Sacred Secular, July 26, 2015

Sacred Secular

Proverbs 8:1-11, 22-36

Pastor Joshua Noah

July 26, 2015

Humans like categories. Dividing lines. Definitions. Clear boundaries. We like such structures because they make us feel safe. They make us feel secure. They make us feel as though we know what to expect. Psychology tells us that establishing such boundaries helps individuals feel secure. Children who have no limitations or rules tend to either act out or attempt to create rules and boundaries for themselves. Give any group of kids a chance to create their own game, and they will immediately create lists of rules and regulations.

At the same time, this need to create boundaries – even ones for our safety – often causes a whole host of other issues and even furthers divisions among people such as the racial profiling of people of Middle Eastern descent following September 11 or higher rates of incarceration among African-Americans.

We LOVE categories and order within the church – especially the Presbyterian Church. Our motto is “Everything decently and in order.” We love our polity – our system of church government – and all the guidelines and regulations that come with it. We have the Book of Order, Roberts Rules of Order, the Book of Confessions, Presbytery by-laws, local church by-laws, committees, and councils, etc. We even have our own “unspoken” rules within the church – such as our “assigned” pews, the person who always chairs this event, and so forth. And when someone violates those unspoken rules, it often comes with swift and unchristian-like retaliation.

We also like to make clear distinctions over what “belongs” in church and what does not. When we get to church on Sunday mornings we always make sure that we dressed in our Sunday best, that we check our bad language at the door, that we make sure we act a certain way, and that we don’t talk about certain topics – like sex, drinking, or politics – unless of course we are condemning them. And we often feel that when we come to church we are gaining some kind of special insight, some form of special wisdom that we can’t get anywhere else in the world. That this is the place where only the sacred resides. The rest of the secular world just doesn’t understand things the way that we understand things.

On some level, that is true. We do profess a particular truth. We profess Jesus Christ as Lord. As the Son of God. God in human flesh who came to bring about our salvation and freedom from slavery to sin. And we are commanded to see the world differently – through the lens of the Gospel – and to help bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth. However, problems arise within our faith when we leave our Gospel glasses in our church pew.

In our text this morning, we find Wisdom personified as a woman – Woman Wisdom. Woman Wisdom calls out to us, asking us to seek her out and to learn from her. We also learn later in the text that Wisdom is a creation of God – brought to life before the beginning of Creation – and we learn that God delights in the presence of Woman Wisdom, working alongside God as the foundations of the earth are marked out. And now Woman Wisdom inhabits the earth, calling out to us to seek her and learn from her. The interesting thing is where Woman Wisdom is found. She is not found in the temple. She does not call us from the synagogue. She does not cry out from heaven above. Woman Wisdom invites us to take up her course of study not from the places humans have labeled as sacred, but from the secular streets and the city gates. From the places that are accessible not just to a select few who belong to the established religious order, but places that are in the public arena where all can learn from God’s Wisdom.

In ancient times, the city gates were major centers of human social activity. At the city gates were large structures that contained rooms which would house public debates, public court proceedings, public classrooms, public auctions, and more. Today those public structures would be our town halls, courthouses, schools, and marketplaces. Wisdom calls us to learn from these places – these public, secular places – knowledge and fear of the Lord.

But why? That doesn’t make any sense! Why would we be called to learn about God in the world outside of the church? Doesn’t God understand that the rest of the world is not holy, not sacred, like God’s church? The root of the word “secular” even means – “Not belonging to a religious order.” Why would we be called to learn about God out there?

Maybe it’s because everything in the world – both the things we call sacred and the things we call secular – is created by God. There is no sacred/secular division for God because God created it all! Things that may be seemingly secular – as not having any holy significance one minute – can become sacred the next because of God’s providential power.

