Monday, October 22, 2012

Called to Power?

NOTE:  My friend and colleague, Jim Kerr, was to have been the guest preacher at a church in Grafton, WV, this morning, but because of illness, he called yesterday to ask if I were available.  I was, and hence this sermon.
 
Called to Power?
Isaiah 53; Hebrews 5:1-10; St. Mark 10:35-45
A Sermon Prepared and delivered by James E. Norton, Guest Pastor
Church of the Covenant, Grafton, West Virginia
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 21, 2012
This morning’s Gospel story is one that appears in three of the four Gospels.  The disciples quarrel over who should have the places of honor and power at Jesus’ right and left hands.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the disciples.  Striving after power and status may be quite the human thing to do.
 
 
When reaching retirement, say some psychologists, it is natural to look back and reflect on the many of our working years.  I recall my father’s tendency for such reflection after 50 years as a handyman in a furniture store, and I find myself engaged in such ruminations after 46 years as an ordained pastor.  One very clear recollection for me involves the assumptions I had just after graduating from seminary and receiving the church’s stamp of approval: “Ordained.”  (Use ASL for “dumb” as if stamping my forehead with the word “ordained,” and play with that.)  There I was full of excitement about all that my education had taught me and my imagination even went so far as to believe that people back home in West Virginia were waiting with bated breath, so eager were they to absorb all that I could impart.  How powerful I was going to be!  Surely I would be promoted quickly to the office of District Superintendent, seated at the right or left hand of the Bishop!


Do I need to tell you how long it was before that delusion was done in?  Actually, it took about a year for my yuppie aspirations to be the pastor of the “church-of-what’s-happening-now”—with its walls bulging from increased attendance and membership, its growing budget, its new building programs, its higher salaries, its added perks, its upscale parsonage, its fancier office complete with a parson’s private privy, its power and prestige within the community and throughout the state—it took a year for those hallucinations to end up where they belonged (down one of the holes in the two-seater outhouse out back).  So much for private privies.


And so much for our power as pastors.  Yet, sometimes it seems that more than pastors assume that pastors possess power.  The message that often comes through from Superintendents, Bishops and other denominational executives, and sometimes even through church members, is that if the pastors were competent and their hearts were in the right place, churches would grow, mission giving would be overflowing, and operating budgets would always have surpluses, despite the declining population figures and the worsening economic conditions, especially for the middle class and working poor.  People have to pay their taxes, but there is no power to compel them to be faithful in their commitment to the church.  That kind of faithfulness is motivated either by the desire for power and control (the more I give and the more I do, the more I will be recognized and rewarded for my “faithfulness”), and/or it is motivated by genuine care and generosity.  But those are highly personal considerations, and it is unlikely that pastors have much power over what people do.  Adults (not children, of course) do what they want to do—that’s the privilege of being adult.  Pastors and other persons may be able to persuade others to do those things that are constructive and contribute to the common good, but the bottom line is that people do what they want to do.


Some individuals sometimes act as if that they are powerless and that they are not behaving the way they say they want because of being forced by others against their will.  “I really wish I could help out with that project, but you know how browbeating Brunhilda can be?”  How often I’ve heard individuals make such claims to powerlessness and yet how they really seemed to be doing what they really wanted to do or not doing what they didn’t want to do, and at the same time eliciting a pity-party for having to live in such oppressive conditions.  The reality is that being adult means doing what we want to do, and perhaps, that’s as it should be.


Some of us can remember a time when the institutional church was thought to be a powerful force, one that could dictate what people did and didn’t do.  There was a time when the church seemed to be the moral authority in the community, and it was respected and its voice had power.  The Blue Laws were enforced so that storeowners didn’t dare open their places of business on Sundays.  Prominent professional people and business leaders joined the church because it was good for business to be seen in church.


