the Rev. Dr. Paul Tellström Irvine United Congregational ChurchProper 9 2007 Being Liberal and Evangelical— July 8, 2007 Copyright 2007, Paul Tellström. May not be used without permission Galatians 6:1-7 Luke 10:1-11 word count: 2.170
After my time at General Synod was over (and it was a time when I had a renewed sense of pride to be a part of the UCC), I rented a car and left Hartford on the next leg of my trip. I punched in the address of the Thomaston Opera House into my GPS, and the little voice began to tell me how to get there. Thirty years ago, the scenic designer of the old Victorian opera house in Thomaston, Connecticut quit, and in desperation, the tech director (and a friend of mine) called me to fill the post. I worked in theatres throughout college as a technical director and small-time scenic designer, and so off I went to design sets for the summer season at the Thomaston Opera House. When I arrived a couple of weeks ago, the door was open, and I climbed up the stairs to the auditorium and walked through the backstage area and right out onto the stage where a single bulb burned in the same stand, just as I remembered it all those years ago. What I didn’t remember was how small the grand opera house had shrunken to—my memory had doubled its size. Plaster had fallen from the walls and the beautiful painted decorations were missing in some places and blackened with age in others. I looked up to the stage-left side of the balcony, where the Thomaston Opera House ghost was always reported to be sitting; small, wiry, and sporting a black mustache that accented his constant look of intensity. I wondered if just once someone would have reported that they saw him looking bored or doing a crossword puzzle, but no—he was always seen in that split second he could be seen, staring intensely. He had been the organist for the opera house, and had been killed in any number of ways depending on who was telling the story. His organ, the “Mighty Wurlitzer” used to rise up from the pit, all lit up and white. Now, this huge console sat on a plywood platform to my right. The organ had a system that allowed it to play itself, almost like a player piano, and was still used as late as the 1970’s. When a new staff person arrived, there was a hazing ritual. You would be taken to the basement to work late at night on a set piece that just had to be finished by morning. The whole crew trundled along to the theatre to help, and they told you all about the Thomaston Opera House Ghost. How he could be heard playing the organ by himself late at night, how you could be by yourself in the theatre and suddenly see him staring intensely at you from the corner of your eye in the balcony, and just as quickly he would be gone. After telling the story, someone would remark that they seemed to be missing a crucial “left-handed bolt-remover” and someone else would report that they had last seen it sitting on the stage upstairs. This was the cue to ask the newest person (which would be me) to go up the back stairs into the empty theatre to find the tool in question, and since your reputation rested in knowing your tools, you didn’t want to say that you had never heard of a left-handed bolt-remover—you simply hoped that it would present itself on a stage lit only by a light-bulb on a stand. Up I went, not knowing that everyone else was going up the front way. Out onto the stage where my shadows were thrown up to the balcony where the ghost was sure to be staring intensely as I walked by the bare bulb, and then it happened. The organ lit up, white and monstrous, and began playing itself like some musical Moby Dick. The keys moved by themselves, which was more than my feet could do. I stood there cemented to the floor and it became worse when I heard the eerie laughter. Laughter….from the crew, who came out of the shadows. “Boy wasn’t that funny.” “Do you know how scared you look?” My friend came out from behind the controls stage right weeping with laughter. I wanted to be so angry, but it was soon explained to me that this was done to the newest person, and it would be my turn to lead the plan to do it to the next. I couldn’t wait. Those two young costumers will never be the same. Two weeks ago I stood near this same spot in this decaying theatre and took one more look around, and left without so much as a “boo” from the balcony. The next day I found myself in my hometown in upstate New York, and it was important for me to go to the church where I grew up. Another old Victorian building, and before pulling open the door to the sanctuary, I had a moment when I thought….what if it will be the same as the opera house? What if the paint is falling with the plaster and there is the same air of disuse and neglect? What if the changing religious climate in this country has had an impact here as well? I opened the door to the same, well-kept and familiar sanctuary I had sat in as a child, where Janice Johnson sang in the choir and my father taught Sunday school. Coming back from General Synod, I feel refreshed and eager to move ahead—I was energized by the prophetic preaching of Bill Moyers, the words of Susan Thistlethwaite and Walter Brueggemann encouraging us to be faithful to our tradition, and the closing worship where 8,000 people could stand and sing “There is a Balm in Gilead” without looking at the words. There was a commonality and a reminder in it that what we have is a very precious church—one that embraces the outsider, believes in going to Mexico to build houses for the poor, believes that social justice is an important component of how we live out our faith, cares for the earth, wishes to be informed and make our own decisions on important issues, forms communities of faith that become like family in spite of our differences, and worships through the questions to the Creator that brought us into being. We were sent back to our churches by President John Thomas, who reached into the fountain that stayed prominently in front of us the whole time, and threw the water up into the air in our direction, reminding us never to forget our baptism and what it means for us to be a part of the living water that binds us together. We were sent, like Jesus sending the seventy out, saying, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” The theme of the message is “the