Look at the story of Moses and the burning bush. Moses passed that bush many times before in his work as a shepherd in the land of Midian. Day after day, week after week, year after year, Moses passed that seemingly unassuming bush, and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened with that bush. Then one day, God took what was seemingly secular to humans and made it especially sacred. One day, the bush was ablaze with fire – yet it was not consumed by the fire. One day God spoke to Moses through that seemingly secular bush – and the history of the people of God took a dramatic turn. 

And that is why Woman Wisdom calls to us from the streets, from the public markets, from the courthouses, and from other places outside the church. Because you never know when a burning bush is going to show up. When the secular suddenly becomes sacred.

At the same time, the seemingly sacred can become simply secular. Those of us in ministry keep seeing this happen over and over again. Churches more concerned about the secular than the sacred. Churches more concerned about maintaining particular structures and programs than about whether or not they are truly engaging their community. Churches who would rather die doing things the way they’ve always been done rather than try to follow the Spirit into the unknown. The saying most commonly heard in any dying church is: “That’s not how we’ve done it before.”

In Trenton, New Jersey, an aging Presbyterian congregation was met with an interesting dilemma. The church was literally dying. The average age of the membership was increasing while the worship attendance was decreasing. The massive sanctuary, which once housed hundreds and hundreds of worshippers each Sunday, sat empty most of the time – simply sucking away money as the remaining members kept it heated and air conditioned. Then suddenly, thanks to the work of the youth director – which the church shared with two other congregations – a new group of young people began attending the church. These kids were from inner city Trenton. Most of which walked many miles in order to attend the church. There were close to twenty of them in all that sat together during the worship service and participated in the fellowship hour afterwards.

However, these young people had never been a part of a church before. They didn’t know how to “behave” during church. How to participate in the liturgy. How to be a part of the life of such a community. They didn’t know the unspoken rules of the church. That this pew is where Mrs. Thomas always sits. That Alice always sets out the cookies during coffee hour. That food is not allowed in the church parlor. As such, these young people began to be seen as a nuisance by many of the members of the congregation instead of as the opportunity of mission that the Holy Spirit presented them to be. Yes, they were noisy and disrespectful during what should be a sacred time of reverent worship. Yes, they ate all the snacks during fellowship hour, and didn’t offer to help clean up afterwards. And so, the session of elders got together, discussed the concerns of the congregation, and voted to ask the young people to leave the church and not come back. (In my humble opinion, on that day, that church signed their own death certificate.)

Here was a perfect example of the Holy Spirit crying out to this congregation and giving them the opportunity to engage in a new ministry. Even placing the ministry right in their laps! The secular was brought right into the sacred. Yet instead of finding ways to engage with these young people. Instead of finding ways to mentor them, to walk alongside them, to befriend them and love them, to make disciples out of them – this church rejected them. And in doing so, it rejected the Holy Spirit, and the wisdom that God was offering to them. This church rejected these young people because their very presence threatened the way that the church had always done things. The old programs and structures were not going to work with these new young people. When the youth director, a colleague of mine, desperately tried to talk to the session and offer new ideas for how to work with these young people, and develop new and different ways the church could invite them into the greater life of the church, the session uttered those deadly words: “That’s not how we’ve done it before.” Perhaps it would have done them some good to listen to Woman Wisdom in verses 35-36: “For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death.”

Why do churches do this? Why do they keep on doing things the same way year after year? Why do churches lament the loss of young people, yet don’t make the necessary changes that make the church welcoming, even when young people do show up? Why do they worship the “way things have always been” over the glory of the Spirit’s movement among them, even when it happens in strange and unfamiliar ways?

It’s because people prefer the misery they know, to the mystery they don’t know. God understands this about humanity. God’s been dealing with this human flaw for thousands of years. Even the Israelites complained that they would rather go back into slavery in Egypt than risk starving to death in the desert. And it all comes down to trust. Do you trust God? Do you trust what the Holy Spirit is doing? Even when God tears down everything that you once knew and loved, do you trust that God will bring about something greater? Do you trust that God can be found in places outside the church, even in places that might frighten you? Even among people that may make you uncomfortable?

