Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Consider your call...


The following sermon was preached on Sunday, August 27, 2017, for the ordination of Dr. Cambria Kaltwasser to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.

A couple of weeks ago, I texted Cambria and asked her if she had any idea what scripture she would like for her ordination. I was preparing for a three month sabbatical from my pastorate at the Lawrence Road Church and I knew that, what with one thing and another and a pre-sabbatical to-do list that was merrily begetting baby to-do lists of its own, time was going to get short very quickly. 

So when Cambria wrote back and suggested this passage from 1 Corinthians, my first reaction was “Sweet!” I mean, easy peasy, how hard could it be. It’s an ordination sermon on a text where foolishness is featured prominently. Ministry. In the church. In 2017. Obvious foolishness. Done. 

Of course, when you pastor a church that sits smack dab in the middle of the hyper-aggressive secularity of the Northeast Corridor, a church sandwiched between the joblessness, poverty, crime, and racial unrest of Trenton to the south and the big estates, old money, and uber-privilege of Lawrenceville and Princeton to the north, the notion that the message about the cross is foolishness to pretty much the entire world is not exactly a newsflash. 

Those who study these things tell us that over 60% of millennials believe that Christians are a judgmental lot, while nearly 70% of young adults say that “anti-gay” best describes most churches today. I don’t need the Pew Research Institute or the Barna Group to tell me this. The one constant of my conversation with the brave souls engaged in youth ministry at my church is how to actually do the love of God, never mind the cross of Jesus Christ, in our current social and political environment when our youth have never heard of a loving God, when more than half the thirty or so teens and young adults who show up for Wednesday night dinner and fellowship don’t know if they were ever baptized, could care less than nothing about a Sunday School or church that has historically cared less than nothing about them, and are pretty much there for the free food.  

Ministry. Church. Obvious foolishness. Done. What with one thing and another and the state of the church in America and the world today, how hard could it be to put together an ordination sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:18-31?

Not hard at all, except for the fact that we’re here today to ordain a woman for whom the descriptor “foolish” would not be the first word that comes to mind, a woman wise by any standard, conversant in the language of the academy, a scholar who has been immersed for a decade in the accumulated theological and ecclesiological knowledge of the ages, both here as graduate and post-graduate student and abroad as a Fulbright scholar. And to top it off, not just a scholar, but a Princeton Seminary certified expert in the message about the cross Barth scholar, a newly minted doctor of the church. 

And, well, as it turns out, despite my best efforts, Cambria isn’t being ordained to a mission outpost in the secular wilds of urban New Jersey. God has called Cambria to Iowa, to  Northwestern College, a “…Christian academic community,” in the words of Northwestern’s mission statement, “engaging students in courageous and faithful learning and living that empowers them to follow Christ and pursue God's redeeming work in the world…and prepares them for fulfilling careers and faithful lives as thinking Christians.” 
As one of the Lawrence Road folks commented when he learned of Cambria’s call, it’s hard to get more inside baseball than that. Cambria will, by and large, take her place in a community of relatively like-minded Christians, teaching Christian young adults who have been raised in the church, millennials who unlike so many of their peers, are not unfamiliar with the message about the cross and the teachings of the church. 

And not for nothing, but it does not escape my notice that there are a lot of smart, wise, highly educated people gathered here who have a significant investment in all kinds of knowledge. I’ve been present at ordinations where the preacher managed, in the course of his sermon, to offend nearly every person present. Let me just say that as I approached this text today, I was not unmindful of the aggregate wisdom and learning that this beautiful college campus represents.

Because the truth is that although the church has historically used Paul to call out the myriads ways in which the wise of the world have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, this passage from 1 Corinthians is about as inside baseball as you can get.

Paul here is not all that concerned about outsiders to the faith. As much as we might like to make this about all the folks out there for whom the message about the cross is foolishness, this one’s written for us who believe, especially for us who believe who are gathered here today for a completely inside baseball rite of the church, especially for us who lead a Christian academic community, especially for us who lead the church of Jesus Christ, especially for you, Cambria, who after today will not only wear the mantle of doctor of the church, but also the stole of minister of the Word and Sacrament.

Paul has no illusions about the world and its wisdom. Paul sees clearly the world and its addiction to human knowledge and human power and the desire to control and dominate and oppress. Paul sees the world, the wise ones, the scribes, the debaters of this age, and he dismisses them with the wave of the hand as ones who are perishing. 

It’s us, the ones who are being saved, the believers, the called, us who claim to follow Jesus that Paul is worried about.

And not without reason. The message about the cross is foolishness because the way of the cross is hard and the world wants easy. The church of Jesus Christ wants easy. As my mom used to say, we want to have our cake and eat it too. 

We in the church want the comfort of our buddy Jesus while we clasp tight to our bosoms our teddy bears of prejudices and bigotry and violence, our love of military strength, our admiration for great wealth, and our exercise of unfettered and unquestioned privilege. We in the church proudly wave the rainbow flag of inclusion, of love of God and neighbor, and stand silently by as the alien and the stranger in our midst are shut out and banished. We in the church bask in God’s kindness, mercy, grace and forgiveness and call those who disagree with us sinful, bad, enemy, less than human, irredeemable and unforgivable. 

