Giving Voice
Giving Voice
Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19October 13, 2017
I’ve been rereading Resident Aliens
this month. That little classic, by theologians Stanley Haurerwas and William
Willimon, turned 30 this year, and like most 30 years olds, it’s aged well in
some ways, less well in others.
I’m in a grace-filled mood at the moment, so I’m going to ignore its shortcomings and focus on the still resonant word for the church that Haurerwas and Willimon penned in 1989 when they noted that “a tired old world has ended, an exciting new one is awaiting recognition.”[1]The world whose ending they named was actually several worlds. The world of Christendom that began in the age of Constantin some 300 years after the time of Christ was the largest of those worlds, to be sure, but its American child – the great 20th-century Protestant Establishment consensus – was also rapidly passing away by the late 1980s.Now, 30 years on, we are living through a generation shift as those of us with living memory of the culture shaped by that establishment begin to retire. Thus, the church that is emerging around us is beginning to be led by folks not beholden to a memory of a time when Sunday morning worship was the only game in town.In the first chapter of Resident Aliens, Haurerwas and Willimon, who are both a bit older than I am – they’re in their 70s and I turn 60 in December – somewhat playfully date the death of that older world on a Sunday evening in 1963 when the Fox Theater in Willimon’s hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, showed a movie.
What film could have caused the death of the Protestant Establishment in America? Well, it wasn’t any particular movie. In fact, they didn’t mention a film title. It was simply the fact that the theater was open on a Sunday evening to show a movie at all.You see, if you are as old as I am you can remember a time when stores were shuttered on Sunday mornings, when no youth sports were scheduled, when everything revolved around the central organizing principle that people spent Sunday morning in church. Heck, in my southern childhood, nothing was scheduled on Wednesday evenings either because that was church supper night.But if you are closer to the age of Resident Aliens then you have no such memory at all.And you know what? That’s a good thing! The good old days weren’t all good for anybody and they were no good at all for somebodies. After all, about the same time the Fox Theater was daring to open up on a Sunday evening in Greenville, South Carolina, Martin Luther King, Jr. was writing these words from a jail cell just a bit down the road in Birmingham, Alabama:“[T]he judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”[2]For most of the time since 1963, most of us who remember a time when the church felt like the comfortable center of American life have been trying to figure out how to return the church to that position that felt right, that felt normal, that felt comfortable.The problem is, the place of the church was never intended to be the center of a comfortable culture. If the church is the gathered community of followers of Jesus then that gathering is never supposed to be at the center of society because that’s not where Jesus lived and moved and had his being. And it is certainly not supposed to be comfortable because whatever else his life may have been, when Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and said, “follow me …” … well let’s just say he probably didn’t mean let’s go have a nice pot-luck brunch.None of that is to say that we are not called to bear one another’s burdens, to bind one another up, to love one another. We are! None of it is to say that we are not called to make a joyful noise. We are! None of it is to say that we are not called to share good news. We are!All of that is good and right and appropriate. Moreover, as Jeremiah said to the captive Israelites living in exile, “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce … seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.”In other words, you may well be aliens in a strange land, but you are also residents of that land so live fully in it, and seek good for it.
But remember to return to give thanks to the one who makes you whole. In other words, you may feel like strangers to your homeland, you may feel like foreigners in the culture of your birth, but when you remember to return to me to give thanks and praise you are turning to your heart’s true home.Moreover, giving voice to that – to gratitude and to good news – is your central calling as the church.
In a few minutes we’ll move to the back of the sanctuary to make sandwiches for our neighbors at the Residential Program Center. It’s good and right that we do so. We are, as a Matthew 25 people, after all, called to feed the hungry.But you know what? We’ll never do that as effectively and efficiently as our friends at AFAC or A-SPAN do it. In a contemporary welfare state – and the United States is certainly one – we’ll no more compete with excellent nonprofits or government agencies when it comes to feeding the hungry any more than we’ll compete with Fox Theater for attention on a Sunday evening.So what is it that we can do? What is it that we are called to do?We’re called to give voice to the vision of a future otherwise, to imagine and show forth the example of community lived out through expressions of gratitude and praise that point beyond ourselves to something more, something deeper, something that roots us and grounds us and calls us forth. So, let’s feed our neighbors in body and mind and spirit, and let’s go forth into God’s world with love, joy, and creativity to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. And let’s seek companions on the journey from every walk of life. May it be so. Amen.