Woman Wisdom teaches us that those are the places where we can learn the wisdom of God. And try as we might to create boundaries and borders, God keeps breaking them down. God keeps opening a new door. And if we don’t attempt to cross those boundaries, to walk through those open doors on our own, God will find a way to push us out into those spaces – or in the case of the Trenton church – God will push the boundaries into our own self-created sacred spaces. Because there are no divisions between sacred and secular with God.

Jesus understood the importance of breaking down barriers. That’s why he did his ministry on the margins. With those who were cast out from the temple and the synagogue. He sought out those everyone else shunned aside. He went to them, saw them for who they really were – who God made them to be – and offered them love – something they had never known before.

How can we begin breaking down barriers here at Grace? How can we start erasing the human-created lines between sacred and secular? In what ways can we go out into our community so that we can offer God’s love and receive God’s wisdom in return? And how can we let people in even when they disrupt the way things have always been? AMEN.

 

Words of Wisdom, Pastor Joshua Noah, July 19, 2015

Words of Wisdom

Pastor Joshua Noah

July 19, 2015

Ask any new parent or parent-to-be, and they will tell you that never before in their lives have they received so many “words of wisdom” than when they have their first kid. When it comes to how to raise children, suddenly everyone is an expert and more than eager to contribute their words of wisdom so that the new parents can raise their children right! Let’s admit it. We’re all guilty of it. Even I’ve done it, and being a former school teacher, I still do it. Give out parenting advice. Mostly because I’m a believer in the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. And as I’ve worked in ministry over the last few years, I’ve also come to believe that it takes a Church to raise a Christian. You just can’t be Christian on your own. It takes a community of other loving Christians, in all their imperfect brokenness, working together to share the Good News and to bring about the Kingdom of God into the here and now, in order to understand the complicated and difficult Wisdom of God.

This communal passing of wisdom has its foundations in the beginnings of human history. And during biblical times, it even became codified into what we call the Wisdom Literature of the scriptures – the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. These are texts which wrestle with the daily struggles of life – the joys and sorrows that life throws at us every single day. These texts address issues of everyday life: economics, friends, family, work, sex, politics, and so forth. And yet, they are the texts that are preached on the least. Probably because these texts don’t concern themselves much with issues of salvation, but simply with how to live a good life. Their wisdom comes not from some great divine revelation from above, but from the lived out experiences and observations of humans below – all of which are seeking to understand the action and character of God in such situations. As one biblical scholar puts it, “The Proverbs are spiritual guides for ordinary people, on an ordinary day, when water does not pour forth from rocks and angels do not come to lunch.” (Ellen Davis)

We have a term for this kind of theology in seminary, it’s called “Practical Theology” – as opposed to “Systematic Theology.” Systematic Theology is where people think about theology in the abstract ether and read volumes of books by theologians, often with German names, like Barth, Schliermacher, Moltmann, and Tillich – all in the hopes of trying to create an organized system by which people can understand God – problem is, it seems as though only other systematic theologians can understand it. And it’s often an understanding of God that works in an ideal world, not the real world. Practical Theology, meanwhile, looks at what is actually happening in the world, asks why it is happening, poses the question: “Where is God in all of this?” And finally asks the most difficult question of all: “How is the Spirit calling us, as Christians, to respond to this situation?” Hence, the practical theology department houses the fields of Christian Education, Preaching, Pastoral Care, Youth Ministry, Spirituality, and Mission. (And is the department where I spent most of my time in seminary.)

The book of Proverbs grows out of such a practical situation – the Jews living under the control of the Persian government. Now the Persians are kind enough to not only grant the Jews freedom of religion, but to also allow them to return to their promised land and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonians destroyed it. But yet, the wise sages and other religious leaders of this time felt it was important that their unique identity as the people of God not be squashed out by the powerful influence of Persian culture. So, they devised a system of Proverbs, and attributed their authorship to Solomon – the last great king of Israel who was renowned for his wisdom – in order to teach the people how to live a good life in the face of such overwhelming cultural influence.

