel, they daydream of power and influence.  They do not know that the real story of discipleship unfolds in sometimes harrowing ways.  As Gandhi said in more recent times, people tend to want a religion shaped by worship without sacrifice.

                The disciples keep falling back into familiar ruts or “scripts” innate to human nature, grasping the ways they know rather than risking themselves fully and taking up the way of Jesus.  Even after hearing of the passion about to come, James and John, the Zebedee boys, are more worried about the seating chart in the glory and power to come.  I find it remarkable that Jesus did not bawl them out on the spot.  No, Jesus keeps it gentle.  To follow the way of Jesus Christ, the power that the world lifts up is not what you learn with Jesus’ teachings.  He gives a lesson about power that the Zebedee brothers might not catch onto right now.  Be careful what you ask for, as the way of Jesus will be one of sacrifice.  Behold the rest of the gospel after this, as Jesus stands up for principles and evidences unshakable obedience to God. 
               By the gospel’s end, it is unmistakable: Jesus’ difficult way and the bravado (the false or untested bravery) of the inner circle followers.  As Jesus dies on the cross, his disciples have scattered, Zebedee boys included.  Those at his right and left are two anonymous men, two criminals, who die alongside Jesus.  The way of Jesus is not easy, shaped by a glory strangely unknown amid the competing views of fame and power.
               The brothers Zebedee need a lesson in humility.  They ask for favor when Jesus comes into his glory.  Jesus tells them of the difficult days ahead and his foreknowledge of the same difficulties await those who follow.  For all he knows, for all he teaches, Jesus still reserves the last word, the final authority to God alone.

              A few years ago, psychologist and writer Robert Coles recounted a conversation he had as a young man while working with Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement.  Day was a fiery spirit, comfortable staring down civic and religious authorities if it allowed the basic needs and rights of people to be met, particularly for those who were poor and marginalized.  Day noted that such a life of service and advocacy was not easy.  Some days, it seemed as if the work was endless and the results were minimal.  Day observed that it can be a long stretch of time before one has a sacred moment, a time when one has great clarity about one’s purpose and service to God.  You have to learn how to live in the times of “sacred moments and long secular days”.  (AMERICA, Nov. 1996)
             The Zebedee brothers want confirmation they are on the right path and indeed will experience a great payoff in the end.  The life of faith does not work that way, though we sometimes try to make faith about what we would like to have rather than what the way of Jesus asks us.  We are called as the finite and fallible people we are, people with individual strengths and weaknesses.  We follow, taking leave of the world’s scripts about what matters as well as our own ego, desires, passions, and myopias.  It is a challenge to put into checks our fears, anxieties, pretenses, and sinfulness, so that we can live out our lives in Christ.  (And that’s just the list of things I need to work on!) We follow, working out the edges of our lives all the days of our journey on this earth.  And to live the life of faith, one able to wait, to watch and pray, this takes a fair acquaintance with humility.
To be humble is to know your place in the scheme of things.  The saints of God, those who followed Christ and are remembered by the Church, were not people with their heads up in the clouds.  They practiced a form of obedience to God and a witness to the gospel that each one of us is called to undertake. 

             As we near “All Saints” in the church calendar, think of those “greats of the faith” known to you in your life, and you will see a common thread:  persons who were merely human yet lived a life of trust in God.  They might be among those some parts of the Church has put on a list declaring them “saints” or they could be people just known to a few.  There have been saints among us, those who follow Jesus intentionally.  And pray for yourself and for these others around you this day that you might too be in this good company.

             Humility often gets elevated to a high and unattainable standard or confused with a veneer of piety people put on so as to appear important or “holy”.  Humility is a stripping down of self, allowing the goodness of Christ to suffuse and reshape us.  You cannot follow Christ without being humble in your discipleship.  From the ancient witness of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, we are reminded of a wise Christian woman named Syncletica, who observed, “A ship cannot be built without nails and no one can be saved without humility”.  (The Desert Fathers, edited by Benedicta Ward, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2003, 161)

             A few years back, I heard an interesting pair of people speak about their faith.  One was Roman Catholic and the other was a Quaker.  The Quaker lecture was given by Bain Davis, the Bennington, Vermont, Friends (Quakers) Meeting.  Bain’s task was to explain Quaker ways, especially in relationship to the tradition’s social activism and pacifism.  For most of the outside world, Quakers are known for being silent in worship (something admittedly puzzling to Baptists) and their commitments to be a “peace testimony church”.  As Bain explained Quaker ways, he noted that the tradition aims to bring the best out in a person by helping a person develop religious habits that enable a more peaceable life.  In turn, a person who is so attuned enables others to discover this goodness within them.  Quakers strive to see the goodness in all persons, even those who might be considered less good or without much good at all.  Humility brings the best within us to the surface and empowers us to move through the world with peace, love, and grace.  We give ourselves over to becoming the person where the label “humble” just seems to fit.

              One of the books I treasure is Henri Nouwen’s book In the Name of Jesus, a small book he wrote on Christian leadership.  Nouwen’s book is a quick read, yet he traces a model for ministry that still serves as a touchstone in my own work.  I read it for the first time on a college choir tour, however, I read it from time to time even today as a reminder of what I am called to do.  Nouwen wrote the book after a period of life where he felt a bit lost.  His successful career in academia had grown less attractive, and Nouwen found himself searching for new meaning in his life and ministry.  Nouwen was invited to live among disabled persons as part of a communal living approach to disability care.  Nouwen served as a chaplain to a gathering of disabled persons and their care providers, learning a markedly different way to serve and care as a minister.  As he recounted later, he was not the Ivy League professor or noted author to the members of this community.  He was called simply to be Henri.

              Humility is not easy.  It disarms us of our pretenses.  To be humble admits the Christian story ends in a way shaped by the cross and points to the new life Christ gives us in his resurrection glory.  We do not seek out the seat at his right or left.  We allow ourselves to flourish in our simplicity and our devotion, not in the pursuit of matters seeking to self promote.  We are humble because we have chosen to be nothing else.

              It is similar to the story drawn from Nikos Kazantzakis’ book about St. Francis.  As Francis instructs his followers on living simply and trusting God alone.  Francis tells his disciples,

              Strengthen the world that is tottering and about to fall:  strengthen your hearts above wrath, ambition, and envy.  Do not say: “Me! Me!”  Instead, make the self, that fierce insatiable beast, submit to God’s love.  This “me” does not enter paradise, but stands outside the gates and bellows.” (St. Francis, p. 309)

               To illustrate his point, Francis tells of a holy man who goes to the gates of heaven after living a devout life.  Each time the holy man comes to the gate, a voice cries out, “Who is there?”  And the holy man says, “It is me.”  The voice says, “There is no room for two here.  Go away.”  The holy man winds up plummeting back to earth, given a chance to learn again and approach the gates when he has learned his lesson.

               Finally, after a number of times approaching the gates with the same result, the holy man realizes his error.  When he approaches the gates, the voice calls out again, “Who is there?”  And the holy man says, “It is you.”

                With that, the gates to paradise open.   (See St. Francis, 309-10).