Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Genesis 18:16-33, I Peter 1:13-15
June 27, 2004
During this morning’s services, we introduced Carl Gladstone, Lynn Hasley and Jeff Nelson to the gathered congregations. All three graduated from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in mid-May. All three were commissioned for ministry by Bishop Linda Lee at sessions of the Detroit Annual Conference later in May. All three were appointed to the ministerial staff of First Church, effective July 1, 2004. Jeff Nelson is no stranger to First Church, having first appeared as a part of a seminary class studying large local churches, then staying on as a seminary intern and working during 2003-2004 as a “private hire.” Carl and Lynn, however, were meeting the congregation for the first time. The service included introductions and congregational responses, affirming our ministry together.
In an article entitled “Sixty Five Reasons for Hope,” Ann Svenungsen, who is the current president of the Fund for Theological Education, rehashed a three-day event involving 65 young, diverse and gifted individuals on the cusp of their entry into pastoral ministry. Near the end of the conference, participants were asked: “Why would you encourage a young person to become a pastor?” To which the first eager respondent said: “Because of the power, the prestige, and the awesome dating life.”
As concerns power and prestige, ours is not a profession where one is supposed to covet them…. or is likely to attain them. Every time one of those surveys is taken that attaches popular esteem to particular professions….you know the surveys I am talking about, the ones that run the gamut from “most admired” at the top to “least admired” at the bottom….we clergy seem to be slipping.
As concerns an “awesome dating life,” I suppose the jury is out. I’ll have to confess that it worked for me. And who knows what it will do for Carl. As for Jeff and Lynn, their dating life began before seminary, ended before seminary, and had darned well better not resume after seminary. For while the bishop didn’t tell me to say that, Bridget and Gary did.
Moments ago we welcomed Carl, Lynn and Jeff to the ministry of First Church. As concerns formal education, they’re done now. As concerns their first-ever appointments, they’re here now. As concerns the evaluation of the Annual Conference (quite apart from their present level of confidence), they’re ready now. And as concerns the marriage of congregation and clergy….the marriage that must take place if ministry is going to happen….they’re ours now. As concerns their giftedness, they are extraordinary. But as concerns their natures, they (like the rest of us) are about as ordinary as they come. For while God may need a few angels, God is unfortunately saddled with a slew of mortals. Like them. And Rod. And me. Although on most Sundays, Rod dresses more angelically.
We clergy are so blessedly (and cussedly) human. One day Kris and I were in the supermarket when we ran into a parishioner….probably one of you. And you, looking at us pushing a basket, said something like: “I never expected to see you here. I mean, it never occurred to me that people like you have to do things like this.” But we do. For while we sing lustily about “the bread of heaven feeding us till we want no more,” there is other bread we have to buy….and toast….and butter….sometimes even to the point of slapping some salami between the slices on the way to creating a sandwich. And eating is only one of the earthy things we do. So for any of you who might not have noticed, those of us who have been called to speak of the Divine, aren’t. At least not very often.
I suppose one or two of you may have wondered why, when presiding at the table of our Lord, ministers structure the sacrament so as to be the first to partake of bread and cup. Because each pastor knows himself (or herself) to be the chief of sinners, don’t you see. We who, while presiding at the Lord’s table may be golden of voice and nimble of fingers, are nonetheless clay of feet. And we know it.
But it is not news that we distance ourselves from pretense, pride and pedestal. Forty years ago, along about the time I started, clergy could be heard saying to anyone who would listen: “After all, we’re only human. Our spouses are only human. Our kids are only human.” Then darned if we didn’t begin conducting ourselves in ways that proved it beyond anybody’s doubt, including our own.
No longer was the issue a glass of wine at a wedding reception, a pantsuit in the sanctuary, or a cuss word during a work project when the hammer missed the nail and hit the thumb. Suddenly the issue was the lover we took, the spouse we dumped, the money we embezzled, the altar boy we violated, or the scandal we buried. It never occurred to us that people were losing faith in church….faith in faith….even faith in Christ….because they were losing faith in us (one lead story on the eleven o‘clock news after another). So from those to whom we said, “After all, we’re only human,” we began to hear, “We know. We know.”
So, with that as a context, I’d like to tell you a story. A very old story. A certainly pre-Christian story. Which has nothing to do with ministry, on the surface. But a great deal to do with ministry, in the depths.
We’re talking Abraham, here. Our ancestor, here. The first one to hear a call, here. And the first one to pack the U-Haul and move outside his comfort zone, here. Even though at the time he did it, he was three times as old as Carl.
