On Crowds & Generous Leaders

“As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

I am grateful this morning for two posts on the Episcopal Café blog site, one by David Sellery and the other by Andrew Gerns.  Both are priests in our church and their writings led me down several very fruitful paths of reflection on today’s gospel reading.

Sellery ponders the nature of crowds.  Way back in 1841, Charles McKay wrote an influential book titled The Madness of Crowds in which he famously stated, “[People], it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”  He blamed a crowd mentality on everything from financial bubbles to witch-hunts to the popular style of men’s beards.  Surely McKay was thinking about Beanie Babies when he wrote:

“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

McKay’s writings inspired other thinkers.  In his 1886 book, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche observed that “insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”  He, of course, provided the philosophical underpinning for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was even more descriptive:

“Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled.  I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

Apparently he had just finished shopping at Suffolk’s Wal-Mart. 

Given this mindset, we might expect that a sermon preached on today’s text a hundred and fifty years ago might emphasize how Jesus drew particular individuals out of the crowd, empowered them to be disciples, and basically dismissed the rest as a mob possessing heighten needs and unrealistic expectations, but having little or no value.  But this is not at all how Jesus treats the crowd in today’s reading, is it.  He has compassion for them.  He teaches them.  He touches them.  He heals them.  In short, he is a shepherd to them.  He values the crowd.

Francis Galton didn’t subscribe to this approach at first, but he came around.  In 1906 the British mathematician visited a local country fair where he observed a competition to judge the cut and dressed weight of fattened ox.  Over 800 people placed a wager.  Galton recognized that most were not experts and had no real insight on the matter.  Surely their wagers would be all over the map.  Galton saw this as a test of democracy.  He later wrote, “The average competitor was probably as well fitted for making a just estimate of the dressed weight of the ox, as an average voter is of judging the merits of most political issues on which he votes.”  What was the average person capable of doing?  For most, very little.  What could a group of individuals produce?  Not much, according to the prevailing thinking at the time.

After the competition was over and the prizes were given out, Galton secured all the tickets from the organizers and ran a series of statistical tests.  Sure, he reasoned, some intelligent wagers would come close to guessing the actual weight, but the presence of all the uniformed people had to skew the results.  Therefore he reasoned and the average of the guesses would be way off the mark.  Imagine Galton’s surprise when he discovered that the crowd’s average guess was 1,197 pounds, while the actual weight was 1,198 pounds.  Not one single individual wagered a guess closer to the actual weight than the collective wager produced by the whole!  This led Galton to conclude that crowds can have astonishing collective intelligence that far exceeds the cognitive capacity of individuals.

In 2004, wanting to set the record straight, James Surowieki published a book to challenge McKay’s now ancient work.  He gave it the title The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.  In it he argues that groups often are able to make better decisions collectively than a single individual member is capable of doing.  Do you remember Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?  When phoning a friend, the correct answer was indentified 65% of the time.  In comparison, polling the audience produced the correct answer 98% of the time.

According to Surowieki, three conditions are necessary for a group to be intelligent: diversity, independence, and decentralization.  The best decisions, he says, are the product of disagreement and contest rather than compromise and consensus building.  This is an especially hard truth for faith communities such as ours because we value so highly ‘getting along’ with one another and we don’t want to risk hurt feelings by having actual differences of opinion on substantive matters.  Surowieki highlights another challenge we face: 

“Groups that are too much alike find it harder to keep learning, because each member is bringing less and less new information to the table.  Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives.”

What we learn from all of this is the crowd has value.  It needs to be respected by its leader and nurtured.  And Andrew Gerns’ blog about generous leadership gives real insight into what this looks like.  Generosity, he says, is about more than money.  It is “a spiritual quality that trusts that God has given us the people we need, in the situation we have to do God’s work.”  It is a style of leadership, he says, that “both calls out and relies upon the vision of the people of God in community.”

What are the qualities of a generous leader?  Based on the writing of Tim Stephens, Gerns’ identifies the following; and as you listen, think how each might apply to Jesus and the leadership style he employs in his ministry with us:

·   Generous leaders want their people to succeed.

·   They are not competitive with their team.

·   The have an open-door policy and are generous with their time.

·   Generous leaders would rather err on the side of grace than be just or strict with policies.

·   They have an open hand.

·   They freely share what they are learning.

·   They love to give away credit to others even when they could rightly keep it for themselves.

·   Generous leaders care about their team.  They know about each team member’s goals and dreams, and diligently try to help them fulfill those desires.

The opposite of a generous leader is a selfish leader and it looks like this:

·   They keep the credit for themselves.

·   They circle all conversations back to themselves.

·   They hide competitive advantages from the team.

·   They are always looking to determine blame for mistakes (“Whose fault was this?” rather than “We made a mistake, let’s learn from it and keep going.”)

I am sure you have plenty of experience with both kinds of leaders.  I have and you don’t need to phone a friend to figure out which I preferred. 

