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And when it came his turn, he said, “I’m joining this church because of those cannons across the street on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.” |
One of the rhythms of parish ministry that I enjoyed immensely, and from which I took great satisfaction, was the reception of new members into the life of the church. Month by month, they would come to the Session meetings—young, old, singles, couples, families—where, early on in the docket, they would be introduced and asked to say something about their personal pilgrimage and their own sense of what was leading them at that particular moment to join that particular church. We heard everything on those occasions—from the profound to the superficial. Some would talk of joining the church because of the terrific choir or the rich liturgy or the church’s sense of mission in the community. Others would talk of joining the church because of the adult Sunday School offerings, or the youth program for the kids, or the stately buildings. Some would admit in so many words that they were there to see and be seen; others would confess that they were there because something, or Someone, had turned them upside down and they could no longer bear not to be there. We heard everything—from the sublime to the ridiculous. But I will never forget one particular testimony I heard on one particular occasion in the church I served in Atlanta. He was a seminary professor, and he and his family were joining the church. And when it came his turn, he said, “I’m joining this church because of those cannons across the street on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.” I thought at the time, “That’s a strange answer.” I had never noticed the cannons across the street. And I would look for them the next day, and, sure enough, there they would be, sitting there as mute relics of some war and pointing straight at the stone gothic sanctuary of my church across the street. I would note that, were they loaded, they could blow away the whole narthex. But at that particular moment in that particular Session meeting, I thought to myself, “That’s a strange answer.” “I’m joining this church,” he said, “because those cannons are pointed directly at us.” People join the church for many reasons, but have you ever heard a reason like that? As I got to know this seminary professor, I began to understand why he would join a church because of cannons pointed at it. Holding a Ph.D. from Duke, he was a student of Stanley Hauerwas. If you’ve never read any Hauerwas, I hope you will before you leave this place. Hauerwas has written widely about the modern-day perils of attempting to follow Jesus Christ in this culture. He and others have described Christians in our time as being something like “resident aliens”—faithful colonists in an otherwise hostile, post-Christian, secular society. He has tracked the decline of what he calls “the Constantinian arrangement” between the church and the powers-that-be, and he has asserted—rightly, I think—that that arrangement between the church and the emperor, which got started with Constantine, is breaking down in our time. I know enough about Stanley Hauerwas to have a sense of why a student of his would be intrigued at the thought of joining a church because it sits across the street from a hall of power and has cannons pointed at it. But how often do we think about the church of Jesus Christ going about
its business, day in and day out, while, all the time, it knows it’s
in the crosshairs of cannons pointed right at it? How often when we’re
at church—taking part in a discussion class, or drinking coffee in
the fellowship hour, or making sandwiches for homeless people, or practicing
handbells, or whatever it is that we do in church—how often, when
we’re there, do we ever think about any of it having much urgency:
the sort of urgency that comes from knowing that all of the big guns that
the world can muster are cocked and pointed straight at us? |
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No, standing on tiptoe with nothing to show for it can’t sustain a church for very long. |
Not often at all, I suspect. In these days when what really compels the mainstream church in this country is the institutional maintenance of it all, we can get energized about a full sanctuary, a balanced budget for next year, a complete slate of Church School teachers, stuff like that. If any church we know anything about ever lived with a more ultimate kind of urgency, it seems that it got over it all an awfully long time ago—maybe even as long ago as the era in which Matthew’s church was operating. That soon after the life and death of Jesus Christ, they were dealing with a sense of embarrassment caused by the delay of the return of Christ. They had believed that the Son of Man would return soon, they had concocted one calculation after another regarding when precisely he would return, they had bragged to their neighbors about him coming back any old day now, they had stood on tiptoe with their noses pressed to the windowpane—waiting, waiting, waiting on tiptoe—and nothing had happened. So a strong strain of skepticism had started to set in. After all, by Matthew’s time, it had been some good while since the crucifixion of Jesus—75, 80, 90 years—and that’s a long time to stand on tiptoe. And to add insult to injury, the early church had begun to suffer the taunts of outsiders: “You Christians have been bragging about, looking for, the return of your Son of Man. You’ve had your noses pressed to the glass for so long that your faces are permanently imprinted there, and what do you have to show for it? When’s he going to come? You say, ‘In this generation.’ Well, where is he?” So a lethargy had started to set in. After all, what’s the point of urgency, when, day after day after day, it’s the same old thing? You can only wait so long until those arguments rehearsed in Second Peter start to make a lot of sense: “…in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging in their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!” No, standing on tiptoe with nothing to show for it can’t sustain a church for very long. It was tearing at the edges of Matthew’s church. If a church decides that we were wrong about all of this and it’s probably just us down here after all so let’s just make the best of it, then it cannot long sustain the ethical life. For that sort of life makes sense only if there’s the hope and the expectation that, across the day-to-day progression of history, our story is being purposefully gathered up into God’s story, and it’s all headed somewhere purposeful even if we can’t always see it; and if we give up on all of that, then join Rotary or something but to Hell with the church. It’s this sort of skepticism that was tearing at Matthew’s church. Which is probably why he crafted his eschatological discourse—as a response to this skepticism. And our text for today, which is part of this discourse, affirms the connection between ethics and eschatology. Christians should always act, said Matthew, as if the coming of the Son of Man were near. How can there even be a good case for the ethical life without a hefty eschatology—the idea that that ethical life makes sense because of where all of life is headed? If any church we know anything about ever lived with that kind of urgency… |
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We never start Advent with something charmingly domestic and sweet and tranquil. |
Well, it’s a good thing that—quite unlike the slurpy sentimentality that the rest of the world will marinate in this December—the Church begins Advent, the Church begins a new Christian year with this reminder, yet again, to cultivate, of all things, an ultimate sense of urgency. We never start Advent with something soft and baby-blue, or with carols about the manger, or with people holding candles and singing “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” We never start Advent with something charmingly domestic and sweet and tranquil. We start it instead with an apocalyptic text like this one which is nothing if not a jarring appeal for urgency. For the church to be alert, to watch, and to act as if the coming of the Son of Man is near. For belief in such a coming means that life is lived in a certain different kind of way—not an endless succession of tomorrows that look just like yesterday, but toward an event. Toward an ending that, by its own nature, changes the way one values things. As Tom Long has put it, “If the dam twenty minutes upstream breaks, then the Rembrandt on the wall is less valuable than the rubber raft in the attic.” The point is that an awareness that we know how life ends has an impact upon what we value now. The point of Advent, as we begin Advent, is that the Church is being
called upon yet again to remember how life is going to be ultimately and
finally, so that we can begin, yet again, living into that life now. If
we are to be judged, for example, by how we have treated the least of
Christ’s brothers and sisters, then we ought to begin—right
now—re-evaluating who’s really important. If we are to be judged
by the One Whom we call our judge, then we ought to begin—right now—re-evaluating
what justice really is. If we are to be judged by the One Whom we refer
to as a hen who gathers her brood under her wings, then we ought to begin—right
now—re-evaluating what compassion really is. |
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All of this, as if the chief gift we pastors offer the world is tact. |
And here’s one that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. If we are to be judged by the One Whom we call the Prince of Peace, then we ought to begin—right now—re-evaluating how we work to genuinely embody some measure of that peace here. Taking the ethics of peacemaking seriously is at certain points a corporate task, and at other points a personal task; and speaking personally—speaking about me now, and not necessarily about you, and not about any official position of this seminary—I am not at peace with myself when it comes to my own, often altogether too tentative response to the war in Iraq from its very outset. In terms of my own personal ethics, my response to this war has been altogether too muted. Surrounded as I am in this community by the tools of our faith which we deal with daily here—scripture and theology and ethics and churchly tradition and twenty centuries of Christian prayer—I have nonetheless been far too unwilling to apply the prophetic critique that they offer to a war that seems ever more, to me at least, like quicksand snuffing out the lives of over a thousand of our troops (not to mention the civilians on both sides caught up in the crossfire and the other troops of both our nation’s friends and its enemies). In spite of how much I’ve wanted to support and encourage some of you who are heading toward military chaplaincies and, conceivably, your own tours of duty in Iraq; and in spite of how much I’ve wanted to encourage a few young men who are friends of mine or the children of friends of mine—wanted to encourage them in their sense of mission and commitment and duty and service as they’ve willingly offered themselves up for going to Iraq—I am no longer sure, if I ever was, that this cause justifies their sacrifice or yours. I am not a thoroughgoing pacifist, and I believe that there are elements of this cause that may have been noble, at