Those days are gone.  The voice of the church is divided and falls on deaf ears.  Those outside the church witness how in some congregations there is haggling over power and bickering within the family of faith, and they stay as far away as they can get.  The pews empty.  The younger generations are more and more skeptical of all institutions, including the Church, and according to research data, 85% of persons in their twenties through forties have never even darkened the doors of a church.  They have never learned the Lord’s Prayer, and about the only time they will ever see the inside of a church is when they attend a wedding or get married themselves.


One time a couple came to the church where I was pastor to look around the sanctuary as a possible place to get married.  The communion cup holders in this particular church were located along the kneeling rail in the front of the sanctuary.  The bride had read the wedding regulations of the church and saw where the church had “candelabras” for use at weddings.  Pointing to the communion cup holders along the kneeling rail, she asked if they were the candle holders we rented out for weddings.  The days when the majority of people have grown up in and been influenced by the church are probably gone and will never return.


Well, okay, the church isn’t as powerful as it used to be.  So what?  There are other very powerful entities in this world.  Corporations, nations and governments can and do wield enormous power, make no mistake about it!  Powerful nations can flex their muscles and use up hundreds of thousands of billions of dollars in an attempt to control the course of history, but do they have the power to escape the long-term political, economic and social consequences of such actions?  Is our country’s present financial failure in any way related to giant corporations and their CEOs condoning virtually any behavior that will net them and their shareholders greater wealth, no matter how unethical or illegal; or is our financial failure in any way related to the cost of combat operations and military actions overseas?  Hasn’t history demonstrated again and again that indiscriminate and miscalculated use of power usually leads to colossal outcomes that inflict greater harm and destruction than good?


When the disciples asked for positions of power and prestige, Jesus punctured their grand illusions of power by asking if they could drink the same cup that he would drink and be baptized with the same baptism with which he would be baptized.  He was referring, of course, to his own suffering and death.  How disappointing Jesus’ response must have been to the disciples!  How upsetting to be told that instead of positions of honor and public acclaim, the disciples would indeed share in Jesus’ suffering, drink that same cup and be baptized with that same baptism.  Not only so, but they would have to renounce their desire for greatness and power and become servants to people in need.


This morning’s passage for the epistle to the Hebrews says, “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death…(but like all of us) he learned obedience through what he suffered.”


The One we claim to be the Son of God was not exempt from suffering, anymore than we are.  None of us can escape suffering.  We can inflict suffering (to be sure) just as we can extend goodness, but we cannot escape suffering.  We cannot use faithfulness as a way of manipulating God into making our lives fair and fine.  We cannot give more to the church as a way of keeping turmoil and trouble at bay.  We cannot expect some special consideration in return for our obedience.

 
My friend for over thirty years, as decent and thoughtful and good a man as you could ever want to know, who died at age 58 after 15 months of agony battling pancreatic cancer, could tell you if he were alive.  Or talk with the mother whom I met some years ago whose son was one of our troops, a medic actually, in Iraq.  She could tell you.  She showed me a picture of him that appeared in the NY Times.  The photographer caught him sharing some of his day’s ration of water with an elderly Iraqi woman, her wrinkled hands smeared with fresh blood.  The picture also showed a gun strapped over the boy’s shoulder.  According to the Geneva Convention, medics are non-combatants and, as such, are not to carry weapons.  The mother’s obvious distress was for her son, to be sure, but she also expressed through her tears deep concern for all whose lives were in jeopardy as well as those families who had lost loved ones.


According to worldly standards, success is determined by political and economic power.  James and John request positions of power where they can lord it over others.  Jesus responds by saying, “No!”  Instead of the glory of exercising authority over others, Jesus offers the way of his own life.  Just as he faced his own struggles and prayed with loud cries and tears, so that way of cross-bearing is our lot in life as well.  The nation or the church that seeks to save its life by achieving status and power over others will lose it.  True disciples, said Jesus, are not those who lord it over others, but those who “deal gently,” who become servants of others.


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