In a 2002 article titled Love is the Killer App, Tim Saunders makes this startling statement:

The most powerful force in business isn’t greed, fear, or even the raw energy of unbridled competition.  The most powerful force in business is love.  It’s what will help your company grow and become stronger.  It’s what will propel your career forward.  It’s what will give you a sense of meaning and satisfaction in your work, which will help you do your best work.

Saunders says there are two reasons why leaders who love will succeed more than those who do not.  First, he says, there is an abundance of choice in today’s market.  “Choice,” he says, “spells doom for villains.  At a time when more of us have more options than ever, there’s no need to put up with a product or service that doesn’t deliver, a company that we don’t like, or a boss whom we don’t respect.”  The second reason he identifies is that you can no longer keep secret your inferior product, snotty company mindset, or boorish individual behavior.  Modern day communication means information is out there everywhere and people are acting more and more on what they know and learn from others.  They will not support what they do not respect.

In this morning’s gospel reading we find Jesus valuing the crowds that come to him, even at a time when he is seeking solitude and rest.  His life is dedicated to helping others succeed, to forming teams and communities that care for one another, to extend grace rather than shore up hard line rules and regulations, to give freely, to teach openly, to credit others when credit is do (think of how often he praises a person for his or her faith, openness, or generosity), and to empower disciples to carry on his work.  He is not a tyrant who capitalizes on a mob mentality to in order to manipulate others for his own benefit.  Rather, he gives of himself so that others might be healed and whole and able to give themselves to others in kind.

Milton Mayeroff, in his book On Caring, wrote that love “is the selfless promotion of the growth of the others.”  Isn’t this a description of how Jesus loves us!  Isn’t it a description of the love we have for a spouse, for our children, for our grandchildren, and for our aging parents!  Isn’t it the kind of love we seek to bring to this place and to our community!  May Christ who embodies this love give us grace and power to live it.

Plumb Lines & Redeeming Unmerited Suffering

Two construction workers are nailing siding to a house.  Neither is exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you get my meaning.  Every time the first worker reaches into his pouch and pulls out a nail, either he tosses it over his shoulder or nails it into the siding.  The second worker asks him, “Why are you throwing away all those good nails?”  The first carpenter explains himself: “If I pull a nail out of the pouch and it is pointed toward me, I throw it away because it is defective.  If it’s pointed toward the house, then I use it because it is good.”  “You idiot,” the other worker replies, “The nails pointing toward you aren’t defective!  They’re for use on the other side of the house.”

In the book of Hebrews we find a verse that sums up a theme running throughout Scripture: “Every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything” (3:4).  The root of the Greek word translated here as ‘builder’ means one who furnishes, equips, prepares, and/or makes ready.  The biblical motif of God as a builder points in two directions.  The first is related to God the creator of all things in heaven and earth while the second is more spiritual.  God builds up each one of us to be ambassadors for Christ.  God builds us to be citizens in the kingdom of God. 

In today’s Old Testament reading we learn that God the builder is also something of a building inspector who takes a look at what we are constructing with our lives and in our society in order to determine the quality of our work.  God the building inspector says to the prophet Amos, “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people.”  A plumb line is a cord with a weighted piece of lead or stone at the end.  When held up, it will make a perfectly straight line against which a builder can check to make sure the verticality of a structure is true.  If it is not true – think of the leaning Tower of Pisa – eventually it will fail.  By setting a spiritual plumb line God sets out to assess the rule and reign of King Jeroboam. 

It is not a good sign when the Hebrew meaning of the king’s name is “he strives to oppress the people.”  Jeroboam first comes on the scene when King Solomon appoints him to head up a public works project.  He uses this position to orchestrate a failed conspiracy against Solomon and as a result has to flee to Egypt.  He returns to Israel after Solomon’s death and promptly divides the kingdom into ten northern tribes, which he ruled, against two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin.  He erects as objects of worship golden cafes in key locations so that his northern tribes will not have to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, which is located in the south.  During the course of his reign, Jeroboam launches continuous military attacks against Judah, thus keeping God’s people in a constant state of turmoil and civil war.

In today’s psalm reading, we are given beautiful images of what a plumb line will find in a well-constructed ‘house’: “kindness and truth, justice and peace.  Truth shall spring up from the waters of the earth, justice shall reign down from the heavens.”  The images of springs and rain in such an arid region suggest how precious and vital these qualities are and how necessary they are for people to live together in a godly way.  And, as the reading from Amos suggests, they are completely absent in Israel during the reign of Jeroboam.

So poor Amos has to do what prophets of God always have to do.  He has to confront the king and pronounce God’s judgment:

The wall that you have built is not plumb.  And because it is not upright it must come down.  The king will die by the sword and the people will be led into exile.  Only then can a new and a true wall be built. 

