Act V

Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20
August 21, 2011


I am a fan of Garrison Keillor. For those of you not familiar with him, he’s the host and voice of Prairie Home Companion – a long running show on public radio. Each week on his program, among other things, he shares news from a fictional town named Lake Wobegon, “where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are all above average”…as he says every week. I have enjoyed Prairie Home Companion for years, and love the news segment. I’m impressed with Keillor’s creativity in coming up with different news stories every week.

I am even more impressed after reading an interview with him. He was asked how much of his monologue was improvised and how much was written down. Keillor responded, “I write up a few pages of notes and then put it aside. The monologue you hear is a man trying to remember what he wrote. Sometimes while he’s trying to remember it, he thinks of something better.” As someone who finds it terrifying to say anything that is not written on a piece of paper sitting right in front of me, I find this impressive.

But as I thought about it, it really does make sense. Not only was he the creator of Lake Wobegon, he has, essentially, lived there for 37 years. He knows the people so well. He knows what they have done before, he knows their stories inside and out, he knows their character. He is not just standing up there making up things off the top of his head;.he’s continuing a story he knows deep in his bones – it just flows out.

I got to wondering, what if this was how we thought of scripture? When we face the world today, and try to act faithfully, we know we are supposed to look to the bible to guide us. But what if the bible is a bit like the scripts Keillor writes each week. I know we didn’t write the bible stories, but we do live in them. We read the same stories over and over, we know the plots, the characters, the settings. Maybe as we seek to live our lives faithfully, we can set the bible aside and while remembering what it says, maybe we will think of something better.

I know that might sound slightly blasphemous. The idea of “setting scripture aside” and “making up something better” is not exactly what we think of as textbook Christianity. But I think the idea for doing this comes from our scriptures themselves. I think it is our scriptures that insist we constantly continue and expand on the stories – that we come up with something better for our time and place.

I think that’s what Jesus is insisting his disciples do in this passage today.

Jesus asks them, “who do people say that I am?” “Elijah, John the Baptist,” they answer. These are characters from the bible…real people who lived in the past. People are saying Jesus is just the same old character. Jesus as understudy, if you will.

But then he asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” He wants it in their own words. They know the scriptures – the texts of the Jewish people. They know a lot about who God is and how God acts in the world. And they have been with Jesus for a while now, and they know him and what he has said and done. Now Jesus wants them to move beyond the script. He doesn’t ask the disciples what the scriptures say…he asks them what they know, deep in their hearts.

Brave Peter gives it a try. Though others stick to what they know – characters of the past…Elijah and John the Baptist – he names Jesus as the Messiah. For Jews living at that time, the Messiah was still something in the future – as of yet unknown, unfulfilled. Peter moves forward in the script…into the part that hasn’t been written yet.

An author named Tom Wright explores what it means to understand the bible as authoritative for our lives. He asks us to imagine that there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four are so good – so compelling – everyone agrees the play should be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate to actually write a fifth act once and for all. Instead it’s better to give the key parts to highly trained and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and then in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, they would work out a fifth act for themselves. It would be true to the play, yet honor the fact that it isn’t, in point of fact, finished.

Now imagine the same is true of the bible. We have the first four acts, but the fifth act is not a part of our bible as it is written down. And we are like the Shakespearian actors constantly performing Act five, and because we have immersed ourselves in them, it will follow the first four acts naturally. Yet it will never be written once and for all.

So, it would probably help to name the first four acts.

In the Christian play, act one is creation – God created everything, including us, and called it good. Act one means every other act that follows must assume the goodness of God’s creation.

Act two is the fracturing of the world. The bible shows us that what was good was broken in many ways. All the acts that follow must assume this brokenness and, because of Act one, we must assume that the movement of creation is toward healing this brokenness.

Act three is Israel – the story of a people that reflect acts one and two. They are fundamentally good – fundamentally God’s people – loved – and ultimately God’s partners in the movement to restore creation. At the same time they reflect the brokenness of the world. They are both victims and causes of this brokenness. Act three gives us characters, plot, and a trajectory for the rest of the drama.

