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Court preachers by William H. Willimon
There’s a history of preachers attempting to ingratiate themselves with the powerful; some clergy are always willing to sacrifice the gospel in exchange for proximity to the crown. Louis XIV had his pet court preachers like Bossuet and Massillon who came to Versailles and, in elegant sermons, told the Sun King what he wanted to hear. Encountering mild resistance from some German Protestant preachers, Hitler elevated a prominent pastor, Ludwig Müller, to the role of Reich bishop in his new German Church and the majority of the churches stepped into line behind the Nazis. I suppose we preachers ought to be flattered that even powerful tyrants, who never care much for Jesus Christ, still require the blessing of willing preachers.And in every age, there are willing preachers.
There was an elegant dinner at the White House on August 27 in which Trump thanked his steadfast evangelical clergy supporters. He should have. One attendant at that sumptuous affair was the Reverend Franklin Graham. It is not simply that Graham has faithfully supported Trump; Graham’s uncritical support is unsurprising and justified considering his political commitments. What is reprehensible is that Graham gives specious support for Trump as a Christian preacher.
Check out Daniel 1. It’s salubrious to remember that there was a time when God’s servants like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah resolved not to defile themselves “with the royal food and wine” so they refused the king’s invitation to the royal table. These young men may not have known everything about the faith of Israel but they did know that the price was too high even for extravagant, royal fare.
In an interview with The New Yorker on September 4, Graham demonstrated that there is no sin Trump has committed (and for which he has refused to repent or even regret), no sexual misconduct (“that was years ago”), malfeasance, marital infidelity or bold deceit that cannot be excused by the exonerating words of a skillful preacher. When asked about Trump’s profanity and his derisive comments about African-Americans and immigrants, Graham explained, “He’s a New Yorker” with “a bit of an edge” who is sometimes “blunt.” When the interviewer said that Trump’s comments seem “mean,” Franklin said that people in the media were mean, but not Trump.
Graham is glad that Trump met with North Korea's Kim Jong-un and pleased that he made friends with Putin. “Pray for the president and Putin” because “the media” and the Democrats want conflict with Russia. When some of Putin’s crimes were mentioned, Graham said that the Russian people “love him” and that our hands aren’t clean either. Asked about the Russian attempts to disrupt American elections, Graham said he doesn’t know anything about that but he does know that America has interfered in many, many countries’ elections so there’s “enough wrong to go around on both sides.”
Graham draws a line when it comes to separating children from their parents. Why? “Government run facilities have pedophiles working in them.” However, Graham says that the worst aspect of the whole immigrant family controversy is that Trump’s opponents “try to use children to make him look bad.”
When the interviewer quoted evangelical Ed Stetzer’s comment that evangelicals have gained political advantage with this president but in the process have “lost our morality,” Graham responded with a dismissive laugh, “Some people think too much.”
Throughout the interview, Graham never refers to Jesus.
Stetzer is right; Trump has provoked a theological crisis among evangelicals, whether they know it or not. When asked (September 17) how she reconciles her conservative Christian beliefs with Trump’s lies and infidelities, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I’m not going to my office expecting it to be my church.” Fair enough. But do evangelicals like Huckabee Sanders and Graham really want to make so great a separation between their faith and their ethics, their lives as Christians and their role as public figures? Is Jesus Christ really so irrelevant to statecraft and nationhood.
President Donald Trump speaks at a Tampa rally on July 31, 2018. Bigstock/jctabb
It’s my conviction that the preachers who have sacrificed so much in order to gain a seat at the king’s banquet will soon discover that they have done grave damage to evangelicalism, to say nothing of the harm they have done to the profession of gospel preaching. When the time came for evangelicals to stand up and say, “No!” they had lost the theological ability even to know that there was something worth saying, “No” to.
Though Donald Trump and the marriage and family he has repeatedly betrayed have scant relationship with the church and apparently no commitment to living the principles of the Christian faith, the Trump presidency has become a test of clergy fidelity to our vocations. During World War I, when his congregation fell willingly into the hands of German nationalism and the war effort, Karl Barth repeatedly told them that this worst of times politically could be, in God’s hands, the best of times theologically, “an extraordinary time of God,” a time to recover the grand, though risky, adventure of discipleship.
This week, as I step into the pulpit, I must ask myself a basic theological question, “Is there any word from the Lord?” My delivery of that word to God’s people may not get me an invite to a dinner at the White House, but it’s the word I must serve above all other words.
I know a preacher who, after one of Jeff Session’s mean moves against immigrants, simply stood up in the Sunday service and read Leviticus 19:33, “If a resident alien lives with you in your land, you are not to mistreat him. ...” He read the passage without comment or application except for ending with, “This is the word of the Lord.” Then he sat down.
Two families (“and major givers too”) left his church saying we are “tired of these political sermons.”
I know another preacher (a conservative evangelical!) who, amid a sermon series on the Ten Commandments preached a stem winder of a sermon against the sin of adultery. He included neither the names of adulterers nor any reference to current events. At the end of the service, a couple emerged and said that they were leaving the church because of the “unfair attacks on the president.”
Though neither of these preachers is likely ever to be invited to dinner at the White House (Bible-believing preachers seem to be out of favor at the White House these days), these pastors are my heroes, my models for ministry, living reminders that submission to God’s word takes precedence over sycophantic servility to powerful people.
Thanks, fellow gospel preachers, for demonstrating that our task, as preachers, at all times and places, is to be obedient to Jesus Christ as Lord rather than kowtowing and being obsequious to competing lordlets.
What a great time to be a gospel preacher.
Will Willimon has never been invited to the White House, though not necessarily because of the fidelity of his preaching.
...
Be sure to check out Pulpit Resource, Will Willimon's weekly lectionary-based sermon resource, available online and through a print subscription.