Speaking the truth to power has never been easy and it has never made one popular.  It is an occupation for which there cannot possibly be sufficient hazard pay.  Amos, to his credit, proclaims what God tells him to speak.

The notion of the prophet speaking God’s plumb line truth connects the Old Testament reading with today’s Gospel lesson.  John the Baptist speaks out publically against Herod’s marriage to Herodias.  Herod was already married when he fell in love with his brother’s wife, who also happened to be his niece.  So he divorces his wife and marries his niece, an act that infuriates his ex father-in-law and his brother.  The two join forces to march against Herod.  At one point the Emperor Tiberius has to send troops to intervene. 

These kinds of actions don’t happen in isolation, as if conducted on a chessboard, but rather disrupt the lives of everyday people who suffer mightily as a result.  Herod’s private affairs have public consequences and John holds him accountable.  He gives voice for God and for the masses when he speaks up and in so doing becomes the focal point of Herodias’ deep anger.

She allows pure hate to fester in her heart, awaiting the opportunity to strike.  It comes at a party, at an event that combines alcohol and sensuality.  Add power to this mix and hatred has all the elements it needs to act.  How dare the prophet hold a plumb line to their lives of royal privilege!  The end of John’s life is as quick as it is brutal and senseless.

Some of us gathered Tuesday night with several hundred other people from around Suffolk for a prayer vigil in response to the June 17^th shootings in Charleston.  Titled “From Hate to Healing”, it was a powerful event that we hope to build on as a racially diverse community of faithful people.  I was incredibly impressed with Alana Simmons, a Newport News resident, whose grandfather, the Rev. Daniel Simmons, was one of the nine people murdered by a young man an hour after they welcomed him into their Wednesday evening bible study. 

Alana spoke powerfully about how the victims’ families have been able to forgive the shooter.  She said that her grandfather would want his legacy to be one of love, not hate, and for that reason she cannot hate the person who perpetuated this horrific act.  Simmons has started a social media movement called the “Hate Won’t Win” Challenge.  It encourages people to post stories and photos of folks from different races doing something nice for each other.  It may sound like a small thing, but for me, it has served as a tool to be mindful to go the extra mile and then perhaps even another extra mile to show kindness to people different from me and to be grateful for the kindness they show to me.

At the prayer vigil we were reminded of a Gospel truth that emanates from the Cross – unmerited suffering is still redemptive.  I have not read enough about Dylann Roof to be able to speak to what he hoped to accomplish.  But surely he did not intend for hundreds of communities around our nation to hold vigils uniting people of different races in prayer.  Surely he did not intend to energize efforts aimed at racial reconciliation.  And surely, as he waved the Confederate Flag as a symbol of his view of white supremacy and racial hatred, he did not intend to accomplish in a matter of weeks what the citizens of South Carolina have not been able to do for generations.  What he did not intend was for God to hold a plumb line to his actions in order to redeem unmerited suffering.

But this is what God does because this is who God is.  Herod may have enjoyed his power and Jeroboam may have been able to run off Amos, but God is the one who holds the plumb line to measure our actions for kindness and truth, for justice and peace.  Nothing will move that line and nothing short of plumb will stand in the world that God is building. 

Today, Amos is remembered for his godly witness and John’s Advent call to repent prepares the way for us to receive the kingdom of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.  Their lives continue to matter.  They continue to inform.  They continue to inspire.  God has been honored by them and continues to work through them.  Jeroboam and Herod are little more than passing names in dry history papers or perhaps are referenced in archeological digs to note a period of time connected to unearthed broken artifacts.   

Long after we have forgotten Dylann Roof’s name, we will remember the Charleston 9 and we will remember how their families spoke words of forgiveness and healing.  We will remember how one cruel act of hatred brought together people of different races to embrace and affirm the value of kindness and truth, of justice and peace.  We will remember hatred unleashed does not rule our world and that, through the grace of God, unmerited suffering is still redemptive.

 

 

Do You not Care that We are Perishing?

Let’s think for a moment about the most basic, elemental conversations we have with God; conversations that are beyond words and touch on fundamental human experiences at the core of life.  Surely, one is this:

Us: “I am filled with awe and wonder.”

God: “This is life as I intend it.”

I remember having this very conversation with God in the moments after the birth of my first daughter – that initial moment when I become a father.

Here is another:

Us: “I have screwed up.  I am an utter failure.”

God: “You are forgiven.  It is in the past.  I love you and you are precious to me.”

This can be a conversation that goes on for a long time because it is not always easy to let go of our mistakes or the message that we are a disappointment.

Another fundamental conversation:

Us: “I am not sure what to do.”

God: “Let me show you the way.”

I am not sure how many of these archetypal conversations there are between us and God.  I am confident we could identify at least a few more if we put our heads together.  There is at least one more conversation that we hear in today’s gospel reading: 

Disciples: “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

Jesus: “Why are you afraid?  Have you still not faith?”

