Summer 2016 Commencment Message

Dover Chapel, Gardner-Webb University, Boiling Springs, NC

Gardner-Webb University  
July 30, 2016

Psalm 139:1-10; Luke 9:57-62

One afternoon in the spring of 2001, as I was preparing to leave Furman University to accept a call to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina, I ran into Dr. Bill Brantley, a physics professor and friend, who engaged me in a conversation about the university and the church, the virtues and flaws of each, about what a calling is, and about why anyone in his or her right mind would leave the security and comfort of a tenured faculty position for the insecurities and inescapable expectations of pastoring a tall-steeple church. As our conversation ended, Bill pointed a finger at me and landed a parting shot before he turned to walk away: “Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back,” he said. His paraphrase of the words of Jesus in Luke 9:62 took me by surprise and made my impending departure from the college campus that had been my home away from home for thirteen years suddenly more real than anything else yet had. “Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back.”

Now, before I go any farther, let make it very clear that the Office of Alumni Relations wants you to look back and come back. And the Office of University Advancement wants you to look back and give back. And so do I. But Jesus’ words in Luke 9:62 are a first-century equivalent of the latter-century admonition to every student in Driver’s Education: “Keep your eyes on the road.” And this morning, those words serve as a reminder to the graduates and to us all that we are doomed to crash if we insist on driving by our rearview mirror. So on this occasion of Commencement, beginning, outset and setting out, I want to offer you a word of orientation and a word of encouragement.

First, the word of orientation. Jesus addressed the words, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” to someone who expressed a simple desire to say good-bye to family and friends. If it weren’t Jesus who said it, most of us would consider this remonstrance to be inconsiderate, insensitive, even. If you think about the family and social dynamics at play in the famous sequence of sayings of Jesus in Luke 9—“the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; “let the dead bury the dead”; and put your hand to the plow and don’t look back, as Bill Brantley paraphrased it—you will understand why many Jews and Greeks and Romans alike were offended by the teachings of Jesus and by the earliest Christian communities because they understood them to be contrary to family values and destructive to the fabric of ordered society. Sara Evans sang it in a country song titled “Suds in the Bucket”: “How can eighteen years just up and walk away . . . gone in the blink of an eye?” That’s exactly what Jesus said to do in Luke 9:62. That sudden departure without so much as a good-bye violates our family values and our assumptions about the nature of ordered society. Some of us know that violated feeling at home or work or church: We have experienced a departure that left us with a hole in our heart, unanswered questions in our mind, and an empty cavern in our soul. So here’s a word of orientation to those of us who are leaving and to those who are being left: Face Forward. “Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back.” The essence of a biblically grounded faith is not in how tenaciously we cling to the things of the past but in how expectantly we embrace God’s future for us and for the world: Facing forward, eyes on the road ahead, not longing for the sights and sounds of the past but embracing vistas of a future yet to unfold. Face forward. That’s the word of orientation.

Now for the word of encouragement. The underlying testimony of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation and the explicit witness of Psalm 139 is that there is no time or place, no circumstance or situation, outside the reach or beyond the real and effective presence of God. According to Psalm 139, no matter where you go or when you go there, you cannot escape the presence of God. You cannot run fast enough or far enough to arrive a place that God cannot reach you, a place where the effective presence of God does not surround you and hold you fast, even when you are not aware of it or even when you actively assert God’s absence.

Six years ago now, John M. Buchanan, who was then the Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and the editor and publisher of The Christian Century, recounted this remarkable description of the reach of the real and effective presence of God: “a minister I know had to lead her suburban Chicago congregation through an unspeakable tragedy: a member of the congregation shot and killed his wife and her son and then killed himself. The minister had to comfort her congregation and hold it together. She spoke at a memorial service for the mother and son. What is there to say in that situation? She told the congregation crowded into the sanctuary that there was a phrase in the Apostles’ Creed that had always bothered her: the phrase stating that Jesus ‘descended into hell.’ She told how the pastor of the church in which she grew up so disliked that line he went through the hymnals with a large black Magic Marker and crossed it out. ‘I grew up saying the creed without that line,’ the minister said. ‘Now, this week,’ she said, ‘I understand it. We have descended into hell together and Christ has gone before us, into every corner of it. The good news is that when life takes us there, when we have to go there, [Christ] goes with us,’” she said.  (The Christian Century, March 23, 2010, p. 3).

