Sunday
January 21
Lighten Our Darkness
By Marsh Chapel
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He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside. He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is. (A Schweitzer)
One
Speaking of Jesus, here He is this morning, midway from Christmas to Easter, from manger to cross, from nativity to passion. Along the shoreline he strides, one foot in sea and one on shore. He makes two invitations. As Howard Thurman said, ‘Christmas happens every time there is a birth, a mother, a child, a birth, new life’. We need to give as much attention, extended attention, to Christmas, here at Marsh Chapel, as we do, here, to Lent, Holy Week, Triduum and Easter. Our health, our salvus, our salvation, is in part in keeping that balance, of birth and of death.
He meets two brothers at dawn, and they meet him, He who is the light that shines in the darkness. Notice how Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, are sketched. There is little to nothing of history here, but what there is says so much! There is no parental shadow lying on their fishing nets. One hears no maternal imperative, no paternal dictate. These boys are on their own. They have left home already, maybe leaving the city to the south to find a meager middle-class existence with their own means of production. They are small business men, boat owners, fishermen. Neither the amhaaretz (the poor of the land) nor the gentry, they. Not poor, not rich. Working stiffs. Young, young men. Simon already has a nick-name. A sign of joviality, of conviviality, of gregarious playful fun. Peter, the Rock. Is this for his steady faithfulness or his failure to float? On this rock…or…Sinks like a Rock…You sense that these brothers play in the surf a little, kick up the sand a little, take time to take life as it comes. Brown are their forearms, and burnished their brows. They love the lake and life, and have made already their entrance into adult life. For they have left home. One envies their youth and freedom. They have taken to the little inland sea of Galilee, and with joy they meet each dawn, like this one, at first light, as they see Light.
You can feel the sand under their feet as they take a moment to play and laugh. You can feel the chill of the water as they swim, while breakfast cooks over the fire. You can feel their feeling of vitality and joy as they greet another day at sunrise. Jesus invites, and they accept. Follow me…
Meanwhile, back on the beach, Jesus heads south, cove by cove, with Andrew and Peter frolicking in tow. They had already left home. They are ready to take a flier on some new trek, not fully sure how it will work out. It is a miracle that they are remembered, perhaps with a little hagiography, as having responded “immediately”. Still, every little scrap of memory of these two brothers tends in the same direction—full of vim, vigor, vitality andpepperino. Yes, they will follow! But Jesus is about to make a second invitation. Not to the defiant, but to the compliant. Not to the independent, but to the dependent. Not to the strong, but to the weak. Not to the secular, but to the religious.
Down the shoreline a little, there rests another boat. A different story, a different set of brothers altogether. James and John. Known as the sons of Zebedee. Simon has already earned his own name and nick-name. But these two are known by their father’s name. They haven’t left home. They have not yet acquired that second identity. Here they are, as usual at dawn, stuck in the back of the boat. All these years they have watched the Peter and Andrew show. All these years they have envied the fun and frolic down the beach. The late night parties. The bonfires. The singing. The swimming. And here they sit strapped to the old boat of old Zebedee. They are covered with the ancient equivalents of chap stick and Coppertone. And, more to the point, they are trapped under the glaring gaze of Zebedee, whose thunderous voice has so filled their home that their own voices have not emerged. Every day, in the back of the boat. And what are they doing? Why you could have guessed it, even if the text had not made it plain. Are they casting? No. Are they fishing yet? No. Are they sailing? No. They are mending. Mending. Knit one, pearl two… Their dad has got them into that conservation, protection, preservation mode. That worst side of churchgoing mode. Mending. At sunrise! Of course, nets need mending, but the nets and the mending are meant in a greater service! The fun is in the fishing! The joy is in the casting. And there they sit, sober souls, looking for a bad time if a bad time can be had, mending. Both sets of brothers are invited, welcomed, called, as you are today, to follow, even amid the ‘certain normal predicaments of human divinity (James Agee). Called in the struggles of life, to find new life, following Jesus, and so in his church. This is the start of the church.
Two
My teacher Douglass John Hall wrote a book once, Lighten Darkness: ‘Darkness entered into, darkness realized, is the point of departure for all profound expressions of Christian hope. ‘Meaningless darkness’ becomes ‘revelatory darkness’ when it is confronted by the courage of a thoughtfulness and hope that is born of faith’s quest for truth. (DJHall) The church shall need this word in 2024, through all of 2024.
Speaking of church, On Dec. 31, my United Methodist Church officially completed itsrecent realignment. Up to a quarter of American Methodist congregations may have left the denomination. While the percentage of churches and percentage of congregants is not the same — it may be a smaller percentage of actual members who split off — this schism has changed the shape of Methodism, and has made a way forward for the vast majority of members to affirm and love its gay members, family members of gay people, and friends and neighbors of gay people.
Like other Protestant denominations (for example, Episcopal, Presbyterian and Lutheran), the United Methodist Church has faced decades of conflict, largely over the full humanity of gay people. Also, like other denominations, after years of national and other meetings, the denomination has at long last come to a conclusive point.
This division is by no means a surprise, and in fact has been fully present since at least 1970. Over the past 50 years, it has been debated, avoided, postponed, and dreaded since before I entered the ministry in 1979. The determinations of the General Conference (the governing body of the UMC) have placed this time frame, with the stipulation that individual churches could leave the denomination at this time, over the gay issue.