This particular back-a-forth is so central to our experience with God.  We are afraid and God is perplexed.  “What is going to happen to us?”  “Why don’t you understand that everything is going to be OK?”  It is easy to make the case that we don’t understand and trust God, but, based on this give-and-take, it is equally true that God does not entirely get us.  One commentator I read this week invites us to recast today’s gospel reading as taking place on an airplane where the engines have failed and the craft is in a severe dive.  “Why am I afraid, God?   Are you serious!”

For years now, Wednesday nights have been popular evenings for churches to hold functions.  First Baptist Church just down the street swells with activity on Wednesday nights.   For the past few weeks, we here at St. Paul’s have gathered for a pot-luck dinner and discussion.  While we are not setting attendance records, those of us who come enjoy the food and fellowship. 

It is sobering to realize that at the very time we came together here in our church, an unspeakable and senseless horror unfolded at a similar gathering at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.  The Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina called it an “unimaginable tragedy” that “calls for prayer, response, and self examination”.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, writing on her blogsite, posted this:

As a white woman witnessing this horror from afar, I feel called to teshuvah, to soul-searching.  What can I do to change the reality in which this kind of hate crime is possible?  I want my nation to be better than this.  I want humanity to be better than this.

My thoughts and prayers echo hers.  I also resonate with what the words of Guy Sayles, a Baptist pastor in Asheville, NC:

In many ways, American culture is harsh these days…  We’re afraid of unpredictable terrorism and of uncertain economic conditions.  We’re prone to scapegoat those people who are different from us—to blame ‘the other” for our insecurities.  Far too often, we’re willing, as in Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, to “pass by on the other side” and to leave people battered by violence, whether physical or emotional or economic, bleeding in the ditch.

I don’t know precisely what can be done, but I do know that we need for people who believe in the rightness of the dream of a beloved, just, and merciful community to speak and act in ways which counter the harshness all around us.

Our own bishop, Holly Hollerith wrote this to our diocese:

The recent killing of nine innocent members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina represents the tragic convergence of three very serious social issues plaguing our county today: racism, gun violence, and inadequate mental health care - particularly for our young people.

Given the fact that the AME Church is historically rooted in our own Episcopal Church, I believe this event should be a wake-up call for all of us.  I strongly encourage all parishes in the Diocese of Southern Virginia to be diligent in assuring that conversations are taking place on the local level around these serious social matters.  I likewise encourage our parishes to be part of consciousness raising efforts that lay these matters before our respective local governments for the purpose of seeking solutions.

Most importantly, I ask all Episcopalians in Southern Virginia to be diligent in praying for the victims of Emanuel AME and their families, the City of Charleston, the perpetrator, Dylann Roof, and those through out the world who suffer from acts of violence.

The disciples said to Jesus, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  He responded by asking, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

I am not sure what I would have felt had I been one of the twelve disciples on that boat after Jesus calmed the storm.  Certainly I would have felt relief, felt awe, felt joy.  But I also think I would have been terrified that the world as I knew it had bent in ways unimaginable to me, albeit to my benefit. 

In Lief Enger’s book Peace Like a River, Reuben Land, the narrator, tells the story of an apparent miracle that saved his father’s life at birth.  Reuben then ruminates on how we tend to elevate all manner of lesser events to the level of miraculous, thereby domesticating those events that are truly beyond us.  Listen to how Rueben makes his case:

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.  It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in.  Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time.

Rueben then goes on to make this insightful and disturbing observation: “People fear miracles because they fear being changed.” 

So much of the conversation around gun violence in our country boils down to this simple truth: we are willing to live with horrific events like what happened in Charleston because we are unwilling to step into a new and unknown alternative.  We are afraid of being changed.

I think it is worth noting that today’s gospel reading takes place not just on the Sea of Galilee, but at a point of transition.  Jesus and the disciples have left the known confines of Jewish communities and set sail for the land of gentiles – a new and unknown world.  Isn’t it predictable that the worst storms and the greatest challenges come at these moments of potential change!  Reuben Land has a challenge for those of us who tend shrink back at such moments:  “People fear miracles because they fear being changed,” he said, but then he adds, “though ignoring them will change you also.”

After the 2007 killings at Virginia Tech I thought things would change.  When Virginia Senator Creigh Deeds was stabbed by his mentally troubled son (who subsequently took his life), I thought things would change.  I am confident that when Senator Deeds applied himself to the problem with all he could muster, he thought things would change.  But in our commonwealth, as in our country, the beat goes on without any change.  And even here, in our own community, gunfire is a regular feature of nightly gatherings in our neighborhoods.

Nancy Rockwell, another blogger, reflecting on today’s gospel reading, writes this:

Faith… is the antidote to fear.  It doesn’t prevent the conditions in which fear arises from occurring.  Faith did not provide them and their boat with a safe journey over the sea.  Faith is a way of walking through fear, without succumbing to its grip.  Fear draws us into rage, helplessness, desperation or despair.  Faith draws us to rise to the occasion in which we find ourselves, as steadfast voices for Peace, as creators of calm.