Act four is Jesus. Jesus comes to give us a glimpse of what is possible in this broken world. A glimpse of the way to break out of the pattern of humankind, doing the same things over and over. He shows us the way forward, and invites us to think anew. He invites us to become Act V.

And so, act five is the church. It’s the disciples after Jesus has gone. It’s the Christians throughout history. It’s the church. It’s us. We are the ongoing, never written for good, Act V. Being a disciple means two things when it comes to the bible; We must always immerse ourselves in the bible; we would certainly all admit we could always learn more about our bible. We cannot skip this step. But step two is improvising; coming up with things that are new and better for our time and place.

We face things never imagined by the bible. Jesus did not solve everything once and for all. The world is still broken, and we face problems he never did. So, we have to improvise. The script helps, but it is not finished.

It’s nice to have a script. Many actors surely take comfort in having the words written for them and their work is to merely perform them as best they can. But when this is true, creativity is severely limited. And while different actors perform the script slightly differently, it’s the exact same story told again and again. It can never be new or fresh…it can never be contemporary. Obviously, in the world of plays, this isn’t a problem.

But in the end we are not in a play – the stakes are much higher. We are on a journey through life – and how we choose to act really matters in the world. There are very real consequences. Our scenery changes, constantly. And performing the same script against changing scenery begins to look ridiculous. It can cease to make sense – and the consequences can be devastating.

This does, I admit, have huge implications for what it means to call scripture authoritative for our lives. We tend to think the bible is true because it’s God’s word for all times and all places. We think the bible is sacred because it never changes, it’s always right, and we can go to it with any problem and find the “answer.” But this view ultimately makes us look ridiculous. And I am not alone in thinking this.

Paul, for example, is constantly improvising based on his scriptures. Paul writes to the church in Rome, people facing things the disciples never did, people trying to understand what it means to be faithful knowing Jesus didn’t come back when everyone assumed he would, that Jesus didn’t look exactly like the Messiah was supposed to look, people trying to live as Christians in their broken world.

Paul obviously wants them to look to scripture for guidance – he quotes his scripture all the time…which of course at that time was only what we call the old testament. He also wants them to look to what they know of Jesus’ life through the stories that had been passed down to them. But, he recognizes that this is not enough. They must take all this – the scriptures, the stories others have told them – then set it aside, and figure out what comes next. They must, in Paul’s words, discern God’s will for them. Discern. Not replay the past, or try to make the scriptures fit their current situation. With great humility and sober judgment, they are to figure out their Act five.

The ethical dilemmas we face today are worlds away from those the authors of our bible faced. We see the world differently. MUCH has happened. Some parts of the world that were broken have been healed and restored. Some parts that were whole are now broken.

Think about the challenges we face with the environment. We can assume the ozone was intact when Genesis was written. Yet people insist on addressing the environmental problems we face by sticking to the script that was written 3,000 years ago. But if our part of the play is to join in the movement to restore what is broken now, in this day and age – we need to know God’s new word for us.

Science has completely changed the scenery, modern technology has moved us to an entirely different stage, politics introduces new characters and dynamics. With Acts one, two, three and four in mind, we need to set them aside and improvise; then we will see what new things emerge.

Our actions, if we’re being faithful, will likely be radically different from what the early Hebrew people did in their journey to be faithful to God. They conquered lands to be free from oppression; we must give up our tendency to use creation for our own ends. They built kingdoms meant to mirror God’s realm; we now know we must dismantle the institutions of power and oppression. When we try to use the old script in the new setting, we begin to look ridiculous…and the consequences are devastating.
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Some want to argue that the play is complete. Some want to argue that the answer to our broken world is to say over and over again the words of scripture. To do exactly as the characters in these books did things. Some believe we have a script and we must follow it to the letter. Jesus, the disciples and Paul tell us there’s more to the story – God is living, and we must discern God’s will for our time and place. If we don’t, our lives don’t make sense, we can’t be relevant to our world, we end up acting in ways that are antithetical to God’s will for us.

