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ОглавлениеWhat Shall I Preach?
My experience as a young person in the pew, listening to the sermon of the day, yielded no sense of pattern for expectation. After all, the pastor or evangelist would offer “what God had laid on his heart” in his private devotions. In other words, I grew up used to topical sermons, only related to the church year at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
It puzzles me that I never questioned this pattern until well into my career. The homiletics class at Nazarene Theological Seminary offered no enlightenment on the yearly pattern from the pulpit. I only remember offering “practice sermons” to the class. I doubt I would have gone around the corner to hear Professor James McGraw preach anyway.
In my Associate capacity at First (Park) Congregational Church (Park), Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I spoke from the pulpit only occasionally, I continued to speak out what was on my mind. This means finding a topic or theme, then going to scripture to proof text one’s point. The Congregational tradition, loose in its observance of the Christian year, offered me no encouragement to change.
When I arrived at my first singular pastorate at Community Congregational Church, United Church of Christ (CCUCC), in Pullman, Washington, in 1971, nothing changed. In fact, the pattern intensified. I determined to preach on Sunday what rose to my attention in the course of a week of pastoral duties. In retrospect, my effort reflected the “what God laid on my heart” pattern in a more secular vein. Sometimes this worked when my mind and heart were flooded with ideas. At other times I came to Friday, and sometimes even on Saturday, with a certain panic. “Opening my mouth to let the Spirit fill it,” appealed to me not at all.
Speaking of spontaneous pulpit patterns, I followed in a parish a man who bragged that on Sunday mornings he walked over to the church, from the next–door parsonage, in those moments pursuing his only preparation of the day. As often as not he would refer to the week’s sports events, speak personally of someone in the congregation (usually in a jocular vein), and draw out some spiritual or moral insight. Some folk liked it. Others were skeptical. Count me among the latter.
Only when I came to my second singular parish ministry in Tacoma, Washington, United Church in University Place (UCUP), did the light begin to dawn. While attending continuing education events at the Vancouver School of Theology, the virtues of lectionary preaching, concurrent with the church year, hovered into view. With determination, I began weekly study of the lectionary texts in order to find grist for the Sunday message. I experienced this new orientation as a sort of personal grace. Indeed, as the years incorporating this pattern moved along, I found my personal life revolving around the Christian year much more than around the secular calendar. That remains true to this day.
As with any virtue there exist deficits. The passing scene at times calls for attention from the pulpit. If a tornado roars through town, one may not stand behind the sacred desk and expound on the beatitudes, if that gospel lesson is assigned for the week.
I recall that once, following the impeachment of President Clinton, I spoke on the non–assigned gospel text, “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (Matt 10:26). Also, speaking to certain social issues prove somewhat difficult if the scriptures scarcely raise the subject, e.g., the societal scourge of gambling.
Another detriment to lectionary preaching occurs. Sometimes on a Monday one comes to the readings for the week and discovers no movement of mind or heart. That presents a challenge to be met and overcome. If hard work and prayerful diligence take place, perhaps someone will say after the service, “That word meant a lot to me. One of your best messages.”
One must not leave the subject of pulpit patterns without dealing with the issue of relevance. It is true that occasions have risen when concerns, spiritual or social, occupy mind and heart while the assigned readings seem far afield. At that point one remembers the nature of Protestant preaching, namely, that the word comes from the sacred text, not one’s own private preoccupations. One hopes that the faith, hope, and love presented in the text, and “poured through human personality” from the pulpit, will bear all the relevancy any faithful listener might need. Leave it to some other occasion for the man or woman of the cloth to share fondest ideas or personal hobby horses.
Publish Glad Tidings
A central feature of communication in the parish continues to be the newsletter. Announcements of parish events, presentation of the parish calendar, listing of parish staff, reports of births, baptisms, weddings, and deaths consume much of the content. Often these days the newsletter arrives on–line.
The parish newsletters adopt a tradition of titles—“The Chimes,” “Good News,” “Voice of Faith,” “The Messenger,” etc. In large churches these appear weekly. In smaller churches once a month publication appears to be the rule.
One other feature, not mentioned above, is the article written by the minister, or in larger parishes, by rotating ministers. The content of these articles, read over time, reveal much about the author. For the most part these pieces render Dullsville exciting. Often one detects the minister sensed the publication deadline rushing down. Something must be said. Occasionally one finds someone who writes well about significant matters. I remember with pleasure a regular monthly piece from Rev. Richard Coombs, Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, in Spokane, Washington.
Too often one encounters those clergy who use the newsletter space to talk about themselves ad nauseum. They speak of their trials, their joy in the ministry, their renewed spiritual insights, and on and on. It’s as if the parish world spins around them, and for them it does.
On a somewhat higher scale one might discover the cheerleader. I recall a piece by a colleague, Rev. Larry Alland, speaking about the season of Lent. He referenced a Creative Churchmanship Conference, a Women’s Lenten series on the parables of Jesus, Sunday afternoon experimental worship, the solid Sunday morning attendance—all in the six weeks of Lent. He closed by saying, “This vitality is a reflection of the commitment to ministry you, as a member of the church, have made. Let’s keep up the good work!”