Well, I began this sermon by thinking about some of the basic conversations that take place between us and God.  Let me end by holding up the possibility highlighted at the end of reading.  “Who is this,” the disciples asked one another, “that even the wind and the waves obey him?”  Somewhere beyond the disconnect between us and God and beyond the fear of change there is the possibility of amazement; amazement at what God can do.  And while the disciples where overcome with this feeling of awe while doing nothing to engender it other than waking Jesus from his sleep, I suspect that as our nation grapples with gun violence, racial tension, and mental illness, we will have to move toward change – sometimes dramatic change – in order for a new, more peaceful order to emerge. 

We Christians talk about the kingdom of God.  We pray for it.  What are we willing to do to see it become a reality?  Why are we afraid?  Why do we still not have faith?

We are a Slow Church

It began in 1989 as a response to the ‘McDonaldization’ of food and restaurants - food that is served quickly and no matter where you are it is always the same.  We have a name for it.  We call it ‘fast food.’  A counter movement emerged in Rome where, after it was announced that a McDonalds was going to open near the Spanish Steps, protesters chanted, “We don’t want fast food.  We want slow food.”  And with that a movement was born that today has over 1,300 local chapters in fifty-three countries. 

The Slow Food movement is not just about food.  It is a critique of what Carl Honoré, a Canadian journalist, labels the “cult of speed,” which is rampant in our society.  Fast, he says, is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality.  Slow, on the other hand, is calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity.  Slow is about “making real and meaningful connections – with people, culture, work, food, everything.”

On nice afternoons when I was in school in Boston, I drove to Gloucester to sit on a bench overlooking the bay to do my reading.  I liked the feel on my face of the sun and the breeze off the water.  The sounds of the bay – gulls and bells – were calming.  I watched trawlers making their way out and home.  I could go on for some time about those wonderful afternoons, but suffice it to say it was a fabulous environment to soak in theology or church history or whatever.  Gloucester’s best known landmark, the Fisherman’s Memorial Statue (a mariner at a ship’s wheel looking out to the sea), was located not far from the bench where I did my reading.  Passengers from dozens and dozens of tour and school buses flocked around the statue, took pictures, and departed on ten minute intervals.  What is the difference between fast and slow?  They had a picture, but I had an experience of the bay.

The sociologist George Ritzer coined the phrase “McDonaldization” to describe “the process by which the principles of fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society.”  This trend, he says, has four dimensions: efficiency, predictability, calculability (quantifiable results), and control.  These values, which drove the Industrial Revolution, have led to an industrialization of almost every aspect of our lives.  How well do you handle the opposite: messy, unpredicatable, immeasureable, and not under your control?

Chris Smith and John Pattison grew up in different mega-churches, but now, as adults, have chosen to worship in churches that look a lot like us here at St. Paul’s.  They write about their experiences in a book titled Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus.  To their way of thinking, congregations steeped in the church growth model “come dangerously close to reducing Christianity to a commodity that can be packaged, marketed, and sold.” 

There are books and seminars to teach you how to build a church that will number in the thousands.  It involves, among others things, location, parking lots that can be emptied in fifteen minutes or less, high-quality coffee, contemporary music, and lots of technology.  But by emphasizing efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control, these churches sacrifice something essential in order to be large. 

Smith and Pattison write of their experience growing up:

Instead of cultivating a deep, holistic discipleship that touches every aspect of our lives, [our churches] confined the life of faith to Sunday mornings, where it [could] be kept safe and predicable, or to a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” which [could] be managed from the privacy of our own home.  Following Jesus [was] diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community.

There is nothing fast about apprenticeship, is there!  

Smith and Pattison are part of a sizable movement of folks raised in the church growth model who are leaving it in favor of something different.  The slow church movement, they say, “is a call for intentionality, an awareness of our mutual interdependence with all people and all creation, and an attentiveness to the world around us and the work God is doing in our very own neighborhoods.”  It is not private nor is it quite what we think of when we say public, in that it does not involve standing on a soapbox and preaching at passing crowds.  This faith is communal.  It is lived out in and with others – members of our church and the people of our neighborhoods.  By its very nature, it is neither efficient nor predictable nor measureable nor under our control.  It is, to go back to Trinity Sunday, improvisation.  It always takes on a life of its own which we do not dictate, but participate in.

This morning we hear Jesus tell two parables about seeds.  In the first he describes the miraculous way seeds sprout and grow without any help from us.  In the second he reflects on how a small seed, over time, will grow to become a large tree.  Each parable tells us something about the kingdom of God.  There is nothing spectacular about a seed and certainly there is nothing fast.  Once a seed is put in soil it takes time for it to germinate, to sprout, and to grow.  There is very little we can do to speed up the process.  Our role is to water and to weed and to wait. 

