Luke 18:9-14—The Proud and the Penitent (Reformation Sunday)

Once upon a time, there was a very proud church. This church was proud of how big it was. After all, it was one of the biggest churches in its town. This church was proud of its worship. After all, it was very well attended. The music was excellent. The preaching was outstanding. And people felt a sense of God’s presence in their worship. They would say something like, “Surely, the Lord is in this place.” This church was proud of its annual budget. Its people were generous, and so it had excellent facilities, a fine staff, and it did many, many very good things in its community with the resources at its disposal. This church was proud of its theology, its way of thinking and believing and the clarity of its purpose and its identity. This church was proud of its missions. It was a leader in its state in both giving to missions and going for missions. This congregation believed that Jesus really meant what he said in the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). This church was proud of its fellowship. After all, there were children and youth and adults of every age and station—young adults and median adults and senior adults—together sharing in one another’s lives and in the worship and the service of God. It was a very proud church, the kind of church that sometimes said to itself, “Oh God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches. Struggling in size. Uneventful in worship. Failing to meet budget. Wayward in theology. Weak on missions. Lacking in fellowship. O God, we thank you that we are not like those other churches.” Forty years later, this very proud church is but a shell of its former self. I could take you there to see it, and you would shake your head and wonder what on earth had happened.

Now, it’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall, as Proverbs 16:18 is sometimes translated. It seems to me that sometimes pride doesn’t precipitate the fall as much as it exacerbates it or accelerates it. It’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall as much as it goes before a long, slow decline. But however it happens, it is clear to me that this morning’s Gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary applies every bit as much to churches as it does church-goers. It applies every bit as much to congregations and entire denominations as it does to persons and individuals who make up congregations and denominations. And it occurs to me that the message of this passage to congregations and denominations is all that more pertinent on this particular Sunday that is celebrated around the world—at least among Protestant churches—as “Reformation Sunday.”

The roots of Reformation Sunday go back to October 31, 1517, 490 years ago this month, when a Roman Catholic priest and university lecturer named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses or statements or arguments to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His 95 theses argued against the idea that forgiveness of sin or pardon could be purchased from the church by making a contribution to the effort to renovate the greatest church building in the world, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. When Luther nailed his arguments to the door, a conflict began that has forever broken and fractured the church. The very proud and very large Christian church in the West came apart, in part, at least, because it was a very prideful church. A church whose size made it difficult for its leaders to be responsible and responsive. A church whose worship, in many ways, was inaccessible to worshipers. A church whose “budget,” so to speak, was so enormous and complex that it was, in fact, one of the primary economic engines of all of Europe, with massive land holdings that led to extraordinary profits from agricultural enterprises. It held a near monopoly on the tithes and offering and giving of the general populous without any accountability to those who were doing the giving. A church whose theology was above reproach by its congregants. A church whose mission was carried out by the relative few “religious,” while others just looked on. A church whose fellowship was strained and tenuous. I know any number of Roman Catholic priests in the United States today who have said things like, “If I had been a Roman Catholic in 1517, I would have been Martin Luther’s kind of Roman Catholic.” The church was in desperate need of reform. But what happened, of course, was not so much reform, as it was fracture, schism, brokenness that has never been repaired.

It’s not clear to me whether pride precipitates the fall or only accelerates and exacerbates it. It’s not clear to me that pride always precipitates a fall; sometimes it is a long, slow decline. But it is clear to me that there are those churches and denominations who to this day play the role of the prideful Pharisee in this morning’s Gospel lesson—“O God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches”—instead of the role of the penitent tax collector who says, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen in our efforts to answer your call. Have mercy on us, for we have failed you and our world and ourselves in our mission. Have mercy on us.”

