Sermon from January 18, 2009

                 WHAT I WILL SAY TO OUR NEW PRESIDENT WHEN HE CALLS

               I Kings 3:3-15                    I Timothy 2:1-6

                  Sermon presented on January 18, 2009

 

 

President-elect Obama has often said, famously now:  “My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.”  With that promise in mind, I’ve been thinking he might call me, to chat about things, but the call hasn’t come (not yet, anyway).  I know he’s been busy these days, and sometimes I turn my cell phone off.  But I’m prepared, when he calls, to say a few things to him, and I’d like to share some of those thoughts with you today.

            First and most important of all, I want him to know that I’ll be praying for him, and that we’ll all be praying here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.  Our praying for him is not a political act.  I’ve been leading worship for 33 years, and have led prayers for Republican presidents 21 of those years and for Democratic ones 12 years, now to be 16, at least.  It’s what we do in obedience to the Word of God, where it is written:  “ . . . prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings [should] be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions” (I Tim. 2:1, 2).   

 

            John Calvin wrote – and I might have to take a moment to remind President Obama that this is the 500^th year of Calvin’s birth, and he might want to come to Grand Rapids to participate in some of the festivities marking the occasion, and if he does, he’s warmly welcomed to worship with us here at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church! – but, that aside, Calvin wrote about this passage from scripture:  “Whatever character they may be who rule over us, we are commanded to offer up public prayers for them.”

 

            And I would take the opportunity to tell the new President that in the Church of Scotland, from whose spiritual soil the Presbyterian Church sprang, every Sunday prayers are raised for the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Princes and “all the royal family.”  This doesn’t mean that those who are praying support the policies of the royal family; in truth, polls suggest that a majority of people in Scotland favor the elimination of the monarchy altogether.  But the wisdom of the Church of Scotland is, that’s another issue, to be debated at other times and places.  In worship, prayers are to be said for “all who are in high positions,” it is written in scripture.  And so we have often prayed here in worship for President Bush, and now we shall pray for President Obama.

 

            Kevin Ferris, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes that he recently dropped-by the meeting of a high school Young Republicans Club in a Philadelphia suburb, to find out what these young people were thinking as the Obama inauguration approaches, something they surely regard as unwelcome.  A 16 year old told him she’d like President Obama to know she’ll be praying for him.  “What sort of prayer?” the reporter asked.  She said:  “May you be safe in times of war and peace.  May you return to your family a better person than you were before.  May you learn the price of being a president, and be able to carry that weight.  May you remember the hopes and prayers of a great nation rest with you.”

 

            Amen to that.  President Obama needs to know that people of faith will be praying for him, without regard to their own political affiliations or sensitivities.  I’d like to assure him of that.

 

            Here’s another thing I’ll tell him when he calls.  I’ll encourage him to go to church.

 

            This may be a touchy subject, so I need to raise it carefully, because Barak Obama belonged to a church, that church in Chicago, and it didn’t work out well for him.  I might also tell him, by the way, as a friendly aside, that I appreciated his defending the preacher there.  It’s not that I agreed with the ideas of that preacher, ideas which I found disagreeable.  But, well, I sort of like a guy who stands-by a preacher when everyone else is piling-on!  In the end, though, Barak Obama came to conclude with many others, that he could no longer defend the indefensible, and he left that church.  But he seems not to have chosen another church.  And this is what I will encourage him to do.

 

            When you don’t go to a particular church regularly, but worship here-and-there, now-and-then, you begin to lose the clarifying, correcting, and caring fellowship that healthy faith must have.  It’s through worship and study groups, the words to hymns and prayers, communion celebrated and mission projects shared with brothers and sisters in the faith, and so forth, that we come to understand Biblical faith rightly and to know what the Lord requires of us.  Left to our own, sin begins to reshape what we believe to our own ends and purposes. 

 

            Absent a community of faith, we end-up being tossed back-and-forth, believing anything, standing for nothing.  I might even tell President Obama, if I dare — (I’ll have to assess how the conversation’s going) — that I’ve already gotten hints of this kind of thing, in his selecting a high profile evangelical minister to pray at one inauguration event, then a high profile liberal minister to pray at another.  I’d like to suggest that you don’t have to do this, Mr. President.  Instead choose a church that relates to your spiritual aspirations and then be unapologetically grounded in it.  Personally, I don’t care if it’s evangelical or progressive, integrated or African-American, pietist or activist, whatever; but choose a church, make it your church, and then become involved in its life and work.  This will be better, I think, better for him and for the nation, than four years of constantly trying to balance things out.