When the story begins, Abraham has just learned two things. First, he has learned that the elderly lady he loves (and with whom he has been sleeping fruitlessly for more years than he can remember) is going to have a baby. Second, he has learned that a town with which he has had no prior intimacy or experience is going to be destroyed. And the bulk of the narrative that follows has to do, not with the former, but with the latter….with Sodom and its doom, rather than with Sarah and her womb.
The storyteller is never more masterful than he is in these next few paragraphs. God tells Abraham that complaints have risen to his ears about Sodom….the word “complaint” meaning “cry.” And, thanks to Gerhard Von Rad, we even know what the complaint was. “Foul play,” that’s what it was.
So what did the Sodomites do? Or what had they already done? Well, not what you think. Sodomy is the common answer. Except the Bible contradicts it. Check out Ezekiel 16:48, Isaiah 1:10 and 3:9, and Jeremiah 23:14, and you will discover that the Sodomites are condemned for lives of pride and prosperous ease, an abundance of food, and little evidence that aid or hospitality has been shown to the poor and the needy. At any rate, the fate of the Sodomites evokes the first-ever debate between God and human beings about the interplay of judgment and mercy. Which gives me some comfort to know that I am part of an argument that has been going on for nearly four thousand years.
I suppose the initial question is: “Is Sodom guilty?” To which, in verse 17, God’s answer appears to be “Yes.” Yet in verse 20, God appears to be saying: “I’d better go down there and check it out.” But Abraham’s concern is not so much if the Sodomites are guilty, but what will happen if they are guilty. Or, more to the point, what will happen to the innocent minority if the majority are guilty. Abraham can’t abide the thought that the innocent might be caught up in the punishment of the guilty.
No, that’s wrong. What Abraham can’t abide is the thought that destruction should come to the people as a whole….to the city as a whole….just because there are guilty people in it. Notice that Abraham does not say to God: “Go ahead and wipe them out, but use tactics of destruction that discriminate the non-guilty from the guilty, so that the non-guilty are granted immunity.” Nor does Abraham say to God: “Go ahead and destroy the guilty, but first warn the non-guilty….tell them I’m coming like Moses (even though Moses hasn’t yet appeared in history’s timeline) to lead them out before all hell breaks loose.” No, Abraham doesn’t say any of those things.
Instead, he says to God: “Look, I really have no reason to ask this….no authority by which to ask this….no status that gives me any right to ask this (given that I am but dust and ashes)….but have you considered that there might be as many as fifty righteous people left in the city? If so, will you spare the city for fifty?” And God says that he will.
So Abraham, emboldened by the fact that God is bargainable and that concessions can be wrought from him….yet realizing that he hasn’t the faintest idea whether Sodom has fifty who can be counted righteous….says: “What if I’m short five?” To which God says: “You’ve got your five. I won’t destroy it for forty-five.”
Now the juices of argumentation are beginning to flow. And whoever among you says, “You can’t argue with God,” you need to realize that Abraham was the first of many to do it. Job, of course, perfected it. While I, in my humble but feisty way, simply contribute to it.
At any rate, Abraham (not having a clue as to the quantity of righteousness in Sodom) bargains God down to forty….then to thirty….then to twenty….then finally to ten. In response to which God says: “Find me ten and I’ll spare, not just the ten, but the city.” And to this day, when Orthodox Jewish men meet daily for prayer, there must be ten. It’s called a “minyan.” And if there are not ten, they do not pray. Or they wait to pray until one of them gets on a cell phone and calls Max (the relief prayer), whereupon Max drops everything and drives down to the temple so that there will be ten….thus enabling prayers to be raised.
Now I said I was going to spin this text so that it lands on a word called “ministry.” And the best way to do that is to ask the three of you (this morning) to do what I do with every text I read (every morning)….namely, insert yourselves into it.
Which you could do by substituting yourself for Abraham. After all, he is the “called out” one in the story. He is the one who talks with God in the story. He is the one about to have a baby in the story (no, we won’t go there, Jeff….shouldn’t go there, Carl….probably don’t want to go there, Lynn).