The testimony of Scripture and the witness of the most ancient confessions of the Christian faith agree that there is no time or place, no circumstance or situation, outside the reach or beyond the real and effective presence of God. Songwriters Sam Tate, Annie Tate, and Dave Berg combined a quote from Winston Churchill—“If you’re going through Hell,” Churchill said, “keep going”—and an Irish toast—“May you be in Heaven five minutes before the devil knows you’re dead”—to come up with an infectiously singable chorus that Rodney Atkins took to the top of the country music charts: “If you’re goin’ through hell, keep on going. Don’t slow down. If you’re scared, don’t show it. You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there.” You might. Or you might not. But the Ultimate difference maker is not chance or the ignorance of the devil. The Ultimate difference maker is that when life takes us into hell, Christ has already gone before us into every corner of it; and when we have to go there, Christ goes with us. The essence of facing forward is not hoping that we will avoid or escape failure or fear, pain or suffering, grief or death or even hell for that matter. The essence of facing forward is the full confidence and trust that come whatever may, there is no time or place, no circumstance or situation, outside the reach or beyond the real and effective presence of God. That’s the word of encouragement.

So with Alumni Relations, I say, “Come back . . . any time.” And with University Advancement, I say, “Give back . . . all the time.” And with Jesus I say, face forward: Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back. 

Copyrighted © 2016 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. This material may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jrogers3@gardner-webb.edu.

A Moment of Clarity

Facing Forward: Bearing Fruit

Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 13: 6-9   

First Baptist Church, Asheville, NC

July 10, 2016

Note: There are many things that must change on many levels: operational, legislative, executive, judicial, and electoral. This sermon focuses on the one level that each person can and must change: the relational. 

One afternoon some years ago, while a pastoral staff was gathering for its weekly meeting, one staff members finished a phone conversation with her husband with a cheery, “I love you too, sweetie. Bye bye!” whereupon several of her colleagues responded with a spontaneous and unison, “Aaw!” The young minister looked momentarily taken aback; and then she looked around and said quietly, “Well, in his line of work, you never know when a good-bye might be the last one.” Her husband, you see, was a city policeman, and now it was her colleagues’ turn to be taken aback. I thought of that exchange on Friday morning when like many of you, I awoke to learn that five law enforcement officers in Dallas, TX—Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa—had said their last goodbyes without having known it.

That’s not the only flashback I’ve had this week. The shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana on Tuesday and Philando Castile in Minnesota on Wednesday took me back to another incident, one that didn’t make the news. A college student out for the evening in a town like any other town ended up beaten and incarcerated. When the investigation into the charges against him was complete, it turned out that his only crime had been being black at night in an encounter with the wrong officer of the law. No one involved wanted the story told. The local law enforcement agency wanted it to go away, as did the local Solicitor, as did the college where the young man was a student and an athlete, as did his father who owns a business with sensitive law enforcement connections. It didn’t end like the stories from Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights this week, but it could have.

For my wife and me, it was a deeply disturbing reminder that parenting a young black man in the United States is a very different experience than parenting a young white man. What happened to him could very well have happened to our son who was one of his best friends, a teammate, and a frequent companion out on the town. Except that it would not have been likely to have happened to our son because in spite of how much time he has spent over the years with black teammates and roommates and coaches and friends, he can’t commit the crime of being black at night in an encounter with the wrong officer of the law.

But this week we may have arrived at a place we have never been before. Van Jones, a political activist, commentator, and attorney, says that police and African-Americans are now more alike than they realize. “I think there may be only two groups in the US who actually can understand each other. One: black young people. Two: the police. They literally are having and describing the same experience.” They both say they feel vulnerable. Both say they feel like it’s open season on them to be shot at and shot up. Jones says, “If to both sides it seems that the world is misunderstanding them, it’s a good time to say, ‘You know what? Let me open my heart up a little bit.’ And listen to the pain of the law enforcement community, listen to their fear, listen to their sense of being labeled and wronged and misunderstood. Or let me listen to those African-American kids. . . . they . . . feel like they have a target on their back because of their skin color. Maybe that’s a reason for them to actually have some common ground. We can actually, rather than turning on each other, turn to each other. Instead of coming apart, we can come together. Because there’s now enough pain in both communities that we should be able to understand each other.”