In this morning’s gospel lesson we are reminded that the church is always under construction. The church is always undergoing renovation. The church is always in need of renewal. The church must always move toward transformation. The church always requires reformation. We must never be so proud that we do not subject the sacred cows of our size and our worship and our budget and our theology and our missions and our fellowship to scrutiny, to question, to challenge from within and challenge from without, so that instead of taking a fall or entering into a long, slow decline, we are constantly responding to the movement of the Holy Spirit of God among us and around us, sensitive to internal and external conditions that are constantly changing, with the result that our call and our mission in one decade may not be the same as our call and our mission in another. If we fall into the trap of pride, we will keep doing over and over and over again the things we did in the past while the world around us moves on and is filled with needs and opportunities for ministry and mission that we never see or hear because we are so very proud of being such a very good a church.

Instead, we must always be under construction and undergoing renovation. We must always be in renewal, transformation and reformation. The way forward with God lies in our penitence rather than in our pride. It is the penitence of a congregation that together and individually prays, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen away from your call, and we have failed you on our mission. Forgive us, O God. By your grace and power, renovate us, renew us, transform us, reform us, in Jesus’ name and in Jesus’ service. Amen.”

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Jeremiah 31:15-17—Weeping and Working Toward Hope (Children’s Sabbath 2007)

Opening Sentences:

Leader: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
Leader: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them up to the Lord.
Leader: Every 10 seconds a high school student drops out.
People: Jesus loves me, this I know.
Leader: Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected.
People: For the Bible tells me so.
Leader: Every 40 seconds a baby is born into poverty.
People: Little ones to him belong.
Leader: Every 51 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.
People: They are weak, but he is strong.
All: Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.
(Adapted from the Children’s Sabbath at First Christian Church [Disciples of Christ] in Frankfort, Ky., published in Shannon Daley-Harris, National Observance of Children’s Sabbath Manual, vol. 16 [Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 2007], p. 69.)

Sermon:

Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. She is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them. At the beginning of this morning’s Scripture lesson from the 31st chapter of the book of Jeremiah, Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted, verse 15 says. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?

In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, Rachel was there and not for the first time. Rachel was the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph, he of the coat she had made him with fancy sleeves or many colors, depending on how you translate it. Her son, you may remember, was reportedly torn to bits by a wild animal, when in fact his half-brothers had sold him into slavery. Rachel did not live long enough to be a party to the discovery and the happy tears that her son was still alive in Egypt. His name meant “he adds,” but he was taken away from her. Rachel was also the mother of the twelfth and last of Jacob’s sons, in whose childbirth she died after naming him Ben-Oni, “son of my sorrow.” Evidently, her husband Jacob was unwilling to live with the constant reminder of his late wife’s grief, so he renamed the boy Ben-Yamin, “son of the south” or “son of the right hand,” depending on how you translate it. Rachel was a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and by the time the prophet Jeremiah invoked her name and her tears, the descendants of her beloved Joseph and Ben-Oni had been exiled from the land of their living into Assyria, modern-day Iraq, for more than a century. Rachel’s tears for children in Jeremiah 31 are the tears of an entire people. They are tears for innumerable children whose days have turned to darkest night, whose dreams have turned to nightmares, whose lives have been cut short by death—or worse. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?

One afternoon, thirty years ago this fall, I came home from my job as a classroom teacher’s aide and announced to Bev that I hoped we didn’t ever have children. That was something of a departure from previous discussions we had had, so I had some splainin’ to do, as Ricky Ricardo would say. “I can’t stand the pain,” I told her. She said, “Well, aren’t we selfish? You can’t stand the pain?” I said, “No not my pain, their pain. I can’t stand their pain.”

Some of you have heard me speak of TW. TW was 14 years old and in the sixth grade. You do the math. TW was a disturbed and troubled child. He was a volatile sort. TW was in school each day because he got himself up in the morning, got himself dressed and got himself to the bus stop in time to catch the bus to school. Incredible grief and pain and anger always lay just below the surface of his skin. One day when he was 6 years old, he stood in his family’s kitchen as his mother lay on the floor and bled to death from a hemorrhage in pregnancy. In the intervening years, TW had been institutionalized repeatedly as he tried to come to terms with his grief and his guilt and his failure: his grief over his mother’s death, his guilt from assuming that somehow he had something to do with what happened to her, and his lingering sense that he had failed to save her that day. Other children in the class, one or two of them at least, loved to set him off, trigger his rage and get him sent to the principal’s office. All they had to do was whisper in his ear “yo’ momma.” It was a common street and playground insult, “yo’ momma.” But not for TW. It brought his grief and his guilt and his failure bubbling up to the surface, and he would fly into a rage, at the end of which I would walk him to the principal’s office as he sobbed. I wanted to bring TW home with me, but such things were not allowed.

