". . . holy partners in a heavenly calling. . ."

Sermon by James W. Crawford

March 8, 1998, Second Sunday in Lent

Hebrews 3:1-14

Are you ever discouraged about the church? Do you get in high dudgeon now and again about its high claims and low accomplishments? Are you frequently struck by what we might call its gross hypocrisy: its self designated claim as the church of Jesus Christ, and yet you find yourself infuriated over the gap between what you believe Jesus to be all about and what you see the church doing or failing to do?

 Not long ago I came across a fiery polemic by that mid-20th century prophet John Haynes Holmes. He entitled it, "If Christians were Christians." And he nails us church-types right to the wall. He accuses us of getting stuck in the swamp of complex organization, of reciting creeds as a substitute for living the Christian life. He points to the church's 2000 years of anti-Semitism, forgetting the Jewishness of Jesus. He calls attention to the church's racial prejudice and discrimination over generations; he cites us for claiming to follow the poor, rejected Jesus while countenancing poverty and protecting our own moneyed and powerful non-taxable interests. He exposes our eagerness to design rationale for national or ethnic conflict, supporting militaristic patriotism itself leading to the legitimization of violence and abuse. It is not a pretty picture he paints. It is a catalogue of failure, false claims and in some cases outright deceit and moral fraud. If Christians were Christians, he writes, in summing it all up, "we would have in this world one spiritual fellowship of men and women seeking steadfastly 'unity of the spirit in the bond of peace;' we would have one universal family -- not races, or nations or classes, but humanity; we would have one worldwide commonwealth -- not rich and poor, high and low, but a single family enjoying freely and happily the riches of the earth which is their common home; and lastly, we would have everywhere a reign of peace, the reign of all who love in the service of all who suffer."

I

Those high expectations of John Haynes Holmes and that low opinion he finally articulates gives you a sense of where that congregation of Hebrews stands. Indeed, John Haynes Holmes sounds as if he might be one of the lapsed members of that Hebrews congregation. The are fed up with the church. They are dropping out like flies. What they thought might be a success has turned out to be a disappointment. The community they expected harbored instead seeds of discord exploding from time to time in outright enmity. The world, with its misunderstanding and conflicts, its pride and prejudice, its greed and power struggles, its clash of haves and have-nots, its gossip, backbiting and cynicism, its institutional paranoias, organizational conundrums and smug complacencies - all of this infects the church as well. There is no escape. The promise of heaven turns out to be -- well what? Just the same old hell.

And so I ask again, do you ever feel that way about the church? Overcome, tired out, bushed and frankly discouraged because its seems to be more of the same old stuff? You might as well join the Junior League, the Kiwanis,  the Y or some service club that really does some good, and on Sunday enjoy a leisurely brunch and peruse the papers. Why not?

Well, if you feel like that -- and it's not surprising if you do -- boy! has our author to the Hebrews got something for you! Do you know what he says? He says to that discouraged and failing church, "brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus!" Consider Jesus! Now when we use that expression "consider" -- when we urge someone to consider a matter -- in good, democratic fashion we mean, "take it under advisement," look at the pros and cons, weigh the issue carefully, talk it over and come to some conclusion. Our translation this morning just does not capture the intensity and urgency of our author's plea. He is telling us who suffer boredom or fight off discouragement with the church not simply to "consider Jesus" -- he is saying, "ATTENTION! WAKE UP! REFOCUS!  GET ON THE BALL! You have lost the forest for the trees. Remember to whom you truly belong! You are the Church of Jesus Christ! Forget the junk distracting you for a little while and look first of all to Jesus!"