How does it make you feel to know that God works on a timetable and at a pace different from what you might like?  You can say and do all the right things – come to church regularly, say your prayers daily, tithe you wealth happily, tend to the downtrodden compassionately – but, as they often say in commercials, actual results may vary.  God works in God’s own time and we cannot and should not hurry the process along.

These two parables assure us that God is at work in and through our lives.  That certainly is reassuring.  But they also call on us to be patient and to trust, and that is not always easy.  If you are computer proficient, think of it as trying to teach someone who has never held a mouse and right-clicked.  How natural is it to jump in and take over for that struggling person; to short-circuit the slow process of growth?  After all, we want to be efficient, predictable, productive, and in control. 

But life – thank God – does not always work that way.  Just like a slow cooker brings out flavors you will not taste in food that has been microwaved, the life of faith creates deep and sustaining roots over time; time spent in incalculable, seemingly meaningless interactions with God, with yourself, and with others.  It is only over time and taking in the long view that you recognize God has done something enduring in you and with you and through you.

This morning, as we say thank you to Amy Austin for her service as our parish administrator and hello to Cindy Cowan as she steps into that role, we have a wonderful example of what it looks like to be in a place, to allow it to touch us, and to open ourselves to connecting with others.  Amy has not been a person with a job title and a function to perform.  Slowly, over time, she has become one of us and very central to what we think of when we say “St. Paul’s.”  She cultivated something in this place and something very special emerged from it and we are grateful for it.  We are also grateful for the early sense that Cindy is going to “fit right in.”

I would like to think that St. Paul’s is a slow church, in the best sense of that term.  We cultivate our faith and our relationships with one another.  We don’t leave here what we experience on Sunday mornings.  We take it with us out the doors and carry it with us throughout the week.  And most important, we tend to what we see and sense God is doing in and around us.  St. Paul’s is not our church.  It is God’s.  When we are open to what God is doing in and through this place we will be like the surprised person in Jesus’ first parable who does not know how the harvest came to be, but rejoices that it is there.  We too rejoice when we see what God is doing in our lives, in our church, and in our community.  It starts off small, growing slowly, but eventually becomes something like a tree that sustains so much around it.  We are a slow church.

A New Label

Here is a little known fact: the reading we just heard is the first time Jesus’ family is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark.  Matthew and Luke both have stories of Jesus’ birth and give us an initial picture of Mary pondering the praise of earthly and angelic messengers.  John’s gospel tells the story of the wedding at Cana where, in her first appearance, Jesus’ mother supports his effort to turn water into wine.  But here, in Mark, the first time we meet Jesus’ family they show up to confront him. 

Let’s set the scene.  This is early in Jesus’ ministry.  He has been teaching in small towns around the Sea of Galilee.  He has been healing and casting out demons.  He has gathered a small group of disciples.  And now he returns to the place where he grew up – to Nazareth.  These are the people who have known him since he was a little boy.  They mob Jesus and his followers to the point where they cannot even eat. 

What happens next is scandalous and has been handled by various bible translations in very different ways.  The New Revised Standard Version, which we read in public worship, says this:  “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”  The clear sense is the family arrives because of what other people are saying about Jesus.  The King James Version says: “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, ‘He is beside himself.’”  Here, the family is not involved at all and what people are saying has been softened from “out of his mind” to “beside himself.  The J.B. Phillips bible says, “People were saying, ‘He must be mad!’” 

Each of these variations highlights how translators have been uncomfortable with this passage.  And they are in good company.  The gospels of Matthew and Luke were written after Mark and both drew on it as a source for their work.  When they tell this story they omit altogether any reference to any person or group thinking Jesus was out of his mind.

The Contemporary English Version of the bible comes closest to translating accurately what the Greek text actually says: “When Jesus’ family heard what he was doing, they thought he was crazy and went to get him under control.”  This is not a picture we often get of Jesus; that at one point early on he was an embarrassment to his mother and his brothers and his sisters.  He was bringing shame on the family and they felt obligated to put a halt to his actions and behavior.

To put the question simplistically, how do you think this made Jesus feel?  Only a few months earlier he rose up from the Jordon River and heard God call him “beloved”.  Now his family is calling him “crazy”.  His own family!  To make matters worse, the religious mafia come down from Jerusalem to sully his reputation.  They call him “demon-possessed.”  All of us as children were taught that sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt us.  But somewhere along the path of life we learned first hand that long after broken bones have healed a heart injured by a hurtful words retains its pain.  How do you think this made Jesus feel?

In a commentary that looks at the Gospel of Mark through the discipline of Social Science, writers Bruce Malinda and Richard Rohrhaugh examine what a group does to validate itself when an individual goes against grain or moves in a new direction.  One of the tools at the group’s ready is what the authors call “deviance labeling.”  They demonstrate how accusations and negative labeling – if made to stick – seriously undermine a person’s place and role in the community.  Think about what happened to a person in the 1950’s who was labeled a “pinko.”  Today we marginalize individuals, groups, and movements by calling them “extremists.”  Think about all the labels our society can put on a person that will damage a career or one’s place in our society.

