Two weeks ago at the funeral of Jack Layton, a prominent Canadian politician I admired greatly, Stephen Page, formerly of the Barenaked Ladies, sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”  The song felt out of place in the formality of a state funeral with prime ministers and royal representatives and a flag-draped coffin, but ultimately there was nothing more Canadian than yet another Canadian covering this song.  I have been obsessively replaying it for two weeks now.  Perhaps Page’s version is not the best musically among the song’s countless iterations, but its friend-singing-at-a-friend’s-funeral raw emotion is incomparable.

Looking back on my compulsive replaying of the song, I noticed an odd emotional pattern.  I feel down, and rather than an upbeat song, I seek out music that reaffirms my current emotion.  I feel morose and alone, so I pick a sombre song and listen to it alone.  The technology of our culture has made listening to music, a once inherently communal act, an ever more intensely private, personal matter.  With the internet, I have nearly any song whatsover available to me, without previous constraints of culture and language and place.  With headphones, I have the advantage of listening in complete solitude.  Individual music listening can be therapeutic, but it is not particularly challenging.

Gathering in a church, however, is a rare case of communal song among nonmusicians.  So when I feel down, the church prods me into raising my voice, however quiet and lacking in confidence, in jubilant praise.  When I feel jubilant, the church prods me into pensive reflection.  And in each emotional challenge, I am challenged to stop listening alone and start making something in community.

Christ and the Canaanite Woman, Juan de Flandes, c. 1500

A sermon by Jean-Daniel Cathèll-Williams, Director of Youth Ministries, Mystic Congregational Church, Mystic, Connecticut.

A reading from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter 15, verses 21-28.

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

The Good News of Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God.

I just said “the Good News of Jesus Christ.”  An ancient and traditional way to conclude a formal reading from one of the four Gospels.  So ancient and traditional, some of you may have been content to just let me do that.  To call that passage good news.  Yet maybe among us are some more sceptical or more attentive people who are wondering, why I have the nerve to get up here and tell you a story where Jesus calls a woman a dog is good news.  The easy explanation is that the story has a happy ending: “And her daughter was healed.”  All’s well that ends well, right?  Let’s not all fret about who called whom what.

The honest explanation is that it bothers me too.  It’s been bothering me all week.  In our United Church of Christ tradition, as in the Catholic Church and several other Protestant denominations, sermon texts are suggested by a rotating list of passages called the Revised Common Lectionary.  We use this guide because it unites with Christians around the world, and sometimes more impressively, with other churches in our town, knowing that millions upon millions of Christians are being inspired and/or puzzled by the same words we are.  We use it to help nudge our preachers into touching upon the whole variety of the Christian message, rather than falling into the tempting trap of just preaching our favourite stories in an endless rotation.  We use it so that the youth minister and seminarian in the pulpit on a summer Sunday does not squirm away from the hard parts of the Bible, the parts where Jesus seems, frankly, to be mean.

When I was a teenager, I wore a bracelet, a woven cloth bracelet embroidered with the letters, “WWJD.”  Trust me, in the 90s, this was cool.  The acronym, “WWJD” was designed to be a reminder to me to pose the question, “What would Jesus do?” No question was too large or small for me to, at least on my good days, first ask, “What would Jesus do?”  Would Jesus lie?  No.  Would Jesus have a Snickers bar and Pepsi for lunch?  Maybe. Would Jesus skip class?  No.  But what about if it were to talk to and comfort a friend who is sobbing?  Hmm…

The problem I quickly discovered is that I did not actually know what Jesus would do.  The Bible doesn’t cover everything.  Even if it had, it was long and had lots of big words, so I can’t claim I had read it all anyway.  So I created a fake Jesus, and I know I am not the only one to have done this.  I created a comfortable, imaginary Jesus.  Jesus was the perfect example, so I assumed he behaved perfectly, or at least what my preconceived ideas about what “perfectly” would mean.  Jesus the nice guy, Jesus the well-mannered, Jesus the rule-follower, the Jesus of Emily Post’s Etiquette guide.

