Charge to the Pastor

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

Countryside Community Church

5 May 2024

               Jenny, welcome to Omaha.

            Something strange happened to me in the last few years—suddenly I’m no longer one of the new guys, but am now one of the old farts.  I don’t feel like an old fart, but the reality speaks for itself.  Every local faith community we at First Central partner with, and almost every UCC church in the Living Waters Association, has a pastor, rabbi, or imam who has arrived here since I began my ministry in Omaha fourteen years ago.

            So, as the wizened old guy, I thought that for this charge to the pastor, I’d give you ten lessons I’ve learned from being a minister in Omaha, Nebraska.

• Nebraskans are nice and they don’t coast. And those were actually slogans the city and the state used a few years ago in advertising campaigns.  You’ll discover the folks who hold such ideas with irony and those who don’t.
• Sports is important. Which, you probably know already.  Sadly, football seems less important than it was fourteen years ago.  And I’ll make no further comment on that.  But volleyball, College World Series, and lately women’s basketball are HUGE.  And then we usually get cool Olympic trials every few years.  We even had Olympic curling not too long ago.
• Fall is (usually) our best season. The morning sun shines with golden radiance.  We are most likely to have our perfect, top ten weather days (and there are only ten).  And then everyone puts on their flannel and goes apple picking.  You also have to go to Valla’s at least once every autumn.
• Winter, however, is not our best season. Some aren’t too bad.  But some have repeat polar vortexes and fifty inches of snow.  Lately they’ve just been getting weirder and unpredictable.  But one rule of thumb is that at least once every winter you and your family have to go, at least for a few days, someplace warm, where the sun shines and nature still has some green in it. 
• Omaha is really like a big small town. It won’t take you long to start running into people you know everywhere you go.  The best part of this reality is the quaint charm to so much that happens here.  One of my favorites is the Fourth of July.  There are all these little neighborhood parades and people throw parties in their backyards.  Front porches are hung with bunting.  It looks like a completely different time.  And it will charm you, and you’ll fall in love with it. 
• You must have an opinion on the streetcar.
• Natural disasters. Get ready for them.  We’ve had two 500-hundred-year floods in the time I’ve been pastor.  And I think we are about due again for the next one.  Blizzards, droughts, and, of course, tornados as well.  What will astound you are the responses.  The ways in which this community musters to help people in need.  Omaha is deeply philanthropic and generous.  Filled with excellent organizations who do the hard work well.  The capacities exists.  Omaha has wonderful community spirit.
• Where we still have lots of work to do is in racial justice and class inequality, as we deal with the lasting effects of redlining and other unjust decisions from the past. The uprisings and reckonings of 2020 made all too visible our shortcomings and how much work remains.  Here too there are vibrant groups doing good, hard work.  And it’s our job to follow and partner so that we can manifest our Christian values on the ground.
• Omaha is a place where you can make real change. This is a small enough city still that a few well-organized people can have a major impact.  For instance, twelve years ago the LGBTQ community, alongside the progressive congregations, and younger business people organized to pass our Equality Ordinance.  And then successfully defended it from challenges.  And in more recent years it has been expanded with no controversy and unanimous votes of the City Council.  Last year we did face new threats against bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, and LGBTQ rights in the state legislature.  The vast array of civil society that organized against it was a glory to behold.  We lost last year, but this year we prevented most of the evil bills.  So welcome to this fight.  It is one we where you Jenny, leading your congregation, can make a real difference, real lasting change, that imagines more and improves the lives of people.
• And finally, number ten. As the demographic trends show that the world is undergoing deep, radical change when it comes to religion, church, and spirituality, you’ll discover that the most fun thing about being a pastor in Omaha, Nebraska is that here good preaching and dynamic pastoral leadership work. They are effective. They bear fruit. 
  
  And your setting, your congregation is just primed to take off.  To imagine more.  To cast a vision, organize your mission, manifest your commitments, engage with effective partners, and help to meet the needs of this community.  It’s fun.