Sometimes the “Minister’s Minute,” which unfortunately for a few years I called “Bowman’s Aim,” seeks to persuade folk in the parish to a certain point of view. I recall once I called attention to an upcoming Youth Sunday in which the youth had helped to shape the liturgy. Seeking to appeal to adults, I wrote:
You need to know some of what you have come to understand, but you need them to remind you of what you once knew, but have forgotten or cast aside. Both need God in order to learn what is not yet known.
Sometimes I tried to do serious theology in several paragraphs. One of these efforts appeared at the onset of Eastertide, April 1, 1970:
Often at Easter we hear three commonly accepted myths which have infiltrated the teaching of the church: the myth of progress, the myth of the “immortality of the soul,” and the myth of the hope of spring. All deserve a severe analysis. I can only suggest here.
The notion of human progress is a fairly recent idea. It is doubtful if this is a biblical notion. “The Kingdom of God” is God’s to bring in, as the Social Gospel preachers of the early 1900s learned to their chagrin. It is debatable as to whether scientific and technical progress humanizes us or ever brings us closer to God.
In sermon and funeral orations, we have heard about ‘the divine spark in man’ or of the ‘eternal essence’ which cannot die. That is a purely religiocultural notion, not discoverable in the Bible. The New Testament teaches about death and resurrection to new life—a vastly different concept. Paul Tillich describes the Western myth of immortality as an escape from the “courage to be.”
To identify spring and Easter is to get all mixed up. T.S. Eliot said, “April is the saddest time of the year.” He was right. It gives off a hope that is futile. We know winter is coming. There is no hope found in the “eternal return” of the seasons. On the contrary, Easter speaks of something brand new—a dramatic break–up of the certain slavery of death. Once—only once—death was not as certain as winter—and that makes all the difference.
Worship as Experimental Experience
“There’s no such thing as non–liturgical worship. There’s either good or poor liturgy.”
Raised in the evangelical tradition, I know casual forms of service. Those who prayed looked askance at formalized petitions. Rather they “opened their mouths to let the Spirit fill them.” Yet, when analyzed, these casual prayers followed a formula that could find its way into print.
While at Park Church, from 1968 to 1971, much “experimental worship” developed around the country. In that local church, a good deal of restiveness manifested itself regarding the rather stiff and locked–in mode of the Sunday service. To some extent, sensing the desire for change, the Senior Minister, Rev. Ned Burr McKenney, in conjunction with the Board of Deacons, provided opportunity for new forms. In Lent of 1969 four alternative vesper services took place in Thompson Chapel. I provided planning and leadership.
The four services provided variety as follows:
1. A “Service for All Generations” included separate meditations for children, youth, and adults.
2. A “Sing–in for Peace” included a portion of a poem by the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan. Convicted and sentenced for the destruction of draft files during the course of the Vietnam conflict, he then occupied a prison cell. The poem in part read:
A man stood on his nails
an ash like dew, a sweat
smelling of death and life.
Our evil Friday fled,
the blind face gently turned
another way, toward life.2
3. A “Folk Mass for Passion Sunday,” taken from the Revised Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper of the Episcopal Church, USA. Musicians at piano, bass guitar, and vibraharp accompanied the liturgy.
4. A “Drop–In Communion” for the first day in Holy Week presented the worship with a liturgy side by side with explanatory notes set for private reading. The printed meditation by Catholic author, Romano Guardini, led eventually to the printed invitation to come forward when ready to receive the loaf and the cup. The basic format of the service derived from the Iona Community of Scotland.
God is not better worshiped by some “high church endeavor on Main Street” rather than by a “low church” effort in a white frame sanctuary by the railroad track. Likewise, newness of form offers no panacea. Familiar forms may lead to dulled spirits. Some lively combination seems recommended. Liturgy may provide the comfort of the familiar and the adventure of the new. How desirable!
When two or three gather together, no matter the form, all seek the Presence.
Doing Theology Regularly
The parish minister is ordained and installed as “pastor and teacher.” So in the December 2003 newsletter at Bethel United Church of Christ, in Manchester, Michigan, I devoted the “Minister’s Minute” to one traditional theory about the way the sacrificial death of Jesus applies to our sins: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Old and current stories illustrate the meaning of “ransom” —The Norse myth of how everyone’s tears might ransom Baldur from the dead; the account of The Fisher King, in which a guilt–ridden disc jockey risks his own life to ransom a derelict back from the brink of destruction; the C.S. Lewis space fantasy in which Dr. Ransom fulfills the meaning of his name by saving the mythic planet, Perelandra, from destruction.
The dying of Jesus on the cross has, in Christian theology, been called a “ransom offering.” That is to say it is a price paid to redeem the people from aimlessness and sin back into the safety of God’s eternal care.
The notion of ransom sacrifice finds a small place in many main–line Protestant pulpits. Yet how does Jesus Christ, as the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith says, achieve the “conquering sin and death?” Ransom is one way of answering that question.