I’m in a grace-filled mood at the moment, so I’m going to ignore its shortcomings and focus on the still resonant word for the church that Haurerwas and Willimon penned in 1989 when they noted that “a tired old world has ended, an exciting new one is awaiting recognition.”[1]The world whose ending they named was actually several worlds. The world of Christendom that began in the age of Constantin some 300 years after the time of Christ was the largest of those worlds, to be sure, but its American child – the great 20th-century Protestant Establishment consensus – was also rapidly passing away by the late 1980s.Now, 30 years on, we are living through a generation shift as those of us with living memory of the culture shaped by that establishment begin to retire. Thus, the church that is emerging around us is beginning to be led by folks not beholden to a memory of a time when Sunday morning worship was the only game in town.In the first chapter of Resident Aliens, Haurerwas and Willimon, who are both a bit older than I am – they’re in their 70s and I turn 60 in December – somewhat playfully date the death of that older world on a Sunday evening in 1963 when the Fox Theater in Willimon’s hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, showed a movie.
What film could have caused the death of the Protestant Establishment in America? Well, it wasn’t any particular movie. In fact, they didn’t mention a film title. It was simply the fact that the theater was open on a Sunday evening to show a movie at all.You see, if you are as old as I am you can remember a time when stores were shuttered on Sunday mornings, when no youth sports were scheduled, when everything revolved around the central organizing principle that people spent Sunday morning in church. Heck, in my southern childhood, nothing was scheduled on Wednesday evenings either because that was church supper night.But if you are closer to the age of Resident Aliens then you have no such memory at all.And you know what? That’s a good thing! The good old days weren’t all good for anybody and they were no good at all for somebodies. After all, about the same time the Fox Theater was daring to open up on a Sunday evening in Greenville, South Carolina, Martin Luther King, Jr. was writing these words from a jail cell just a bit down the road in Birmingham, Alabama:“[T]he judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”[2]For most of the time since 1963, most of us who remember a time when the church felt like the comfortable center of American life have been trying to figure out how to return the church to that position that felt right, that felt normal, that felt comfortable.The problem is, the place of the church was never intended to be the center of a comfortable culture. If the church is the gathered community of followers of Jesus then that gathering is never supposed to be at the center of society because that’s not where Jesus lived and moved and had his being. And it is certainly not supposed to be comfortable because whatever else his life may have been, when Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and said, “follow me …” … well let’s just say he probably didn’t mean let’s go have a nice pot-luck brunch.None of that is to say that we are not called to bear one another’s burdens, to bind one another up, to love one another. We are! None of it is to say that we are not called to make a joyful noise. We are! None of it is to say that we are not called to share good news. We are!All of that is good and right and appropriate. Moreover, as Jeremiah said to the captive Israelites living in exile, “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce … seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.”In other words, you may well be aliens in a strange land, but you are also residents of that land so live fully in it, and seek good for it.
But remember to return to give thanks to the one who makes you whole. In other words, you may feel like strangers to your homeland, you may feel like foreigners in the culture of your birth, but when you remember to return to me to give thanks and praise you are turning to your heart’s true home.Moreover, giving voice to that – to gratitude and to good news – is your central calling as the church.
In a few minutes we’ll move to the back of the sanctuary to make sandwiches for our neighbors at the Residential Program Center. It’s good and right that we do so. We are, as a Matthew 25 people, after all, called to feed the hungry.But you know what? We’ll never do that as effectively and efficiently as our friends at AFAC or A-SPAN do it. In a contemporary welfare state – and the United States is certainly one – we’ll no more compete with excellent nonprofits or government agencies when it comes to feeding the hungry any more than we’ll compete with Fox Theater for attention on a Sunday evening.So what is it that we can do? What is it that we are called to do?We’re called to give voice to the vision of a future otherwise, to imagine and show forth the example of community lived out through expressions of gratitude and praise that point beyond ourselves to something more, something deeper, something that roots us and grounds us and calls us forth. So, let’s feed our neighbors in body and mind and spirit, and let’s go forth into God’s world with love, joy, and creativity to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. And let’s seek companions on the journey from every walk of life. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Stanley Haurerwas and
William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989)
15.
[2] Martin Luther King, Jr.,
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” in A Testament of Hope (San
Francisco: Harper, 1986) 300.
posted by David Ensign at
9:58 AM
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