least in the abstract; but, to say the very least, these strategic elements have been executed poorly, to the end that we are now mired in a colossal and immoral mess. What’s more, I’ve been willing, all too often, to examine the daily evidence of how badly this war has been going, how confused has been its purpose, how ineffective has been its outcome, how disruptive to families has been its impact; as if I’ve been examining the numbers for the daily lottery. I’ve been ashamed of myself for not speaking up, earlier on, when in this community various signs and posters of protest to the war were removed here and there from various apartment and dorm room doors; when the charge was uttered, here and there, that such signs and posters were unseemly and unpatriotic—as if the chief business of this community is the formation of patriots as opposed to the formation of Christian pastors, as if there’s never a distinction between the two. I’ve been ashamed of myself for feeling that, in this institution, when other seminaries were firing manifestos to the local newspaper or marching in the streets, we dodged a bullet (if you’ll pardon that image) by merely holding a Midweek Manna or two in which the topic was how to pastor congregations and to manage conflict in the midst of different opinions about this war. I’ve been ashamed of myself, as well, for congratulating myself, against the backdrop of the unfurling news of this war, for how managerial I’ve been as opposed to how faithful I’ve been—for how good I’ve been at keeping my mouth shut about my reservations to this war, lest I offend this or that potential donor. All of this, as if the chief gift we pastors offer the world is tact. All of this, as if the One Who begins breaking into our world at Advent comes like a diplomat bearing a briefcase rather than a thief in the night creating for the whole wide world a new sense of urgency. Could it be, in fact, that the last thing that we want from the Church,
from the gospel, is such urgency? “Keep awake,” says Matthew,
but could it be that that’s about the last thing in the world that
we want to hear from him at Advent? |
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“Here’s what. We’ve read the Bible, and we know how it ends. We aren’t at the end yet,” he said, “but we know how it ends, and that’s what makes the difference.” |
Calvin Butts is the Senior Pastor of New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Years ago, it was the church of Adam Clayton Powell and then of Samuel DeWitt Proctor (if you’ve never heard of them, go look them up; it will do you good). Calvin Butts has been there for probably twenty years. Abyssinian is one of the most historically faithful African-American churches in this country. It sits up in Harlem, just north of 125th St. It rises up above that street in majestic splendor, and from its spire you can see just about anything that you would want to see. Or, to put it more accurately, just about everything that you would not
want to see. Blocks and blocks of burned-out buildings. Shabby little
pawn shops, boarded up storefronts, roach-infested corner groceries that
practically cower behind protective steel mesh. Vacant lots which are
illegal dumps, in the vicinity of which prostitutes and crack dealers
ply their trades. Nights in that neighborhood are punctuated by the sounds
of gunfire and sirens, and in the daytime truant kids roam the blocks
in gangs. In an interview with someone from The New York Times a few years ago, someone asked Calvin Butts, “Yeah, sure, you’re doing great stuff, but it’s hard to see what difference you’re making; so what enables you and your folks to keep going?” You know what Calvin Butts said? He said, “Here’s what. We’ve read the Bible, and we know how it ends. We aren’t at the end yet,” he said, “but we know how it ends, and that’s what makes the difference.” We know, too, don’t we! |
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...let it be that we are reminded, over and over again and all the year long, that we know how its ends! |
We aren’t at the end yet, but we know how it ends. It ends just like it begins—with God! The One Who redeems it all, transforms it all—just as surely as this One created it all! And that means that, even on the bleakest day, we need to stay alert. So let the cannons of our culture aim themselves at the church of Jesus
Christ. Let them be loaded with every pretentious assumption that our
self-serving and self-absorbed world can muster. Let them fire away for
all they’re worth. It won’t stop us, because we know how it
ends! It ends with God! And let that holy power that draws us to this holy place, and to places like it, day by day and week by week just keep on drawing us here—that disruptive, prophetic power that gets let loose here in the midst of our faithful worship and summons every one of us to submit to transformation, in the presence of which our fingers are pulled one by one from their tight grip on the status quo and we are wrenched away from the world as it is to get a view, over and over again, of the world as it will be. Let that holy power keep empowering us to remember that we know how it ends! It ends with God! And let it be that—besieged as we often are by all about life that threatens to overwhelm us like a treacherous wave—we nonetheless find our way back to this special place and places like it, to be shaped by the waters of its font and fed by the bread and cup of its table; and, so shaped and fed, let it be that we are reminded, over and over again and all the year long, that we know how its ends! It ends with God! “Keep awake, therefore,” says Matthew. For we know how it ends.
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Ethics
and Eschatology