We ask, “Does God demand the ransom?” and answer, “Yes.” Immediately we add, “And God provides in Christ the ransom sacrifice.” What God’s moral law demands God’s loving will provides. As in the story of Abraham and Isaac, God both requires and provides the sacrifice.
Once we attended an organ dedication in a near–by church. We sang these words from the hymn, “Salvation unto Us Has Come”:
And yet the law fulfilled must be, or we were lost forever;
Therefore God sent His Son that He might us from death deliver;
He all the Law for us fulfilled and thus His Father’s anger stilled
Which over us impended.
Well, it rhymes, but is there reason? These words, translated from a German source, Paul Speratus (1484–1551), contemporaneous with Martin Luther, remind us of the theology that made the little girl report to her mother about the church service, “Well, I like Jesus, but I don’t like God.”
I do, however, resonate positively with the next stanza of the hymn:
Since Christ has full atonement made and brought to us salvation
Each Christian therefore may be glad and build on this foundation.
Thy grace alone, dear Lord, I plead Thy death my life now is indeed
For Thou hast paid my ransom.3
Other hymns proclaim the ransom. For example, the hymn, “Praise, My Soul, the God of Heaven,” reads as follows:
Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven; to his feet your tribute bring,
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore God’s praises sing.4
It may well be argued that a key verse in St. Mark’s gospel is, “For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
God
The rookie minister asked the veteran pastor, “About what should I preach?” The wise pulpiteer answered, “About God and about twenty minutes.” That advice needs revision in light of contemporary short attention spans. The correct answer now is this: “About God and about twelve minutes.”
In my first opportunity to speak from the pulpit on June 9, 1968, in Park Church, I chose as a title, “God.” There issued from my lips a lengthy harangue taking up four printed pages. The paragraphs wandered about as with a person lost in the woods. Certainly the parishioners needed extra grace that summer’s day to endure the so–called sermon.
It was Trinity Sunday. I sought to make this doctrine relevant. But only one illustration provided a window into the teaching. I related a story Cardinal Cushing of Boston told on himself. He was in a department store shopping. Someone rushed up to him, breathless, urgent, saying, “There’s a man in the store seriously ill!” Immediately going to him and leaning over his prostrate form, the Cardinal asked, “My Son, do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit?” The man replied, “Oh my, here I’m dying and he’s speaking to me in riddles.”
The human incident illuminated for a moment what I struggled to convey that day—that faith is a risk of a relational sort which allows the complexities of doctrine to await a more opportune time.
One year later, June 8, 1969, I mounted the Park Church pulpit again. Trinity Sunday. The message this Sunday consumed only one–half the previous time. The sentences strode forth in more Hemingwayesque fashion.
I began as follows:
The greatest theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, in 1928, said, “As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give God the glory.”5
Nevertheless, I sought to speak of God. Among others, I quoted American theologian, Roger Hazelton, who wrote:
Traditional talk about a being who is supposed to preside over human affairs, whose prerogatives are properly described in the images of authority and sovereignty may of course persist for a long time in the church and elsewhere. But the well of conviction out of which these words and symbols arise is slowly, surely drying up.6
I spoke of the hidden aspect of God in some of scripture: portions of the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, Habakkuk, and Jonah.
In what I regard as a paragraph worth repeating, I said:
What may the preacher say in this hazardous context? Probably what he has always said. Come. Be a believer. Take the risk of faith. God wills to be known even in his absence. Take the risk of fanaticism. The world’s worst psychotic dreams have been acted out in God’s name. The world’s worst crimes have been committed for the sake of God. Take the risk of intolerance. Faith carries no guarantee of wealth, power, fame, or even friendship. Take the risk of self–righteousness. People still say to me, “I believe in God,” as if some merit accrued to them on that account.
I feel it today, even as I felt it fifty years ago when I preached from the Park Church pulpit. People seem unbothered by the God question. Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, seem anachronistic. They struggle with believer’s hangover. As Gabriel Vahanian, a French Protestant theologian, said in 1961:
Modern man lives in a world of immanence. If he is the prey of anxiety, it is not because he feels guilty before a just God. Nor is it because he fails to explain the justice and love of God in the obvious presence of evil and injustice . . . Now man has declared God not responsible and not relevant to human self–knowledge. The existence of God, no longer questioned, has become useless to man’s predicament and its resolution.7
I am not sure how many in the pews on that Trinity Sunday experienced the hiddenness, even the absence, of God. Perhaps the preacher spoke to himself and made an effort to find resourceful answers. How many times the person in the pulpit answers questions those in the pew do not ask!
I closed the homily titled, “God,” by focus on the Christ figure, who has ever been my recourse. I said:
The Christian way is modeled after one who, humanly speaking, risked it all and lost on the cross. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” It is to this figure that those of us plagued by the God question turn. In this time, when “something has happened in the consciousness of Western humanity,” we must once again grapple with the one who said, “He that has seen me has seen the Father.”