The opening of Proverbs – the prologue – guides the reader as to the purpose of learning wisdom. Wisdom is important to learn because it: 1) transmits a tradition, 2) helps one to understand the action and character of God, 3) provides one with skills and virtues for making proper decisions for the sake of righteousness, justice, and equity, 4) provides the youth with prudence, knowledge, and discretion, 5) helps older sages to gain the skills they need to be able to provide counsel to others and grow the tradition, 6) helps one to interpret the teachings of the wise, and 7) helps one to deepen his/her own piety and “fear of the Lord.” If you notice, it’s not just the young who are called to participate in this learning of wisdom – ALL ages are called to learn this wisdom together – young and old alike, side-by-side, growing in their fear of the Lord which – according to the teacher of Proverbs – is the beginning of knowledge – the source and goal of all wisdom. And it is this divine wisdom of God which not only created and ordered all of creation, but also shapes and regulate our own human institutions – especially the Church.

On the other hand, fools are those who despise wisdom and instruction. Don’t be deceived. Fools are NOT unintelligent. Instead the rest of Proverbs describes fools as those who are easily seduced, tend to engage in actions which disrupt the community, follow their passions instead of their reason, and as such hold contempt for instruction about God’s will because it often contradicts their own will.

          As we move forward into chapter 3 of Proverbs, we find that the proper teaching of wisdom will promote the virtues of loyalty and faithfulness. Now please note that the meaning of “loyalty” is not to be taken lightly. Because the Hebrew word used for “loyalty” in our English translation is hesed. This word hesed is found over and over again in the Old Testament because it is the word used to describe the steadfast love and commitment of God for God’s people. It’s a powerful form of loyalty that does not waver in the face of outside cultural influences. At the same time, “faithfulness” is the expectation that the God to whom you are loyal will act true and in ways that will promote your well-being.

          That all sounds wonderful – but let’s be real. Such hesed loyalty and such well-being promoting faithfulness can only be possible if we truly TRUST God. And do we? First of all, it’s difficult to trust something about which you have no knowledge. How many parents would hire a babysitter you’ve never met before, without any references, or some organization vouching for their dependability? How many people would hire a contractor just by randomly picking one out of the phone book (for those of us who still do that) and not check his/her credentials or at least look up reviews of him/her on Angie’s List or Yelp? We don’t trust things about which we have no knowledge. So how do we gain knowledge of God?

The wisdom tradition tells us that knowledge of God comes not just from reading the bible, not just from reading complicated theological textbooks, not just from hearing the best preachers, not just from reading the latest feel-good Facebook post. True knowledge of God comes from life experience. From experiencing the joy and sorrow, the pain and euphoria of life. From waiting out the never-ending parade of medical tests, needle-sticks, chemo treatments, vomiting, hair-loss, and frustrating follow-ups that come from fighting a disease like cancer. To the moment of sheer resurrection you experience when the doctor tells you, “You are cancer free!” From the fear that comes when you realize that you’re going to have a kid and you’re just a kid yourself! To the overwhelming sense of love you experience when you hold your child for the first time. From the meaninglessness of watching a loved one slowly disappear due to a debilitating disease like Alzheimer’s. To the strange relief you feel when they have finally passed on and broken free of the disease’s grip. All of these moments, and many more like them, all contribute to our knowledge and understanding of God, God’s actions, and God’s character.

But through such trials and tribulations we have to ask ourselves: “Can we trust God long enough to gain that knowledge? Or do we grow inpatient too quickly and “lean on our own understanding?” The thing that Proverbs specifically tells us NOT to do.

And living a long life does not mean that you have gained such knowledge. Because if you’ve never taken the time to stop and ask, “What’s God doing right now?” or if you’ve only “leaned on your own understanding” then you will simply attribute such successes to your own abilities or such losses to bad luck, and will never understand the work of God in these moments.