 

            Another advantage of going to church is he won’t be coaxed into watching the Sunday morning pundits criticize him on Meet the Press.

 

            Now, if President Obama asks me my opinion, I’ll be eager to tell him that there are excellent Presbyterian churches in Washington.  The closest one to the White House is New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in walking distance, where Abraham Lincoln worshiped.  That was his church.  And Lincoln spoke the most profound and sublime words ever authored by an American President concerning faith and civil responsibility; he said:

                        With malice toward none, with charity for all, with

                        firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,

                        let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind-

                        up the nation’s wounds.

 

            Yes, Mr. President, you might want to think about becoming a Presbyterian.  But I know that’s not what you called about, I’d be quick to assure him. 

 

So, let’s move on to other things.   President Obama may be thinking his call to me is shaping-up as unproductive, if he wanted my ideas about particular policies and programs.  But to re-cycle a line that’s familiar to him, that’s “above my pay grade.”  I don’t know how to solve the worst U.S. economy in 50 years, nor the international challenges of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Gaza conflict, and al-Qaeda gathering strength in remote regions of Pakistan.  To paraphrase Woody Allen, I don’t even know how the can opener works, how can I know these things?   I do have opinions about political topics, of course, all kinds of opinions about all sorts of things.  But I’m daunted by the problems we face as a nation, and rather than add to the noise of partisan debate, I’d like instead simply to transmit to President Obama my wish that he receive wisdom greater than his own.

 

I would encourage him to turn to the Book of I Kings, Chapter 3:  a story of Israel’s kingly succession, from David to Solomon.  Early in Solomon’s reign – in his new administration, we might say – he went to the temple at Gibeon, to seek the help of the Lord.  At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon, in a dream.  The Lord said to him:  “ask what I should give you.”   And Solomon said:  “an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.”  Solomon did not ask for riches or honor, nor for victory in war, nor for the elimination of adversaries, none of the things that might be a new leader’s wildest and more wonderful fantasy.  Rather, he asked the Lord for “an understanding mind.” 

 

This sounds simple enough.  But it isn’t.  It’s hard for any of us to ask for wisdom, humbly.  Everyone agrees that humility is of first importance – Thomas More called it, “that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot” – but though we honor it in theory, we’re still inclined to be “know-it-alls” in practice.  And humility must be especially illusive for someone who is being lifted-up and regarded by many as superhuman, as a savior, almost. 

 

I look forward to telling President Obama that I happened to be in Chicago on Election Day, at a meeting.  I was in Lincoln Park, which with its population of young urban professionals may be among the most Obama-friendly neighborhoods in America.  What I sensed there that day, in the coffee shops, restaurants and convenience stores, was no mere, “great, our guy won,” but an expectation that all of the world’s problems will now be solved.  Veteran reporter Sandy Grady recently wrote in USA Today that, in her experience of covering eight Presidents, there’s never been one who “carries [such] enormous expectations . . . that he’s the Miracle Man.”  To some extent these expectations have been fueled by Obama’s own promises.  But this seems to me unreasonable, unfair and childish; and also unwise, if President Obama were to take it seriously.  So, I might suggest to him, when he calls, to re-read the Bible, the part about Solomon, who, precisely at the moment of his greatest power and popularity, yet humbly asked God for “an understanding mind,” that he might be able to govern wisely, faithfully and well.

 

On Election Day evening in Chicago, I purchased a bottle of champagne to bring to a reception I was attending.  Everyone in the store was in a lively, celebrative mood.  When I put the champagne on the shelf the clerk asked:  “Are you celebrating the end of the dark past or the beginning of the bright future?”  I made some kind of lame joke, I forget what I said, because I didn’t want to get into it with him, not with other customers lining-up behind me.  But what I’d liked to have said is something like:  “I believe absolutely that’s there’s a bright future, a light so bright that it will overcome the darkness of the past and present.  But that light is not coming into the world on Election Day, not this one, nor any other.  That light is the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and it will shine on the day of his coming.”

 

            Our confidence that God can be trusted to fulfill his promises should not lessen our interest in this earthly existence and the affairs of state.  God calls us to be co-creators with him in bringing order out of the chaos of this world’s sinful madness.  Politics and government are means God ordains by which this holy work may be lived-out.  And so as my talk with President Obama comes to a close – because, I’m thinking, he still has a great many more calls to make –  I will bless our new President with words Thomas Jefferson spoke in his First Inaugural:  “may that infinite power who rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best . . . to enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon of January 11

                           WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF HOCKEY?