I probably haven’t told you about Brenna. Brenna was also in that class. She was 15 and in the sixth grade. You do the math. She was 15 years old and had a record for prostitution. Brenna was tall and very dark and very strong. To tell you the truth, I was scared of Brenna. She was taller than I was. She was stronger than I was. And she was faster than I was. There is a lot about Brenna that is memorable, but what I remember most are the three primary looks I saw in her eyes. The first was a dazed and distant look she would wear into class some mornings that made me wonder what in the world had happened the night before that she was trying to ignore or forget or recover from. Her second look was fury. It was a wild fury that screamed out through her eyes even when she stood silent. The third was longing. It was the look of a child who just longed to be loved and cared for instead of used. I wanted to bring Brenna home with me but such things were not allowed, and she would probably take the gesture the wrong way anyway.

What I know now that I didn’t know then about TW and Brenna is that their name is Legion. There are tens of thousands of children in our communities and in our country and millions all around the globe like them in one way or another. We see them. And we hear them. And we persist in ignoring them. They are casualties of AIDS in Africa. They are casualties of political violence and genocide in places like Somalia and Iraq and Afghanistan. They are casualties of war and famine poverty all over the world. Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. Rachel is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them.

But this morning’s scripture lesson does not abandon Rachel in her disconsolate weeping. In verse 17, the Lord announces to her—and to all who weep for the children, “There is hope for your future.” “There is hope for your future.” Hope is that thin thread of anticipation that just maybe the future might be better than the present. Hope is not optimism. Hope is what sustains us when there is every good reason for pessimism. Hope is not looking on the bright side. Hope is what keeps us going when we can see nothing but darkness on every side. The goal of hope is not the gratification of our wants, but the fulfillment of our deepest needs and the deepest needs of others. Even others like TW and Brenna, whose name is Legion.

“There is hope for your future, says the Lord.” And the bridge between weeping and hope is work, according to verse 16. Work. “There is a reward for your work, says the Lord.” In the end, the reward is not for our weeping but for our working, even as we weep. So don’t get caught up in the arrogant conservative assumption that the children of responsible parents are not at risk because they’re being brought up in the right way and they will not depart therefrom. Children of responsible parents are at risk as well as children of irresponsible parents. And don’t get caught up in the arrogant liberal assumption that only poor children are at risk because children from affluent homes have everything they need. Children from affluent homes are at risk, as are children from poor homes. In fact, the tide has turned in our culture. Children of affluent families in the suburbs are now statistically at greater risk for drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity than poor, urban children. And the reason, sociologists tell us, is because affluent children from the suburbs have the money, the transportation, and the unsupervised time necessary to mix the cocktail of drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity. Arrogant conservative assumptions and arrogant liberal assumptions alike are crippling our culture and killing our children. All children everywhere are at risk.

So don’t just sit there. Start weeping, like Rachel. And don’t just sit there weeping. Start working, like Rachel. For in your work there is a reward, says the Lord. There is hope for your future in your weeping and in your working, says the Lord.

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Matthew 16:24-26—The Cross Your Compass, Christ Your Guide

NOTE: This sermon was originally delivered on May 26, 2002, on the occasion of graduation recognition. It is posted here to make it available to interested readers of the forthcoming revised edition of Charles Kimball’s When Religion Becomes Evil. Referred to in his final chapter because of its suggestion that we must account for the theological equivalent of “magnetic declination” in our thinking about God, the relevant portion of the sermon is this.

In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.

I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.

At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.

But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.

Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.