A Sort of Forgiveness
Amnesty, a term garnered from the Greek, amnestia, meaning forgetfulness, holds slightly less weight than pardon. To pardon is to forgive, to say to someone or some group, as far as I am concerned you no longer stand guilty of the offense. Amnesty, on the other hand, relates exclusively to the punishment phase. It means to say, though you have acted in a wrongful fashion, I will pass over it and treat you as if it never happened.
An example of the dilemma faced by young men in the Vietnam conflict era appeared in a letter to “The Olympian,” an Olympia, Washington, newspaper, sometime in the early 1970s as follows:
I left America last on June 12, 1969, just four days after I graduated. It was indeed a difficult decision to leave the United States since I am an American citizen and love my country greatly. I have always tried to be loyal to my country and am proud of my citizenship. But for personal moral reasons I could not support the military role of my country in Vietnam. I applied for the status of Conscientious Objector but was turned down. After seeking counseling from some WSU staff members, I finally decided to emigrate to Norway rather than be drafted.
Thomas V. Hansen
Bankveien 9 F
1347 Hosle
Oslo, Norway
Discussion of the issue swayed back and forth in the nation. President Nixon, continuing to prosecute the war, refused to countenance amnesty for those many thousands living above the border. A number of church and political leaders pressed for administrative action. The National Council of Churches Board adopted a statement calling for amnesty for all who were in legal jeopardy because of the war in Indochina, except those who had committed acts of violence.
On March 5, 1972, from the pulpit I took up this hot topic of U.S. men who had crossed the border to Canada or elsewhere in order to escape the jeopardy of the draft to service in the Vietnam conflict. My text, Matt 6:9–15, derived from the Sermon on the Mount in which we hear Jesus teach his disciples to pray, “and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” (It’s clear, since my topic was amnesty, that I ignored the nuanced difference between forgiveness and amnesty.)
In my pulpit word, I noted several objections to the fairness of forgiveness or amnesty. I asked, for example, “If I forgive my brother who has wronged me, how will that be fair to my brother who has not?” To put that in the public consciousness of the time, one might ask, “If I tell a U.S. citizen residing in Canada he can return to the USA without fear of legal repercussions, how is that just to the parents of a young man who obeyed the law, donned the uniform, and lost his life in a Vietnamese rice paddy?”
In response to that legitimate question, I pointed to the elder son in the parable of the father who had two sons, he who refused to be merciful toward his brother (Luke 15:11-32). I also pointed to the inclusive outreach to the south of President Lincoln following the Civil War, in order to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” I could have pointed to the reconciliation, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, in which the truth of Afrikaner aggression against the Coloreds, Asiatics, and Bantus, once confessed, received the amazing response tantamount to forgiveness or amnesty.
So I asked, “Can we find it within ourselves to receive in forgiveness those who have become legal outlaws? And who is going to grant them forgiveness for forcing them to decide between legality and conscience? Do we have to wait a century after the fact before we can respect acts of conscience?”
Picking up the topic in the next church newsletter, I referred to the phrase I learned from the ethicist, James Gustafson, about the church as “a community of moral discourse.” Admitting that amnesty might well be a hot topic, especially for a minister less than one year into the life of the parish, I expressed satisfaction that I received few, “That’s nice, Rev.,” sorts of comments at the door, but found genuine dialogue instead. I knew I remained outside the advice of the Senior Minister, Rev. McKinney, when he told me, “I’ve learned never to say anything controversial from the pulpit.”
On his second day in office, January 21, 1977, President Jimmy Carter, one of the most profoundly Christian men ever to occupy the White House, issued a presidential pardon to those who from August 4, 1964, to March 18, 1973, chose Canadian or other exile, or other options, over conflict in Vietnam. The pardon did not apply to the hundreds of thousands active duty military personnel who went AWOL or deserted during the course of the conflict. Thousands benefited from that action. Perhaps a volume of words from other pulpits, based on Matt 6:9–15, played some role in the President’s action.
I realize that nowhere in that Sunday’s discourse did I grapple with the conundrum featured in Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, namely that a straight forward moral act of an individual might not be readily available to a nation state. I note that such a caveat did not deter the good Baptist, Jimmy Carter.
On February 5, 1973, I spoke again at length on the call for amnesty. The Vietnam conflict was drawing to a close. I titled my pulpit word, “Let Bygones be Bygones.”
In response, I received a gracious letter from an active member of the congregation, a World War II veteran. Virgil Michaelson noted the problems surrounding the Vietnam conflict but he insisted that if persons had fled to Canada or Sweden in the 1940s we might not have freedom now to discuss openly these sensitive issues. He spoke of his own “unbearable months” in Nazi prison camp. For those who avoided the call to serve, he was not willing to overlook it.
This respectful letter, concluded “in the Christian Spirit” it was intended, I still have in my keeping. This was an instance of the church as a “community of moral discourse” for which James Gustafson appealed. I do not have a copy of my reply. I hope it was as gracious as Virgil’s letter.
Mary Had a Baby
In my first parish, Park Church, in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1968–1971), talk about abortion galvanized a number of my colleagues. The Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision lay a few years off. The Senior Minister, Rev. McKenney, placed abortion advocacy petitions to Congress at the church door, appealing for signatures. My clergy peers were helping women find physicians who would perform abortions. I had no use for this activity.
