Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Romans 10:14-17, I Corinthians 9:15-18
It was, as I remember it, the winter of’64….which slid, ever so slowly, into the spring of ’65. I was in New Haven, Connecticut, finishing my final year in Yale Divinity School. I was also a Methodist waiting for an appointment. My first appointment. Not that I was alone in my anxiety. Even though Yale was intentionally inter-denominational, there were a couple of other Methodists on the floor….Jim Bortell of Illinois and Ivan Burnett of Mississippi. Which explains why most nights, along about ten o’clock, we would go to the refrigerator in the basement, dish ourselves some ice cream, and spend the next half hour speculating on where we would be appointed (and what it would be like, once we got there).
Eventually, the word came to us all. I was heading for Dearborn as an associate. Jim was going to Monmouth, Illinois as an associate. And Ivan was being assigned to a little church in Grenada, Mississippi as pastor in charge. Theologically and politically, Ivan was the most conservative of us all. But going back to rural Mississippi in the summer of ’65….with the word “Yale” screaming from the pages of one’s resume….was the kiss of death for a preacher. So they got him quick. They got him good. And they got him out. Whereupon he resurrected his career as a Navy chaplain, retiring from the military and the ministry….not that one ever “retires” from the ministry….a year ago June. Meanwhile, Jim and I press on….happily and fruitfully….in Normal, Illinois and Birmingham, Michigan respectively.
I can’t, for the life of me, remember whether Jim wanted to start his career as an associate. I know I didn’t. I wanted to jump right in and preach every Sunday. I didn’t care where….or to how many. I just wanted to do it….by myself….on my own….full bore….no backup.
But my district superintendent, the late Herb Hausser, had other ideas. “Bill,” he said, “you’re a great talent. But you are a raw talent. And if you can conceive of God as speaking through a church bureaucrat, this is what I hear God saying to me (about you): ‘Send him to a church where he can touch the most, while being mentored by the best.’” Which is how I became the fourth pastor on a four-pastor staff in Dearborn….overseeing all of youth ministry….all of children’s education….all of adult education….doing my share of the pastoral work….while preaching almost never. But Herb was right in one sense. Dearborn was where I needed to be…. doing what I needed to do….watching who I needed to watch. Ironically, my first boss (and he was my “boss”), Fred Vosburg, now lives into his nineties in the same retirement complex as my folks. In Dearborn, of course.
You have heard me say, on more than one occasion, that the mid-sixties were wonderful years to be alive and in ministry. We had great youth groups at Dearborn First. In fact, there are six ministers in our Conference from those youth groups, currently giving great leadership to our denomination. Those teens were filled with passion, wrestling with tough issues and making hard decisions, all the while singing songs of faith and freedom. There was never a Sunday night that we didn’t sing for 20 minutes or more.
All of which came back to me, just two weeks ago, when Julie said: “Let’s go to Meadowbrook and see Peter, Paul and Mary.” Given that Julie’s musical tastes run to a little bit of “classic,” a little bit of “rock” and a whole lot of “country,” I wondered: “What does Julie know of Peter, Paul and Mary?” But she knew enough to want to know more. So we went. And we loved every minute. Big crowd. Great night. Good singing. Easy listening. This is their 40th anniversary year. Talk about feeling old. But they had some new stuff….as if we came to hear the new stuff. Which we didn’t. Most of us came to hear the old stuff.
And they did it all. Midway through the first set, they sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” And they closed the second set with “If I Had a Hammer” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Whereupon they offered an encore of “This Land is Your Land” that brought our voices out, our hands together, the house down, and the evening to a close.
But it is what Julie said on the way home that interested me. “I knew a few of their songs,” she said, “but now that I’ve heard them, I can see why so many people were moved by them. Fifteen minutes more and I’d have gotten right on the bus….to go anywhere….and stand for anything. They really get you out of yourself and into caring about the world.” To which I said: “You’ve got it. That’s how we felt. At least that’s how I felt. Which was why the mid-sixties were such great years to be alive.”
It got ugly, of course. By the late sixties, it got awfully ugly. I don’t know if you can blame the war for that. But a lot of people did. Some got angry. Some got shot. A whole lot dropped out. A whole lot more turned on….pharmacologically, I mean. And the “drug thing” crashed the party and (unfortunately) never left.