So, again, welcome.  There’s lots of good, difficult, and rewarding work to do.  And you’re going to enjoy it.

Finding Yourself in Chaos by James Newby
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A rich, helpful guide to doing ministry, both as one grapples with personal crises and as one navigates with a congregation through our current polycrisis. There is a tender grace embodied in this book.

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Beautiful and Terrible Things: Faith, Doubt, and Discovering a Way Back to Each Other by Amy Butler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A book every pastor should read, and church members in leadership who have responsibilities for caring for pastors.

The chapter on her divorce resonated deeply with me. I cried fresh tears.

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Giving

Psalm 145:13-21

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

5 March 2023

               Last April, during a work trip to Boston, I scheduled a visit to the Congregational Archives, which are in a grand historic building on Beacon Street, just past Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House.  Deb Kirwan, Susan Fortina, and former First Central member and now resident of Maine, Ken Friedman-Fitch and I were welcomed into the beautiful reading room of the library and archive, with giant windows that overlook the cemetery where Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and others are buried.

               The helpful archivist had brought out for us a number of documents and books that I had requested to look at, and showed off some of the highlights of the historic collection.  He also said that the archives maintains a file on each of the churches across the nation, so he had ours to show us.  Inside were lots of pamphlets and orders of worship and postcards and such from throughout our history, most of which I’d seen already in our own archives.

               But there was one document which I hadn’t seen before—the program for the 1922 dedication of this building.  It’s a twelve page booklet with pictures, histories, and lists—some of which we’ve included for your enjoyment in an insert in today’s bulletin.  The dedication program also contains the orders of worship for the services held 101 years ago to commemorate the completion of this building.

               And, that’s right, I said “services” with an s.  The program began on Thursday, March 2 at six o’clock with a big fellowship dinner in the room we now call Memorial Hall.  The Pastor, Rev. Dr. Frank Smith, presided.  Unfortunately, the menu was not printed.  There were toasts and responses to the toasts from representatives of the state conference and other Congregational churches in Nebraska. 

               At 8 p.m., after the dinner, they moved into this sanctuary, which they called the “auditorium.”  Where they held a “Service of Worship and Inspiration” with the Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Kansas City preaching.  One of the hymns sung that evening was “Faith of Our Fathers,” which we will be singing shortly.  Another was “Day is Dying in the West.”  Here are the first two verses:

Day is dying in the west;

Heav'n is touching earth with rest;

Wait and worship while the night

Sets her evening lamps alight

Through all the sky.

Lord of life, beneath the dome

Of the universe, Thy home,

Gather us who seek Thy face

To the fold of Thy embrace,

For Thou art nigh.

               They gathered again the next night, Friday, March 3, at 8 p.m. for a Service of Music.  They opened with “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and heard choirs, soloists, quartets, and organ.  The music was by Wagner, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, and others.  The postlude was “March for a Church Festival.”

               On Saturday, they rested.  Apparently.  No programs in the booklet. 

               Sunday morning, March 5, began with an 11 o’clock Service of Dedication.  They opened with the hymn “Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand,” which is about the church being gathered into paradise triumphantly at the end of history, but I’m guessing the second verse felt appropriate to the moment in which they were singing:

What rush of alleluias
Fills all the earth and sky!

What ringing of a thousand harps
Bespeaks the triumph nigh!

O day, for which creation
And all its tribes were made!

O joy, for all its former woes,

A thousand-fold repaid!

               Mr. E. H. Benner, the Chair of the building committee, then gave the keys to Dr. J. P. Lord, the Chair of Trustees, and the church read the litany of dedication, which we will reprise later in this service.  These memorial stained glass windows were dedicated, and Dr. Ozora S. Davis, the President of Chicago Theological Seminary delivered a sermon.  The congregation sang “O God Beneath Thy Guiding Hand” which is about the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock.  The final verse a stirring evocation on that day in 1922, I’m sure:

And here thy name, O God of love
Their children’s children shall adore,
Till these eternal hills remove,
And spring adorns the earth no more.