Though Donald Trump and the marriage and family he has repeatedly betrayed have scant relationship with the church and apparently no commitment to living the principles of the Christian faith, the Trump presidency has become a test of clergy fidelity to our vocations. During World War I, when his congregation fell willingly into the hands of German nationalism and the war effort, Karl Barth repeatedly told them that this worst of times politically could be, in God’s hands, the best of times theologically, “an extraordinary time of God,” a time to recover the grand, though risky, adventure of discipleship.
This week, as I step into the pulpit, I must ask myself a basic theological question, “Is there any word from the Lord?” My delivery of that word to God’s people may not get me an invite to a dinner at the White House, but it’s the word I must serve above all other words.
I know a preacher who, after one of Jeff Session’s mean moves against immigrants, simply stood up in the Sunday service and read Leviticus 19:33, “If a resident alien lives with you in your land, you are not to mistreat him. ...” He read the passage without comment or application except for ending with, “This is the word of the Lord.” Then he sat down.
Two families (“and major givers too”) left his church saying we are “tired of these political sermons.”
I know another preacher (a conservative evangelical!) who, amid a sermon series on the Ten Commandments preached a stem winder of a sermon against the sin of adultery. He included neither the names of adulterers nor any reference to current events. At the end of the service, a couple emerged and said that they were leaving the church because of the “unfair attacks on the president.”
Though neither of these preachers is likely ever to be invited to dinner at the White House (Bible-believing preachers seem to be out of favor at the White House these days), these pastors are my heroes, my models for ministry, living reminders that submission to God’s word takes precedence over sycophantic servility to powerful people.
Thanks, fellow gospel preachers, for demonstrating that our task, as preachers, at all times and places, is to be obedient to Jesus Christ as Lord rather than kowtowing and being obsequious to competing lordlets.
What a great time to be a gospel preacher.
Will Willimon has never been invited to the White House, though not necessarily because of the fidelity of his preaching.
...
Be sure to check out Pulpit Resource, Will Willimon's weekly lectionary-based sermon resource, available online and through a print subscription.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William H. Willimon
The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at the Divinity School, Duke
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Re-forming worship: Sacraments traditional and innovative by Clifton Stringer
Worship is ultimately nothing besides our immersion in the dying, burial and rising of our Lord Jesus Christ in communal, and therefore necessarily ritual, celebration and praise. Accordingly, worship is the particularly privileged communal site of the intersection of tradition and innovation in the church.
In this post, I'm going to harvest a bit of the wisdom of 12th century theologian and mystic Hugh of St. Victor for those involved in the reception and construction of worship services. (Hugh is a terrific Christian thinker who taught at the now-destroyed Abbey of St. Victor in Paris.)
For Hugh of St. Victor, the list of official sacraments hasn't yet been set at seven. That happens in the generation of scholars and church leaders after Hugh. And that later list of seven certainly hasn't yet been attenuated to two as it is among many heirs of the Protestant revolution. The consequence of this is that Hugh is rather free with the term sacrament (sacramentum), applying it even to things which develop in the history of the church and which no modern Christian church calls a sacrament.
Yet, Hugh's application of the term sacrament, even as it is very free in a way, isn't at all arbitrary.
In this post, I'm going to harvest a bit of the wisdom of 12th century theologian and mystic Hugh of St. Victor for those involved in the reception and construction of worship services. (Hugh is a terrific Christian thinker who taught at the now-destroyed Abbey of St. Victor in Paris.)
For Hugh of St. Victor, the list of official sacraments hasn't yet been set at seven. That happens in the generation of scholars and church leaders after Hugh. And that later list of seven certainly hasn't yet been attenuated to two as it is among many heirs of the Protestant revolution. The consequence of this is that Hugh is rather free with the term sacrament (sacramentum), applying it even to things which develop in the history of the church and which no modern Christian church calls a sacrament.
Yet, Hugh's application of the term sacrament, even as it is very free in a way, isn't at all arbitrary.
Hugh of Saint Victor, C.R.S.A. / Public domain
Moreover, there's wisdom in how Hugh thinks about all this for those who plan worship today. We can see this wisdom in terms of two interconnected aspects of Hugh's thought: what sacraments are, most broadly, and how sacraments enable us to participate in Christ's dying, burial and rising.
Sacraments, for Hugh, are patterned on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself, as God Incarnate, is the central sacrament in history, the central revelation of divine form in earthly material, creaturely form. And, within Christ’s life, it is the three days of Jesus’ dying, burial and rising which are central. These three days do the plenary revealing/manifesting work of the God who is Trinity, and they do the plenary re-forming work in our lives and in history as a whole. In a word, everything those in the Wesleyan theological stream call sanctification. Sanctification happens, on this account, as the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ in his dying, burial and rising, such that we’re restored in the goodness and likeness of God. That’s to say, Hugh is, like many medieval theologians, very much in earnest about St. Paul’s teaching in Philippians 3:10-11 (CEB): “The righteousness I have comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings. It includes being conformed to his death so that I may perhaps reach the goal of the resurrection of the dead.”
Jesus Christ is the central sacrament in history, and we’re saved as we’re reformed in union with Christ’s dying, burial and rising. But Jesus Christ isn’t the only sacrament in history. For Hugh, there are many sacraments, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and beyond. All of them are sacraments because they may be interpreted symbolically or allegorically, and to spiritual profit, by being interpreted in light of Christ’s paschal mystery (i.e. his dying, buria, and rising). So there are many sacraments, and they’re all Christ-centered. Said precisely, the designation “sacrament” is warranted, for Hugh, if something is a sign which, through spiritual interpretation, aids the faithful in participation in the paschal mystery, uniting them to the LORD and vivifying them with the eternal life of the same.
So, for Hugh, the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist are central, yet many others gather around them, and can even be invented in the life of the church (and Hugh notes instances of popes doing this). Notice how the symbolism of Baptism and Eucharist both center on the paschal mystery. Baptism is an immersion — in Christ’s death — and a rising — in and with Christ. Eucharist spiritually communicates the “body and blood” of the crucified and risen Lord to those who gather around Jesus Christ to become disciples.