But I left….after four years in Dearborn….to take a 700 member church. Whatever could the Bishop have been thinking to appoint me to a 700 member church? The year was 1969. And I have been doing the “establishment thing” ever since. Has my life changed? A lot! Have my looks changed? Come on now….is the Pope Catholic? Has my calling wavered? Strangely….hardly. Has my mind changed? Not all that much. It was pretty well grounded, then. My positions were pretty well formed, then. I would be willing to go back into my “barrel” and re-preach the first sermon I delivered from the pulpit of that 700 member church….when I was finally on my own. And I wouldn’t feel apologetic or embarrassed by words I wrote 31 years ago. Oh, I’d tidy up the verbiage. I write much better sentences now. And I’d update the illustrations. I stay far more current now. And I’d plug in the insights I have gained from keeping my eyes in the books (new books) and my ears to the ground (your ground). But I’d preach it. And you wouldn’t be totally able to dismiss it.
Still, in the midst of all that I have added (you have to keep up, you know), and the little that I have subtracted (some things are just stupid to hang on to, you know), there have been a few shifts more seismic in nature. How many? Darned if I know. I only started thinking about this a couple of weeks back. But, at the moment, I can clearly identify four. One, concerning society. Another, concerning theology. A third, concerning church. And the last, concerning Bible.
Let’s start with society. In 1965, I thought it was far more “fixable” than it has turned out to be. Concerning the great problems of the time, I really thought that “every day in every way, we could make things better and better.” Which was, of course, the mantra of the Social Gospel Movement in the early part of the twentieth century. And what killed the Social Gospel Movement (along with its belief in the inevitability of Kingdom-building progress)? World War II and the Holocaust. That’s what killed the Social Gospel Movement. For that’s when theologians and preachers rediscovered how utterly perverse human beings can really be.
I was four when the last of the concentration camps was liberated. And I was just turning five when we dropped the bomb. Besides, people said that as bombs go, this was a good bomb. Maybe even the last bomb. So why shouldn’t I have thought at age 25….in the summer of ’65….that our songs and my sermons could make an immediate and recognizable difference? After all, evil named would lead to evil exposed….would lead to evil addressed….would lead to evil lamented….would lead to evil repented….would lead to evil corrected….would lead to evil eradicated….would it not? So where was I wrong?
Well, in the summer of ’65, I hadn’t fully accounted for the power of sin….personal sin….corporate sin….institutional sin….any sin. As a reality, I was agin’ it. But as a concept, I never named it. Because as a word, I didn’t like it. “Sin,” I mean. It had too many images I wanted to leave behind….like revival preachers, sawdust trails, sweaty tents, those kinds of images.
But I have learned over the years that people sin….repeatedly and mightily. They sin when they’re off by themselves (in little groups of one or two). And they sin when they cluster together (in bigger groups like 30, 300, 3001 or 2.6 billion). And I’ve learned that most of the sins have more to do with power (grabbing it and keeping it) than with sex (doing it and abusing it), even though most of you would guess otherwise (given that it’s safer to talk about sex than power).
But I was totally bummed (not to mention intellectually chagrined) when Scott Peck dared to suggest in his second book, People of the Lie, that there were a few individuals he had met in his therapeutic practice who could be explained by no other word than to say that they were “evil.” I found that abhorrent. Still do, at some level. But I have met three or four such people (who I can explain with no other word than the word “evil”). And while three or four are not many, they have been enough to shake my idealism.
There is an age-old conundrum which asks: “Is the world essentially a white chessboard with black squares, or a black chessboard with white squares?” Today, I’m almost afraid to ask the question, given that someone will read “race” into it. Still, as conundrums go, I’ll stick with my assumption that the world is white and the squares are black. But there are a lot of squares. And not only do they continually move, but they cast some mighty big shadows.