The culture of Jesus’ day was no different.  To be labeled “sinner” or “unclean” or “barren” was devastating.  The most serious accusation of all was “sorcery”, of being in league with the devil.  Jesus’ accusers acknowledge that he has cast out demons but challenge the source and motivation of his acts.  Their means of attack is a calculated attempt to shame him publically in order to ostracize him from the community.  It has the potential of doing irreparable damage not only to Jesus’ young ministry, but also to him as a human being.

If you have ever been the recipient of a deviance label then you know just how hurtful it can be.  You know what it feels like and you know how that label binds others together through the common connection of being against you.

So these two attacks – one from family and the other from the religious establishment – are very serious challenges to Jesus.  He rather easily dismisses the charge made by the religious leaders – “How can a kingdom stand if it is divided against itself”.  It is the kind of bettering we will see from him time and again as those who pose theological objections find themselves answered and outwitted. 

But what will he do with his family?  How will he defend himself against the deviance label that he has gone mad?  For Jesus, he uses what must have touched him very deeply as a teaching moment.  He turns it around and puts a new label on every person who is willing to listen to him and to follow him.  He labels them as “family”.  Family, for Jesus, is not just flesh and blood.  It is a gathering of all people who respond to God’s call in thought, word, and deed. 

It is something we experience here at St. Paul’s.  It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, or how long you have been here, all of us who are seeking God in and through this place are kindred souls.  When you respond to the invitation…

“Come, 

because is it is the Risen Christ who invites you.

It is the Risen Christ who seeks to meet you here.”

…you become family with every other person who responds with you.

“If you do the will of God you are my mother, my brothers, my sisters, my family.”  What an incredibly powerful, incredibly gracious, incredibly healing label.  In the face of ugliness and attack, Jesus issues an invitation to new life. 

I wonder how deeply we understand what this means.  The poet Wendell Berry has written several novels loosely based on the people of his small home town in Kentucky.  Burley Coulter is one of his recurring characters and in the book What are People for? he makes this statement:

“The way we are, we are members of each other.  All of us.  Everything.  The difference ain’t who is a member and who is not, but who knows it and who don’t.”

Through the rather curious episode early in Jesus’ ministry that we learn about today, we hear Jesus inviting us to make a transformation from attack to embrace; from being threatened to being accepting; from making distinctions based on differences to being kindred souls knit together in a new family of belonging.  This transformation is a sure and certain sign that God’s kingdom is present in our midst.  It is not about who is in and who is not.  It is about who knows it and who don’t.

Tina Fey & The Holy Trinity

Chances are good the prayer book in your pew has never – and I mean EVER – been opened to page #864.  If you pick it up right now, open to that page, and listen very closely you will hear the sound of the binding breaking in a brand new place.  What you will find on the page – printed in very small type – is an ancient 6^th century document known as the Athanasian Creed.  Written to combat one heresy or another, it is the first Christian creed to state explicitly the equality of the Three Persons of the Trinity.  Here is some of what it says:

The catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;

Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. 

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. 

Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. 

The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. 

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. 

The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. 

And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. 

As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. 

Perhaps you will find yourself in agreement with the English writer Dorothy Sayers who said of this creed, “The whole darn thing is incomprehensible.” 

Today is Trinity Sunday – the one day during the church year when the preacher is charged with the task of confounding the congregation with an esoteric presentation of a doctrine beyond comprehension.  Or not!  Today I choose not to describe who God is, but to ponder how God works; how God interacts with all that God has made, especially with us curious and (at times) contemptuous human beings.

I grew up in a tradition that held to one degree or another God predestines all things.  That word is used in the bible several times and Scripture is clear that the end God chooses will come to pass.  How else can this be true, some reason, if God does not control – or preordain – all that happens?  For some time now I have rejected such thinking in favor of free will – the notion that we can and do make free choices all of the time.  But how can God’s end be assured if there is no guarantee you or I will play our parts? 

For years I have resolved this dilemma with the analogy of a chess match.  If you sit me down opposite a grand master and give me the first move, clearly I am free to move whichever piece I choose.  The grand master will respond.  I am free to make whatever second move I want.  We don’t know exactly how the game will play out, but one thing is sure… the grand master is going to win. 

God, in relating to us, is like the grand chess master.  We are free to move as we will, but God will counter and in the end the outcome is certain.  I am now beginning to ponder if this is the right analogy.  It still seems a little too mechanical; too cold and calculated; a pointless exercise.  It lacks playfulness and finesse.  It doesn’t mirror how I experience life. 