Let’s keep this amazing play going. Let’s perform our Act V; let’s improvise and see what new and creative things emerge. Amen.

Ministry in Chaos

Matthew 14:22-33
August 7, 2011

I spent a little time this week looking at paintings depicting this scene from the gospel of Matthew – Jesus walking on water. Given the fame of this passage, you can imagine how many people have tried to capture the story in art.

There were some similarities in all the paintings – in all of them Jesus walking on the water, for example . But, one of the things that varied wildly was what the water looked like – or rather what state the water was in.

In most, the water looked like a typical large lake when there is some wind in the air. A few waves and ripples. In some it was a placid lake, and Jesus is walking toward the boat on something akin to glass. In one, there is a wave breaking and Jesus is, I swear to God, standing on the wave. He looks like a California surfer!

All of these fall short, I think, of capturing the picture the text is trying to paint for us.
Instead, the ones I think get the closest to portraying the text are the ones that show the sea in turmoil, dark, foreboding, menacing. Think Lake Michigan in the middle of a massive storm. Huge waves, wild splashes, people throwing up over the edge of boats being tossed about.

In the bible, the sea is both literal and symbolic. In addition to the stormy sea being a potential reality the disciples faced every time they stepped in a boat and set out for the other side, it would also have represented for them the chaos that existed before God brought the world into order at creation. And culturally, for anyone living at that time, the sea meant demonic spirits, underwater monsters, darkness, and danger. It was not a safe place. For the disciples, even on the best weather days, the sea most certainly was not serene.

Neither is the world in which we seek to follow Jesus. There are serene pockets, but most of the time, when we are called into ministry in the world, we are called into the chaotic sea.

Ministry is at times hard, it can be enormously complicated, and things can get quite muddled. It’s hard because sometimes it means going places that make us uncomfortable, sometimes it means being with people we don’t like. Sometimes we expend all our energy and it seems like nothing changes. It takes time we don’t have. Sometimes it means running afoul of authorities or cultural norms. Sometimes it means ridicule and hate. It’s hard.

And, it’s complicated. Addressing the problems and sufferings of this world is not a simple, straightforward matter. The problems we face – poverty, war, healthcare injustices, debt ceilings, a growing gap between the rich and poor – if these were easily solved then, well, they’d be solved. Instead, there are different ideas about the best way to solve these things, intelligent people who disagree, no clear path, and it’s pretty much two steps forward, one step back most of the time. Sometimes we don’t know if our attempts to help aren’t actually hurting instead.

And, it can be muddled. It’s not always clear that when we set out into the world to serve we are following God’s call. This question came up in our Friday noon bible study recently. How do we know if we are living our lives faithfully? It’s a really hard question. It’s tempting to use ease of life as a measure – in other words, if things are going along smoothly and all the pieces are fitting together, we must be on the right path. But in this passage, the right path is through stormy waters…it’s not easy…it’s choppy and dangerous – it’s downright terrifying. The disciples wonder if they see a ghost when Jesus approaches. How do we know if we are following Jesus or just a ghost?

But, regardless of all this, Jesus calls us out of the boat to follow him. He calls us to walk faithfully in the midst of this chaos, even when every bone in our body tells us we’re going to sink.

When I was a seminary student, I interned at a small church in El Cerrito, CA. This was another one of those “small, but mighty” churches. There were about 40 active members, but active they were. They were extremely justice oriented. I often found myself wearing my stoll in marches of all kinds. One of the things this church was involved with was labor rights. There was a group in N., CA that was specifically a faith-labor coalition that worked for justice for those at the bottom of the working world rungs – and our church was part of that group.

