A quieter and more gentle ministry...

NOTE:  Here are the worship notes for Sunday, January 27, 2013.  It is, in the congregational tradition, the day of our Annual Meeting.  This is more than a business meeting, although it is that, too.  It is a time to discuss mission and ministry, affirm new leadership and make certain that we have the resources for this calling.

Introduction
Last Saturday, Dianne and I took a trip up to Mass MOCA – that incredible jewel of a museum dedicated to contemporary art in our own backyard –and as is often the case I left in awe.  It regularly blows my mind the way a creative soul can take the ordinary stuff of everyday life – things I might take for granted or even throw away – and in the presence of inspiration and imagination, transform into something of beauty.

One such exhibit, the Phoenix by the Chinese artist Xu Being, was staggering in this regard.  Have you seen it?  I can only encourage you to take the time because it is a wonder to behold.  Here’s what he did:

·       After pondering what it means to live in a society that is changing as rapidly as China – a land enveloped in industrial, economic and social transformation – he spent two years harvesting discarded wreckage “from construction sites in urban China, including demolition debris, steel beams, tools and remnants of the daily lives of migrant laborers (like hard hats to create two 12 ton metal birds.) At once fierce and strangely beautiful, these mythic Phoenixes bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today's China.” 

·       Did you get that?  Xu Bing took the garbage from construction sites and created a thing of beauty and awe.  And when you witness it, you can’t help but stop and rethink what it means to be alive at this moment in time because these birds are 90 and 100 feet long!  Their physical presence is arresting, their symbolic story is sobering and their artistic splendor is provocative:  beauty from garbage – who would think it possible?

Small wonder then that God’s word for our generation is more often than not shared with us through the work of artists and prophetic poets.  Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, put it like this:  when confronted by the word of the Lord, our commitment is:

Not to ask whether or not it is realistic or practical or viable but whether it is imaginable. (To be faithful) we need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and co-opted by the (dominant) consciousness that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.  (That is why) Imagination is always a danger to every totalitarian regime and they are frightened by the artist.  It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one that the king – or political leader or corporation – wants to urge as the only thinkable one.  And the characteristic way of the prophet is that of poetry and lyric.

What did St. Paul Simon sing to us so long ago:   as our people bowed and prayed to the neon gods they made… the signs flashed out their warning in the words that they were forming; and the signs said, "The words of the prophets are now written on the subway walls and tenement halls."  Have you ever looked at graffiti?  Seen its beauty and pain?  Listened for the voice of someone crying out:  I am somebody – not just a gang banger with no hope – but a person of creativity and dreams and imagination?
Visual artist, Mako Fujimura, wrote that: “September 11th taught us again that we can use our imagination either to destroy lives or to save lives. On 9/11 we had on the one hand militant hijackers who turned their imaginative vengeance into determined evil acts. On the other hand were firefighters who climbed the falling towers. We have to realize that before any of these terrorist acts were committed, they were imagined. We swim in the ecosystem of imagined actions. We are responsible for how we respond to that power. We do have a choice between saving lives and destroying lives. And if we do not teach our children, and ourselves, that what we imagine and how we design the world can make a difference, the culture of cynicism will do that for us. If we do not infuse creativity, if we do not take the initiative to help our children imagine better neighborhoods and cities, despair will ruin their imaginative capacities and turn them into destructive forces.”

Insights
That’s what I see Jesus doing in today’s text – using his imagination to provoke our own – in ways that are holy. Taking tradition like an artist and playing with it creatively and respectfully, so that when we look and listen and respond to what he has designed, we sense something of God’s gracious potential within and among us.  It may make us weep – lament is often how the prophets break through our well-developed veneer – but it could also make us smile or rejoice in beauty.

 

So join me for a few minutes now as we consider how Jesus the artist – a prophetic poet grounded in tradition – plays with possibilities for living in ways that are passionate and imaginative.  Because that’s what is taking place in our story from Luke:  Jesus is embracing the rituals of his synagogue – reading from the ancient text and then teasing out new meanings –like an artist dedicated to beauty.  There is form – the synagogue – and there is content – the words of Isaiah and Christ’s interpretation.