I want to suggest this morning that Van Jones has put his finger on something that is bigger even than the horrific events of the past week. “Let me open my heart up a little bit.” And listen to the vulnerability and the pain and the fear and the sense of being labeled and wronged and misunderstood and targeted. “Rather than turning on each other, turn to each other. Instead of coming apart, we can come together.” Just maybe we can.

Listen to what happened in Andover, MA, on Friday morning. Natashah Howell, a young African-American described a trip to a convenience store in a Facebook post [reproduced here as it was written].

As I walked through the door, I noticed that there were two white police officers (one about my age the other several years older) talking to the clerk (an older white women) behind the counter about the shootings that have gone on in the past few days. They all looked at me and fell silent. I went about my business to get what I was looking for, as I turned back up the aisle to go pay, the oldest officer was standing at the top of the aisle watching me. As I got closer he asked me, “How I was doing? I replied, “Okay, and you? He looked at me with a strange look and asked me, “How are you really doing?” I looked at him and said “I’m tired!” His reply was, “me too.” Then he said, “I guess it’s not easy being either one of us right now is it.” I said, “No, it’s not.” Then he hugged me and I cried. I had never seen that man before in my life. I have no idea why he was moved to talk to me. What I do know is that he and I shared a moment this morning, that was absolutely beautiful. No judgments, No justifications, two people sharing a moment.”

Her hashtag at the end of the post was #Foundamomentofclarity.

That moment of clarity, that moment of turning to each other instead of on each other, of coming together instead of coming apart, is a model for what must happen in this congregation, in this community, in this state and region and nation and world. I’d like to propose it as a new liturgical moment. I propose that “It’s not easy being either one of us right now is it” . . .  “No, it’s not” . . . be adopted as a 21st-century variation on “The peace of Christ be with you” . . . “And also with you.” “I guess it’s not easy being either one of us right now” . . . “No, it’s not” . . .  That would pretty much take in all of us in this room in one relationship or another in church, in school, at work, at home, in the community. That moment of clarity models the way forward for us all on Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, on Muslim-Christian relations, on immigration, on sexual orientation and identity, on same sex marriage, and on which bathroom which law requires me to use when I’m in the state of North Carolina. You name it, it’s not easy being any of us right now; and therein is common ground we must cultivate and plant and water and feed and week and harvest.

In Luke 13, Jesus told a parable in which a man with a fig tree in his vineyard came looking for fruit on it but found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” The gardener replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down” (Luke 13:6-9). The parable that Jesus tells puts us all on notice that what we are most looking for and what we most need right now takes years of cultivation and care to come to fruition.

This morning’s epistle lesson from Colossians 1 says in verse 6 that the gospel has been “bearing fruit and growing in the whole world” and bearing fruit in the congregation at Colossae. Verse 10 goes on to characterize leading “lives worthy of the Lord” as bearing fruit in every good work. And bearing fruit is a long, slow process that requires constant cultivation and care. The exchange in the convenience store between Nastasha Howell and the police officer was spontaneous on the face of it, but I assure you that there is a long backstory that brought these two unlikely strangers to a hug at a time when racial tensions in our country are running the highest they have since the 1960s. That hug didn’t just happen: It was years in the making, just like the figs on the tree in the parable in Luke 13. One of my grandfathers grew up working for a farmer who had a peach orchard on his farm, and my grandfather liked to say that the best way to tell that a peach is ripe is when it drops off the tree. The peaches are dropping off the trees right now. The trees are heavy with fruit, and the fruit stands are full. But a peach tree must be cared for and cultivated for three years—and in some climates for four years—before it is ready to bear fruit. “Bearing fruit and growing,” living lives that are worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work, requires a long-term commitment of time and energy and will and resources. And whatever else it takes, it requires opening up one’s heart to share in the vulnerability and the fear, to listen to the sense of being labeled and wronged and misunderstood and targeted.