This was a tricky ministry, to put it mildly. Unions are, like literally all other institutions, a mixed bag. There was so much that was good about this partnership. Many things they stand for and work for are in line with my Christian values….fair pay, access to good health care, job security, etc. And, partnering with labor leaders meant tapping into their considerable networks and access to politicians and people who were actually making the decisions about these things. They had credibility, visibility, and access. It was a good partnership.

But, they also had agendas beyond and, in my humble opinion, at times contrary to the values we shared in common. And they really wanted the religious folks to sign on to the whole shebang, because it gave everything they did a kind of moral credibility. “See. The church is with us,” they could say. “It must be good.”

Navigating these complicated waters was no easy trick. It was tempting to be co-opted by the labor leaders. It felt good to have access to people in power. It felt hopeful to have a voice and be heard. Things actually happened. Cities adopted living wage ordinances, new hires were receiving good benefits, and people were free to organize in places it had once been impossible. I don’t have to tell you how satisfying it is to actually feel like your faith in action is accomplishing something good.

But power corrupts…even the best of us . I had to stay constantly on my toes, evaluating each new issue that came before us from the labor leaders to make sure what we were doing still aligned with my values. I had to think through consequences, I had to understand labor/management dynamics, I had to know the history of unions, I had to discern when something was right and when it just felt good to have some power. I had to figure out how to distance myself at times when labor was pressuring me to stand by their side. It was hard. It was complicated. And at times I was confused about who to trust and what was “right”. Was I following Jesus or the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa?

But, none of that negated the fact that it was important work, and I truly believe the church should have been right in the middle of it all. It was the faithful thing to do, even if times it felt chaotic and I was unsure of myself. I’m sure I made mistakes, I’m sure I missed opportunities, and I’m sure there were times I was used by people for political gain. But in the end, I think it was a good ministry – helping the least among us.

We are called into this world to do ministry. This world. The seas are rough, the waves are high, and doing ministry can at times feel about as easy as walking on water.

“You of little faith,” Jesus says to Peter. I think Peter’s lack of faith was that he wanted Jesus to save him by plucking him out of the chaos and setting him back in the boat at the first sign of difficultly. When he cried, “Save me!!”, he didn’t mean, “show me how to stay out here and continue the journey with you.” He meant, “Get me outta’ here! I can’t be with you on the stormy seas of life!”

We’re called to ministry in this chaotic world. I do think we are called out of the boat to walk through stormy waters, and I think in many ways this church is already are out of the boat.

Of course, at times we feel at times like we’re sinking – that the water is over our heads and we wish for a Jesus that would get us on safe ground and do all the work himself. We feel like we’re sinking when things get hard, so we sometimes do whatever we can to get back in the boat. We pull out, we leave it up to others, we make excuses. But if we want to stay in the water with Jesus, we can stick with it, finding the support we need when things are tough. We can lean on each other, and put one foot in front of the other as we walk toward Jesus.

We feel like we’re sinking when things get complicated, so we are tempted to oversimplify. We ignore complexities and then, like bulls in a china shop, we can cause all sorts of damage. But if we want to stay in the water with Jesus, we can use our God-given ability to reason through things. We can be wise and thoughtful. And then we can step forward – knowing there are times we have to choose between the lesser of two evils and sometimes we will get it wrong. But knowing also that’s the reality of ministry in a chaotic, complicated world.

Finally, we feel like we’re sinking when things feel muddled, so we look for people to follow who claim certainty. We turn to charismatic leaders with all the answers who are happy to lead us wherever they want to go. But if we want to stay in the waters with Jesus we can regularly practice discernment; checking in with ourselves about who or what we are following. Using scripture, trusted friends, fellow church members, we can listen for Jesus’ voice amidst the loud storms of life.

Jesus is our model for faith in the midst of chaos. And he calls us out of the boat into the chaotic world to minister, like he did, to the lost and least, the lonely and abandoned, the oppressed and the poor. It won’t always be easy, it won’t always be clear what to do, we won’t always be sure we’re following Jesus rather than a ghost. But if we stay grounded in the life of Jesus, we won’t sink. Amen.