About A Very Important Matter
Sermon by James W. Crawford
September 13, 1998
I suspect you have been reading the papers yesterday and today, or been glued to CNN. Do you wonder what is going to happen when the country absorbs what one reporter called this "Washington bedroom farce?" It is a serious matter. And as we wallow in it, it is surely not the only serious matter we face. There is a world-wide currency crisis, and globalization being what it is, no nation will escape its implications. Serious! Not to mention Osama bin Laden holed up somewhere in Afghanistan, committed to wiping out Western culture from the face of the earth. Or the Antarctic ice flows receding at an ominous pace. Important matters confront and surround us. We cannot escape them. They make an impact on each of us.
Nonetheless, as serious as these matters may be -- and perhaps a hundred others bedeviling your life and mine -- the passage we read a moment ago from Luke's Gospel focuses on a matter transcending in importance all the truck and trivia knocking us about on our 24 hour news channels. It is about the Christian life: how we are going to live the Christian life in these chaotic times with its ultimate loyalties demanded and the enormous risks involved? Luke's story is perfect for the beginning of a new program year here at Old South, a reminder of who we are and what we do amid our troubled world. Luke reminds us what we take on as we join together in the Christian enterprise. And friends, of all the matters facing us, I warrant how we live as Christians in our time is probably the most important, the most serious matter of all.
Luke's story, of course, centers on Jesus himself. Jesus is headed toward Jerusalem. He walks a road he knows will end in catastrophe. But for three years his message spreads like wildfire across the Galilean and Judaean countryside. He encounters the wounded, the weeping, the weary and worn; and the encouragement, healing, restoration and redemption he bears and shares tends to attract and enthuse a wide spectrum of the populace. Look at that crowd, as Luke describes it, almost a religious revival striding that road, a cross-section of society: patriots looking for the Captain to expunge the oppressive Roman colonialists; the crippled or sick looking for the physician to restore a limb or cure a disease; the curious grabbing a peek at the rumored celebrity, the trendy embracing the latest fad; the skeptics eager to argue the faith; the wishful thinkers, hungry for security and solemn spiritual guidance from this carpenter turned Holy Man. It is an evangelist's dream, a bandwagon for Jesus!
Oh! Oh! Mood change. The music stops. The banter drops. . . . Silence! Then the voice of Jesus: "Hey!" he says. "Stop! Hold it! Do you know what your doing? Have you any idea what lies ahead? Do you know what you are getting into? I have to tell you, sticking with me to Jerusalem will compel some tough choices. Hanging in there with me may trigger some terrible conflict. To follow me means a reorientation of your loyalties, a recasting of priorities, a fresh definition of first things first. To commit yourselves to the vision of the new world of grace and peace I represent may put some of the things you currently consider most important -- it may put them on the line. It may put at risk things you hold dear, ties you count as close as your mother and father, your children, your spouse, maybe even your own death. Are you counting the cost? Do you know what is at stake? Which of you, for instance, desiring to build a tower, would not first calculate the cost to assure your finishing the job? When you build your tower you want more than a hole in the ground. You want more than a partially poured foundation. You want more than a sad and shabby dirt-pile people will point to, joke about and deride you as laughing stock of the day."
Or again, "Which of you setting out for battle knowing that your enemy waits with twice as many troops hungering to wipe you out, which of you will not sit down, calculate the cost of battle, measure all its risks and perhaps sue for peace before the slaughter begins? This discipleship is a very serious matter! Better stay home if you are not ready for the challenge. Better call it off, if you can't see it through to the finish."
I
This passage shakes me up. It insists again that we discover at the heart of the New Testament and at the root of our faith One whose vision and demonstration of what human life could really be, finally gets him killed as a blasphemer and traitor. The noble mission of Jesus earns him a Cross.