Our answers to the question what would Jesus do risk taking on a life of their own and may lead us into creating a Jesus far removed from what Jesus in fact did.  The Jesus of the Bible was not Jiminy Cricket, a chipper little voice of conscience.  The Jesus of the Bible did not wander the streets of Jerusalem with a ceaseless grin and a t-shirt that said, “Free hugs.”  As a teenager, he got exasperated when his mother asked him, “Hey son, where have you been the last few days?”  He seemed exasperated with her again as young adult when she asked for a little help in the kitchen at a wedding that was stressing her out.  “Woman, my hour has not come yet.”  That’s just King James for, “Not now, Mom.”  Jesus was not all smiles.  He got angry sometimes, and he openly wept sometimes.  Jesus called people “broods of vipers,” once accused his best friend of being “Satan,” ran through a sacred temple screaming and flipping over tables, and he implied that a woman in desperate need was a dog.

So not only is the Jesus of the Bible not actually what we often picture when asking “What would Jesus do?” we’re faced with the harder reality that perhaps we would not like it if others behaved as Jesus did.  If a perfectly polite, endlessly accomodating, easily pushed-over man preached in ancient Judea, it was not the man who enraged both a mob and the Empire so viciously that he was crucified on Calvary.

So to find real Jesus, we go back to Matthew 15.

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

What does the Bible mean when we read about someone being “demon-possessed”?   Are there marauding actual, evil spirits eagerly conquering the bodies of innocent young maidens?  Is Matthew using a vivid metaphor?  Is the mother simply using her culture’s only available understanding of what perhaps we would call a mental illness?  All three are common Christian understandings, but let’s focus on the mother’s full description, “My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”  “Suffering terribly.”  However we describe the reality of demon possession, the daughter’s suffering was utterly real.

What would Jesus do?  My imaginary Jesus would turn around immediately and say, “I’m so sorry.  How can I help?”  But what did Jesus do?

Jesus did not answer a word.

This does not seem like the Jesus I prefer; my imaginary Jesus who would spin around with a ready hug and a ready miracle.  So this may not be the Jesus I prefer, but it is the one I often know.  This seems exactly like the God to whom I pray.  I wonder if I could find someone who has ever prayed, who has never felt like their cry, “God, someone I love is (or I myself am) ‘suffering terribly,” has felt that God “did not answer a word.”

Perhaps when God does not seem to be coming through for us, good Christians will.

So [Jesus’] disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

How could they?  They did not plead for her cause, they pled for her to go away.  A clue is that Matthew tells us she was a Canaanite woman, an ethnicity the Israelites had lived in side-by-side anymosity for centuries.  A nation that Old Testament biblical authors were quick to blame for nearly every Israelite crisis.  She was the kind of woman that these disciples just did not want to be bothered by or hear from or help.  Before we modern readers are too quick to condemn them, I wonder what word each of us could use a subsitute for “Canaanite” in our lives.  Which of God’s beloved sons and daughters do we wish would leave us alone or go away?  Would just shut up and get out?  Republican, Democrat?  Rich, poor?  Immigrant, old money?  Young, old?  Telemarketer?  Well, surely Jesus would not allow any human divisions to influence his ministry, right?

Jesus answered [the disciples], “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

For a religious leader of his time and place to behave this way is not surprising.  Interfaith ministry does not seem to have been a spiritual priority yet.  What is surprising is that Jesus is not surprising here.  I want him to extraordinary, but he just behaves in the most ordinary, culturally expected way.

The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

What remarkable faith indeed.  She is a woman who knows she is a precious daughter of God.  She knows God’s blessings are hers to claim as much as anybody else’s.  No matter what the good religious folk say, even the religious leaders, she will not be put down, shut up, or shoved aside.  She knows where she stands with God, and is not seeking affirmation but recognition.

Based on this story, we need to rethink asking ourselves, “What would Jesus do?”  We need to ask, as the Rev. Peter Gomes, my college chaplain, suggested “What would Jesus have me to do?”  You see, in this story, Jesus is not the one whose example we should follow.  He is a teacher, prodding his student to do something for herself.  What are the two things his apparently rude actions spurned her to do?

First, when she shouted at him, he didn’t listen.  It was not until she knelt down before him in humility that he listened.  Requiring someone to kneel before us as a prerequisite for helping them would be sheer hubris if done by anyone other than the Son of God.  We do not want to live in a world where everyone behaves like he’s the Son of God!  So it’s not Jesus’ example, but hers which we should follow in this story.

Secondly, she discovered that shouting to God or counting on supposedly good Christians like the disciples is often not enough.  Jesus cornered her into standing up for herself and for her daughter.  How much I wanted Jesus to be the nice, polite Jesus in this story, but had he been, he would have traded his calling as perfect teacher for perfect manners.

