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.