The entire sermon is as follows:

Welcome to the next stage of your journey! Welcome to the next leg of your life. Whether you are graduating from high school or college or graduate school, the course that you have been following is about to change. In the next few days or weeks or months the territory that most of you will be in will be different, for some of you, quite different, from the now familiar ground you have been covering recently. Now the truth is, the graduates are not the only ones among us who are facing major changes in our lives. Others of us are staring down the barrel of big changes in where we live or with whom we live or where we work or with whom. Some of us we are facing changes in our family or our financial situation or our health. So what I’m saying to the graduates this morning I’m saying to the rest of us, too, but I’m saying it most directly to the graduates.

When you are setting out for unfamiliar territory there, are several things it would be a good idea to have to help you find your way, to help you stay on course, to help you keep your direction. Most of us probably think first of a map. As long as you have a good map, one that accurately represents the territory, and as long as you stay on the roads or the trails represented on the map, it’s a handy thing to have. But the problem with most maps is that sooner or later, you are going to find yourself in an empty spot on your map. When you find yourself in a place you can’t find on your map, your map’s not a whole lot of use to you.

The Bible is like a map. From Genesis to Revelation, it is a triptych from creation to consummation, from the beginning of all that was and is to its end. On the grandest possible scale, the Bible shows us where we come from and where we are going. What the Bible doesn’t always do so well, though, is show us exactly where we are. There are places in the territory of your life that are empty spaces in the Bible. It’s fine to ask, “what would Jesus do?” but the Bible never shows how he behaved on a date or at a fraternity party. If Jesus had just taken one spring break trip, we would have that territory covered in our map. The Bible doesn’t tell us how to pick a college or what to major in when we get there. Should I get married, and if so, when and to whom? There’s a lot of territory that doesn’t show up on our map. That doesn’t mean our map is no good or unreliable. It’s just that the Bible is more like a globe than a topographical map. A globe shows us the big picture, the world and its continents and their countries and a few major cities. Even if Greenville were to show up on a globe, Greer and Mauldin and Simpsonville, Anderson, Easley and Travelers Rest, not to mention Pumpkintown and Possum Kingdom, aren’t likely to be there. The Bible shows where we come from and where we are going, but it doesn’t show us every place along the way that we are going to find ourselves.

So we need more than the Bible; we need a compass also. In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.

I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.

At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.

But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.

Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.

That’s why a second point on my compass is identified with an “F” for “faith.” In 2 Corinthians 5:7 the apostle Paul says, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” The book of Hebrews calls faith “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” On our compass, then, faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through, no matter the terrain or the conditions.

The gospel narratives show faith to be an orientation of throwing oneself on the mercy and the power of God to change our lives for the better. In Matthew 9:2, a group of people carry a paralyzed man to Jesus, and Matthew writes that “Jesus saw their faith,” and healed the man. Jesus saw the way they were throwing themselves and this one whom they loved on his mercy and power; that was their faith. Later in the same chapter, “a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years . . . touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well’” (vv 20-21) . And when she does, Jesus turns and says, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well” (v 22). A third story in the same chapter has two blind men following Jesus and “crying loudly, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” He asks them, “’Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’. Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done by you.’ And their eyes were opened’” (vv27-30). Now on the surface of it, these three stories are about physical healing, but in the gospels physical healing is everywhere and always about spiritual realities also. As a spiritual reality, faith is the assurance and the conviction that God is able and willing to give us the capacity to walk on; God is able and willing to stop the bleeding in our lives; God is able and willing to give us the sight we need to see beyond where we are to where we must go. Faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through in life and in death, no matter the terrain or the conditions.

The third point on my compass I designate with an “H” for hope. Paul says of hope something quite similar to what he says about faith. In Romans 8:24 he says, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what (is already) seen?” The book of Hebrews calls hope “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (6:19). That’s a great line, and it alone would justify “hope” being one of the principles that guides our lives: “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Don’t confuse hope with “optimism” or “looking on the bright side.” Hope is something far more profound. Hope is what sustains us when there is every reason for pessimism. Hope is what nourishes us when we can see nothing but darkness. 1 Peter 1 tells us, “By [God’s] great mercy [God] has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (v 3). Notice the language of “new birth” and “resurrection.” Hope is all about facing death, both literal death and the figurative death of failure and the mess we make of our lives sometimes. Hope is the capacity to see beyond the turmoil, the difficulty, the suffering, the pain of the moment. Hope is the sure and steadfast anchor of our soul that insists that neither the mess we make, nor the failure we experience, nor death itself is the final word. Hold fast to hope, for there is life after mess, there is life after failure, there is life after death.