In Galatians 5:22-23, the apostle Paul offers us an inventory of what he calls the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s the fruit we are called to bear in living lives worthy of the Lord. It takes years of cultivation and care for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control to bud and bloom and set and grow and ripen and then to go to seed so that the gospel will bear fruit and grow in the whole world and in a congregation and in a community and a state and a nation. It takes years, sure, but you can break those years of cultivation and care down into moments of clarity in which you open your heart to simply ask someone how they are really doing, and in the common ground of your mutual vulnerability and fear, turn to each other instead of on each other, come together instead of coming apart, and in so doing model living lives worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work. #Foundamomentofclarity. May it be so for you. Make it be so for you. 

Copyrighted © 2016 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. This material may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jrogers3@gardner-webb.edu.

Roll Up Your Sleeves and Grab a Bucket

Psalm 51:1-17; Luke 4:14-21

Myers Park Baptist Church 

Charlotte, NC 

January 24, 2016

It was an annual ritual when I was growing up. It was practiced religiously and without fail. On the first opportune day, spring cleaning began. There was no nook or cranny in the house that was not dusted, vacuumed, swept, or otherwise harassed. Drapes and curtains were taken down, rugs were taken up, and nothing—not furniture or major appliances—went unmoved. Floors were scrubbed—not mopped, mind you; they were routinely mopped. In spring cleaning floors were scrubbed, walls were washed, and the windows inside and out squealed for mercy.

I always wondered why my mother did it. I always wondered why she worked so hard at spring cleaning. It’s not like the house stayed clean. What I’ve come to understand these many years later that I didn’t understand then is that the annual ritual of spring cleaning had less to do with the condition of the house than it had to do with the condition of my mother’s heart and soul. What I couldn’t hear when I was younger was that in and around all the orders to move this, move that, “stay off that floor” (and always and still my favorite: “Don’t use that bathroom; I just cleaned in there”), there were other sounds—the sounds of my mother’s heart and soul being refreshed, renewed, revived.

It turns out that our care for our living space can be a window on our care for our souls. Most of the time, most of us get along pretty well, given how busy we are. We manage to keep things mostly in order and more or less clean. One day years ago, when there was more than the usual cleaning going on, our five-year-old announced that he was wise to it all. He said, “I know why you’re doing all this cleaning.” “You do?” I said. “Yes,” he answered. “Grandma’s coming, isn’t she?” And he was right. While it is sometimes true that children have no clue what is going on their parents’ lives, it also true that they see right through us far more often than we realize. And it’s just as true that most of us don’t get around to the spring cleaning of our hearts and minds and souls these days any more than we get around to the spring cleaning of our living space.

And of our congregation. Some years back, the congregation I was serving hired a consultant to visit Sunday School and worship as a “secret shopper,” as it is known in the retail industry. We asked him to provide us with the perspective of a fresh set of eyes on our grounds and our facilities and our worship and our congregational interactions. What he saw and reported to us was “eye-opening.” He pointed out things that we were so accustomed to that we couldn’t see them for what they were. On February 1, a new set of eyes will arrive in this place. That set of eyes is attached to a mind and a heart and a soul to whom you are entrusting the proclamation of the gospel and the leadership of this congregation. As they did in the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke 4, you will hand the Scriptures to a new preacher; and like his predecessor in the Galilee, Ben Boswell will “bring good news to the poor. . . . proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And on the first opportune day, impelled by his vision of the gospel and a fresh set of eyes in this place, he will call on you to begin spring cleaning: to roll up your sleeves, grab a bucket, and to get to work.

You may think that it’s too soon to start thinking about spring cleaning when we are surrounded by ice and snow. But there is a considerable body of literature in the field of psychology that lines out the stages of thinking that precede any significant new action, whatever that action might be. The first stage is Precontemplation. Precontemplation is the stage at which you have not yet acknowledged to yourself that you need to make a change. Clueless, I call it. The second stage is Contemplation. Contemplation is the stage at which you recognize that you need to do something, but you’re not ready or even sure you want to do it. Clued In, I call it. The third stage is Preparation or Determination. Preparation or Determination is the stage at which you decide and get ready to do what you have recognized needs to be done. Dialing In, I call it. The fourth stage is Action or Willpower. Action or Willpower is the stage at which you finally do what you have recognized, determined, and prepared to do in your life—or your congregation. All In, I call it. Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action. Clueless, Clued In, Dialed In, All In. It takes a while to get there, so it’s not too early to start thinking about spring cleaning in your life individually and together.   