Sacraments, for Hugh, are patterned on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself, as God Incarnate, is the central sacrament in history, the central revelation of divine form in earthly material, creaturely form. And, within Christ’s life, it is the three days of Jesus’ dying, burial and rising which are central. These three days do the plenary revealing/manifesting work of the God who is Trinity, and they do the plenary re-forming work in our lives and in history as a whole. In a word, everything those in the Wesleyan theological stream call sanctification. Sanctification happens, on this account, as the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ in his dying, burial and rising, such that we’re restored in the goodness and likeness of God. That’s to say, Hugh is, like many medieval theologians, very much in earnest about St. Paul’s teaching in Philippians 3:10-11 (CEB): “The righteousness I have comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings. It includes being conformed to his death so that I may perhaps reach the goal of the resurrection of the dead.”
Jesus Christ is the central sacrament in history, and we’re saved as we’re reformed in union with Christ’s dying, burial and rising. But Jesus Christ isn’t the only sacrament in history. For Hugh, there are many sacraments, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and beyond. All of them are sacraments because they may be interpreted symbolically or allegorically, and to spiritual profit, by being interpreted in light of Christ’s paschal mystery (i.e. his dying, buria, and rising). So there are many sacraments, and they’re all Christ-centered. Said precisely, the designation “sacrament” is warranted, for Hugh, if something is a sign which, through spiritual interpretation, aids the faithful in participation in the paschal mystery, uniting them to the LORD and vivifying them with the eternal life of the same.
So, for Hugh, the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist are central, yet many others gather around them, and can even be invented in the life of the church (and Hugh notes instances of popes doing this). Notice how the symbolism of Baptism and Eucharist both center on the paschal mystery. Baptism is an immersion — in Christ’s death — and a rising — in and with Christ. Eucharist spiritually communicates the “body and blood” of the crucified and risen Lord to those who gather around Jesus Christ to become disciples.
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And, in like ways, other things can be sacraments too.
One example Hugh gives concerns the spiritual interpretation of a certain candle followed by the catechumens on their way to baptism. Hugh writes:
Pope Zozimus established that a large candle be blessed on the Holy Sabbath of the Pasch, which the deacon blesses after benediction has been received from the priest. This candle designates Christ: in the wax humanity, in the fire divinity; and as it illuminates it precedes the catechumens to baptism, just as once a column of fire preceded the children of Israel as they crossed the Red Sea, illuminating by fire and shading by a cloud (cf. Ex. 14, 19, 20, 24, etc.). (On the Sacraments 2.9.5)
So this candle is essentially a mini-sacrament that is part of the liturgy leading to the baptism of catechumens.
Hugh’s thinking about sacraments is at once inspiring, liberating and instructive with respect to the construction of worship services today. One can be Spirit-led and creative and also biblical and traditional, all at the same time. Hugh gives us a clear criterion for liturgical innovations. The criterion is that a sign or act derives its meaning from its spiritual interpretation being ultimately connected to Christ’s paschal mystery. As such, it sanctifies.
Worship planners of the world, go forth and do likewise!
One example Hugh gives concerns the spiritual interpretation of a certain candle followed by the catechumens on their way to baptism. Hugh writes:
Pope Zozimus established that a large candle be blessed on the Holy Sabbath of the Pasch, which the deacon blesses after benediction has been received from the priest. This candle designates Christ: in the wax humanity, in the fire divinity; and as it illuminates it precedes the catechumens to baptism, just as once a column of fire preceded the children of Israel as they crossed the Red Sea, illuminating by fire and shading by a cloud (cf. Ex. 14, 19, 20, 24, etc.). (On the Sacraments 2.9.5)
So this candle is essentially a mini-sacrament that is part of the liturgy leading to the baptism of catechumens.
Hugh’s thinking about sacraments is at once inspiring, liberating and instructive with respect to the construction of worship services today. One can be Spirit-led and creative and also biblical and traditional, all at the same time. Hugh gives us a clear criterion for liturgical innovations. The criterion is that a sign or act derives its meaning from its spiritual interpretation being ultimately connected to Christ’s paschal mystery. As such, it sanctifies.
Worship planners of the world, go forth and do likewise!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clifton Stringer
Clifton Stringer is based in Austin, Texas and holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Boston College. He previously read more.
Though the church has started to rectify centuries of misunderstanding with regard to mental illness, addiction, and death by suicide, many people in our pews still carry around the wounds that the church has inflicted. Thanks in part to the scientific and psychological advances that help us understand why someone might take their own life, the church is beginning to move away from seeing suicide as particularly sinful and more like the end of a disease process. Even still, the stigma around mental illness and addiction is prevalent in Christian circles.
Even recently, some more conservative-leaning Christian outlets have tweeted advice about how to handle depression by seeking out a spiritual director or reading the Bible and praying more. The problem here is a failure to distinguish between clinical depression and a down period or a dark night of the soul like St. John of the Cross. For people struggling with clinical depression, prayer and other spiritual disciplines are good, but they probably also need a trained therapist and medication. Despite our increased cultural understanding about mental illness and addiction, there remains a strong sense that this particular kind of suffering is a moral failure.
Like many clergy in our modern era, I have sat through too many funerals of victims of suicide where families and loved ones are so afraid of judgment that they cannot even say how the person died. When a diocesan clergy colleague of mine died by suicide last year, the communications were similarly vague, and there was little to no discussion about clergy who might be struggling with mental health issues. Again, the shame and stigma combined with the sense that this wouldn’t be a problem for people who had a strong spiritual life, pushed what could have been an opportunity for conversation and mutual support back into silence.
September marks National Suicide Prevention Month, which can provide an opening for clergy to speak on this subject. Unfortunately, there are probably few people in any given congregation whose lives have not been touched by suicide, and yet it is rarely mentioned from the pulpit or in spaces for formation. In addition to merely breaking the silence around mental illness, addiction, and suicide, clergy can and should advocate for improved access to treatment and management options for the most vulnerable populations. As anyone who has tried to navigate our healthcare system is aware, there are very few accessible and affordable pathways for those seeking treatment.