                                        Luke 19:1-10   Colossians 3:23-24     Deuteronomy 25:14-16

                                                        Sermon presented on January 11, 2009

 

The question posed by the title of this sermon, “What Does God Think About Hockey?” appeared as a headline recently in the Washington Post.  Washington Capitals’ defenseman Brian Pothier is a practicing Christian, “definitely not [in] the majority in the hockey world,” he says.  Hearing of this, Post religion writer Kathy Orton interviewed Pothier, hoping to find-out how he relates his faith to his work.  Later-on I’ll say a thing or two about how he answered her questions, but for the moment I’d like to broaden the question, so that it takes-in all of us.  For Brian Pothier, hockey is a job.  It’s what he does for work.  So the larger question is:  what does God think about whatever it is we do for work?  What does God think about our vocations?  I invite you to take the sermon title, and change the word hockey to the word that fits you.  What does God think about . . . sales?  What does God think about . . . teaching?  What does God think about . . . engineering, or homemaking; office work, or medicine?  construction, or retirement?  business, or social service?   And so forth.  Is your vocation related to your faith in some way; or is it a part of life you see as wholly separate from, and perhaps even at odds with, your faith?

 

There are many different reasons why we spend the days of our lives as we do.  Most practically, we need to earn a living, of course.  And in this present world it’s not only money we’re after, but benefits, as well, like health care and retirement, which may be as important as cash salary.  Sometimes people may feel forced into one kind of work or another by factors beyond their control — by family obligations, say, which limit  mobility, or by health considerations, and so forth.  And there are periods of time when larger or macro-economic forces come into play, when a person’s just happy to have a job, any job.  My Grandfather Raum sold vanilla extract door-to-door during the Depression.  He died before I was born, so I never had a chance to ask him, but I’m guessing he wasn’t responding to some higher call to be a vanilla extract salesman, but rather scrambling to provide for his family in tough times.  And while our present economic malaise is certainly not of the depth of the 1930s, yet increasingly there are people now, and perhaps some of you, who find themselves scrambling these days.  For reasons such as these I always want to be slow to talk in lofty terms about vocation, or about rising to one’s calling or fulfilling one’s destiny.  When you can’t pay the VISA bill, the person on the other of the line is unlikely to have interest in such ideas, however sublime. 

 

But, when you consider how much of our lives is spent at work — just count-up the hours, the days, the years of our lives – clearly, God cares about this major part of our lives.  What kind of God what it be who doesn’t care about what we do from 1/3 to a ½ of our time here on earth?  Whatever kind of God that might be, it’s not the God of scripture. 

 

Certainly not the God who charged Adam to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” a charge which, in the words of theologian Nancy Pearcey, represents . . .

            . . . what we might call the first job description:  to develop

            the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities,

            governments, laws . . . to harness the natural world:  plant

            crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music . . .

            [and] to create cultures and build civilizations – nothing less.

 

Nor the God who in Jesus Christ met and befriended people in the workplace:  farmers and fishermen, homemakers and academics, wine stewards and vineyard workers, shepherds and temple employees, soldiers and civil servants, parents being parents and children being children.  Jesus also told parables featuring ordinary people engaged in the everyday work of their everyday lives.

           

Nor do we see indifference to work in the God who declares in the New Testament:  “You know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58).    And certainly not the God who counsels in Scripture:  “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord” (Col. 3:23).

 

Rabbi Jeffrey K, Salkin tells this story, about a move his family made.

            The boss of the moving crew was a delightful, crusty

            gentleman [Salkin writes], a dead ringer for Willie Nelson.

            I had never met anyone so enthusiastic about his or her work,

            and I asked him the source of his enthusiasm.

           

“Well, you see, I’m a religious man,” he answered, “and my

            work is part of my religious mission.”

 

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

 

            “Well, it’s like this.  Moving is hard for most people.  It’s a

            very vulnerable time for them.  People are nervous about

            going to a new community, and about having strangers pack

            their most precious possessions.  So, I think God wants me

            to treat my customers with love, and to make them feel that

            I care about their things and their life.  God wants me to help

            make their changes go smoothly.  If I can be happy about it,

            maybe they can be, too.”

 

Brian Pothier, the hockey player, said pretty much the same thing.  “I don’t walk into the training room with a Bible in my hand and start” talking about religion, he told the interviewer.  Rather, “the best way for me to show guys what I believe, or how I believe, is just to live it out.”