So let me ask you:  what do you know about a synagogue?  What happens there?  What does the word mean actually?  Have you ever been to one? 

·       Synagogue is a Greek word, not Hebrew, which literally means the assembly. Tradition has it that Ptolemy, one of the Pharaoh’s of ancient Egypt, had the first five books of the Hebrew Bible translated into everyday Greek for the Jews of the Mediterranean who didn’t speak or read Hebrew sometime 200 hundred years before Christ was born.

·       A synagogue needs 10 Jews to gather for prayer.  Usually the building contains the Aron Hakodesh – a cabinet to hold the Torah scroll – and a Ner Tamid – an eternal light that is always shining to symbolize God’s constant presence.

This is the form – a sacred place of prayer and teaching – into which Jesus brings the content by taking the scroll and reading the appointed passage for the day from the prophet Isaiah – and also sharing his insights about it.  You see both the written and the spoken word are valued – both the sacred text and the contemporary interpretation are important – for “a Jew comes to the synagogue for the comfort and grounding nature of what is familiar and for the insight and spiritual challenge” offered in the teaching.  This is our model – not one or the other, but always both/and – neither simplistic fundamentalism nor opinions without profound spiritual context.

So let’s first be clear about what the text tells us so that we can then playfully bring our own creative wisdom and interpretation to it, ok?  And I’m going to try to frame this for us with some questions that I hope will help us appreciate the significance of this reading for this day – our annual meeting – when we rededicate ourselves to the mission God has given us for our time.

·       Question number one: why does Luke’s gospel show us Jesus reading the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah and then interpreting these words for his people as the first public action in Christ’s ministry?  Why do you think this is significant? 

·       One scholar put it like this: the words of Jesus are not just important for what they say but also because of their source… Jesus isn’t just making this stuff up.  Jesus’ situates his ministry in the ongoing promise and commitment of God, to the lowliest of God’s servants, to those who fear God from generation to generation, to the hungry, to God’s people Israel, to Abraham and Sarah. The promise and prophecy of Isaiah provides the theological trajectory that Jesus will articulate and embody in the Gospel of Luke. (Karoline Lewis, Working Preacher)

These words from the prophet Isaiah were given to God’s people after they had been taken away from Israel to Babylon in chains – and after they returned to Jerusalem nearly 70 years later – grounding this poem in time to about 500 years before the birth of Jesus.  The gospel of Luke, therefore, wants us to take the ancient tradition of God setting God’s people free very, very seriously.  It is the first thing Jesus talks about – it will color everything else in Luke’s gospel – and it helps us understand who Jesus is:  God’s anointed and beloved.

·       Question number two:  besides the poetry of the prophet Isaiah, do the words of Jesus sound like anything else you’ve heard or read in the gospel of Luke? 

·       Does anybody recall the poem attributed to Mary – the Magnificat – after she received the promise that she would give birth to God’s messiah through who body?  We sang it during Advent and it appears bright and early in Luke’s gospel – chapter one – listen again:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
 he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

These words of Mary, of course, are very similar to those sung by another woman in Scripture, Hannah in the book of Samuel, who also returns thanksgiving to God for the birth of a special and holy child.  So what strikes you as important in all of this?  Why is Luke grounding the wisdom of the Messiah in the songs of women and poetic prophets?

Could it have something to do with the experience of some of society’s most oppressed and marginalized being nourished by grace?  Could it be a sign to us about where to listen for God’s voice in our age?  And where to go as we live into our mission?  St. Paul was clear in teaching that our mission as those who follow Christ is NOT an isolate act.  We are neither a random collection of individuals doing our own thing, nor a collective of spiritual automatons blinding following tradition.  Rather, we are a body – the Body of Christ in a new and ever-changing form – called to share Christ with one another and the world.