Despite improvements in how the church handles mental illness, addiction, and suicide, we still have a ways to go. We can start to break the silence, shame, and stigma around these issues by telling our own stories, talking about how these things have affected us and our families, and advocating for better treatment and management options for all people.
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. For more information and resources, see the National Alliance of Mental Illness website. If you are in crisis or are experiencing difficult or suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273 TALK (8255).
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This superwoman, the uber-mom described in Proverbs 31 could evoke some sort of sermon — although I wonder if it’s a reading that inflicts some pain on the wife who never gets praised, the one abandoned, the one abused, or the mother whose children never rise up in gratitude. It’s in the Bible, so God wants us to read it. I for one will forego the challenge and preach either on a combination of the Psalter and the Epistle, or just the Gospel.
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Suicide and the church by Kira Schlesinger
It was a week into the Easter season, and I was at dinner while on vacation in Central California when I started receiving text messages from my parishioners back at home — the adult son of a pillar of our congregation had taken his own life after a long battle with addiction and mental illness. When I got in touch with his mother the next day, her first question for me broke my heart. “Can we have his service at the church, and can he be interred in our columbarium?” she asked. I was confused by the necessity of the question but assured her that her desires could absolutely be met. Later, I learned that just a few decades earlier, at the church where she grew up, those who died by suicide could not be buried from the church or in the church’s graveyard.Though the church has started to rectify centuries of misunderstanding with regard to mental illness, addiction, and death by suicide, many people in our pews still carry around the wounds that the church has inflicted. Thanks in part to the scientific and psychological advances that help us understand why someone might take their own life, the church is beginning to move away from seeing suicide as particularly sinful and more like the end of a disease process. Even still, the stigma around mental illness and addiction is prevalent in Christian circles.
Even recently, some more conservative-leaning Christian outlets have tweeted advice about how to handle depression by seeking out a spiritual director or reading the Bible and praying more. The problem here is a failure to distinguish between clinical depression and a down period or a dark night of the soul like St. John of the Cross. For people struggling with clinical depression, prayer and other spiritual disciplines are good, but they probably also need a trained therapist and medication. Despite our increased cultural understanding about mental illness and addiction, there remains a strong sense that this particular kind of suffering is a moral failure.
Like many clergy in our modern era, I have sat through too many funerals of victims of suicide where families and loved ones are so afraid of judgment that they cannot even say how the person died. When a diocesan clergy colleague of mine died by suicide last year, the communications were similarly vague, and there was little to no discussion about clergy who might be struggling with mental health issues. Again, the shame and stigma combined with the sense that this wouldn’t be a problem for people who had a strong spiritual life, pushed what could have been an opportunity for conversation and mutual support back into silence.
September marks National Suicide Prevention Month, which can provide an opening for clergy to speak on this subject. Unfortunately, there are probably few people in any given congregation whose lives have not been touched by suicide, and yet it is rarely mentioned from the pulpit or in spaces for formation. In addition to merely breaking the silence around mental illness, addiction, and suicide, clergy can and should advocate for improved access to treatment and management options for the most vulnerable populations. As anyone who has tried to navigate our healthcare system is aware, there are very few accessible and affordable pathways for those seeking treatment.
Despite improvements in how the church handles mental illness, addiction, and suicide, we still have a ways to go. We can start to break the silence, shame, and stigma around these issues by telling our own stories, talking about how these things have affected us and our families, and advocating for better treatment and management options for all people.
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. For more information and resources, see the National Alliance of Mental Illness website. If you are in crisis or are experiencing difficult or suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273 TALK (8255).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kira Schlesinger
The Reverend Kira Schlesinger is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Tennessee with a Master of Divinity degree from read more…Bigstock/aradaphotography
* * *
Psalm 1. The editors of the Psalter positioned this non-prayer at the head of all the prayers as a signal to show us the sort of life that prayer and worship cultivate in us, and then the sort of life required for the prayer and worship to be fruitful. Translations lunge for “happy” instead of “blessed,” but “happy” is just too tinged with American pursuits and the trivialities of feelings to work well.It’s not “blessed” like the absurd blessings imagined in Bruce Wilkinson’s atrocious Prayer of Jabez (God’s got a warehouse of blessings in boxes for you, you just have to back up your station wagon and pick them up…). It’s a life of peace, contentment, goodness, and hope.
The company you keep matters. Church ought to be the village for raising our children and for becoming wise, good people. But too often we become a self-righteous, gossipy enclave eluding the realities of the world and growing knottier and more inward instead of holier and more outward-looking. My repeated phrase lately is “If you only hang around with people like you, you become ignorant and arrogant.” At the same time, keeping the company of those striving for wisdom, goodness, holiness and a boundless passion to save the world? This will save your own soul.
The Psalmist speaks of meditating on God’s law “day and night.” The very zealous Jews at Qumran kept someone up twenty-four hours a day meditating on Torah to fulfill this. For us? We can have Scripture on our minds at least a lot of the day, perhaps echoing what Dorothy Day said late in her life: “I tried to remember this life that the Lord gave me — and I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and his visit to us all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have had him on my mind for so long in my life.”
The image of the tree planted by water is unforgettable, simple, profound. The tree thrives not because of what we see above ground, but what is transpiring unseen, underground. Such a person “prospers,” which we mis-hear in our capitalist, upwardly mobile society. Again, in a subsistence level economy, it’s about living, being at peace, having enough, being part of a community and contributing to it, and receiving from it.
* * *
James 3:13-4:8a (skipping 4:4-6!), our Epistle reading, links beautifully to Psalm 1. How fascinating to contemplate the likelihood that this James is Jesus’ brother, and that he probably heard Jesus’ teachings, such as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) which are clearly echoed here! Did he, as he became familiar with Paul in the early years of the church, ponder Paul’s thoughts on the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), which also are echoed here? Fruit is being yielded. The Beatitudes, and the Fruit of the Spirit aren’t commandments (like Go be merciful! Go be patient!), but beautiful portrayals of what a life well-rooted in Christ and the Spirit is like.
"Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us about Powerful Leadership" (Abingdon Press, 2017). Order here: http://bit.ly/2rYxHac
Mercy, peaceableness, gentleness, wisdom... all so very counter-cultural, needing reiteration from the preacher and tangible portrayals, as we get overstuffed with what James bemoans: ambition, disorder, wickedness, selfishness. Think of anyone you know who fulfills in some measure James’s list of virtues. Tell a story. Jesus’ brother speaks of resisting the devil. But how? How do we know it’s the devil anyhow? There is a BS element to the devil’s assailings, and outright deception — probably saying what we want to hear. When is tough-going from the devil and when is it from God? In Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, every time young Jesus reaches out for pleasure, “ten claws nailed themselves into his head and two frenzied wings beat above him, tightly covering his temples. He shrieked and fell down on his face.” His mother pleaded with a rabbi (who knew how to drive out demons) to help. The rabbi shook his head. “Mary, your boy isn’t being tormented by a devil; it’s not a devil, it’s God – so what can I do?” “Is there no cure?” the wretched mother asked. “It’s God, I tell you. No, there is no cure.” “Why does he torment him?” The old exorcist sighed but did not answer. “Why does he torment him?” the mother asked again. “Because he loves him,” the old rabbi finally replied.
Preachers must tell what people will hear no place else: there are evil forces (not our political foes or foreign powers) that are sneaky, and pervert the good and beautiful into the evil and tawdry. It’s silly but I think of Lewis Grizzard’s distinction: naked is when you don’t have clothes on; necked is when you don’t have clothes on and you’re up to no good. C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters will always be unmatched in wit and wisdom regarding the way we get undone by what is not of God.
How to resist the devil? Thomas Merton, who suggested the devil wants, above all else, attention, might say to simply pay no attention, to turn toward the good and beautiful. Someone else, can’t recall who it was now, wrote that we might think of jiu jitsu, where you use your opponent’s energy to undo himself. So we are still, we know God is God, and evil’s violent lunges whip by us and defeat themselves.
* * *
I love today’s Gospel reading, Mark 9:30-37. Jesus, once again, is explaining to them the way of the cross; just like us, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask.” Afraid — that he would think they were slow? Afraid — that his talk might just implicate them in the way of the cross? Afraid — just why, really? It's worth exploring in a sermon (and better to tease them with three good possibilities and leave them hanging instead of nailing down your one right answer).Notice Jesus didn’t reveal he knew their confusion on the road. And while they were on the road, he didn’t let them know he overheard their chatter. It was only when they were back in the house that Jesus asked “What were you arguing about on the way?” Again they were silent. Silence is golden! And silence is a great virtue in the spiritual life; yet silence can also be an embarrassment, a cover-up, a subterfuge to hide what God knows is in us.
Typically, like so many clergy, and like the people to whom we minister, their impulse is to be “the greatest.” There’s nothing wrong with striving for excellence. Hearing about “the greatest,” I get tickled by those famous Muhammad Ali quotes about being the greatest (the funniest two being “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am,” and “My only fault is that I don’t realize how really great I am”). The biblical assessment of greatness intrigues: you’re so great you’re a temple of the Holy Spirit, you mirror the image of God to others, you have an eternal, glorious destiny. The problem comes down to being puffed up about the wrong things, and as the disciples exhibit in our text, competing and stepping on others, which is thinly veiled insecurity and pathetic delight in crushing the other.
God’s children don’t get crushed, and they don’t crush. It reminds me of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s quoting Sarah Grimke during her Supreme Court hearing: “I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks.”
Jesus shows the way with yet another of his child sayings. This time it isn’t “become like a child” but rather “whoever welcomes a child.” I wonder about asking a random child to walk up and join me at the front — picking him or her up, and talking some about love, greatness, friendship, humility. Risky, but the potential is rich. Exactly like what Jesus did that day in the house in Capernaum.
What can we say September 23? 18th after Pentecost originally appeared at James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Reprinted with permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James C. Howell
Dr. James C. Howell has been senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church since 2003, and has served read more…
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I noticed some of my own flavored memories one Wednesday morning as I cleaned tears from the lenses of my red frames. The night before, in my binge-watching Ally McBeal phase, I wept over the death of a character named Marty. He was a nursing home resident and the joy of its being. He organized dances and sported bow ties as he twirled his fancy-feet partners to the tunes of Ella and Frank. To Marty, every woman was a darling, every man gentle. All were friends. And when Marty experienced (unrecognized and undiagnosed) disillusionment in the form of dragons and cyclopes and other fantastic creatures, he offered them as adventures to his lady and fellow companions. Every night at 7:30p.m., Marty and his crew would turn out the lights, gather in twos and threes, and search the home for these imaginative invaders. His friends were delighted to have a quest in a place where much of their time was spent waiting for it to pass. Marty brought life and laughter to men and women who had been missing its taste.
When Marty died, his friends and I gave our salty tears to tissues and the earth.
Wiping that story away from the reflection of my glasses and into the reflection of my spirit, I thought of both the Matthew passage and the other famous salt story in the Hebrew Bible: Lot’s wife. As the scripture tells it, after the negotiation with Abraham to spare Sodom and Gomorrah failed, God sent angels to save Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and his family. These divine messengers instructed Lot to take his loved ones and leave before God brought death and destruction to the place Lot called home. Unable to convince his sons-in-law of the coming devastation, thus lingering and possibly still hopeful, Lot, his wife, and daughters were forcefully moved outside of the city by God’s angels and told not to look back. As sulfur and fire fell from the sky, one of the few to escape turned around to view the wrath: “But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen 19:26).
A pillar of salt.
Salt of the earth.
What might those phrases mean, together?