Byron and Marshal were twins that I worked with at my home church. These twins were dedicated members of my youth group. But Byron and Marshal lived in a constant state of fear. They were afraid because everything in their life was going so well! I know it doesn’t make sense, and frankly I didn’t understand at first either. But one of them illustrated it for me – he drew a roller coaster ascending a steep hill. He said, “I feel like that things just keep going up and up for me. I’ve never experienced anything bad or difficult. I’ve never known anyone who died. I’ve always had everything I’ve ever wanted or needed. But at some point, I’m going to hit the top of the hill, and it’s going to be all downhill from there. And I’m terrified that when it starts to go downhill, it’s going to go down fast! And I don’t know how my faith is going to handle that.”

Most people would reply with, “No! It’s going to be fine! You’re young and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you! Jesus loves you!” But instead, I was blessed that the Spirit moved me to say, “Your right. And that would scare the hell out of me too! But I tell you what, when things do crash and burn, you have a group of people here in this church who love you, who are here for you, and who will pick you back up once you hit the ground.” Remember, it takes a Church to raise a Christian.

Only few months later, these young men would tragically lose their grandmother. And when they did, the other young people gathered around them, hugged them, prayed for them, listened to their mourning, and shared their own experiences of loss and coping – shared their own wisdom. They didn’t offer shallow platitudes of “She’s in a better place.” Or “It was God’s will.” These young people offered themselves. And those young men soon realized that God was present with them throughout that great loss – through the hugs, tears, presence, and prayers of their fellow youth group members. They saw what God was doing in that moment. And they gained great wisdom in the process. Wisdom that would help them to grow in their faith and in their faithfulness.

And that, my friends, is the wisdom tradition at its best. Wisdom that is passed down not just through words but through actions. Wisdom shared not because of our faith, but by our faithfulness. Wisdom sharing isn’t just an intellectual exercise, it is the acting out of our faithfulness. It’s re-enacting what God has already done and continues to do. God, who spoke the world into being by his Word of Wisdom, also put his Word of Wisdom into action in the world through the incarnate Word of Wisdom, Jesus Christ – who taught us not only by his words but by his actions. And in turn calls us to perform the same actions in the world – actions which lead to righteousness, justice, and equity for ALL people.

I’ve spent the last few weeks touring this town. Meeting people. Speaking to them. Listening to their stories. Trying to get a grasp on the ethos, the spirit, of this community. What I found was a community whose young people are struggling, suffering, and in pain. You don’t notice it at first sight because they are rather adept at making everything appear okay. But if you take a moment just to listen, to hear their stories, you will learn about loss, sorrow, and need. The need is the most painful of all because it’s not just a need for material things, it’s a need to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be feel like they matter in this world. The need to feel as though they have a place where they belong.

Many of us may respond, “Then come to the church! You belong here!” The problem is, the image that the church universal has created for young people is that they are not heard, that they are not taken seriously, and that their opinions don’t matter. And the only way we can undue that negative stereotype is not to sit back and wait for them to come to us, but to go out to them. To truly listen to them. To share the wisdom of our experiences of God with them, and even more importantly, to listen and learn from the wisdom of their life experiences. There is a lot that they can teach us, probably even more than we can teach them.

The prologue of Proverbs teaches us that wisdom is not just for the young and inexperienced, but for the old and experienced as well. So that the older sages can learn to give counsel and add to the wisdom tradition. How can you give counsel to a young person if you’ve never taken the time to listen to a young person’s life?

We ALL have a lot of growing to do. We all have a lot more wisdom we can gain from one another. We simply need to be willing to open ourselves to the movement of the Spirit among us – among both young and old alike. And we can only do that if we wish to seek wisdom and discipline. Otherwise, we become fools. And as the Proverbs 1:7 teach us – only “fools despise wisdom and instruction.” So do we wish to become foolish? Or do we wish to become wise? AMEN.