But, in addition to society being less fixable, I have also discovered that the riddles of faith are less solvable than I thought in 1965. Over the years, I have had to make my peace with the fact that I may never know a lot of the things I do not presently know. Some of those are profoundly doctrinal. Like the Trinity, which I sing doxologically and comprehend scholastically, but can’t really say I understand internally. And like the Atonement, given my comfort with the idea that the death of Jesus on the cross is personally beneficial (yes, I believe he died for me), coupled with my discomfort with the idea that Jesus’ death is Old Testamentally sacrificial (as in the idea that God required Jesus to die for me).
And then there’s my friend John Stuart, who claims that when he dies….and if he sees God….he wants to unfold his fingers and show God a malignant tumor. Whereupon he will say to God: “Explain this.” As for me, I doubt John will get an answer in this life and may not get an answer in the next one, either. But he will get “the next one.” Life, I mean. Not answers.
As concerns the church, I have learned that all the social and political engineering will not, in and of itself, usher in the Kingdom. Most people….especially most clergy people….believe it will. In the mid-sixties, I believed it would. I was one of the self-identified “young Turks” of the denomination. For a few years we met in the basement of Fourteenth Avenue Church (down in the shadow of the ballpark). Which was probably appropriate given that, at any given time, there were about 14 of us. We were going to plan, plot and politic to advance people who shared our agenda….although we didn’t call it an “agenda,” we called it a “vision”….into Conference positions and key local church pulpits. Once there, we would leaven the loaf, sweeten the pot, and do all measure of wonderful things which (from our perspective) would become obvious to one and all….as to their aptness and rightness….once we were in a position to do them.
And the fact of the matter is, we were incredibly successful. Two became bishops. One is currently a seminary president. Half a dozen became district superintendents. And two or three of us wound up as tall steeple preachers. What’s more, I still believe in the rightness of our visions. But I repent the audacity of our pretensions. The Kingdom is of God. And all of the social engineering of this world….which goes on to this day….will not bring it about. And may, if we are not careful, actually retard it.
Finally, let me say a word about the Bible. In 1965, I thought my job was to explain and defend it. Neither of which I proved to be much good at. Today, what I want to do is experience it….and help you experience it. I want to read it so that it reads me. And I want to preach it so that you and I will wiggle around inside the text….figuring out who we are in the story….so that hundreds of years will flake away and the encounter between Word and We will be as fresh as our morning orange juice. You and I can argue endlessly about what we think the Bible is or isn’t…. about where we think its authority rests or doesn’t….and whether we think that God’s Word is multi-voiced or singular. But, with each passing year, I have less and less interest in what it means to take the Bible literally, and more and more interest in what it means to take the Bible seriously.
Which, as a preacher, is what I strive to do. The other day I happened upon a bumper sticker which read: “If garbage collectors and preachers went on strike the same day, which would you miss first?” I winced at the comparison. What a blow to my self esteem. For I know the answer as well as you do. The garbagemen would be missed first. But, over time, I think the clergy would be missed most. Because when your liverwurst begins to smell, it’s one thing. But when your life begins to smell, it’s another. Take the preachers away for very long, and the stench of our lives would be unbearable. Therefore, I no longer apologize for anything I preach. Not only it is a word about life and death. It is, to those who are perishing, a word of life and death.
So I keep doing it….here….there….wherever. It’s who I am. And it’s what I do. Remember when Kirk Gibson, after being out of baseball for nearly a year, signed on for a second stint with the Tigers? Many questioned his ability. Even more questioned his sanity. But Gibson bore all the “why come back” questions politely, before citing Muhammad Ali’s classic response when someone asked him why he was going to climb back in the ring again. Ali’s answer: “A boxer boxes.” Well, a preacher, preaches.
In something that has become a bit of a signature text for me, the Apostle Paul writes: “Woe be unto me if I do not preach the gospel.” I suppose Paul is saying: “This is so much a part of who I understand myself to be, I can’t not do it.” Which is how I feel about what I do. And you are marvelously kind to let me do it here. For which I thank you.
Note: This sermon was preached on the weekend of my 60th birthday, accounting for the fact that it is somewhat biographical in nature. My use of the word “Methodist” in the opening paragraphs reflects the fact that we did not become “United Methodists” until 1968….or three years after I accepted my initial appointment. The oblique reference to 3001 in the section on sin identifies the membership goal of First Church which is “3001 by 2001.”