Could it be that this woman who saw her friends and neighbors dying, heard them screaming and felt their hopelessness, was so overcome by grief that she wept? Haven’t we all witnessed loss and cried? Are we not moved by lingering images from war, from genocide, from disease, from floods and hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and poverty? Do we not open our tears to the suffering of those we have and have not met? Is it possible that this woman’s pain was so heavy, her wailing so hard that she could not, would not move? Might she have believed that as long as she stared, her home would still stand? Maybe she could pray the city into safety? Haven’t we done the same at a hospital bedside, over the ashes of a relationship, in the moments after a dreaded phone call or knock at the door?
I watched it happen to my father. It was October of 2002 and I was in my last year of undergraduate studies. Early one morning my roommate woke me with a note left by my sister. She had been trying to reach me by phone and knocking throughout the night on our apartment door and somehow, neither myself nor my roommate heard her pleas. I called home, with my roommate by my side, to find out that one of my brothers had died. It was Greg, Dad’s second child from a previous marriage. He was 38, married, and the father of two young adults. He was the brother who visited us the most and stocked our supply of Sun Drop until it was made available in our local grocery store. He was the brother who would spend a week or more with us over the summer, working in the garden with Dad and carrying the bounty to the kitchen for canning. He was the brother who drove three hours every day that Dad was in Cardiac ICU to tell him that he loved him and us, too. Of the older brothers I had gained when Dad and Mom married, Greg was the one that I knew best.
But I did not know that he would end his own life.
Walking through home’s door that morning was one of the hardest moments of my story. As soon as my sister and I were inside, Dad pulled us in for a close and helpless hug. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said, “but it happened.” Most of that day and the next were a blur for everyone. Making arrangements and packing clothes for the trip to bury my brother, coupled with Dad’s desire to make a stop at his favorite barbecue restaurant, was surreal. Barbecue was such a normal thing; suicide was not.
On the night of the visitation I heard Dad asking, “Where is Gregory?” We were leaving the funeral home after our disbelief, dressed in black, finished one round of sympathetic words I don’t remember. I thought Dad was confused.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was staring at Sodom and Gomorrah and hoping that Greg would appear.
Standing over his son’s coffin earlier that night, Dad was a pillar of salt.
Standing by Greg’s graveside the next day, listening to “Taps” and a 21-gun salute reminder of the way he died, we were all pillars of salt.
As Greg’s body was lowered into the ground, the ground was covered with our sorrow. Like Lot’s wife, we stood in grief, desperate and unmovable. We salted that from which we came and that to which we shall return. Our flavor was strong then. Mixed with the tears of a nameless woman from Sodom and Gomorrah, it still is now.
Perhaps Lot’s wife was told not to look back to spare her grief.
Perhaps she looked back because she believed in truth and salt.
Perhaps Jesus is asking us to do the same, to be vulnerable, to embody love, to season and be seasoned by each other.
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. For more information and resources, see the National Alliance of Mental Illness website. If you are in crisis or are experiencing difficult or suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273 TALK (8255).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kitty Taylor
Kitty Taylor serves as Prevention Education and Outreach Coordinator for the North Georgia Mountain Crisis read more…
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With one-way tickets in hand, we fled to Miami at the beginning of the summer of my eleventh year. In the divorce, my father had kept the house and the only car. The courts held him to one-dollar-a-day child support and no alimony. The child support never arrived. My mother had supported us on hourly wages from a local factory, catching a ride to and from work with sympathetic coworkers.
To buy those tickets and to provide us a cushion in our new setting, my mother had saved what she could and had sold most of what she owned. No job and no apartment awaited us in Miami.
Risking so much, especially with a child in tow, may seem reckless to some. Their thinking might go something like this: As bad as things may have been, at least she had a job and a roof over her head.
But this view of our circumstances fails to connect with my mother’s desperation and her legitimate fear.
Trudy was escaping the man who had unapologetically beaten her and had threatened to shoot her. In a Southern town of less than two thousand, she would never be safe from his domination and his violence. And abandoning me to my father’s influence was unthinkable to her.
So, we boarded a bus and traveled for over twenty hours into the unknown. Trudy not only yearned for a new life for us. She believed that a better life was possible. Crucially, she had previously learned that the old life would have to die before the new life could emerge.
Surviving a Nazi concentration camp had taught her this truth as a teenager. Crossing the Atlantic alone in a ship designated for displaced persons and starting over in the New World had reinforced that lesson.
"A Resurrection Shaped Life: Dying and Rising on Planet Earth" (Abingdon Press, 2018). Pre-order here: http://bit.ly/2K2M3wB
To put this in Christian terms, followers of Jesus seek to lead a resurrection-shaped life. We see in Jesus’s resurrection not only the promise of life after we’ve drawn our last breath. The death and resurrection of Jesus shows us a way of living right here on planet Earth that has an eternal trajectory.Again and again we let go of a life narrowed by suffering or prejudice or injustice. We let that life die instead of clinging to it and trying to improve it in superficial ways. Once that life breathes its last, a new, more expansive life can emerge.
That’s what Jesus was getting at when, after predicting his death and resurrection, he told his followers to take up their cross and follow him. That in order to live they must die. He was teaching them to pattern their lives on his example. (Mark 8:27-38)
Barbara Brown Taylor says this:
“Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.” (Learning to Walk in the Dark)
Resurrection is more than a happily-ever-after ending. It is the Jesus Way of leaning into the life we actually inhabit.
After some periods of homelessness and hunger and uncertainty, my mom and I ended up in Atlanta. She got a job. I went to Catholic schools. My maternal grandparents reconciled with their daughter and moved to Atlanta so that we could all live together in their retirement.
The story doesn’t end there, tied up in a neat bow. We had entered a new season of life, but we were hardly finished dying to old, narrow, battered selves. Financial challenges dogged us. The psychological effects of abuse weighed upon us.
Part of my own growth has been to recognize that resurrection is as much about our common life as it is about our personal life.
Together, we need to let the world die that allows and even promotes daily violence against women.
Together, we need to let the world die that allows our rising cost of living to force thousands of full-time, low-wage workers into food insecurity and even homelessness.