And I think Luke feels that in his church, too. He and his church friends seem to be getting, figuratively, at least, crucified. That is why Luke tells us this story. Fifty years after Jesus' death, when the early church expects serenity and peace, everything is going down the drain. The church is no evangelical marvel. It is not drawing tons of people. It is not a smash there in downtown Antioch. It is under siege. Join the church and go to the lions. Join the church and gain contempt because you hang out with social scum. Join the church and come under investigation because when pressed to say, "Caesar is Lord," you say, "No Way. Christ is Lord." And almost worst of all, Luke's church finds itself blamed for the sad reality of families wounded or broken because some members decide to climb on board the Jesus-movement and their families won't talk to them anymore. Ostracized for Jesus.
What a church Luke describes! When people join it they take a dangerous step; they play for high stakes. And because the risks of discipleship and its costs are so high, a lot of people who join the church, after their initial enthusiasm, say "thanks but no thanks. I'm out of here." Recalling Jesus' images, Luke compares those dropouts to builders of pathetic, abandoned, half-built watchtowers, deserving of nothing more than mocking laughter. He says they remind him of stupid generals, marching into a major battle, leading a coterie of untrained troops unprepared for the rigors of trench warfare, fit only for massacre.
II
Do you see why this passage makes me nervous? Shakes me up? I sense it may be aimed directly at us. Some of you may have seen the invitation in our bulletin to join our church on World Wide Communion Sunday, October 4. You heard me invite you to an Inquirer's Class two weeks from tomorrow night. I mean every word and I do want you to attend. Please! But what do we promise you here? In the ruling argot of our time, what are we marketing on this corner? Should you join our church -- or if you happen to be a member already -- in any case, what might you expect here? Clearly, a smorgasbord of program: Greg Peterson's splendid organ music and choir, opportunities for outreach and program design. We can provide counseling, theater, Bible Study, religious discussion. You will find fantastic friends, the flint of your own religious conviction whetted to the steel of others -- you want K-Mart for soul food? We got it. And I am grateful for it.
But I wonder. I wonder if in light of our Lord's question to that surrounding crowd on the Jerusalem road and his devastating images of a failed tower builder and a stupid general if maybe we have been busy covering up the cost.
Robert McAfee Brown in his collection of "St. Hereticus" papers captures some of our evangelical efforts under an essay entitled, "The Easy Way." He begins with an image of what we may see on television from time to time. As he watches his television evangelist, Brown sees a disarmingly simple formula for church growth: "make Christianity easy." It is not hard, he writes, to make a "decision for Christ" in that TV church even if you have been sitting in a high balcony in a great theater, if you can make your way to the foot of the Cross (which you can) via the escalator. And you need not worry about being uncomfortable while you are listening to the sermon because, as the advertisements remind you, "the place is air-conditioned."
Brown sees something important in this TV Church and he urges we adapt it to our own mainline types. If enough attention is put on the ease and comfort of the surroundings, people will miss the demands and sternness of the Gospel. And he pursues this idea for just one moment, allowing him to take a crack at the advertisement for some of these churches who promise "that if you arrive too late to get a seat in the nave, there are comfortable overflow chapels to accommodate you. This is," Brown writes, "I suppose appropriate to a comfortably accommodating Gospel, and suggests that a well-known hymn may need revision:
He leadeth me, O blessed thought!
To air-conditioned chapels fraught
With cushioned pews -- where I may see
The Minister on closed TV.
Touche! As Brown says, this easy way can be exploited by other means as well. And we are vulnerable.
To ask our question again, what do we promise you here at Old South? What do we market? A beautiful room to gather in, comfortable -- not air-conditioned -- but in general gracious and accommodating, a terrific place to get married in (much nicer than city hall) . . . or buried from, perhaps more elegant than even the plush and generously appointed funeral homes. And you will find here a couple of ministerial professionals who can make things candid and personal in an ambiance surely more inspiring than a judge's chambers or the mortuary.
And these cushy pews. I remember one of our congregants, since moved away, who grew up in a classic New England meeting house, badgering me constantly about the commodious crimson cushions in this room relieving our backsides of the needed reminder of the rigors of the Gospel.