               But, they weren’t finished.  At 3:30 p.m. they returned for a “Service of Fraternal Greetings” with messages brought by local ministers and bishops of other churches and denominations. 

               Then, at 8 p.m. they held the final “Service of Praise and Meditation” with Dr. Davis of the seminary preaching again, this time a sermon entitled “The Christian Church in the Modern City.”  The congregation sang “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.”

               A lot comes through in the program and the orders of worship.  Their pride, delight, and satisfaction in what they had accomplished.  They even express a triumphalism that sees their work as part of a great, centuries-old legacy, that will lead on into the future as part of God’s great work.  There is a sense of we did this—with our hard work and money.  They viewed it as a spiritual accomplishment.  And one that would be of benefit not just to them, but to the wider community, to the entire state, region, and nation, and even in benefit to ministry around the world.  As you can see in the excerpts we’ve included, they highlighted the congregation’s support of Anna Lane, missionary pastor in Beijing, China.

               If we are wise, we should also examine all of this with a critical interpretative lens as well. This was a settler congregation building on land once inhabited by the Omaha people.  The triumphalism of the hymns can be a little off-putting, such as the third verse of “O God, Beneath Thy Guiding Hand” which was about the Pilgrims. 

Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God

Came with those exiles o’er the waves

As if such things did not already exist on this continent among the indigenous people who lived here.

               We are the heirs of this building, this legacy, this history.  We are the recipients of a great gift.  The heirs of their generosity.

               Theologian Amy Plantinga Pauw reminds us that the church is part of a “complex, intergenerational web” of giving.  There is no way, of course, to reciprocate the gifts, instead the concern for us becomes how do we “use their gifts well and pass them on to others.”

               This Lenten season our worship series is focused on words of wisdom and the six “rhythms of life lived in God’s presence” that Pauw identifies.  Giving is one of those.

               Giving is central to who God is in our tradition, as this Psalm 145 reminds us.  God’s hands are always open, trying to satisfy the desires of every living thing.  God’s giving is so extravagant, that it can be overwhelming.  Of course, God’s greatest gift is Jesus himself.  The story of Christmas is the story of the greatest gift—God’s child born in human flesh to live our life and die our death and rise again so that we too might fulfill the image of God inside each of us. 

               Amy Plantinga Pauw writes, “There is an indispensable generosity to creaturely life.  We respond to God’s manifold gifts to us by becoming mediators of God’s gifts to others.”  The best way for us to respond to God’s graciousness and generosity is to become generous ourselves.  The best way for us to receive the gifts of our ancestors, including this building, is to use the gift well, to share it, and to pass it along to others. 

               The goals of our Christian living are to sustain life, to help all people and all creation to flourish.  To create a community of sharing and service that benefits and cares for one another.  To bear witness to alternative and better ways of being human.  She writes, “In its giving, [the church] leans into [a] vision of universal communion in which all creation rejoices in God’s boundless generosity.”  The church “aims to be a community whose life gives life to others.”

               At its best, that’s what I see in the dedication of this building 101 years ago and the legacy that it left in this community—of care, service, and prophetic witness.  They had a vision for what this great gift could do not just for them but for the world.  Our task is to forge our own vision for the second century of this gift.  To share this building to the service of humanity and the renewal of creation so that God’s mission in our time is accomplished.  And to pass this gift along to those who come after us, so that they can use it in the ways God calls them in their time, even if that means changing the things we have done or that we cherish.

               How do we use it, share it, give it in a way that fulfills God’s purpose and mission? 

               I recently read a book that said churches should be guided in these sorts of decisions by three over-arching values—how we create a common life together, how we repair the damages done in the past that are part of our legacy, and how we use our resources to set people free. 

               Here is a place where we baptize babies, educate children, grow spiritually, emotionally, and physically, celebrate marriages, care for one another in illness and loss, join in fellowship and worship, and grieve our dead.  And we want to do these holy things in a space that is beautiful, accessible, hospitable, fun, and sacred. 