When we came to Pullman, Washington, in 1971, I soon helped found a Pregnancy Counseling Center in Moscow, Idaho, the adjacent city. There I worked with Catholics and Protestants of similar views to enable girls and women to find a supportive atmosphere in which to find alternatives to abortion.
On December 10, 1972, I brought this issue to the pulpit in an oblique way under the title, “Mary Had a Baby.” I wrote a dramatic dialogue for Mary and Joseph as they considered together the “problem pregnancy.”
Taking extensive poetic license from the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, I presented the couple as caught in a struggle about what course to take.
The dialogue which Brenda Robinson, as Mary, and I, as Joseph, held that morning before the congregation took place as follows:
Once coming to terms with Mary’s pregnancy, they spoke of the threatening political circumstance around them—their poverty–laden situation and their forlorn hopes for Messiah. Mary exclaimed, “These circumstances grip me like a vise.” Joseph even tells Mary he knows of a man who can end the pregnancy.
There is a pause, as if time has passed. Then the couple begin to speak to each other of the arrival of resources beyond themselves, “life affirmers” from the ancient text and saints around them. Mary tells Joseph she has “pondered things in her heart.” Then she exclaims, “Dare I say it, Joseph. I feel as a co–creator of the world. Without me part of the future dies . . . Joseph, I feel that God is with me . . . I will have this baby!”
The dialogue builds in affirmation. Joseph exclaims, “Mary, we have traveled thousands of miles in this room. We can travel the rest of the way to new birth.” And Mary replies, “Joseph, I feel the ecstasy of hope . . . I am literally inhabited by hope! My soul magnifies the Lord . . . ”
So as Mary utters the words of the Magnificat, Joseph concludes it, words they both know from the tradition when Hannah bore Samuel, her first–born son.
In his excellent volume, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self Worship, Paul C. Vitz criticizes “selfism” psychologies that have attacked the family structure. He then offers a word of advice which I approve:
May we not see that a psychologist advising abortion is acting in hostility against the deep structure of beliefs and meaning celebrated in the Christmas story? Recall that the young Mary was pregnant under circumstances that today routinely terminate in abortion. In the important theological context of Christmas, the killing of an unborn child is a symbolic killing of the Christ Child.8
Mr. Vitz sees the development of counseling approaches under the rubric, “family therapy,” as a hopeful sign.
For a long time now I have noted that promoters of liberal thought in religion and politics speak out on behalf of the most vulnerable in society. They even say a society should be judged on how it treats its weakest members. How can they leave the fetus out of this equation? An anomaly!
Of course, I know the reply: “Well, the unborn is not yet a person.” Really? How is it we allow nine allegedly wise persons to decide the arrival of personhood in the womb? What is there in our holy history that gives women, or men for that matter, “the right to choose”? We’ve come a long way, baby. A long way away from reverence for life.
Funding Our Lives by Chance
During my last year of ministry in Pullman, Washington, and my first year in Tacoma, Washington (1981–1983), I filled the role of President of the Washington Association of Churches (WAC). I served as Vice President previously (1979–1980). This body, the successor to the Washington Council of Churches, brought Catholics and Protestants together around many themes. Rev. Loren Arnett served for many years as its effective Executive Minister.
The ministries of the WAC were as long as your arm. It attended to refugees, food needs, employment, etc. Annually a legislative conference alerted churches to relevant issues on tap in the state legislature. The WAC supervised the Washington Wheat Campaign in which agriculture in the state contributed donated wheat to be shipped from Portland or Seattle to needy sites abroad. For example, in January 1984, 3,936 bags (200,000 lb.) of wheat traveled through Peru to Bolivia to be distributed by the indigenous churches to the most in need.
As I say, the vast amount of ministry would require many pages to disclose. Perhaps a report from Loren Arnett, in July of 1987, will serve to speak of the quantity and quality of the WAC’s ministry:
• 250 refugees were resettled with the help of fifty–eight congregations.
• 360 refugees were placed in jobs.
• 281 Salvadorans and Guatemalans were provided emergency housing.
• $1.3 million worth of food passed through the Food Buying Service warehouse to food banks.
• 150 persons attended the Legislative Conference.
• Over 2,000 individuals and congregations received the legislative newsletter ALERT every week during the legislative session.
Stepping down from the Chair in 1983, I was appointed convener of a WAC ad hoc committee to study and report on private gambling and the proposed lottery in Washington State. At that time few states in the Union possessed state lotteries. The WAC advocated in the state legislature to keep a state–run lottery out of the picture. To no avail.
Not many in the churches knew of the millions of dollars in favor of the lotteries flowing into states from the gambling enterprises. Regularly newly designed games to entice the consumer came on board. Meanwhile, more and more church members found their way to Las Vegas or Reno to fritter away their God–given assets.
I well remember standing on a street corner with Rev. Paul Pruitt, a United Church of Christ minister and a member of the state legislature. Earnestly he said to me, “I’ve not had one letter or phone call from any of the churches urging me to oppose the onset of the lottery in the state.”