She was a Canaanite and she needed to be treated as an equal in the kingdom of God, not just for her sake, but for the sake of a daughter whom she loved.  Ever since God chose to let humans in the church, human divisions have been in the church.  People needing fellowship and healing and love, people with genuine gifts to offer the work of God, have been labelled and cast aside, told to get out, told to sit in the back, told to stay away from the pulpit, told to stay away from the communion table.    What does Jesus teach the Canaanite woman, and us, to do when we or those we love are dismissed as dogs unworthy for the blessings of the church?

Kneel before God and then stand up for yourself and those you love.  You can’t just scream at God.  And sadly, you can’t count on good Christians, the disciples to advocate for you.  Sometimes they, more than anyone else, just want to you to shut up and go away.  Sometimes, like the disciples, their prayers and pleas to God will not be that you see justice, but that you give up.

Our tradition, American Congregationalism, does not have a pure, innocent history.  After all, we trace our religious heritage to the Puritans, equally enshrined in history as intensely persecuted and intense persecutors.  I am pleased, though, that we do have a tradition of repenting early and often.  We were the first American Protestants to ordain a black pastor; the first to have a woman pastor, possibly in world history; among the first to allow our gay sisters and brothers to serve as pastors.  Critics have claimed at each of these moments that we ignored the Bible.  Yet, these changes occurred not by ignoring the Bible, but by believing it.  By believing Matthew 15, where Jesus prods the Canaanite woman to stands up for her right to eat from the master’s table with, “You have great faith! Your request is granted.”

To add a personal detail, a little over a year ago, shortly before any of you had met me, my wife and I made an excrutiatingly difficult decision to leave the denomination of our youth, a church we had served with commitment and dedication and a church to which we are indebted for many of our greatest blessings in life, including meeting each other.  Part of the reason for that decision to leave was that as I looked into my young daughters’ eyes, I could not justify telling them that because of their chromosomes, because they were born female, that they could not be a religious leader like me.  I do not know if my daughters will even want to be pastors, but I am grateful to be in a community of Christians where they will never have to doubt that they can be.

So when we ask what would Jesus do, we have to wonder if that is the same question as “What would Jesus have me to do?”  Because he when he wants you to do something, when he wants you to stand up for yourself and those you love, he does not want you to be polite, he wants you to be bold.  Jesus taught me that being polite is overrated.  Amen.

The best way to enjoy Duxbury is to grab a good book, a bathing suit, and a bicycle on a warm summer day.  Follow this itinerary to a have a great day of exploring and to recreate a day in my middle school life.

Park near the High Street United Methodist Church, an old wooden, white clapboard New England church, on the corner of High Street and Taylor Street on the Duxbury/Pembroke town line.  Bicycle east down High Street through woods and past Cranberry bogs.  Turn right onto Summer Street and then immediately right onto Franklin.  Turn left onto Valley Street.  A small dirt parking lot on the right will mark the entrance to the Duxbury portion of the Bay Circuit Trail, a walking/mountain biking path that will wind through the woods, ponds, swamps, and Cranberry bogs of Duxbury.  Follow the trail markers through conservation lands and short detours onto paved roads, to Bay Farm Field.

Bay Farm is a park made out of a former farm left fallow and mowed once or twice annually.  Across the street from Bay Farm on Loring Street, just a stone’s throw into the town of Kingston is a great farm stand.  On the east side of the road is a marker for the 42^nd parallel.

The main field of the park is excellent for kite flying on windy days.  At the east end of the park is Kingston bay.  There are great shade trees and rock ledges for reading or writing angsty pre-teen poetry.  At low tide, there are tide pools that are great for observing skates and sea stars.  Sitting on the water on the rocks is a great place to watch sailboats, kayaks, and scan the shoreline to see mansions, Plymouth’s long defunct rope factories, and the Myles Standish Monument.

After resting up at Bay Farm, take Loring Street north to the first intersection and turn right onto Bay Road.  Soon you will reach Hall’s Corner, Duxbury’s quaint attempt at a downtown.  Peruse shops at your leisure.  Grab a snack at the convenience store, which although not in fact a Cumberland Farms for nearly twenty years, is referred to as “Cumby’s” by committed nostalgic townies, or a cheap, quick lunch at Duxbury Pizza.  At the Hall’s Corner traffic circle, turn right onto Standish Street.  Bear right onto Crescent Street and follow signs for the Standish Monument, a tower topped by a statue of one of Duxbury’s founding Pilgrim residents, Captian Myles Standish.  Climb up the monument for great views of the bay and Duxbury Beach.