The final point of my compass, the one which sticks down into the ground, is “L” for love. Like “God” and “faith” and “hope,” love a sermon in itself, a whole lifetime of sermons, but you will be happy to hear that I don’t intend to preach them all this morning. Paul calls love “the greatest of these” three, faith, hope and love (1 Cor 13:13). “Pursue love,” Paul says (1 Cor 14:1). Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God and the second like unto it is love our neighbor as our self. Jesus also taught us that we should love our enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” (Matt 5:43-44). If hope is the anchor of our soul, then love is the anchor of our ethics, our behavior. It is the fundamental orientation of our attitudes and our actions in the Christian life. Love is the basis of the Christian life because it is the fundamental orientation of God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16). “Let all that you do be done in love,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:14.

So there you have it. The four points of the compass: God, who is always and everywhere the one in relation to whom we orient ourselves, as the needle of a compass points to the north; faith, which is our assurance and our conviction; hope, which is the anchor of our soul; and love, which is the ground of our ethics. So you have your map and you have your compass. But the great news of the Christian life is those are not all you have for your journey. Because when Jesus says, “Let them take up their cross,” he also says, “follow me.” Not only do you have the cross as your compass; you also have Christ as your guide. “Follow me,” Jesus says. Covey’s paradigm of principle-centered living that provides an inner compass is a good idea. But in the Christian life we have more than a map and a compass; we have a guide also.

In Hebrews 12:2 we read these words, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” Jesus the pioneer, the archegon, the Greek text says, “the one who blazes the trail” for us, our guide and constant companion in whatever terrain or conditions we find ourselves. “I am with you always,” Jesus tells us, “even to the end of the age.” The greatest testimony of the Christian life is not that we rely on a roadmap, the Bible, or even on a compass, the cross, but that we make our way through life in the personal presence of the Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ who is our savior and our friend. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” it means that we will never be alone. For there is no place we can go that the presence and love and redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ cannot reach. The trail that Christ has blazed for us leads through life and even through death so that whatever mess we make of our lives, whatever failure we experience, whatever manner of death we die, neither mess nor failure nor death is the final word.

As you go from this place and this time, take up your compass, the cross, and stay close to your guide, Christ, and in all things, may God bless you and keep you, may God’s face shine on you and be gracious to you, and may the light of God’s countenance be lifted up to you and give you peace. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2002 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Dr. John E. Johns: A Legacy of Faithfulness

NOTE: It is a bit unusual for me to post funereal remarks, but in this case, John Johns lived his adult life at the intersection of the church and the academy, and in particular an academy (Furman University) and a church (First Baptist Greenville) in which I have served. These remarks are one of four contributions to the celebration and remembrance of his life in Daniel Chapel on the Furman campus on October 1, 2007. John's successor as Furman's President, Dr. David Shi, addressed John's "Legacy of Leadership." John's life-long friend and former student, Dr. Bernie Cochran, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Philosophy at Meredith College, spoke to John's "Legacy with Roots." And Dr. Jim Pitts, Retired University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Emeritus at Furman called our attention to John's "Legacy of Relationships."

October 1, 2007
Psalm 27; Jeremiah 17:7-8

When I joined the Furman faculty in the fall of 1988, I was surprised and a bit befuddled by the pervasive use of the language of “family” to describe this university. I was familiar with many images for a university (most of them positive), but “family” was not one of them. And as inviting and alliterative as the image of the “Furman family” was, I confess that I quickly became caught up in the suspicion and cynicism that dominates the intellectual and hermeneutical landscape of the academy and the church, and I concluded that the essence of the image of family was the prevailing paternalism and patronizing of “Father Knows Best.”