 

So, I’ve put a number of Biblical ideas about work on the table this morning.  Let’s gather them up, and see how these ideas come into play in the life and work of one particular Bible character, Zacchaeus. 

 

Zacchaeus “was a wee little man/a wee little man was he,” as we used to sing in Bible School.    He was a tax collector, but he might as well have been a hockey player, or anything else, for that matter – butcher, baker, candlestick maker — because the primary problem with Zacchaeus wasn’t what he did but how he did it.  Now, to be sure, in the world governed by imperial Rome, a tax collector – or, Bible scholars note, “toll collector” is probably a better translation, that Zacchaeus’ job was to assess fees from toll booths situated at transport and commercial centers – this was work people despised, naturally, and they looked down on those who did it.   We have not only the witness of scripture, but reports from other places around the Roman world, as well, that those who collected taxes were scorned everywhere.  Taxes created financial hardship, of course, but more than that, it was humiliating and degrading to pay taxes imposed by an occupying power.   “Taxation with representation,” would come the cry centuries later, from a people also occupied by an imperial across the sea.  So, all this is true, but it’s not what’s principally at stake here.  This may surprise you, but look closely at the text and you’ll see that at no point does Jesus tell Zacchaeus to stop working as a tax collector, like he tells the woman at the well, for example, to “go and sin no more.”   No, he says nothing like that to Zacchaeus.  The work of tax collecting in itself seems not to be counted by Jesus as unworthy work.  What’s the problem, then?

 

The problem was the way Zacchaeus performed his work.  He defrauded people.  God had given his opinion about unscrupulous business practices centuries earlier, in his indictment of those who conned unsuspecting farmers by the use of rigged scales.     “You shall have a perfect and just weight,” it is written, “a perfect and just measure.”  Those who practice business dishonestly “are abhorrent to the Lord,” the passage continues (Deut. 25:15, 16).  Zacchaeus was abhorrent to the Lord.  But Christ saw in him, as he sees in all of us, the possibility of change.  He looked-up at Zacchaeus, in the tree.  “Zacchaeus, come down,” he said, “for today I must stay at your house.”  We need to talk.   Zacchaeus resolved to payback victims all he’d embezzled from them, with interest, and to commit the rest of his life to the service of the poor.  It’s not clear why Zaccchaeus made such an immediate change, anymore than it’s clear why earlier Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets behind and followed Jesus.  Some come to Jesus slowly, over time, while for others the call of Christ claims and compels the personality wholly.   As for Zacchaeus,  his soul was redeemed and renewed, and perhaps his new character might impress others at work and inspire them to change, as well.

 

2009 is the 500^th year of John Calvin’s birth.  It’s being marked variously all over the world, with a number of worthy events happening in Grand Rapids.  Here at Forest Hills Laura and I are team-teaching a class on Calvinism as Calvin’s ideas are expressed in the Westminster Catechism.  And from time-to-time in sermons this year, I intend to highlight themes that are characteristic of Calvin’s thought.  Today’s is one of them. 

 

 Historians David Hall and David Vaughan write:

            One of the culture-changing aspects of Calvin’s leadership

            was his emphasis on the sacredness of ordinary vocations.

            Prior to his time [they continue], workers felt little sense of

            Calling unless entering the priesthood.  Vocation was

            restricted to ecclesiastical callings.  [But] Calvin thought

            that any area of work – farming, teaching, governing,

            business – could be a valid calling from God, every bit as

            sacred as a minister.  This was a radical change in worldview

            . . . He taught that a person could serve God in any labor and

glorify him . . . that all callings are important.

 

            It’s a thoroughly Calvinist notion – and more important than that, a faithfully Biblical one –  to imagine Zacchaeus returning to his job, knowing now . . .

+ that God cares about what he does and how he does it;

+ that God is glorified or demeaned by his actions and attitudes in the workplace;

+ and that God regards all work as holy work if it is done excellently, ethically, caringly and enthusiastically.

 

And so we may think of our work, as well.

 

So, back one last time to our hockey player.  Does God really care about who wins and loses hockey games?  Of course not, Brian Pothier answers.  “You win some, you lose some,” he adds.  It’s all “part of the grand plan of developing and cultivating who you are as a person.”   He’s suggesting that work – what we do and how we do it – is not something set-apart from our spiritual growth, but part of it; it’s an arena in which we reflect and transmit the love of God in Jesus Christ, and are strengthened and supported in that love.

           

May God bless each of us in our work, so that through it we may be a blessing.