Politics has played a clear role, as it has in church decisions for the more than 200-year history of Methodism. The United Methodist Church has always been the most national, most representative Protestant denomination, with at least one local church in every county of the 50 United States.
Notably, gay rights are not the only wedge issue dividing the denomination. Our current Book of Discipline affirms a moderate pro-choice position on abortion, as do I, one of things many of those leaving the denomination oppose. Methodism has a long track record of advocacy for the rights of women, including the right to ordination, which some of those leaving the denomination oppose. Even broader cultural issues related to lifestyle, parenting and schooling have percolated not only through the body politic of the country, but also through the community and communities of faith.
That is, there is a direct relation and correlation between the denominational debates and national political currents. Some of that is simply the presence of John and Mary at the school board on Tuesday evening and then in worship together on Sunday morning. Some more of it is lodged in different perspectives on local vs. national authority, and state vs. federal authority.
Having had the privilege of preaching from 10 different pulpits, it has been quite impressive to me just how localized and culturally distinctive each congregation becomes, in matters great and not so great.
But while our faith communities, like our country, have become polarized across a wide range of issues, differing stances on gay rights have contributed most directly to the current denominational move forward. This is an issue that is biblically misunderstood. There are, in all 66 books of the Bible, both Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, some 30,000 verses. Exactly six of those — six out of 30,000 —arguably have anything directly to say about same-gender relationships. It was not exactly a central theme for the biblical writers.
But what makes this matter so devilish for modern Methodism is not the utter paucity of any biblical material related to this theme, but rather the very clear, centrally admonished teaching otherwise, for instance in Galatians 3: 28, Paul (often a favorite for conservatives by the way) writes: “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female. “ Martin Luther called Galatians “the Magna Carta of Christian liberty.” In it Paul very clearly sets aside religious, economic and sexual distinctions, on the power of the unity of faith, of baptism and the Gospel of Christ. ‘There is no male and female’, but rather the unity of faith, hope and love in the person of Christ, crucified and risen. (See J.L. Martyn’s magisterial Anchor Bible Commentary on Galatians for more detail).
Thus, many of those now leaving the denomination, purportedly on biblical grounds, have apparently not read all of the Bible, or at least have not read some parts of it carefully, faithfully, and fully, especially Galatians 3:28 and similar passages within the full and fully liberating arc of biblical theology.
Nevertheless, the separation is happening. And for the future, that means hard work for Methodism. It means the ongoing struggle to support urban ministry with poor and underprivileged people, the struggle to support growing churches in Africa and Asia, the struggle to support summer camping ministries, campus ministries, elder care ministries, and many other forms of service that our connectional system has effectively and efficiently provided over decades, will have to go on with fewer people, churches, and far less money. We will have to cut in all these mission-driven areas and of course in many other administrative ones (number of Bishops, superintendents and other).
Politics is downstream from economics, which is downstream from culture, which is downstream from religion (and I here mean religion very broadly construed). What happens in religion really matters and both conditions and reflects the broader American landscape, for good or ill or very ill. Our divisions flow downstream into others.
The work of the church will get more difficult. But 2024 also brings a new day, a chance for creative repositioning, a moment for younger clergy coming of age to find their voice and influence, and the kind of freedom that comes with change.
Three
Speaking of change, and of the church, two hundred years ago Friederich Schleiermacher set out a new theology, in the service of the church, and in the wake of the Enlightenment. ‘Fides quarens intellectum’—faith seeking understanding—guided his effort. He founded all his great, long work, THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, upon a single insight, ‘the feeling of absolute dependence’. Our faith, the faith once delivered to the saints, the faith of Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, at Christmas, he grounded in our experience of dependence. By feeling he did not mean emotion or sensation, though these were of course included. By feeling he meant experience, and preeminently the unfathomable but palpable, unutterable but unmistakable sensation of absolute dependence. Where did all, all this, come from? Whence life, breath, freedom, existence? Why something, not nothing? By some miracle grace, here we are, dependent, absolutely dependent on the unseen for the seen, on the unknown for the known, on the dark for the light.
Jesus enters our culture, jostled left and right to be sure by other and stronger prevailing winds, from Christmas into Epiphany, to leave a lasting impression upon us of our absolute dependence, of a feeling of absolute dependence: The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.
What strikes the reader following him anew today is how very quickly Schleiermacher moves from the feeling of absolute dependence to the experience of fellowship in the communion of saints. Straightway, after a few paragraphs, he moves from dependence to church. The feeling of absolute dependence immediately propels one into the gathering of others of such feeling. So, an experience of hope drives one to a common, a community of hope. An experience of peace prods one to find out, seek out, a fellowship in peace. A moment of joy kindles a delight in the shared evocation of joy. And a longing for love places one in the midst of a group of others who have the same longing. Are we lovers anymore? I know we know a lot, especially in a University setting. Good. But are we lovers? Do we love a lot? ‘The religious self-consciousness, like every essential element in human nature, leads necessarily in its development to fellowship or communion; a communion which, on the one hand, is variable and fluid, and, on the other hand, has definite limits, i.e., is a Church”. In other words, the gift of faith may lead each one of us more strongly, regularly and personally to unwrap that gift, week by week, in church, in worship, in gathering, in assembly, on Sunday morning at 11am. Come and worship! Come and pray, come early, come and learn someone’s name, come and sign up to receive the newsletter, come and linger for coffee, come and warmly welcome a student. Come and worship!
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside. He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is. (A Schweitzer)