I think I have never heard a homily devoted to Christian stewardship in relation to gambling. I do have a record from the 1978 General Synod when Rev. Avery Post, President, UCC, said, “I do not want to bring people into our covenant on low demands, but as members we accept the stewardship of time and money . . . ”
In the spring of 1975, in a series of pulpit words on social issues, I broached the subject of gambling. I said:
Let’s suppose two primitives meet for a first time in a clearing, with a bundle of fur skins over one’s shoulder and the other with a basket full of grain on his head. Simultaneously, they think, “Exchange!” How might that exchange occur? One could by brute force or trickery rob the other. Or they might negotiate some sort of barter system. They might then make some sort of exchange based on a common, valuable currency. Who knows, they might even exchange gifts.
There is one more exchange possibility. I quote from the 1975 pulpit word:
They could spot a piece of wood and throw it in a stream. If it comes down on the side with the bark showing, the pelts guy surrenders them all to the grain guy. If the non–bark side is up, then the pelts guy gets all the grain. It’s an exchange. We call it gambling.
Gambling is a wild ride on the fatalistic back of chance. Exciting. Addictive. Also, antisocial and without any basis in reason.
One more element of concern enters. It’s illustrated by my mother’s refusal in my childhood to let me play marbles “for keepsies.” She understood that such behavior loses the element of conscience. In the gambling act, there is a desire to win all, even if that leaves the other destitute.
In my homily, I weighed the pros and cons. Is not all of life, such as driving a car, a sort of gamble? Is not investment in the stock market a gambling behavior? Or is gambling not a benevolent behavior if public education receives a part of the proceeds? Or what if churches hold bingo parties to raise money for their operation? Even if gambling is an inferior sort of activity, may we not reuse the old phrase, “The devil’s water being used to turn the Lord’s mill”?
I countered these rationales with a central argument: the essence of the act is chance, and in this way lies outside the Christian’s understanding of careful stewardship of resources. I noted that James Wall, editor of the widely–read periodical, “Christian Century,” had been decrying the increase of gambling, a practice he found inimical to the tradition of the Christian faith and one that exploited the human temptation to greed.
I also argued that other human behavior that involves chance, such as climbing a mountain, involves all sorts of prudential, cautionary preparation. In gambling, all caution goes out the window, unless of course it involves “smart money” which is unethical on the part of the gambler.
In 1964, the State of New Hampshire introduced the public lottery to gain public revenue. Since then almost all states have fallen in line, many with inter–state lotteries. In New Hampshire, the state’s road signs once read, “A lottery ticket is an ideal Christmas gift.”
Is not the institution of state–sponsored gambling, with its increase in addictive behavior, one sign of a disintegrating civilization? And a practice enhancing such decline? And if a public service is worth supporting why not ask for it in the out–front mode of progressive taxes, rather than subtly out of the back pocket of weaker citizens?
Alas, the horse is out of the barn. Even to speak and write in the above manner seems quaint, does it not?
The Gay Affair
In the Spring of 1978, in my seventh year as minister in Pullman, Washington, I undertook to bring to the Sunday morning pulpit four post–Easter messages on current social issues—gambling, abortion, homosexuality, and war. Nothing controversial about those, eh?
As it happened, the message on homosexuality fell on Father’s Day. I am sure I noticed that. Convinced that human sexual activity and procreation go hand in hand, I saw no reason to shift the topic to another date. One woman in the congregation found herself quite upset that the subject matter coincided with the celebration of the male parent.
In a few words, let me summarize what I said from the pulpit. I began with allusions to a few of the scripture texts which reference the subject: Gen 19:1–29; Lev 18:12, 20:13, and Rom 1:18–28. I noted, too, those texts that lift up heterosexual relationships: Gen 1:23 (male and female in creation), John 2:1–11 (wedding in Cana), and Eph 5:22–33 (analogy on unity in the church to unity in male/female marriage).
I spent extra time with Rom 1:18–28. Paul’s topic is idolatry. He asserts that those who bow to untrue Gods produce a darkening of minds. The turn to same–sex behavior becomes one of the expressions of some persons caught up in an idolatrous society. In this way, Paul seems to offer an implicit explanation as to why many homosexual persons do not feel this inclination is a matter of choice. Paul seems to speak of behavior modification by cultural influence.
I then turned to the arena of experience, though much, for better or worse, remained closeted in 1978. I referred to two persons. I mentioned Rev. Malcom Boyd, an Episcopal priest and writer, who had “outed” himself, noting that his book, Are You Running With Me Jesus?, had much good to say. I then quoted Rev. Nathaniel Guptill, then the UCC Conference Minister in Connecticut, who in public remarks, had argued that the aversion many people have to homosexual behavior probably should not be exorcised, “since it is a part of a system of sexual inhibitions that protects children from molestation by their parents and also sisters from their brothers, making intimate family life possible.”9
I then began to become persuasive through reason. I argued for the civil rights of homosexual persons, without moving to the approval of the lifestyle. Loving elements appearing in gay and adulterous relationships need not lead to approval.