Since the early centuries of the Christian faith, Psalm 51 has served as a guide for what I’m calling spring cleaning for the heart and soul and mind of individuals and congregations alike. The first Action in spring cleaning is to open all the doors and windows. Throw open the doors and windows of your life to God’s mercy. Psalm 51 begins this way: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy” (v. 1). Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message starts this way: “Generous in love—God, give grace! Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.” What Peterson’s paraphrase gets right is that spring cleaning for the heart and soul and mind and church is a God-given opportunity. If God is not “generous in love,” as Peterson paraphrases the Hebrew word חֶסֶד, and if God is not “huge in mercy,” as he renders the Hebrew phrase כְּרֺב רֶחֶם, then every one of us and all of us together are doomed to live our lives stuck in the mess we make of them from time to time. But because God is “Generous in love” and “Huge in mercy,” we have God-given opportunities to clean up our lives and our church and to start all over again.

The second Action is to take down all the drapes and curtains. Take down all the drapes and curtains that cover and conceal your sin, your shortcomings, whatever is unsightly or unseemly, inadequate or inappropriate in your life. The first two verses of Psalm 51 include a triple confession of sin: “my transgressions,” “my iniquity,” “my sin.” Taking down the drapes and the curtains on our sin means acknowledging to ourselves and to God that we have sinned. For some of us, that is the hardest step of all. We live in an age of euphemisms, of evasive good-speak. We “fall prey to indiscretion”; we “err in judgment”; we “get a little carried away”; we “don’t know what came over us.” Some of us just can’t bring ourselves to call our sin “sin.” Taking down the drapes and the curtains means confessing to God that have missed the mark individually and congregationally in things we have done and things we have left undone, in things we have said and in things we have left unsaid, in things we have thought and in things we have failed to think. Taking down the drapes and the curtains that are concealing our sin allows the purifying and life-giving light of the presence of God to shine into the nooks and crannies of our heart and soul and mind for the cleansing and healing that comes only from God.

And that’s the best part of spring cleaning for the heart and soul and mind. The third Action is this: God does the scrubbing. God does the scrubbing. Listen again to verses 1-2: “Wipe away my transgressions.” “Scrub away my guilt.” “Cleanse me from my sin.” Verse 7 says it too: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Peterson renders the idea of verse 7 this way: “Soak me in your laundry, and I’ll come out clean; scrub me, and I’ll have a snow-white life.” We cannot cleanse ourselves from sin. There are no do-it-yourself antidotes, no self-help remedies, for sin. Only God can do that kind of scrubbing. According to 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, [God] who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” “Generous in love” and “huge in mercy,” God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves when we turn our hearts over, broken and contrite to God, who wipes away our transgressions, scrubs away our guilt, and cleanses us from our sin.

Peterson captures life on the other side of spring cleaning in his paraphrase of verses 8-12: “Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. . . . give me a clean bill of health.   God, make a fresh start in me, . . . . breathe holiness in me. . . . put a fresh wind in my sails.” Ever felt like you needed a fresh wind in your sails? That’s what spring cleaning for your heart and soul and mind—and your congregation also—does for you.

Along with a fresh set of eyes, Ben Boswell will bring a fresh wind in your sails. I hope and pray that you will make the most of the God-given opportunity that is just ahead of you: Open the doors and windows, take down the drapes and curtains, roll up your sleeves, and grab a bucket. 

Copyrighted © 2016 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. This material may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jrogers3@gardner-webb.edu.

An Epiphany Vision: Local Food, Local Faith

January 10, 1016

Isaiah 60:1; Matthew 2:1-12 

Myers Park Baptist Church 

Charlotte, NC  

 

Christians are expected to be messengers of change in bringing justice, peace, reconciliation and development.

—Abune Paulos Gebre Yohannis

The local food movement, as it has been called, has become all the rage in these parts, especially among affluent consumers. It’s a bit ironic, if you think about it: In the two-thirds world, the only food that is available to the overwhelming majority of people is local food. So local food is a surprising new common denominator between Charlotte’s affluent urbanites and suburbanites and impoverished villagers in India and Ecuador and Ethiopia, for example.