               Here is a place where the prophetic word is spoken, where we listen to the still-speaking God and work for justice and peace.  Here we create a community where all are welcome and included.  Where we work to break down stigma and try to right past wrongs.  We opened this space for the Omaha people when they first started teaching language classes in order to preserve their culture.  Father back we hosted the first integrated head start in the city.  We host baby showers for refugees. 

               And from this place we work to set people free.  We feed the hungry and clothe the needy and visit prisoners and build houses for the homeless and forgive medical debt.

               But, we can do more.  Be more, in the second century in this place.  For this is also a place where we can imagine more ways in which our resources and our gifts could be used to fulfill God’s mission to set people free, right what is wrong, and create a common life together.  To craft a vision for what this great gift could do not just for us but for the world.  Let’s be inspired by our history not just to honor a legacy, but to live into the future with vision and mission.

               So, like those a century and one years ago, let God’s generosity flow through us, shining with glory.  We too can give, serve, and share.  So that this gift is one we pass on into its second century.

Revive the Spirit

Isaiah 57:11-21

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

22 January 2023

               In her book An American Sunrise, recent United States Poet Laureate, and member of the Muscogee-Creek Nation, Joy Harjo, includes this song:

Do not get tired.

Don’t get discouraged.  Be determined.

Come.  Together let’s go toward the highest place.

               Harjo also includes this historical note about the song:

It is said that two beloved women sang this song as their band came over on the Trail of Tears.  One woman walked near the front of the people, and the other walked near the back with the small children.  When anyone faltered, they would sing this song to hold them up.

Do not get tired.

Don’t get discouraged.  Be determined.

Come.  Together let’s go toward the highest place.

               As I was studying the passage from Isaiah this week, one of the themes that stood out is that we as people of faith and hope affirm life, even, and especially, in times of danger. 

               This oracle in Isaiah was spoken to a group of people who had come back to their national homeland, a place many of them knew only from the stories of their parents and grandparents.  A place they had been exiled from for decades, living instead in the foreign imperial cities of their captors.  But now God has fulfilled God’s great promises.  God created a way through the desert, and the people have returned home again.

               Only to discover that restoring and rebuilding their way of life is more difficult work than they realized.  For one thing, they can’t all agree on what their new society should look like.  They disagree about what they are building.  And they are encountering opposition and challenges.

               So, in the middle of these difficult circumstances, the prophet speaks “Build up, build up, prepare the way.”  And what will enable and empower the people to accomplish the work is the presence of God.  God, who is reviving their spirits and challenging the wicked.

               The contemporary theologian Elizabeth Johnson reminds us that the universe is “an open-ended adventure” and that God’s Spirit is what draws us into the adventurous life.  She writes, “The indwelling Spirit of God moves over the void, breathes into the chaos, quickens, warms, sets free, blesses, and continuously creates the world, empowering its evolutionary advance.”

               God is the one present with us in all of our difficulties, helping us to face them with courage and hope.  The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God is the high and lofty one, but this high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, is also with the lowly.  The high and holy one dwells with the lowly ones.  This is one of the key insights of our biblical faith, that God, the Creator of the universe, is present with us and in us.  And is in everything and everyone we encounter.

               And, so, Isaiah reminds the people, we draw strength and vision from the God who dwells in solidarity with us.  Because God is with us, we are revived.

               But, there are still the challenges, the difficulties, the obstructions.  Not least among those are the people who refuse to participate in God’s covenant.  Who reject God’s vision of the future.  Isaiah calls them “the wicked” and says that they are “like the tossing sea that cannot keep still,” making chaos for everyone else.  What will be done about them?

               This passage from Isaiah speaks of God’s anger.  Not a topic we generally spend much time on, preferring to speak of God’s love and mercy. 

               Recently I read an excellent book entitled The Angry Christian by Andrew Lester, a professor of pastoral care.  Lester includes a chapter of his book on the anger of God and Jesus, and he insists that we understand God’s anger as an expression of God’s love.  In fact, that even for us humans, we should realize that because we love, we get angry.  Lester writes of Jesus, “His experiences of irritation, frustration, indignation, and anger all arise when his values are threatened, and therefore, his anger is in the service of his love and God’s love.”