And this Cross here? Perfectly beautiful, an aesthetic masterpiece, installed here in memory of Bob Christenson, for those of us who knew him, a true soldier of the Cross. But I wonder -- for this morning at least, and maybe for every morning -- would it be better if this Cross were wooden, crooked, without filigree, darkened and stripped of its gold effulgence. You see, when church prospects see this Cross -- when I see this Cross -- we are in awe of its beauty and radiance. Rightly so. But there is another side to it: the challenge, the risk, the sign of a life put on the line, a choice coinciding not with what we consider our self interest, but Christ's, our neighbor's, the world's. As David Redding comments, "Compared to Christ, modern congregations seem like kittens playing with a ball of 'yearn.'" We lure prospects. He eliminated them. Membership to us means a catch. To him it meant a Cross." Indeed! Our consumer-oriented culture shapes the questions we ask as we wander into our churches, "What have you got to offer me?" We tend -- I tend -- to run down a catalog of opportunities looking for some program niche, study or fellowship group catering to the self-defined wants or needs of the questioner, seeking to entice him or her into the life of the church.
I am not sure that is faithful to the tone of the New Testament. If Jesus were challenged with such a question in one of our local churches his answer might go more like this: "What do we have to offer you here? I'll tell you what we have to offer. A gaping hole in our outreach budget. A junior high class needing a teacher with character and commitment. A desperate want of people for city-wide feeding programs, local housing efforts, educational support and reform. To the seminary student he would point to the streets, the prisons, the hospitals along with the classroom.
But mostly to us -- the preacher types, my kind -- always rationalizing budgets, corralling new members, plunging into commentaries and theological criticism, he would remind us that the stoles we wear identify us as "the servants of the servants of God" and that only as we encourage, support, heal and succor you and through our congregations -- this one! -- seek to transform this city to its high calling, a beacon to the world, we are no more than failed tower builders, deserving of scorn, derision, and mocking sneers. We are dullard, beef-brained kings, leading our armies to humiliating defeat. Sad!
Luke may well have our number, you see. Churches and ministers possess a genius for covering up the cost of discipleship. We know where the road Jesus walks leads. We know the cost he paid. Loyalty to him bears no less risk, danger and opportunity at the cusp of the 21st century than it did in the first.
III
And so friends, we join again at the beginning of a new season. And as usual, we find ourselves confronted by a very serious matter. It is not the turmoil in Washington, the chaos in Moscow, the volatility on Wall Street; it is not commandos in the Middle east, terrorists in Central Africa, children shooting children in our classrooms. Indeed, those are very important matters. But here we are in church and we have two figurative questions facing us: Can we persevere as disciples, and as Jesus would suggest, be successful tower builders? Can we join the battle and take it to the enemy? We have children in our church school, novices in the Gospel, whose exposure to media violence and mayhem, and now these pathetic and lurid and pornographic headlines, leads, writes Sissela Bok, to "a stabbing of the soul." Our children: regularly stabbed in the soul? You don't think we have a battle on our hands? We have men and women in this congregation sick to death of stories describing sexual abuse and domestic violence as well as deception, corruption, moral myopia in high places. Can we provide here in our worship and common life a vision of another reality where generosity and trust carry the day? That is tower construction! And in our suffering world, where children starve, social inequities proliferate, where vengeance appears to be the rule of tribes and nations, can we of the churches here and across the world forge a policy grounded in a Social Gospel prepared like a general deploying his army for the on-going struggle of justice and reconciliation? And yes, friends, as we augment our tower's foundation, as we deploy our troops, will we lay our lives and our treasure on the line in a way worthy of the One who lay his life on the line for us? Will we be laughing stocks or soldiers of the Cross?
So, it's great seeing you all in church this morning. I'm glad you are here. Is it because you want to follow Jesus? I hope so. And I pray: no half-baked towers here. No, generals feebly surrendering to the enemy before the battle has begun. Not here at Old South! With Jesus on that Jerusalem Road, let us take a look at the promise and the peril of discipleship, prepared to see it through to the end with courage and joy, I promise you: there is no more serious matter.
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