The dominant alternative to local food is mind-boggling in its scope. Consider this: “In 1993, a Swedish researcher calculated that the ingredients of a typical Swedish breakfast—apple, bread, butter, cheese, coffee, cream, orange juice, sugar—traveled a distance equal to the circumference of the Earth before reaching the Scandinavian table. In 2005, a researcher in Iowa found that the milk, sugar, and strawberries that go into a carton of strawberry yogurt collectively journeyed 2,211 miles (3,558 kilometers) just to get to the processing plant”_{(http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064)}. Global industrial agriculture moves tons of food across oceans and continents to retail stores and restaurants the world over.

But here’s the thing: Before it became industrialized and globalized, agriculture and the food it produced was a decidedly local phenomenon. And so was the Christian faith. In the first century of the Christian faith, churches were local congregations. There were no synods, presbyteries, conferences, associations, conventions, or denominations. There were only local congregations. But if you fast-forward to the twenty-first century, the dominant model of the church in many peoples’ thinking is not the local congregation but the multinational corporation. Multinational corporations pay constant attention to global business metrics. For example, global same-store sales—that would be baptisms and new members—and year-to-date global revenues compared to the previous year—that would tithes and offerings—and the number of new offices and retail outlets opened in the last year—that would be church planting and new church starts. Baptisms and new members and tithes and offerings and church planting and new church starts are all good things; I am a proponent of every one of them. But it’s all too easy for global aspirations to seduce local congregations into chasing the metrics and the branding and the marketing and the organizational structure and the lust for competitive advantage that characterize the multinational corporation. To which I would like to say this morning, local food, local faith. Local food, local faith.  

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I am a recovering globalist. “Hi! My name is Jeff, and I’m a globalist.” It’s early evening, and I’m tired after a long and stressful day at work. It’s cold and windy. I left home for the office in the dark this morning, and I’m getting home in the dark. I hurry into the most convenient grocery store on my way to grab the last few items Bev and I need to put supper together, and there they are. They stop me in my tracks. Bright red, plump, and enticing, topped with delicate green leaves: fresh strawberries in the dead of winter. A hint of May, a whiff of spring. My resistance is down; I am weak; and I whisper to myself that perennial lie: “Just this once,” I say. And just like that, I fall off the local food wagon back into the addictive pleasures of global industrial agriculture.

I’m a recovering theological globalist also. He wore a long, gilded robe. When he walked, he moved with a slow, serene gait that made it look as though he was gliding. He was a mysterious and exotic figure on an otherwise staid Presbyterian campus. When I greeted him as we passed on the sidewalk or in the library, he didn’t ignore me, exactly; but his response always gave me the impression that although the two of us were fellow doctoral candidates, we were somehow far from equals. It was only later that I learned how very true that was. He was born in 1935. He entered a monastery in 1941. He was ordained as a priest in 1957. From 1967 to 1973, he engaged in theological studies in Princeton, NJ. In 1973, he was called home to Ethiopia to become a Bishop. From 1976 to 1982, he was imprisoned by the communist government in Addis Ababa. When our paths crossed in the mid-80s, he was an Archbishop in exile. In 1992, he left Princeton to return home again, this time as His Holiness, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an African communion that claims a lineage older than Rome, Canterbury, and Geneva and celebrates its roots in the biblical account of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in 1 Kings 10 and the Philip the evangelist’s encounter with an Ethiopian “official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians” (Acts 8). We were fellow doctoral students, and we were far from equals.

You might say that Abune Paulos Gebre Yohannis sponsored my ongoing recovery from visions of pasteurization and homogenization and commoditization and monopolization of the globalization of the church. The church’s season of Epiphany is often used as a platform for promoting a global vision of the church. But in the interest of the recovery of us all, one day at a time, one grocery store visit at a time, one Sunday School lesson at a time, one biblical text at a time, this morning I’m promoting local food, local faith.