               Now, in the context of the Isaiah passage, God was once angry with the people for their covetousness, which Walter Brueggemann describes as “destructive acquisitiveness.” A greed that was not life affirming, but actually life destroying, and such was contrary to God’s vision for human life. 

               And God is, now, angry during the time of restoration because there are those who threaten the peace and well-being that God is working to create for people.  Because God loves the people and wants the best for them, God is upset when those dreams are thwarted by those whose values and actions don’t affirm life and well-being.

               I’m upset this week . . .

               But, Isaiah tells us, don’t worry too much about those folks, because God will take care of them.  Instead, you people who are affirming the values of life, who are participating in God’s dream of well-being for all creation, you folks will have your spirits revived and you will experience peace.

               Elizabeth Johnson declares that “the Creator Spirit dwells at the heart of the natural world, graciously energizing its evolution from within, compassionately holding all creatures in their finitude and death, and drawing the world forward toward an unimaginable future.”

               God is there, present with us and in us, compassionately holding us in our sufferings and losses, and working with us to move forward, to build a better future.

               “Build up, build up, prepare the way” the prophet declares.  People, peace, to the far and the near.”

               And so when our Spirits are revived, we are capable of building a new community of well-being and peace.  The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes, “Thanks to hope, we reach into the realm of that which does not yet exist and bring that which is future into the present.”  We draw inspiration from our dreams and visions of a better future and work right now to make the present more like that.

               I have to tell you that I feel very excited about our ministry here at First Central.  In my almost thirteen years, there have been many moments of excitement, full of vision and opportunity, and right now is at the top of that list.  Why?

               We’ve come through great challenges and difficulties, and we did so with integrity and care.  But those difficulties were also opportunities for growth and innovation and change.  And now there’s a vitality in the congregation that is palpable.  Worship attendance, in person and online, is very strong.  We’ve got so many children in Sunday school.  We draw and keep new visitors. 

               I’m excited by what our To Be More capital campaign envisions for our future.  Remodeling various spaces in our building so that we can improve our programs for kids and families, invite more people into the building to use it, and even hopefully generate income from rentals to help fund our programs. 

               I’m excited by the skills and vision of our young adults.  And feel that in the decades ahead, we will continue to be served by smart, capable, effective leaders. 

               I’m excited by all the children and their families and am confident that now is the time for us to focus our attention and resources on developing and strengthening the ministries and programs that help to nurture them.

               I’m excited by how the challenges of doing hybrid (on-line and in person) worship well has opened up new opportunities for creativity, for God is clearly doing a new thing in the life of Christianity.

               And while there are certainly new post-Covid challenges to how people want to volunteer and commit their time, I believe this too creates a chance for us to refocus on how we help people create and cultivate their spiritual path.

               I’m going to have more to say about all of these things in my State of the Church address next Sunday during the Annual Meeting and in the months to come.

               But the key takeaway is that God has been present with us, reviving our spirits, healing our hurts, and empowering us to move forward in courage and hope to create the community we’ve envisioned.

               God’s light has come and is shining upon us.  Let’s join God in the work of building the future we’ve dreamed of.

               And, so, I want to return to that Creek song I opened with, and let it be a rallying cry:

Do not get tired.

Don’t get discouraged.  Be determined.

Come.  Together let’s go toward the highest place.

Pastoral Prayer

18 December 2022—Fourth Sunday of Advent

Holy One,
We’ve spent these last four weeks in
Waiting and preparation and eager anticipation.
We’ve been busy baking and wrapping and shopping
And going to parties and preparing music
And doing all the things that we do in this season that we enjoy.

A season that also can be difficult—stressful, overwhelming,
Or particularly for those who are experiencing a loss or an illness or a change in life—
A season that can be particularly hard.