You see, our author-preacher is telling us we are not just a coterie of Boston residents and visitors from around the world meeting in a nice warm room on a cool March morning. We are a people, he says, who through all our discouragement and disappointment with churches in our lives, with church people and with ministers, we are a people who remain faithful to our high calling; we focus our eyes on Jesus because of his faithfulness through thick and thin. We remain faithful because of his enduring trust in and service to the God who appoints him while everyone around him falls away. The root of our endurance through all the problems we face in our churches -- the problems we face in this church -- the root of our endurance is finally grounded in the radiant endurance we witness in Jesus as he passes through the worst experiences we human beings can dish out to each other and pile finally on him. When the church types of Jesus' time -- and that is what they are, good, law-abiding, moral, family-oriented church types -- when they slander him, throw him into prison, concoct a ludicrous trial,  sentence him to death, bloody him up, he does not wimp out, he does not whine, "Well, the world is going to Hell in a hand-cart, the church is going down the drain, I give up, I've failed. Guess I'll drop out and try something else. Let George do it. Let Harriet have a go." Jesus does not quit, go hide, let down, because human nature can sometimes be just plain putrid, or pursue evil and call it good, cover blunders with religious rationale, inaugurate stupid projects steeped in the name of decency. We do not see him turning cynical, asking, "What can you expect of those pompous and mealy-mouthed hypocrites? Nor does he evoke some dark conspiracy aimed at putting him out of the way, shuttling him aside -- though that is what the passion week collaboration between Jerusalem's politicians and denominational executives looks like. No, he when it looks like rotten conspiracies, intramural hatred, the odious instincts we human beings can surface to do someone in -- when the best people conjure the worst they can think of -- even death on a Cross -- this Jesus endures. His faith never flags in a God who, on the one hand, hangs on to us through all our half-hearted and dismal commitment. Jesus does not give up on us. But more importantly, Jesus does not give up on God. He does not sell out the promise of a new kind of human family for you and for me. He serves God's cause of love and justice even when we good church folk let him down, turn our backs or drift away. Indeed, he endures faithfully all the way to Calvary.

 So friends, when the church just seems to limp along, when it feels like a drag, appears to be mismanaged, rates an "F" -- a gang of soreheads and hypocrites -- ATTENTION! Look to the One who lifts us beyond and transcends the difficulties and tangles we face, the one whose fortitude, whose enduring hope and trust in the gracious promises of God's new creation calls out, undergirds and fuels your unshakable endurance and mine.

II

But our preacher asks us not only to look to Jesus Christ, but also to look to one another. "Brothers and sisters," he calls us; "holy partners in a Heavenly calling." Don't you love that? "Brothers and sisters, partners with Christ in a heavenly calling." That should give us a lift!

And it does sound great. We need to hear it time and again. We can find ourselves mired down in everything so that our heavenly calling looks more like purgatory.

I have a little book in my library entitled, How to Become a Bishop without Being Religious. It pretends to give advice on how to be successful in the ministry, and begins by telling us clergy-folk that what we did not learn in seminary is maybe the most important part of our education. You know, like what kind of car to leave out in front of the rectory; or the criteria for selecting the clerical wife. The book includes a chapter on what it calls the "Administration of the Church," which, it suggests is "a polite phrase for raising money." And so on it goes, with a kind of tired, burnt-out, cynical view of what the ministry can be about. And I suppose there may be a lick of truth to some of it. Balanced budgets, by-laws procedures, personnel placement, building maintenance can obfuscate what many of us originally conceived to be a heavenly calling.

And if it is that way with us in the ministry, my soul, what must it be with you? Just as that little church receiving the letter to the Hebrews exhausted itself trying to keep its head above water, so I suspect any number of you this morning may be drained from making a place like this go. You find yourselves breaking your back during the week running like crazy just to keep up with your job, balance you family and your work, frazzled in any case, then find yourselves engaged with a church organization stumbling along with the same kind of people and money problems you have been trying to struggle with all day or all week long.