In the gospel lesson for Epiphany, Matthew 2:1-12, mysterious and exotic visitors arrive to offer gifts to “a child who has been born King of the Jews. For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” It is a fascinating little study in the theological etiquette and biases of English-speaking translators that Matthew 2:1 is the only verse in the Bible where the Greek word μάγοι, μάγος in the singular, is translated other than “magician” or “sorcerer,” a practitioner of the occult. Long before the apostles and evangelists, long before the bishops and priests and monks and ascetics, long before the framers of orthodoxy in Rome and Canterbury and Geneva and Nashville, gifts were offered to Jesus by the predecessors of Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts. Perhaps we should sing, “We three wizards of Orient are.” They are mysterious, and they are exotic, these visitors. They glide into Matthew’s gospel from parts unknown, and they glide back out into the stuff of which legends are made.

In the 300s, John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople—now Istanbul, wrote that the magi came from Babylonia, Persia, and Yemen. An early Armenian tradition said that one was from Persia; one was from India; and one was from Arabia. Local traditions about these visitors and their origins and their gifts and their names and their descendants grew up in Syria and Armenia and Persia and Ethiopia and Afghanistan and Pakistan and India and China. The Epiphany story reminds us that whenever we think about the church or pray about the church or preach about the church, we must always remember the extraordinary and unsettling variety of origins and gifts and names and customs of life and work and worship of those who in diverse times and places and ways have responded to the Epiphany vision of a “light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32), to the Epiphany call to “Arise, shine, for your light has come” (Isaiah 60:1), and the Epiphany model of following the star that leads to Christ. Local Food. Local Faith.

Because of where we live, you and I sometimes make the mistake of thinking of variety in the church as Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian and Lutheran and Episcopalian and American Methodist Episcopal and Roman Catholic and Pentecostal and non-denominational. We are like kids in an ice-cream shop so struck by the colors and textures in front of us that it never occurs to us to think that there is also trifle. And crème brûlée. And cannoli. And baklava. And Tavuk Göğsü. Tavuk Göğsü is a Turkish dessert that became wildly popular in western Europe in the Middle Ages. It’s made from minced chicken breasts, sweetened rice, milk, sugar, and flour and sprinkled with cinnamon and almonds. As Polonius said in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “There are more desserts in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Act I.v.167-168). That’s not exactly what Polonius said, but it’s close. It’s one of those paraphrases, you know, like the Living Bible or Eugene Peterson’s The Message. The Christian life and faith in which we share includes many flavors and textures, many ways of life and work and worship, some of which are mysterious and exotic to us but in which their practitioners—just as we do—offer their gifts and their homage in response to the Epiphany vision of a “light for revelation to the Gentiles,” to the Epiphany call to “Arise, shine, for your light has come,” and to the Epiphany model of following the star that leads to Christ.

Just how expansive and variegated this Epiphany vision, call, and model might be was expressed in 1997 by a prominent Charlotte native when he said: “I think that everybody that loves Christ or knows Christ—whether they’re conscious of it or not, they’re members of the Body of Christ. . . . Whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their heart that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light they have.” That’s Billy Graham on what I’m calling local faith: “they turn to the only light they have.” We all turn to the only light we have. Graham’s heart-felt understanding of the human condition and his heart-felt understanding of the nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ led him to an Epiphany vision and an Epiphany call and an Epiphany model that is expansive enough even to include those foreign astrologers, “we three wizards of Orient are,” who followed the light they had to become members of the Body of Christ.And that is how a Muslim woman standing silently in a crowd can be more Christ-like than the jeering, taunting Christians by whom she is surrounded.

Now, just in case your theological tastes are more catholic and dogmatic than evangelical and heart-felt, you might put more stock in these words from the Vatican II document Lumen gentium, “Light of the Nations” or “The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church”: “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (II.16)

(http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html). In other words, the “light they have,” as Billy Graham put it, is sufficient to lead them into the circle of those whom Abune Paulos Gebre Yohannis characterized as “messengers of change in bringing justice, peace, reconciliation and development” (http://www.africamission-mafr.org/cisa19.htm). That’s a message of recovery for us all, a vision and a call and a model for justice in every place for every person, for peace in every community in every nation, for reconciliation in every relationship, and for development—the cultivation in every location of faith and of learning, of education and self-determination and economic opportunity—in the wide world, local and global, of God’s creation.

That’s local food, local faith. Bon apétit, my friends. Bon apétit. 

Copyrighted © 2016 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. This material may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jrogers3@gardner-webb.edu.