We think of this coming week and all of the excitement of the holiday,
But we also look at the weather forecast,
And we see how bitter cold it will be,
And wonder how difficult those days will be,
And how that might change our plans,
And then our minds wonder to those who are without a home,
The people or the animals, those who will be outside and exposed to these horrible temperatures.

And we realize that all of our seasons come mixed—
With joy and with despair,
With sadness and with glory.

And we hope during this time that we have learned
To cultivate our attention,
To be able to see you and hear you,
In all the ways that the little lights are shining in the darkness,
That the little tendrils are growing in what seems lifeless.

We hope
That wonder has filled our lives,
And given us a sense of hope and encouragement for the future.

"Scripture is from first to last a vision of a world made otherwise than that based on hierarchy, domination, and the rule of money and violence," writes Timothy Gorringe based on the theology of Ton Veerkamp.  This book concludes with a final chapter drawing everything together for what transitions we need in order to create a different/better world.

He asks what kind of culture any community needs in order to be resilient.  I found this important, and one  of the reasons I have been reading all of these books this sabbatical summer, to be sure that our congregation is aware and prepared and doing what we should for the age we are now in and what is coming.

Gorringe believes too much around the climate is doom and gloom that has the effect of people feeling that they cannot act.  Instead he wants to follow the lead of some other scholars who believe that we need a vision of the future that entices people to participate.  Also a wise point for any preacher and pastor.

He believes our need for resilience is at root a spiritual problem.  Spirituality keeps people focused on hope and the future instead of succumbing to despair.  I was reminded of our Lenten worship series that focused on spiritual practices given the reality of climate change.

He writes:

These dimensions of resilience--solidarity, compassion, an ability to cope with tragedy, a sense of purpose, and an understanding of faith, hope, and agape--seem to me to be the real heart of 'inner transition.'

Church's might have to become arks, sanctuaries for the good life.  He returns to his idea of Benedictine communities in the dark ages, that he brought up in the introduction.  He concludes:

If I am right then a rigorous return to the traditions, practices, and virtues that Christians have nourished for so many centuries, but which at the same time the church has compromised so abjectly in relation to the present imperium, may be, to put i no more strongly, amongst the most important things that help to make and to keep human beings human in the dark ages already upon us.

The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life by Andrew Root
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last week, and much of it while I was in a monastery on retreat experiencing the rhythms of prayer in monastic time, I was coincidentally/serendipitously reading this book. Root identifies the core problem facing contemporary churches and church people to be time related. This resonated with me. I've long enjoyed exploring the topic of time (you can find a number of my sermons that approach this theme). And how often in the pandemic years have we heard people focus on losing a sense of time?

Root writes, "We long to find a true fullness that draws us not through time, into some future time, but more deeply into time itself. We long to live so deeply in time that we hear and feel the calling of eternity. We yearn to find once again the infinite in time, to find the sacred in the present, and therefore to be truly alive!"

Yes.

The opening chapter on depression is so excellent. He writes that most depression in the 21st century is actually related to time--that we can't keep up the pace of living our best lives. I've copied this chapter to share with someone I thought needed to read it.

This is the sort of book that had me really thinking of how to apply it to my personal life and how to engage its themes as a pastor for my congregation. I think there will be a future worship series formatted around it. Also, at least four books that he references I plan to read, so it will likely lead to intellectual fertility.

My only criticism was that Root summarizes his points so many times that in some places it becomes very repetitive to the point of tiresome. So it could have used some editing. But that overall does not diminish the book too much.

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FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO & the Omaha Two story by Michael Richardson


One of Omaha's most notorious cases. Richardson argues, obviously from the title, that Poindexter and Rice were framed by the FBI for the murder of officer Minard.

This book is not an easy read because the other piles on the facts and long quotes from documents and testimony with little narrative structure. One wishes for this exhaustive research to be shaped with better skill into a story.

I did like learning more about my congregation's role in this story, as First Central had hosted a forum on police brutality directly before the murder and received much criticism for it.