I appealed to folk to “test the spirits,” so not to become swept along in tides of public opinion. I offered a quotation, growing out of what I called an “unfaithful spirit,” from a passage in Sally Gearhart and William Johnson, Loving Men/Loving Women:
As long as the church is able to perpetuate the belief that marriage and the family are the highest forms of human relationship it will be able to perpetuate itself as a heterosexual family–oriented institution . . . Heterosexual relationships and marriage as traditionally experienced are basically unhealthy.10
Under the “test the spirits” rubric, I referenced Thomas Maurer, a UCC minister and counselor, who argued that one’s sexual choices should be viewed as no more value weighted than one’s choice of cuisine.
I concluded with several propositions:
• First, the need “to confess the fallen aspects of our own sexual imaginations and practices . . . seeking to bring them into conformity with the mind of Christ.”
• Second, in civil society we need to oppose oppression and seek justice. In church we need to receive all persons on the basis of their Christian confession.
• Third, when it comes to the blessing or performing of same–sex unions in the life of the church, “we will decline courteously and firmly,” regarding this not as a civil matter but a consideration subject to Christian discretion.
The denomination into which I was ordained in 1968, the United Church of Christ, drew me in part on the basis of its history of social activism, its defense of the powerless. In the past couple of decades, the epigram, “God is still speaking” (alleged to have been first uttered by that great theologian, Gracie Allen), appeared as the sum of the denomination’s theories. In relation to the homosexual question, this meant that seven biblical passages, the natural law tradition and the advice of the historic church were inferior guidelines to the will of God when compared with the contemporary zeitgeist.
Once upon a time, I picked up the phone and called the UCC headquarters office in Cleveland, Ohio. I asked for the LGBT office. In a few seconds a male voice responded. We spoke courteously. Then I asked, “If I had called the UCC offices and asked for the office of traditional marriage, where would I have been referred?” He did not know. Now one should ask for LGBTQ, in order to be politically correct.
The UCC has prided itself on being the foremost mainline denomination in advocacy of the gay rights movement. A steep price has been paid. In 1957–1958 the UCC body came into being listing 2.4 million members. Now the claim is to 900,000 or so. The denomination’s leadership has been willing to jettison its members not on the LGBT bandwagon. Its small new member growth in recent years, to a significant extent, came through accession of members from the Metropolitan Church, the gay/lesbian dominant denomination. Even this has not prevented the most momentous membership decline among the major Protestant denominations. And as time goes by, there’s an effort to push the envelope. For example, now all sexuality education from cradle to grave is carried out jointly with the Unitarian–Universalist denomination.
Once, while Interim Minister at Bethel Church, I sat my confirmation class down to see a UCC produced film on the Amistad Incident, in which Congregationalists had played a virtuous and courageous Christian role. Much to my consternation, toward the close of the film there came a bit about the continual role of the UCC in its pursuit of peace and justice, including the gay rights movement in church and state.
As a matter of fact, the UCC denomination has gained a foothold on the pedestal it has chosen. If people hear of the UCC they think, “Oh, that’s the gay rights church.”
In 1998, four denominations approved a Formula of Agreement which enabled clergy in all four denominations to receive each other’s ministers without much problem. As I write, three of those denominations—Lutheran ELCA, Presbyterian USA, and the UCC, have experienced horrendous internal spasms over the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian persons, the approval of which has caused massive loss of churches and members. The other body, Reformed Church in America, at its 2016 national assembly, once again refused to move out of its traditional posture.
With a few inclusions and nuances different, I would be pleased to speak from the pulpit today in the same manner I did in 1978. In the meantime, I have endured considerable ordeals, external and internal, which I will not elaborate upon here, over same–sex issues. One must confess that only God in wisdom knows the truth. Surely we see through a fragmented mirror and spy various images. I think the Catholic Church, with its ethical foundation in natural law, offers the best clues for clarity here.
I would add a pastoral note. Through the years, I have had opportunity to minister to practicing gay and lesbian persons. While I have held opposition to their lifestyle, I believe I have been enabled to treat them in the same manner as I would anyone else. Their response to me and my ministry indicates they felt treated well. I say this in credit to the Spirit, not to myself.
A lot of water under the bridge since the Spring of 1978. A whole torrent, in fact. The eddies in the stream had only begun to ripple. The deluge, now forty years old, was building. Now the flood is upon us.
May 18, 1980—When Mt. St. Helens Blew
I had announced that for the all–church picnic in Reany Park the pastor had ordered a perfectly beautiful day. And so it was. Warm for May. Bright blue skies shone overhead as we gathered for morning worship. Afterward many of us stopped by our homes to don casual clothes and head for the park.
We had no idea that 300 miles to our west Mt. St. Helens had blown her stack. There had been plenty of advance warnings of the volcanic eruption. “Don’t go there!” red zone parameters were established. Still, when she blew her top some fifty of God’s children lost their lives. Others managed to outrace the hot ash and survive.