 But please let me tell you something from one who is absolutely so grateful for your stamina and your endurance -- your endurance! -- through the rough-and-tumble of our joining together in this heavenly calling. You have made yourselves, "brothers and sisters. . . holy partners" with Lael, and Rick and Greg and Joan and Janet and me, with others on the staff of this church and most wonderfully with each other. You know, like every family, a lot of us would not even hang around together, might find one another a little weird unless we were of a particular kin -- in our case brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling. What a privilege! I have to tell you that no one in the ministry can be more grateful than I for what you offer as holy partners in our heavenly calling. I cannot thank you enough for your fortitude and enduring partnership. There are men and women in this church who for years have met at 6:30 in the morning to hammer out meeting agendas -- unbelievable! There are women in this congregation managing complex organizations, possessing professional degrees, successful in the world of business or the law -- and guess what? They are teaching Sunday School; they are ready to usher; they are figuring out how a Deacons' fund may be most generously distributed. There are among you Ph.D.s, MBAs, JDs, MDs. a slew of Masters degrees -- you name it -- who pore over plans of this building, ponder decor in the Parish House, meet people off the street with understanding and compassion, invest imagination and love in embracing, supporting, welcoming new faces who gather with us. There are those of you who teach all day, those on the road as sales people, those engaged in the most sophisticated and technical health care settings -- and you, as brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, write prayerful notes, make healing phone calls, send flowers to assuage the pain of someone you hardly know. You are indeed brothers and sisters to one another, bound by a holy calling.

And friends, I do know some of these duties -- some of these organizational necessities can be tiring, boring, routine, draining, deadening, soul burdening if not spirit killing - it is exactly this kind of stuff that perhaps wore out that poor enfeebled congregation we discover in Hebrews. But our solidarity as brothers and sisters in these tasks can sustain our faith and our hope as well. We can nourish one another.

I know I have told you before I often think of my father and his ties to the church when brooding about the qualities of what makes a church vibrant.  He happened to be an orthopedic surgeon who made his hospital rounds on Sunday morning before church, often joining our family during the singing of the middle hymn. As some of you know I have often considered him something like that person described by Paul Tillich -- one who could never say the creed but wanted to stand next to someone who could. How many of us this morning count ourselves among that circle of believers: those who gain encouragement and support from just being with others we believe possess the faith and hope we wish we could muster for ourselves? I will bet there are a couple of hundred of us like that -- each of us a weak reed, leaning on the person next to us -- a person who also feels like a weak reed, themselves depending on the faith and hope they assume we possess, but, of course, we don't. It is what makes a church congregation unique; it is what makes us -- what can we call it -- but a miracle? We are vastly greater than the sum of all our weak and feeble parts. We come into this room,  many of us, with stumbling, fragile, precarious faiths and shoulder to shoulder with our neighbor, we find ourselves and our faith deepened and encouraged: partners with Christ in a holy calling; brothers and sisters!

Isn't that a stupendous affirmation: brothers and sisters? I think so. Just a few moments ago we heard from and applauded the creativity and enterprise of our membership committee. They deserve it. The imagination and effort they provide and invest in our common life here is second to none. I am deeply grateful. But I suspect they will agree, and I hope all of us can, that no scintillating program, no recruiting strategy, no public relations gimmick, no promotional literature, no focus-group analysis, no development tactic -- as vital as these can be in communicating who we are and sustaining support for our blessed congregation here -- none of these can substitute for Christ's inviting us to be his Holy partners in a heavenly calling, a calling to make our world conform more nearly to the dynamics of a realm where generosity, magnanimity, and peace with justice rule and where our discipleship takes on, with all of its risks, something that looks like the shape of Christ's life, Christ's death, Christ's ultimate victory.

So friends, are you ever discouraged and disillusioned by the Church? Are you ever let down by this one? Are you knocked out from time to time by the hypocrisy of so-called Christians -- probably most of all us clowns of the cloth? Hey! Hey! Hang in there! Don't let us frauds in the ministry get you down, or that sinner in the next pew trigger your indignation. Remember, as George Buttrick reminded us, there is always room in the church for one more of us hypocrites -- but even more so, I pray you remember we are here finally, ultimately because -- because in this place and with each other we find our faith nourished; because we gain consolation through Christ's persevering love for us; we gain encouragement through Christ's enduring trust in God's redemptive promises; we gain inspiration through Christ's unflinching hope in God's new creation; we are here because finally we cast our lot, we bet our lives on no thing and no one other than Jesus Christ.