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The Way of Righteousness

Matthew 21:23-32

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

27 September 2020

            We continue our series exploring the lectionary texts from the Gospel of Matthew.  Today begins a series of moments of Jesus teaching in the Temple.  The setting is that week between his Triumphal Entry that we commemorate on Palm Sunday and his impending arrest and execution at the end of the week.  In those intervening days, the Gospel tells us that Jesus went daily to the Temple in Jerusalem and there debated the religious leaders.  And his words and actions lead to his arrest. 

            In today’s lesson the leaders confront Jesus with questions of authority.  He diverts the conversation by asking his own questions and then telling them a parable.  Hear, now, this ancient story:

Matthew 21:23-32

When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said,
“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
Jesus said to them,
“I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.
Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”
And they argued with one another,
“If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’
But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.”
So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.”
And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think?  A man had two sons; he went to the first and said,
‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’
The son answered, ‘I will not’; but later changed his mind and went.
The father went to the second son and said the same;
and that son answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go.

Which of the two did the will of his father?” [Jesus asked]
They said, “The first.”
Jesus said to them,
“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

For the Word of God in scripture,

For the Word of God within us,

For the Word of God among us,

Thanks be to God.

 

 

            Today I want to begin my sermon with a benediction.  Of course, benedictions properly come at the close of a worship service.  They are words of blessings that send us forth for another week of ministry.  Here is today’s blessing:

The One who blesses you is the One from whom you came,

The One who met you on the road,

The One who has sustained you all the days of your life,

and the One to whom we all shall return,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

            Almost twenty years ago I heard that benediction almost every week.  Those were the words that the Rev. Dr. Raymond Vickrey used to close Sunday worship.  He’d speak from the back of the sanctuary.  He spoke calmly and assuredly, radiating joy and hope.

            Ray was the Senior Minister of Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas for twenty-seven years, and it was my privilege and honor to work as his Associate Pastor for a couple of years in the early Aughts.  Ray died a little over a week ago, taken by that evil disease Alzheimer’s. 

            Ray grew up in a working class area of Houston, around oil refinery workers.  He attended Baylor University, where he excelled as an athlete and student, and had hoped to compete in the Olympics.  He was a student when Waco's downtown was destroyed by a powerful tornado.  He rushed downtown from the university and helped rescue people, pulling them from the rubble.  His early ministerial career was ended by a divorce, at a time when Southern Baptists still opposed divorce.  His own experience of exclusion helped to shape his approach to others in the decades to come.

Ray became the director of the alumni association at Baylor and in that role cemented relationships throughout the state.  Then, in the late seventies, he was called back to the church, pastoring a large singles ministry at FBC Richardson.  Then, in 1981, Royal Lane called him as pastor, where he served until 2008.

In the 1980's Southern Baptists would undergo a huge battle as the fundamentalists took over the denomination.  Ray was a voice of reason and moderation in those battles, standing on the right side of questions of biblical interpretation and the role of women in the church.  And so he was one of the leaders as new splinter groups of moderates and progressives formed in the 1990's. 

One of Ray's great gifts was his ability to form deep friendships.  His close friend the Rev. Kyle Childress published an article in the magazine The Christian Century in 2004 about Ray and their close group of friends.  They call themselves "The Neighborhood."  Six pastors who for years gathered twice a year for a week at a time to be friends and supporters of each other.  Try as I might, I've never been able to replicate this in my own ministry.  Even beyond this gang, it wasn't unusual for some friend of Ray’s to drive or fly to Dallas to spend time with Ray when they needed wisdom and advice.

On the big issues before the church of women’s roles and leadership and inclusion of LGBT persons, Ray worked gently, holding conversations, and encouraging people.  He used the example of an elephant—You don’t turn an elephant by tugging hard at a rope.  You turn an elephant by applying pressure, slowly, to its side.

            I learned many lessons from Ray, benefiting from his wisdom and years of experience so early in my own ministry. 