Recently I came across another analogy that has opened up new possibilities.  It is put forward by the comedian Tina Fey who, in her book Bossypants, articulates four basic rules of improvisational acting – the art form where two or more actors play out a scene with no predetermined script or plot.

According to Fey the first rule of improv is “Agree.  Always agree and say yes.”  You are required to agree with whatever your partner is saying.  For example, if your partner says, “Freeze, I have a gun,” do not respond, “That is not a gun.  You are pointing your finger at me.”  A better response, she says, would be, “The gun I brought you for Christmas!  How dare you!”  Rule #1: Agree.  Respect what your partner has created.  Be open-minded.  Say yes and see where it will take you.  

Fey’s second rule is “don’t only say yes, but yes, and.”  Don’t just agree, contribute.  If your partner starts a scene by saying “I can’t believe how hot it is here,” and you respond by saying, “Yeah” there is nowhere to go.  But if you say, “What did you expect?  After all, we are in hell!” the scene is off and running.  Yes, and requires the actor or actress not to be afraid to add something to the discussion.  It requires them to believe their initiatives are valuable.

The third rule is “make statements”.  If you continually ask questions – Who are you?  Why are we here?  What is in the box? – you put all the pressure on your partner to come up with answers.  Fey suggests instead of asking “Where are we?”, you make a statement like, “Here we are in Spain, Dracula.”

Which may not sound all that great, but it leads to Fey’s fourth rule of improv: “there are no mistakes”, only opportunities.  Fey says that if she starts out a scene trying to be a police officer riding a bicycle, but her partner thinks she is a hamster in a hamster wheel, she becomes a hamster in a hamster wheel.  In improv, she says, there are no mistakes, only beautifully happy accidents.

Is it possible that God relates to us in a way similar to how improv actors engage one another: “yes”, “yes and”,  “statement”,  and “there are no mistakes, only opportunities”?

Think about the story of Jonah.  Doesn’t it read like an improv scene?  God starts the scene by telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s judgment on the city.  Jonah’s “yes”, and is actually a move to get on a boat and sail away in the opposite direction.  God brings about a storm and the vessel is in peril.  The ship’s crew and passengers enter the scene.  What will they do?  They toss Jonah overboard.  This might seem like a mistake, but God uses it as an opportunity.  God sends a whale to swallow Jonah.  Now that is a statement!  Three days later the whale vomits Jonah on to shore and he proceeds to Ninevah.  Once there, Jonah makes the statement God told him to make: repent or be destroyed.  The people of the corrupt city provide a surprising “yes, and”, and actually repent.  The story ends in a fascinating place with Jonah sulking because the city is not destroyed and God defending God’s right to forgive. 

It is a story that feels wide open.  It could go in any number of different directions.  God, far from controlling everything in a predetermined fashion, participates in a dynamic give-and-take with each of the partners in the scene.  It is as if God is truly curious to see where all of it will go.

Let’s look at today’s first reading from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  The scene is set very quickly.  The text tells us it takes place “in the year that King Uzziah died”, creating a milieu similar to how we might react to the opening “In the months following 9/11…”  Isaiah makes his opening statement: “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty.”  God makes the opening “yes” by appearing to Isaiah in radiance and splendor.  Heavenly beings add the “yes, and” with their worship and words of praise.  Isaiah’s first statement in the scene is a good one: “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”

How will God respond?  If God says, “What was I thinking?  Of course you are completely unworthy of me,” the scene will come to a screeching halt. 

There are plenty of other rules to improvisation Tina Fey doesn’t touch on.  One of them is this: if you see your partner in trouble, rescue him.  Don’t let him suffer.  Come to his aid.  A seraph comes to Isaiah’s aid.  It flies over to the altar and picks up a hot coal using a pair of tongs.  This is an interesting act in and of itself, but what happens next is improvisational genius.  The seraph touches the coal to Isaiah’s mouth and makes a statement.  Consider the possibilities: “Keep your mouth shut in the presence of the Lord God,” or “Burn for your unclean words,” or “Human words pale in comparison to the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ of heavenly creatures.”  Again, every one of these derails the scene.  What the seraph says is a classic “yes, and”: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

God pushes the scene forward by asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  A likely answer would have been a seraph.  They are impressive and know how to get the job done.  But the scene draws to a close with a surprising twist.  Isaiah has the final “yes, and”: “Here I am; send me!”

This is much how I experience God in my own life and particularly in and through the ministry of this church.  God engages us more and more as we are willing to engage God.  Every development leads to new possibilities.  The church feels alive when we view every new thing as an opportunity even as we treasure all that has stood the test of time.  We are not cogs in some mechanistic game preset and determined by God.  Rather, we are active participants whose contributions either further the cause or end the discussion.  We either advance the work of the kingdom in our own interesting ways or we put it on hold by disengaging from the improvisation God has started. 

On this day that we celebrate the incomprehensible Trinity let me put forward a simple question: What will you add to the scene?