Together, we need to let the world die that makes some among the elderly face the choice between life-sustaining medicine and going hungry.
In our everyday lives and in our ordinary communities, we will experience the darkness of the tomb. Jesus’s followers believe that God does God’s best work in such dark places. That’s where resurrection happens in us and through us.
"Working in the Dark" originally appeared on Looking for God in Messy Places. Reprinted with permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Owensby
Jake Owensby is the fourth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. Jake is the author of several books read more… 
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Without passion, worship becomes dry, routine, boring, and predictable, keeping the form while lacking the spirit. Insufficient planning by leaders, apathy of worshippers, poor quality music, and unkempt facilities contribute to an experience that people approach with a sense of obligation rather than joy. Worship loses its passion. Interpersonal conflict can also threaten the worship life of community, with participants and leaders distracted and exhausted by antagonism. Some services feel inauthentic or self-indulgent as leaders push themselves into the center of attention. Or services can seem as somber as a funeral, when people attend out of obligation, respect, or genuine affection, but privately they wish they were somewhere else. Services sometimes include so many announcements, jokes, digressions, and stories that have nothing to do with the theme, that it feels like a loosely planned, poorly led public meeting. Even with worship in homes, dinner churches, or with online communities, conversation can degenerate into complaining or rumor-mongering. Worship may be the first contact the unchurched have with a faith community, and yet guests may not find genuine warmth or a compelling message. When this happens, people come and go without receiving God.
Worship should express our devotion, our honor and love of God. Passionate describes an intense desire, an ardent spirit, strong feelings, and the sense of heightened importance. Passionate speaks of an emotional connection that goes beyond intellectual consent.
Passionate Worship fosters a yearning to authentically honor God with excellence and with an unusual clarity about connecting people to God. Whether fifteen hundred people attend, or fifteen, Passionate Worship is alive, authentic, fresh, and engaging. People are honest before God and open to God’s presence, truth, and will. People so desire such worship that they reorder their lives to belong. The empty places in their souls are filled. They experience a compelling sense of belonging to the body of Christ.
"Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations: Revised and Updated" (Abingdon Press, 2018). Order here: http://bit.ly/2IKi7IC
In spiritually alive communities, there’s a palpable air of expectancy as people gather, a vibrant curiosity about how God’s presence will become known. Musicians, readers, greeters, and other hosts arrive early, and with care and eagerness they prepare together, encouraging one another. They genuinely delight in one another’s presence, and they give attention to the smallest of details. The gathering, even when it includes many guests, never feels like a crowd of strangers. There’s a unifying anticipation, a gracious and welcoming character to the way people speak, act and prepare. Clearly, the leaders and worshippers expect something significant to take place, and they’re eager to be part of it. They expect God to be present and to speak to them a word of forgiveness, hope, or direction. Singing together, joining in prayer, listening to the Word, confessing sins, celebrating the sacraments—through these simple acts, they intermingle their lives with one another and with God. Worship is compelling. It permeates the air.
* * *
Passionate Worship can be highly formal, with robes, acolytes, stained glass, organ music, orchestral accompaniment, and hardwood pews with hymnals on the rack in front. Or Passionate Worship can take place in an auditorium, gym, public park, or storefront, with casually dressed leaders, videos projected on screens, folding chairs, and the supporting beat of percussion, keyboard, and bass guitar. Authentic, compelling worship derives from the experience of God’s presence, the desire of worshippers for God’s word, and the changed heart that people deliberately seek when they gather in the presence of other Christians. An hour of Passionate Worship changes all the other hours of the week.The regular practice of worship gives people an interpretive lens, helping them see the world through God’s eyes. Among the many competing interpretive contexts in which people are immersed—fierce individualism, acquisitive consumerism, intense nationalism, political partisanship, hopeless negativism, naïve optimism—worship helps people perceive themselves, their world, their relationships, and their responsibilities in ways that include God’s revelation in Christ. The language of the Spirit—love, grace, joy, hope, forgiveness, compassion, justice, community—provides the means to express interior experience and relational aspirations. Stories of faith—scripture, parable, testimony—deepen perception and meaning. The practices of worship—singing, praying, the sacraments—rehearse connection to God and to others. People look at the world in a different way and rehearse their unique calling as people of God and their identity as the body of Christ. Worship changes the way people experience their whole lives.
Excerpted from Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations: Revised and Updated by Robert Schnase. Copyright © 2018 Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Schnase
Robert Schnase is bishop of the Rio Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. He is also the read more…
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I woke up early last week thinking about an uncle — my mom’s stepbrother, Vince — who I hadn’t thought about in nearly 25 years. After my parents' divorce at seven or eight years old, Uncle Vince came to live with us right after his high school graduation.
As a child with a scarcity of consistent male role models in my life, I felt awestruck by Vince’s cool factor. In 1987 or 1988 “cool” looked like ‘80’s Rock-n-Roll hair-band posters all over his little room. He’d occasionally let me listen to music with him warning me against the woes of country music and ensuring that I grew up a respectable rocker. A curious, intoxicating smell always wafted about his room. I couldn’t identify that smell as a child. It was just the Vince room smell. So that made it cool.
After Vince moved out and his father divorced my grandmother, I never saw him again. After a few years, I never even thought about him.
Until last week.
Waking up early with a forgotten uncle on your mind who you haven’t seen for 25 years was bizarre. I made a note to look him up on social media or Google him to see what became of him. Does he have a family? Did he end up in prison over that strange smell wafting from his room? Did he start a hair-band that now travels around the country playing ‘80s covers in local bars?
But 36 hours later that research was unnecessary.
The following afternoon, as I sat at a stoplight on my way home a text message popped up on my screen. My brother wrote, “Hey, I just wanted you all to know Uncle Vince died yesterday.”
Whaaa? He couldn’t have been more than 46 or 47 years old. Besides, what are the odds that I would think of him for the first time in 25 years on the very day he died?
