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Vision and
Revision
by the Rev. Rich Smith
May 6, 2007
Revelation 21:1-5, Acts 11:1-18
Some twenty-five years ago, when I had been preaching
at my new church in California for about six weeks, a woman greeted me
at the door after the service by saying, “O Pastor, each of your
sermons is better than the next!” Now, some thousand sermons later, I
hope that this trend has not continued, but you will have to be the
judge of that. There are weeks, to be sure, when I think I’ve done
pretty well, but then I am sobered by a memory of Winston Churchill,
who said that he used to marvel at how many people came out to hear him
speak until he realized, he said, “that if I were being hanged, the
crowd would be twice as large!”
This being my last Sunday for a while, I had thought about preaching a
really bad sermon today so that you’d be glad to see me go.... but I
also want you to be glad to see me come back come September, and so
it’s a matter of striking the right balance. I am grateful that a
pastoral sabbatical is a tradition at Westmoreland, and not just for
the ministers, but for all the professional staff every five years, and
while sabbaticals are now pretty much standard across the UCC, this
will be the first time in thirty-one years of ministry that I have had
a full one. On two occasions I had half-sabbaticals, the last one being
eight years ago. So I’m ready, and excited, but also a little bit
anxious, because after all I am an eldest child and I have this thing
about being responsible, so stepping away from it is a new thing for me.
But I realize that it really is a very biblical thing, sabbaticals
being based on the institution of the Sabbath, found right there in the
opening of Genesis, when on the seventh day of creation God rested. In
a reflection of this, the Jewish faith – and the fourth commandment –
mandated that every seventh day be a day of rest, one pretty much
ignored in our Sabbath/7 culture. But the Orthodox Jews in my
neighborhood still practice it faithfully. You can see them walking to
services on Saturday mornings. This also found expression in
agricultural practices of ancient Israel, which many farmer still
follow today, with fields lying fallow every seventh year; the land was
much healthier that way. It also played out in matters of social
justice with the year of jubilee – every fiftieth year, after seven
cycles of seven years, all the inequities that had built up were
supposed to be erased, the land given back to its original owners, the
social order put back into equilibrium. That’s what Sabbath is supposed
to do, and sabbaticals as well – give a chance for lives that have
become out of balance to get back into balance, to breathe in as well
as breathe out, for restoration of individuals and communities and
indeed the earth itself – by ceasing business as usual, stepping back,
living by a different rhythm, gaining a new perspective, restoring a
lost vision or even receiving a new one altogether. As Wayne Muller
writes in his book simply entitled Sabbath, “Sabbath can be a
revolutionary challenge to the violence of overwork, mindless
accumulation, and the endless multiplication of desires,
responsibilities, and accomplishments. Sabbath is a way of being in
time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the
gifts of spirit and eternity.”
I am grateful to have this gift and this chance, which admittedly not
too many professions offer. Mostly, it’s been for those in academia,
but I think the world would be a healthier place if everyone got them.
I remember when I was in college, I got a summer job at the nearby
Kaiser Steel Mill. Fortunately, I didn’t have to shovel coal into the
furnaces, but rather numbers into a computer. I got the job because at
the steel mill they had a practice of giving 13 week vacations every
five years – sabbaticals of sorts – because they understood that people
would work better in the long run with this kind of break; and I got
the temporary job of replacing one of those workers.
But for me there is another component to this sabbatical time, because
it’s not just about rest, as biblical as that may be. There’s another
biblically-rooted element, as illustrated in our scripture lesson from
the book of Acts. It’s about vision and revision. In this story Peter
is not on sabbatical, but he has taken time out for prayer, in essence
a mini-Sabbath every day, which always gives one a new perspective. He
prays so hard he goes into a trance, which leads to a dream, a vision,
of all sorts of animals, both clean and unclean, all together with no
distinction being made between them, being lowered before him, and then
a voice saying, “Peter, get up, kill, and eat.” At first he protests,
saying that he has been a strict observer of the purity code, the
ancient dietary laws of Leviticus, meaning there were certain kinds of
food that had never and would never pass his lips. But the voice in the
vision continues, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
This happens three times. And Peter interprets this to mean that he
must take the message of Jesus to “the uncircumcised,” that is, the
Gentiles, those whom he had thought to be, like some of those animals,
unclean, and not worthy of hearing the gospel. And so he does. Word of
Peter’s unorthodox activities got back to the elders at the mother
church in Jerusalem, who call Peter in for questioning. Why in the
world is he doing this? How dare he risk the purity of the faith by
letting in outsiders? But when Peter explains what happened to him, how
clear this vision was, they too see the point, and are open to revision
of their way of doing things. As Peter argued, “If then God gave them
the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” “When they heard this, they
were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even
to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’”
Now, looking back, this was a major turning point in the history of the
Christian movement, for if Christianity had remained only a Jewish
sect, it may have ended up as a mere historical footnote. It was only
when they started including Gentiles, outsiders, the unclean – doing,
by the way, what Jesus himself modeled in his own ministry – that they
were able to grow into a world-class religion.
And it’s important to note that this idea of being more inclusive was
not merely Peter’s idea or whim, it was God’s idea, which Peter became
open to receiving in prayer. And it wasn’t just brilliant inspiration
for an effective approach to evangelism: "Grow the church: accept
outsiders!" It wasn’t just a new technique for church growth – it was
really what we call a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking, of imaging
how the world is or ought to be. God’s realm is not just for us – it’s
for everybody!