What I know now that I did not understand or appreciate then is the distinctive formative experience embedded in the metaphor of family for John and Martha Johns. As we have heard, John grew up in a very large family of orphans. His life and his faith were formatively shaped by his nuclear family’s living and loving and working in an institutional setting sponsored by Baptists to take in some of Florida’s most vulnerable children who became to John sisters and brothers, relatives and friends, loved and cherished as his very own and amazingly expansive family. John Johns’ formative experience of family was not the reactionary conservative ideal of the 1950s that I took it to be, or even the much older ideal of the southern plantation that I suspected, Damn-Yankee that I am. John grew up in Florida, remember, and Florida is not a “southern state.”

John’s take on the university as family was not so much paternalistic as it was maternalistic, as in alma mater, where everyone who came to learn or teach or labor or coach or serve or lead was taken in as a sister, a brother, a relative, in an amazingly expansive family, a kinship not built on blood or genes but on love and devotion to alma mater. It turns out that John's vision was not so much patronizing as it was matronizing—enfolding in the wings of alma mater. It is a vision of family that stands as a living expression of the final verse of the great Isaac Watts hymn adaptation of Psalm 23:

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;
Oh, may Thy house be my abode and all my work be praise;
There would I find a settled rest, while others come and go;
No more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home.

It is a vision of family grounded in the biblical witness to the people of God and the Baptist witness to the gospel that “whosoever will” is taken in. That’s the formative faithfulness out of which and in which John Johns lived and served and led.

But as most of us know, John had an uncanny knack for irreverent faithfulness as well. My friend David Matthews, one of my predecessors at First Baptist Greenville who was John’s pastor during his first ten years as President of Furman, remembers a conversation in which John explained to him that his success over the years in dealing with preachers was largely based on not arguing with them, because after all, John said, “You can’t argue with ignorance.” If you didn’t know John Johns, you could take that statement as an entirely stereotypical reflection of the intellectual arrogance and elitism that is epidemic in the academy. But if you were inclined to make a list of John Johns’ faults, elitism and intellectual arrogance would surely not be among them. John made that statement to his own preacher not in ridicule but in recognition—recognition that rational argument, so highly prized and frequently practiced in the academy and the church alike, is no antidote for agitation and emotion driven by anger, insecurity or ignorance. John was too wise and too secure to take the bait and argue, because John never got caught up other people’s anger or insecurity, much less their ignorance.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

Now, for those of you who are offended by salty language, I’m going to suggest that you cover your ears when I cover mine. In January of 1988, when I met President Johns for the first time as a part of the interview process for a teaching position at Furman, he caught me entirely by surprise when he announced, “Now we have the fundamentalists to deal with. Those bastards have been making life hell for some of us.” I can’t imagine what the look on my face must have been when the old bombardier dropped that sentence on me out of the blue. The next fall, my baptism into faculty politics came when I walked into the old mailroom in Furman Hall where a group of more wizened dons than I were discussing the disturbing word that a fundamentalist takeover of Furman’s board was already underway. “What do you think is going to happen?” someone asked the new guy. “I don’t know,” I responded, “but I’m glad John Johns is on our side.” “So, you think he’s on our side, do you?” asked a derisive voice, and everyone laughed. “Yeah, I do,” I said quietly, and I left the mailroom chastened and a bit ashamed that I sounded so naïve and trusting in the face of the gathering storm. And I went back to my teaching and writing and waiting and praying and agitating and emoting and hoping that in the end the old navigator would take the course that would bring this institution and our faculty lives and livelihoods safely through. And in the end, he did.

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident. . . .
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

My friend and predecessor Hardy Clemons tells the story of how he and John were at a picnic together the first year Hardy arrived in Greenville. In the course of the event, John sidled up to his new pastor and said to him, “Hardy, I don’t know you very well, but if you like, I’ll be glad to bring you a beer in a Pepsi cup.” Now, there’s a friend that many a pastor would love to have: irreverently faithful.

John has left us an invaluable legacy of formative faithfulness, irreverent faithfulness and abiding faithfulness.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is in the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Thank you, John. And thanks be to God!

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.