Christianity

Pastoral leadership for the 21st century: break the rules

A sermon exploring the kind of pastoral leadership the church needs for the 21st century. Risky. Daring. Egalitarian. And able to help disentangle us from the patriarchy that's held us captive for too long.

This was preaching on a live Zoom service upon the ordination of the Rev. Sara Tillema, Minister of Word and Sacrament.

1.

Sara, today we’re celebrating your tenacity and the patience that have helped bring your journey to his moment. Today, we’re ritualizing the beginning of a new journey as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, serving not only the part of the Christian tribe we call the Presbyterians, but also the much larger “holy catholic church.”

When I say we’re ordaining you as Minister of Word and Sacrament for the “holy catholic church,” I mean catholic, small “c”—the universal or cosmic church, not identified one with a particular religious brand or sect or communion. God’s church is bigger than that. For the whole world, the universe itself, is God’s cathedral, and every star and every sea anemone, every bee and every butte, every river and every redwood, every poem and every person is part of this grand mystery called the church. What we do religiously is just a way to awaken us as human beings to the truth that God is in fact in everything and is contained by no one thing, denomination, or religious tradition. . . .

The texts were John 2.1-11 and "Summer's Day" by Mary Oliver. And a performance of The New Rule by the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi.

Leap for Christ’s Sake:  A Meditation on Physics, Cosmology, and Human Life

Unlike the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of John begins more scientifically than it does historically.  The first line of the Gospel reads: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  That may not sound like science to us today, but it was a form of science two thousand years ago when it was written.  It was science and philosophy and theology all rolled into one.  Back then, a university would never have relegated these disciplines to separate departments, different faculty.  And, I believe, neither will we some day in the future.  

    “All things came into being through the Word,” the Gospel says, “and without the Word, not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in the Word was life and that life was the light of all people.” 

    It’s an ancient text that’s trying to make sense of reality—science and philosophy and theology overlapping.  The author’s glimpsed something as big, as revolutionary, as epic as what Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein saw, something that changes everything.

    Trouble is, as with other breakthroughs, the vision would be met with enormous skepticism, hostility, and rejection . . .

Injustice must not remain uncontested

I hear many Christians say that the church is not political; “We need to focus on the gospel not on public policy.”

Image by Scott*

Image by Scott*

I cannot read the Bible and the history of Christianity and go along with that. The prophets, and Jesus himself, were passionate about justice.  The church today must rise up, finding courage and freedom to address—from the perspective of the Bible’s vision of the flourishing of all creation—issues of gun control, immigration, the environment, poverty, war, corporate greed, and racism in America, among other things.

I want to be part of a people who are willing to grapple with such things.  Lord knows we won’t all agree.  But agreement isn’t what I’m after as a pastor.  Agreement can be too dull, too insular, too myopic.  What we need is vigorous disagreement, real wrangling with things that matter from inside a covenant community—that is, a people who love each other and seek the truth, loving and appreciating even those with whom they don’t see eye to eye.  In fact, they will love each other because they don’t see eye to eye and know that this is what’s important for helping them stay honest and moving in the direction of what God is up to in our world.

What I want to see in our churches is engagement—honest, open, passionate engagement.  Only out of that kind of wrestling comes a new vision for the way forward.

The Bible itself is our model for this.  The Bible is one great big wrestling match.  Hundreds of voices over a thousand or more years of wrestling with what they see of God and what they see in the world around them.  All of them trying to make sense of it and create a way for genuine human flourishing.

In a recent interview with seminary student, Mickey Jones, Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann, moves us in this direction.  At the end of the interview, Brueggemann sums up a bracing vision for the way people, serious about the Bible and Christian faith, might awaken to God’s summons to live the justice of God: 

“The Gospel is a very dangerous idea. We have to see how much of that dangerous idea we can perform in our own lives. There is nothing innocuous or safe about the Gospel. Jesus did not get crucified because he was a nice man.”

The problem with Christianity today is that we’ve made Jesus too nice.  Our churches are too nice.  We’re too nice.  (But there are plenty of grumpy Christians, you say.  Yes, you’re right, but they’re largely grumpy about all the wrong things.)  All the while the world struggles, creation withers, human lives teeter on the edge.  Nicety may well be a toxic and demonic seduction in the American church.

This doesn’t give us license to be jerks.  Joy and generosity ought to characterize our lives, even in the midst of our struggle for all that’s just and good.  We ought to smile, even while we say: “No! That injustice must not continue; it’ll not remain uncontested—not as long as I’m alive.”

Toward a Christianity fit for the 21st century

In this picture, I’m with the leaders of our Southeast Asian ministry at University Presbyterian Church: Elder Tony Bounthapanya and Pastors John and Lorna Bosavanh.  Photos of Tony’s father are in the background.  He died after an illness…

In this picture, I’m with the leaders of our Southeast Asian ministry at University Presbyterian Church: Elder Tony Bounthapanya and Pastors John and Lorna Bosavanh.  Photos of Tony’s father are in the background.  He died after an illness the day before.  Laotian culture has a rich tradition of communal life that can sustain a grieving family.  This is day one of three days of mourning.  The home is full of people 24/7, cooking, chatting, praying, laughing, weeping.

Spiritual, political, racial/ethnic, and social pluralism are a reality. For us to thrive on this planet we must learn to get along with each other—in fact, if we are to thrive, we must find the immense good in one another, no matter how different we are from each other.  

This doesn’t minimize our great differences or the trouble those differences can cause us.  Instead, it maximizes a Trinitarian approach to the realities facing us as a global community.  God-as-three-yet-one is a witness to the nature of reality itself—the unity and diversity of the creation, and the insight that if God can get along (God as a unity existing in diversity) than we can too.  In fact, the Trinity is our warrant of wholeness.  It’s why I’m still a Christian despite the foolishness and cruelty of so much of what has often passes for Christianity.  

Embracing the Trinitarian nature of God has an immensely practical application for human life.  We’re made, says the Bible, in the image of God.  That means we are made to celebrate and even enhance our differences, but always with the recognition that we are, nevertheless, one.  Jesus taught this to his disciples: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one,” (John 20.21-23).

This means that a Christianity fit for the 21st century must value, learn from, and dialog with those not only within the church—and those beyond the Christian household—who see things differently.  A Christianity that will not merely survive the 21st century, but which will thrive within it, must find a way to hold conviction while appreciating and learning from others . . . and then improvising on our inherited tradition in order to promote a way of flourishing that enhances all life on the planet.