For two weeks now I have been processing that statistical anomaly. It seems too random.
So what if it wasn’t?
What if God put him on my mind that morning precisely because God knew what was coming? What if God was giving me a chance to pray for him, to pray for his wife, to pray for his kids? What if this random guy I hadn’t seen or thought about in 25 years needed prayer the day I woke up thinking about him?
I’m not saying that is for sure what God was doing that day. But what if he was? What if those times we think randomly of random people aren’t just weird morning tics in our brains but the Holy Spirit-given prompting us for prayer?
I’m not usually one to see either angels or demons behind every rock, but I do think I may have missed a prompting of the Spirit in praying for my long-forgotten uncle. Because, even though I’d forgotten him, God never forgot him. So my remembrance of him was an opportunity to join God’s remembrance, to join God by praying for him. As it is, my continued thoughts about him the last two weeks have prompted me to pray for his family. I don’t know them. I may never know them. But God knows them and they need prayer right now.
I offer this story to you as an encouragement: Continue to be sensitive to the Spirit, pray when prompted, and learn to see the prompts in what appears to be random.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Fuerst
Tom Fuerst is the lead pastor of Bluff City Church, a United Methodist chucrch plant in Memphis. He received his B.A read more…
This article is featured in the Decision 2019: One with Christ, One with each other, One in ministry to all the world (Aug/Sep/Oct 2018) issue of Circuit Rider
Whenever I pause to reflect on how I and so many African men and women are products of God’s mission through The United Methodist Church, I am amazed. I think back to my days at Africa University, where James Salley (Africa University’s Associate Vice Chancellor) still likes to remind graduates that we are the fruit of missional investments of fellow United Methodists locally and around the globe. We are among those who could not afford to have meals on the table or go to school if not for the generosity of countless other United Methodists. As a member of Africa University’s touring choir, I was able to visit many of these supporting congregations as we met and expressed our gratitude to those who had invested in us. I cannot say thank you enough for this great work.During my time on staff at the General Board of Global Ministries, I had the opportunity to witness God’s mission through various projects undertaken by United Methodists across the globe. From Malawi to Cambodia, and from Argentina to the Philippines, I experienced firsthand transformation through vital missional programs in congregational development, health, food security, disaster response, agriculture, and leadership development. At stake in our decisions in 2019 and 2020 is whether this Wesleyan missional movement will continue for the next fifty years and more in new places, such as Tanzania and Southeast Asia, where I have witnessed the thirst for the gospel and the need for missional engagement.
For us to be faithful to God’s mission around the world as United Methodists, we seek to develop a sense of mutual accountability with one another. Drawing from his experience as the current General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (an ecumenical body composed of many member churches with diverse theological statements), Olav Fykse Tveit suggests that “mutual accountability refers to the quality of relations between and among people in the community. It refers to an attitude of active responsibility that must characterize any authentic relationship, the profoundly moral dimension of life together. . . . Mutual accountability is a matter of how we seek the truth together by sharing insights into the truth we carry.”[1]
Peter, James, and John wrestled with Paul concerning the introduction of Gentiles in the Christian community. As followers of Christ, regardless of their disagreement on the topic, they developed strong relationships with each other while sustaining a unified mission between the communities of Jerusalem and that of Antioch, and eventually the other places where God’s mission led Paul with their support through significant risks. The saints outside Jerusalem continued to support, without failure, God’s mission in Jerusalem. For instance, Paul collected offerings to support the poor in Jerusalem.
While the proposed approaches for Christian unity of the United Methodist kind may fall short of perfection, like those outside Jerusalem, I believe that God’s Spirit can lead us into God’s mission, which is strengthened through authentic relationships. Many communities around the globe need to hear the gospel, the message of hope coming from United Methodists, other denominations, and even other faith traditions. As I visit people in North Katanga, Tanganyika, and Tanzania, I still see saints who are in need of food, shelter, healthcare, education, justice, and peace. In every community, young men and women share with me that they are seeking opportunities to study and be meaningful in their communities. Furthermore, I continue to see communities that need access to drinkable water and to be freed from cholera and other diseases. These human beings are seeking signs of God’s kingdom through the good news of Jesus Christ manifested in mission built on authentic relationships and mutual accountability.
“The truth of the gospel can only be sought in a sense of accountability to what is given to us as the faith through the ages, and in a sense of accountability to those whom the gospel addresses today, in their context, in their time, in their search for hope.”[2]
Young Christian leaders, millennials, and their communities seek hope for the future. They are looking for a church that will pass the torch for generations to come, as a church that values God’s mission.
The Commission on a Way Forward and the Council of Bishops gave significant consideration to mission and context as critical elements to be considered for a way forward for The United Methodist Church. In the ecumenical world, mission and service has become a critical element in cementing the unity of church and interchurch relationships. God’s Spirit drives a mission that continues to surprise by taking us on some challenging journeys, which sometimes encounter uncomfortably different views than our signature doctrinal and theological positions. God’s Spirit surprised Peter, John, and James by introducing them to a self-proclaimed apostle of Christ, who claimed to have seen the risen Christ on his way to Damascus. In the same way, God’s Spirit continues to surprise communities around the world, even in America, who learn that women are equal and that we recognize their contributions to the church.
Some years ago, I lost a daughter to malaria. I believe that in a sense her resurrection is meaningful on earth as it is in heaven through the Imagine No Malaria program and subsequent health initiatives that United Methodists have invested in. We are in this mission together. Because we are better and more effective together than we are alone, I desire a United Methodist Church that will tackle together the issues of global migration and refugees around the world. I want to see a United Methodist Church that will continue to invest in planting new faith communities around the world, and I still want to see a United Methodist Church that will continue raising up new Christian, principled leaders through global education initiatives.
[1] Olav Fykse Tveit, The Truth We Owe Each Other: Mutual Accountability in the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2016), vii.
[2] Ibid.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mande Muyombo
Mande Muyombo is bishop for the North Katanga area in the Congo Central Conference. Previously he was an executive for read more…
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