I could tell you to do what Abraham does for others in the story. Abraham intercedes for them…. goes to bat for them….advocates for them. I could tell you to do the same for the “others” you will meet. I could tell you to make their cases before men and before God. Even though that sounds a little Roman Catholic, do it anyway. I could tell you to go with them before the judges….go with them before the doctors….go with them before their accusers. I could tell you to go with them when people have wronged them….when life has dumped on them….maybe even when churches have hurt them. These are marvelous ministries, these ministries called “advocacy” and “intercession.” And when I started, nobody told me how much I would need to do them or how good I would become at them. Instead, I was told about listening, accepting, empathizing and sympathizing. But nobody told me about the need to make stuff happen. Which one does by putting time on the line….money on the line….influence on the line….one’s meager authority on the line….parishioners who can open doors on the line….and yes, prayers on the line. And if you occasionally have to argue with God to get things done, the Bible will give you all the permission (and models) you will ever need.
But my primary concern this morning is not simply that you identify with Abraham the intercessor, but that you identify with the ten who are counted as righteous. Now if you ask what“righteous” means, the definitions in the Old Testament wander all over the map. But most of them boil down to “people who are good” or “people who know God.”
In response to the word “good” and its suggestion that the primary ingredient of righteousness is behavior, I say behave. That’s right, behave. Goodness knows, there are few better things we clergy could do to rebuild the shattered confidence of a public which has had its mind blown (not to mention its heart broken) by our aberrant (and occasionally abhorrent) behavior.
Quintillius defined good public speaking as “a matter of a good man, speaking well.” To which, were he alive today, he would add “a good woman, speaking well.” And while we may disagree about the nature of “the good,” would that we (as a profession) were more diligent in seeking it. “Spiritual formation” (the latest hot button for professional Christians) may be individually challenging and inwardly rewarding. But “character formation” (which has seldom been a hot button for professional Christians) will win far more of the disgruntled and disappointed back to church. Our lives do not have to be prim, prissy, prudish or pious. But they do need to be principled (along with exemplary). People should want to live like us because what they see when they look at us is someone who knows how to live well.
And if the primary ingredient of righteousness is knowing God….or knowing God in Jesus Christ….then that knowledge should infect our personalities every bit as much as it affects our activities. As clergy, our belief should be radiant. It should look like it makes a difference in our lives. We should live like it makes a difference in our lives. If Christ has come that we might have life in abundance, for God’s sake, let’s live abundantly.
Ours is a better way. And if we believe it, people ought to be able to see it in us. Why would anyone pay attention to what we say if, after watching us closely, they can’t see what we have…. don’t want what we have….and don’t feel that their life would be better than it is if they had what we have (because we don’t seem to have anything that differs from what the rest of the world has).
Near the end of a difficult day in the classroom, a third grader sent a message from her little desk in the back of the room to the considerably larger desk in the front of the room. Unfolding and opening it, the occupant of the big desk read: “Teacher, if you are happy, why don’t you send a message to your face?”
Well, what about our faces? If faith in Christ has really transformed our lives, can anybody see it….sense it….feel it….to the point that they desire it? Over the years, I have been found wanting by some who have criticized the quantity of my beliefs (because I don’t measure up to all the things on their checklist). But, to this point, no one has ever said: “Bill, I question the quality of your belief, in that it does not seem to be doing all that much for your life.” Hopefully, what you hear from me is what you see in me. And what you see in me is what has seen me through….plenty. “Be prepared at the drop of a hat,” says I Peter, to give an account for the hope that is in you. But nobody is going to ask you to account for something they can’t see.
So to the three of you I say: “Show us something. Make us curious. Make us envious. That we might be saved, by imitation, from destruction.”
* * * * *
Oh….and one little piece of unfinished business from the text. Remember how Abraham bargained God down to ten (“Will you save the city, O Lord, if there are but ten righteous ones left?”)? And God said he would.
Note that God didn’t say: “Stop. That’s far enough. Proceed no further. You’ve exhausted my patience. I’m at the end of my rope.”
No, God called no halt. Abraham simply walked away. So I ask you, could the deal have dropped to five? Or three? Or one?
Well, I can’t say for sure. But I know Christians who say that’s exactly what happened.
Note: I am indebted to Gerhard Von Rad and his book, Genesis: A Commentary. Much of my understanding of Genesis comes via his translation and interpretation. I am also indebted to William Willimon, chaplain of Duke University, and one of his more recent books on the ministry entitled Calling and Character. A number of people have begun to address the subject of ministerial ethics, but Willimon does a wonderful job in combining the issues of conduct and character with the greater issue of our vocation (calling) to preach.
During the last few lines of the sermon, I pointed at the five clergy from First Church when I came to the number five….at the three new ordinands when I came to the number three….and at the cross when I landed on the number one.