The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

I think it takes a lifetime of being in community to grasp the radical wisdom of this truth.  I know that 45 years after I decided to follow Christ, I am still wrestling with what this really means.  For example, when I was called into ministry in the 60s I was certain that God wanted to use me to change the world.  And, truth be told, I was pretty clear how that was going to happen, too.  I was going to be involved in radical social change.  I was going to be an organizer for racial justice, an advocate for women’s equality, a drum major for justice like Dr. King, an activist for the LGBTQ community and champion for peace like Gandhi.

But here’s what happened:  while I actually had the opportunity to do some of that work on many different levels – and I still support it all now just as passionately as I did back in the day – I discovered that most of my time as a pastor was spent listening quietly for God’s still, small voice in the ordinary stories of very ordinary people.  Apparently I wasn’t called to be a mover and a shaker.  It seems God wanted to use me in a different way – in a ministry that spent time playing music with children and listening to their stories – visiting old people in their loneliness and listening to their stories – sharing Holy Communion and prayer with people before their surgery and listening to their stories – weeping over the agony and pain that sometimes plagues us all and listening to these stories, too.    

Over the years as I accepted that God’s mission for my ministry was very different from what I first wanted, I also began to see that if I am going to follow the way of the Lord, I don’t know how to do it very well all by myself. I need others to help me:  I need others to help me see my blind spots when I think I know it all, I need others to help me find the words necessary for facing our empty times with courage and grace, I need others to encourage and pray for me when I feel afraid and I need to be a part of the body of Christ with me because I really need others to help me do this ministry.

·       Ministry and mission changes over time – it is always grounded in gospel – but it takes different shapes and forms.  Clearly that’s been true for me and I know it has been true for this church.  Once this was a place of glory – just look at it – big and powerful and well-connected to the movers and shakers of another age.

·       But things are different now – today we’re called into something more quiet and humble – something more gentle and even sustainable.  And as we accept and honor this different calling into mission, it can set us free and liberate us by the Spirit of the Lord.

Edward Markquart, put it like this in his book Witness for Christ:

God's story is always related to human need. For example, if a woman is dying of cancer, the gospel is God's strong word of resurrection. If a person is permeated with guilt, the gospel is God's assurance of forgiveness. If people experience extreme suffering, the gospel is the prayer: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble." For the starving, the gospel may be bread. For a homeless refugee, the gospel may be freedom in a new homeland. For others, the gospel may be freedom from political tyranny. The gospel is always related to human need. It is never truth in a vacuum, a theologically true statement which may or may not relate to one's life. The gospel is God's truth, God's message, God's action, God's word to a particular person, to a particular need, to a particular historical situation. You don't throw a drowning person sandwich. However good the sandwich may be, it just doesn't meet that person's need. You throw a drowning person a life jacket or a lifeline, or you dive in for the rescue. So it is with the gospel. The gospel is God's truth, God's action, aimed at a particular human need.

Conclusion
As I listen for Christ’s creative and liberating word for my life – and for our ministry and mission together – my hunch is that it has more to do with being a quiet, loving, humble and real community of compassion than anything else. 

·       Small acts of compassion shared every day – a few modest encounters with bringing healing and hope to our community – a potluck theology of presence rather than anything more glorious – a lot more quiet and listening to one another and the Lord. 

·       I wonder if you sense that, too – that our mission and ministry has something to do with being more tender in a world filled with harshness?  More gentle amidst the pain?  More kind-hearted, quiet and even musical in an era that has become saturated with relentless sounds, messages and information?

As we go into our annual meeting, I hope you’ll consider this as part of God’s Spirit calling us into a deeper ministry… take a few moments now in the safety of this place to listen for what the Lord may be saying to you in light of my words. 

The words I have to say may well be simple but they’re true

Until you give your love, there’s nothing more that we can do
Love is the opening door, love is what we came here for,

No one could offer you more

Do you know what I mean? Have your eyes really seen?

You say it’s very hard to leave behind the life we knew

But there’s no other way and now it’s really up to you
Love is the key we must turn, truth is the flame we must burn,

Freedom the lesson we must learn

Do you know what I mean? Have your eyes really seen?