There we were playing games, conversing, preparing picnic food, and generally enjoying the day. Unaware were we that the mountain had exploded while we were in worship. At some point I looked to the west and saw a black line across the horizon below the cloudless sky. I said to my wife, Dianne, “That looks like the approach of a Midwest thunder storm.”
Then from across the street, where he lived, the Lutheran Campus Minister, Roger Pettenger, hurried toward us. This is what I remember him shouting: “Don’t you people know what’s happened? Go home!” We did.
By late afternoon the ash, blown by the trade winds, had reached Pullman, Washington, on the Idaho border. It fell like a heavy grey snow. Unprecedented! Calm people became agitated. Nervous people reacted with patience. Public schools suspended classes. Washington State University (WSU) closed for the term, causing seniors to be concerned if they would graduate.
By the next morning two inches of ash lay on the Palouse hills. Some forty miles north, six inches fell and choked the winter wheat. Light like talcum powder when dry and heavy as cement when dampened. The scientists at WSU and at University of Washington could not agree as to the danger to the lungs of this ash, but there was a run in the drug stores on face masks. All seemed to agree that this ash bore real danger to internal combustion vehicles.
A week later, on May 25, 1998, my pulpit word title read, “Fall Out.” It was Pentecost Sunday. I spoke of “ambiguous fall–outs” such as ash that clogs motors and injures lungs but might mix with the Palouse soil to produce fine crops. (This latter result indeed happened.) And then I called attention to “benevolent fall–outs” epitomized in the birth of the Church when the Spirit of God fell on praying and believing people empowering them to give unashamed witness to the Christ who brings wholeness into the world, a fall–out we still need. And then, in preparation for Holy Communion, I referred to the need for the bread to be broken in order to enter us. I used a quotation from the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan, “When I hear bread breaking, I see something else. It seems as if God never meant us to do anything else . . . so beautiful a sound . . . the crust breaks up like manna and falls all over everything. And then we eat—bread gets inside humans.”11
Then I prayed:
O graceful fall–out from the Lord,
Covering us, getting inside of us,
with the flavorful nutrition of
amazing love.
O graceful fall–out from the Lord,
spilling over the barriers
of our doubt and fears
with the fruit of divine favor.
Spirit of the living God, fall on us.
I had a hard time living down my promise of a great weather day for a picnic—May 18, 1980.
Easter Day in the Queens
When one says New York City, the name refers to five boroughs. If listed in terms of notoriety, in descending order, we name Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and then Queens. Unfortunately, many people know Queens for a tragedy—the site of a horrendous rape and murder of Kitty Genovese while, as it is alleged, thirty–eight persons in neighboring apartments might have come to her rescue but failed to do so.
As of February 25, 1968, Rev. James H. Ameling had resigned as Associate Minister of Union Church, a formerly Congregational, now UCC, in the Richmond Hill section of the Queens. I was to assume that position as an Interim by the end of March.
Easter Day dawned on Union Church on April 14, 1968. A couple hundred persons or families bought flowers for the day in honor or in memory of a loved one. The choir offered up the anthem, “Lo, the Tomb is Empty,” by Edward Broome. Then Rev. Arnold W. Tozer, the Senior Minister at the church since 1961, mounted the pulpit. As someone said, “If a Christian minister has nothing to say on that day, he/she should be quiet for the rest of the year.”
The denouement of Mr. Tozer’s message claims a fixed place in my memory. His title for the day, “Celebration,” gives a clue that what ensued, though seemingly spontaneous, in reality grew out of his plans for the proclamation.
I recall with clarity that Tozer suddenly said something like this: “This is Easter. The day of Resurrection. Christ is not dead. He is risen. Why do you just sit there? Stand up on your feet. Shout ‘Hallelujah!’ Say ‘Amen!’ Give God praise and glory.” As he spoke, his voice rose, his arms shot up, his whole being exuded animation.
Now this was no Pentecostal church. We were not in Baton Rouge with Jimmy Swaggert shouting, “My! My! My!”, and then breaking into tongues. No, I refer to a staid and proper United Church of Christ in the heart of Queens.
What happened? The Easter congregation rose out of their gravely pews, all the while looking about for assurance. In a way there seemed to be no alternative, given the pastor’s urging. But I can attest that from my seat in the chancel I saw not proforma obligatory obedience. There before my eyes, this old–line, main–line congregation stood en masse and shouted, “Hallelujah! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.” I too joined the celebration.
Not long after my Interim at Union Church ended, I, my wife, Dianne, and our young son, Kirk, moved on to a permanent situation in Michigan. But if someone asks me, “What’s your most memorable Easter?”, I suppose I might say, “Back in Queens when Tozer persuaded that congregation to stand up and shout, “Hallelujah!”
2. Berrigan, Testimony, 174.
3. Speratus, Evangelical, 314.
4. Lyte, Lutheran, 549.
5. Barth, The Word of God, 186.
6. Hazelton, Roger, Christ and Ourselves, 8.
7. Vahanian, The Death of God, 147.
8. Vitz, Psychology as Religion, 66.
9. Based on personal notes at the occasion.
10. Gearhart and Johnson, Loving Women, 92–93.
11. Berrigan, Love, Love, 114.