The church needs you, Cambria. I told you that ten years ago when you came to the Lawrence Road Church as part of Princeton Seminary’s teaching ministry program. It was true then and it is true now, now more than ever. The church needs you to remind us of what we the church are about on behalf of the world. The church needs you to remind us in the words of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, that the church is …”called to undertake [its] mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver  of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond [itself] to the new reality in Christ.”  (Book of Order G-3.0400)  

We need you, Cambria, the church that you join today as a teaching elder. We need your clarity of vision, your unwavering focus on the cross of Christ and the ethical demands that the cross places on us who claim to follow Jesus. We need you to use the mind that God has given you, the education that you have worked so hard to claim, and the compassion and kindness and humility that are a gift from your family and in the power of the Holy Spirit part of your very nature. We need to use those things to teach and re-teach and teach once again the foolishness of a loving God to a church that is so tempted by human wisdom and human strength. 

And God will be with you. This is the core of a cross-centered faith, the foolishness of God made visible on Golgotha, the message about Christ and him crucified. God is with us. This is the promise of the cross, Cambria, for you as you ascend the mighty pulpit of academia to take up this awesome, fearsome calling for which God has been preparing you since before you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. God will be with you. When you walk into a classroom filled with 18-year olds who are not yet quite awake, God will be with you. When you speak truth to power, God will be with you. When you insist on Christ in a world that looks to culture, God will be with you. When the powers and principalities of this world are arrayed against you, and they will be, when life and death hit you in the face and knock you to the ground, when the work is hard and the words won’t come and you are most deeply and profoundly afraid, in exactly those moments and days and years, in exactly those places, God will be with you.  


In 1918, the summer that he wrote his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans and changed the face of theology forever, Karl Barth hung over his desk  copy of Grunewald’s Crucifixion. In it, John the Baptist stands alone, a bit diminished and a little ways off, a Bible open in one hand, the other hand pointing an incredibly long and bony finger towards the horribly crucified, dead Christ, strung up on the cross. Over the course of his long career, from his days as a young pastor until his death, Barth kept that painting where he could see it as he worked, referring to it over and over again in his writings. For Barth, as for John the Baptist, the call on his life was to be a faithful witness who could only point to Christ and him crucified. 

So it was, he wrote, the awesome and only task of the theologian and the church itself to point to a “wretched, crucified, dead man…[We] cannot,” Barth said, “and must not do more than this. 
But [we] can and must do this.” 

The church needs you, Cambria. We need you to tell us the truth. We need you to keep us honest and hold us accountable. We need you to keep us focused and proclaiming Christ crucified, the One who is the source of our life, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.  
This glorious day has been a long time coming, Cambria, but you’ve got this. The Lawrence Road folk are so proud of you and of what you’ve done. We are so hopeful for where you will lead us in the future. From your family in New Jersey and for them, too, I offer this. 
Lift high the cross, my friend. And keep on pointing to Jesus.




Monday, August 14, 2017

Details, details, details



“Try not to prepare for your vacation as you would for your own death.”

Several months ago, as sabbatical became a reality, I jokingly quoted this admonition from a New York Times article on how to ruin one’s time off. The gist of the article was that if one tries to prepare for everything that could possible happen while you are away, you will never relax enough to actually go away and have a good time.

Seems self-evident, doesn’t it? Obviously, enjoying time away from one’s job is a matter of letting go and trusting that one is not actually indispensable, that work will get done, timelines will be met, life will go on, the sun will rise and set. For someone like me whose work is ministry in the name of Jesus, that would be mean living out of the truth that it’s Christ’s church, Christ’s work, Christ’s beloved brothers and sisters – and that Christ will be present in all of it, even if I am not. That would mean trusting that Sunday will come and church will happen and hymns will get sung, prayers will be offered, holy hugs will be dispensed, and somebody will be standing in the pulpit come Sunday morning proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

Easy-peasy, right? All I have to do is actually do what I say. Walk the walk, as they say, instead of just talking it. How hard can that be?

Well. For me, harder than you think. Or maybe you knew how hard it was going to be for me and it’s only me who has been surprised by the 2am bouts of anxiety.

About 18 months ago, the executive director of the English School at the Lawrence Road Church resigned. Jessica was the founder of the school and had led it for more than 12 years. It is not an overstatement to say that the school was her idea, the product of her creativity and imagination, the evidence of her dedication, her baby. So, hoping for a seamless transition, on her way out the door, she handed us a flash drive that contained, no joke, every detail and document, every procedure and protocol, every spreadsheet, pretty much everything that had crossed her desk in the 12 years of the school’s existence. In the months since then, it has become axiomatic that, whenever there is a question about the English School, someone will inevitably say: Check the flash drive…

So here’s the deal. I am surrounded by wonderful gifted people who make sure worship happens every week, not just now as sabbatical looms, but every week. I would put the Lawrence Road deacons up against anyone anywhere in the provision of compassionate, loving, and faithful pastoral care, not just now, but week in, week out. The church staff are at the top of their game, not just now when I will be away, but every day. Our ministry leaders lead—not just now, but always, not because they have to, but because God has called them to this and they are faithful ministers of Jesus Christ. I’m part of all that, but not indispensable to it.

And I know that. And what I’ve realized is that I’m not worried about worship or pastoral care or Christian Education or Properties or Finance or Outreach or Parish Life or any of that. Nope—my peeps have got that—and the love that God has given this congregation to share with one another and the community comes from a bottomless well. That love will carry them through.

What’s keeping me awake, my friends, is the undeniable fact that I’m the only one who knows where I hid the key to the supply closet. And my sweet husband, who will be on sabbatical from the church, too, may well be the only person living who knows how to turn on the ancient steam boiler that heats the sanctuary.

So I’m pulling a page from Jessica’s book. The Lawrence Road folk have the Jesus stuff covered. But if anyone needs the code to the sanctuary router, check the flash drive.