The term “paradigm shift” was first coined in 1962 by science historian
Thomas Kuhn, to describe a change in the basic assumptions in the
ruling theories of science. A good example would be a statement made in
1900, by one Lord Kelvin: "There is nothing new to be discovered in
physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
But just five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on
relativity. The way the physical universe was conceived of changed
forever – a paradigm shift! Earlier, Galileo changed things when he
discovered the moons of Jupiter, and figured out that the earth was not
at the center of the cosmos. Darwin, in the same way, turned the whole
notion of the means of creation on its head. New paradigms all, which
are still not fully accepted in our culture. (The Washington Post
reported this morning that some 61% if Americans don’t believe in
evolution!) The splitting of the atom, and its employment in Weapons of
Mass Destruction also created a new paradigm, which led Einstein to
warn: "The release of the power of the atom has changed everything,
except our way of thinking. Thus, we drift towards a catastrophe of
unparalleled magnitude." New paradigms demand new thinking, but we shy
away and turn too easily to outmoded solutions.
In my thirty-one years of ministry, I have witnessed a new paradigm for
the meaning of the church and the ministry itself. It was best
described by Loren Mead, of the Alban Institute, who says that the
church has actually been through two paradigm shifts in its history –
the first occurring when Constantine made Christianity the official
religion of the empire, and the church went from being a kind of
underground, persecuted, counter-cultural movement to being part of the
establishment. After that paradigm shift, church and state were pretty
much one and the same. To be a good Christian was to be a good citizen,
not a dissenter. Ministers were chaplains to the community, and church
members simply paid their pledge, sat in the pews, and did what they
were told to do. But in the last fifty years there has been another
large paradigm shift, in that we do not live in the world of
Christendom any longer. Clergy find themselves managing institutions
and laity find themselves called to mission beyond the walls of the
church building, and they want and deserve a huge say in what that
mission is. Faith has become much more a matter of choice than
obligation. It’s a different world, and in many ways the church I was
trained to serve no longer exists, although many churches operate as
though it does and then wonder why things aren’t working like they used
to.
Fortunately there are some churches who are coming to terms with all
this and I intend to see them for myself! While I am traveling about
this summer, observing other successful progressive churches, making
music, taking some classes, attending events (like the General Synod),
reading all those books that have piled up (because I am
constitutionally unable to walk out of a bookstore empty handed), I do
expect to learn some new methods and techniques and strategies for
growth and vitality that I will bring back and want to share with you.
But more than that, I pray that, like Peter, I may be open to some new
visions, some new and Spirit-inspired ways of imagining the church,
ways of being the church and leading the church in the midst of the new
paradigm. For example, I take seriously the learnings and the
conversations stimulated by our Worship Initiative. And so I’ll be
looking at some of the larger questions – not just how worship is done,
but what does it mean? Why do we do what we do? Is worship at its heart
an experience of God, as some of you would like it to be, or is it a
time to be inspired for our work of justice in the world, as others
feel? Some of both? Or something else – how do the values of community
building, faith formation, the place of children, spontaneity vs. order
play into these larger issues? And how will we balance commitment to
tradition with openness to hearing a new word? These are some of the
things I hope to engage as I step away from the daily routine and view
our life from a different perspective.
And in many ways, you are all going on the sabbatical journey with me.
Well, I’ve only booked tickets for Pam any myself, but this is going to
be a different kind of summer for you as well. Bob and Amber have made
sure that Sundays will continue to be exciting and inspiring and there
will lots of other activities of a social or educational nature, all
under the banner of “Growing and Greening our Faith.” There will be
some impressive guest preachers (like the editor of Newsweek Magazine).
And there will be, with my blessing and at my urging, experimentation
in worship. Nothing too radical (I don’t expect to come back and find a
banjo orchestra in place) – but my challenge and charge to you is to be
open to all this and to where it leads. How will you continue to feel
the Spirit? How will your experience of the Holy in this place lead you
to recognize and experience the Holy in every place? And when you
travel, I urge you to seek out other houses of worship and report back
– not just that the pews were harder than ours or the coffee was better
or the preacher was worse... but what did you find inspiring, helpful,
or even off-putting? How were you greeted or included as an “outsider?”
Note techniques that you think might be helpful to us, but beyond that,
look at the larger vision: in what ways may it be more inclusive than
ours? How do they understand “church?” What does the life of faith mean
in that setting, and how might it inform our life? What is the
paradigm? Has there been a revision of the vision that takes church to
a whole new level in mission? Bring all this back. Reflect on the
experience you have when you are in town and worshiping here. When I
get back, we’ll put our heads together, and share our experiences and
our own visions and revisions.
I can’t promise that you or I will have the kind of visions that Peter
had – I don’t usually go into a trance, though I suppose that the
freedom of being away from my usual settings and responsibilities might
make me more susceptible to that. But I do hope that we might be open
to a Still Speaking God.... and to revelations like those of that other
visionary, John of Patmos, who saw a new heaven and a new earth, which
is God’s dream, and God’s promise, for us all.
I leave you with these words of Wendell Berry:
Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left for grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.
When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.
May it ever be so! Amen.
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
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