            The day he died, the image of Ray that kept playing in my head was of our last time together at the Bavarian Grill, a wonderful German restaurant in Plano that was our habitat while working together where we spent time almost every week eating, drinking, smoking cigars, planning worship, telling stories.  One on of my visits back to Dallas after moving here, I met up with Ray again at the Bavarian Grill and he wanted to hear all about this church and Omaha and our ministry here.  And he smiled his charming smile and laughed and his face radiated with light.  It is this image of him that played in my head on repeat the day he died.

The One who blesses you is the One from whom you came,

The One who met you on the road,

The One who has sustained you all the days of your life,

and the One to whom we all shall return,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

            The religious leaders wanted to know by what authority Jesus operated.  They wanted to know who he claimed to be.  But Jesus doesn’t answer directly.  Instead, he tries to get them to think about John the Baptist and where his authority came from.  The religious leaders perceive the question as a trap, according to the way Matthew tells the story.  But Jesus might just as easily have been trying to tease their imaginations to think outside the box.  Our hint that this might be the case is that he next tells a parable, and he almost always uses a parable to tease the imagination into considering other possibilities.

            And this one is no different.  There’s a rather straightforward reading, that, in the end, it is better to do the right thing.  Matthew even takes that straightforward reading in a radically inclusive direction—our human hierarchies will be overturned and those so often excluded will be included and those who think they are doing everything right will learn they have made a mistake. 

            Brandon Scott, scholar of the parables, invites us to consider how this parable would have been heard by the original audience, living in a patriarchal society shaped significantly by the concepts of honor and shame.  The first son has publicly shamed the father by disobeying him, but has privately honored him by doing the work anyway.  The second son has publicly honored the son by saying yes, but has privately shamed him by failing to do the work.  Neither has really done the will of the father.  When Jesus asks his listeners which is better, the truth is that neither is a very good option, given the social context. 

            Which teases the imagination into considering new possibilities.  Maybe the social system is wrong—the hierarchy, the patriarchy, the overwhelming role of honor and shame.  Maybe the way of righteousness is to get away from those completely.  Maybe that goes back to the earlier question about authority.  Does Jesus need an authority?  Does he refuse the question because that tries to frame his ministry in a way that is inauthentic to what he’s trying to do?

            Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes:

Attempts to answer the question as posed inevitably result in diverse forms of Christian heresy, for the attempt to establish grounds more determinative than Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection for why we should believe in him results in idolatry.  If one needs a standard of truth to insure that Jesus is the Messiah, then one ought to worship that standard of truth, not Jesus.

Hauerwas writes that we only know Jesus by participating in the way of life that he models.  Jesus seems to be saying to the authorities—just try living this kind of life and see if it isn’t a better way of being human, of being faithful to God.

            Jesus’ way of righteousness is a rejection of our normal systems of authority.  My friend Tripp Fuller recently published a book on Christology (the academic study of Jesus) and in it he writes that we misunderstand the incarnation and God’s presence and work through Jesus if we understand that as divine intervention into the world.  Instead, Jesus models “divine fidelity, patience, and loving investment in the world.”  God doesn’t invade the world with great power to compel obedience.  God is present in the ordinary, suffering alongside us, encouraging and inspiring us in the work.  Jesus wants his listeners to rethink divine power and agency, to rethink authority, and to rethink what it means for us to be faithful.  What it means for us to follow the way of righteousness.

            We have been reminded this week, in the case of Breonna Taylor, that systems often fail to bring about the justice we desire.  I find cynicism tempting in a way I never have before.  Yet Jesus taught us long ago that human systems will often fail us, and that we must dare to imagine new possibilities.

            The Christian way is very difficult.  Patience, fidelity, love, friendship, service—these so often work slowly.  And we can’t judge their effectiveness by the normal human standards.  We have chosen this way of life because our participation in it has revealed to us that this is the better way of being human, of being faithful to God. 

            I point to my friend and mentor as an example of a life that followed the way of righteousness, working slowly and deliberately over many decades, gently teaching and pastoring so many.

            And so Jesus doesn’t appeal to an authority, but invites us into a new way of life.

The One who blesses you is the One from whom you came,

The One who met you on the road,

The One who has sustained you all the days of your life,

and the One to whom we all shall return,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.