harvest” but it is not clear whether this implies an imminent end of the age in eschatological terms or a longer period of missionary work. John Dominic Crossan has presented an approach to this passage as exemplifying the contrasting methods of the post-apostolic church in proclaiming the gospel by word of mouth and communal behavior. He says that there were two distinctive approaches, one by resident householders who developed a type of “domesticated gospel of the kingdom” and one by a more radical and smaller group who developed an apocalyptic gospel. This established a dialectic that enabled the gospel to spread more effectively, especially in the late first and early second centuries CE and could do so for our time as well. Crossan believes that this is both a clarifying and a helpful view at this stage in our understanding of the NT.1 Today we practice these two distinctive approaches of which Crossan speaks. The difference is that it is our mainline traditions that embrace the “domesticated gospel of the realm of God” and it is the growing and dominant radical forces that preach the apocalyptic gospel. We are the direct inheritors of the tradition that shaped liberal Protestantism in America. In his seminal book, “The Law of Congregational Usage”, William Barton asks the question, “What Does Congregationalism Stand For?” The answer is profound, especially since Congregationalism is the historical basis for American liberal religion and society. Through our predecessor denomination, we inherit this idea: “Congregationalism stands for representative democracy. It believes in liberty with all its attendant risks, as safer than sacerdotal (priestly) rule. It holds that, great as are the perils of freedom, in the long run it is safer to trust the people than the priests or the politicians. It still stands for no alliance between church and state but for the governing of the state by an intelligent democracy, a government of the people, by the people, and for the good of the people.”2 As we shared this Fourth of July as a country, we should be reminded that we are still divided over crucial issues of faith and governance. That we no longer may assume that we share many of the values upon which our country was founded, among them being the view of religion that we hold as separate from the rule of the state. A growing voice preaches the apocalyptic gospel that invites church and state to mingle, claiming the greater good for the whole. While on our end, we continue to preach a domesticated gospel—we are the ones who metaphorically “go to the home where we are welcome and stay there”, while others bolder than ourselves go out to claim the harvest as their own. As people of faith, one of the notions that is used to divide us is the idea that we cannot be liberal and evangelical. The idea that has been enforced today is that those who are strictly orthodox to the point of biblical infallibility can be the only ones to be evangelical cedes the advantage to one side. In “Steeplejacking”, a new book by Sheldon Culver and John Dorhauer, the authors point out instances where our mainline churches are being intentionally undermined and taken through sowing dissension in congregations over wedge issues. The umbrella organization for this activity is called the IRD, or the Institute for Religion and Democracy, which feeds dissenting groups in each liberal mainline tradition. In ours, it is known as "The Biblical Witnesses". The Presbyterians have the Presbyterian Lay Committee, and the Methodists have the Confessing Movement. However, with regard to being theologically liberal and evangelical, the authors say this: “Liberal thought originally emerged as a way of reconciling the teachings of the church with the undeniable scientific and moral realities that were emerging in the 19th century. Without such an emergence of thought, the church would have had to force every citizen to choose between rationality on the one hand, and an orthodoxy that could no longer be defended without the abandonment of intellect and reason on the other. The church’s ability to adapt its theologies to emerging truths has been essential to its survival from its inception in the shadows of the Roman Empire to the present day. At its core, this clearly makes liberal theology an evangelical movement within Christianity.”3 As another Fourth of July rolls around, I am reminded of the role our churches played in the founding of our country, and I see this as a source of pride for us. I hear a warning as well—a call to be as the seventy who were sent out as to every nation where the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, to invite and welcome those who are truly seeking to worship in an atmosphere where not only everyone is welcome and the social gospel lives side by side with the search for meaning and spirituality, but where our notions of governance are vested in the trust of the people of this nation, and not in the power of the church selling itself to Rome, but rather being the conscience of Rome—speaking with a prophetic voice that is always lifting up those who cannot speak for themselves. The apostle Paul is right, “God is not mocked, and we will reap what we sow.” In what state we will find our churches and our traditions for your children’s generation and the next has everything to do with how we cherish them now. The call for us is to be more proudly evangelical. To invite others to join with us in recapturing this vision and to strengthen the church, both here and our churches across the country that bear an important witness and a heritage that shaped us to be the country our founders wished us to be: Free, separate from the state in order to be its loving critic, and as Paul said, “Bearer of the message that we should bear each other’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ.” Amen.
Sermon Resources
Scripture for Sunday, July 8, 2007 Proper 9
Galatians 6:1-7 1 My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. 4 All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. 5 For all must carry their own loads. 6 Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher. 7 Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.
Luke 10:1-11 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’
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