When leaving the monument, turn left onto Crescent street, which will loop back into Standish Street.  A great detour off of Standish Street is to turn right onto Marshall Street and follow signs to the Myles Standish homesite.  Some great coastal marsh views are in this detour.  Return to Hall’s corner by taking a right back onto Standish Street.  At the traffic circle, turn right onto Washington Street.

The ride down Washington Street goes past some of Duxbury’s stateliest old homes and manicured gardens and the beautiful Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches.  On your right, you may be distracted by the smells of French Memories bakery.  Give in and get yourself some hot croissants.

At the flag pole in the middle of the road, bear right onto Powder Point Road and the bear right again onto King Caesar Road.  Here you will see some of Duxbury’s finest oceanfront properties, including the King Caeser House, which is often open for tours.

At the end of King Caser Road you will come to the Powder Point Bridge, a spectacular wooden bridge across Duxbury Harbor to Duxbury Beach.  At the beach, take some time to cool off!  The Harbor Side is popular with kayakers and windsurfers.  It can be a bit muddy on the bottom, but is generally warmer and calmer than the ocean side.  Tread gently, and on defined paths, across the dunes to the beach.  At high tide, Duxbury Beach is a bit rocky, but at low tide it is spectacular.  Wide sand, perfect for sand castles and with shallow pools and rivers that are great for playing at the beach with small children.  The truly motivated walkers/bicyclists, can enjoy increasing privacy and calm by journeying south along the beach.  On clear days, you can see across Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown.

At the end of your beach time, cross the bridge and then bear right onto Powder Point Road, for the less scenic shortcut back.  At the flag pole, bear right onto Saint George Street.  After the sports fields, turn left onto Alden Street to visit the John Alden House, home of Mayflower’s ship’s cooper who was another of Duxbury’s Pilgrim settlers.  The small, but impressive, Art Complex Museum is also on Alden Street.  Go north onto Railroad Street to get back to Saint George Street, where you will see Farfar’s Ice Cream, home of the best ice, homemade ice cream in Massachusetts.  Their peppermint patty is especially amazing.  Next door is Once Upon a Time, a great toy store specializing in the old fashioned and educational.

Take the easy, paved way back to your car, past some more small ponds, cranberry bogs, and farmstands, by heading west on Saint George, also known as 14 West.  Follow signs for Route 14.  Shortly after the highway overpass, bear left onto King Phillips Path and follow that unti it becomes Cross Street.  At the end of Cross Street.  Turn right onto Summer Street.  In about a half mile bear left onto High Street.  Follow back to the Methodist Church.

There are no quantities listed below because, well, it’s a salad.  Proportion according to taste. This salad highlights some of the best summer flavours of New England.

Fill salad bowl about 2/3 with baby spinach.  Toss in the following:

• Thinly-sliced cucumbers
• Thinly-sliced carrots
• Thinly-sliced mushrooms
• Raw broccoli florets

Here’s where we make it interesting with contrasting flavours and textures:

• Diced granny smith apple
• Sprinkling of Craisins sweetened, dried cranberries
• Grated extra-sharp Vermont cheddar cheese

Dress with poppy seed dressing.  Newman’s Own and Olde Cape Cod make excellent poppy seed dressings.

I am NOT that jaded, yet.  But I’ve only been here a year, and Mother Yale is doing her darndest to get me there.

So dear new students, welcome to Yale Divinity School, the greatest seminary on earth.  Greatest, but not flawless.  Allow me to warn you so that your two-, three-, or indefinitely-prolonged-year degree program may go peacefully for you.

The Academic Life

Deans & Professors

When you come to a world-class institution like Yale you may expect world-class scholars, engaging lecturers, and stimulating classes.  And you will get them, but not always.  In my first year I had a few amazing professors, a few meh professors, and only one abysmally incompetent one, Professor-Whose-Name-I-Daren’t-Say-but-Who-Every-MDiv-Knows-Who-I-Mean.

If you by any chance encounter a young, charismatic professor who leads engaging discussions, has real-life experience doing cutting-edge ministry, and has a genuine interest in the success of her or his students, savour every second of it.  Yale will drive away this professor away and try to replace her or him with someone who publishes innane commentaries in obscure journals, who has no teaching ability, who has no practical experience, and who is rude. At the end of the year you will get an e-mail about how all the best professors you had are leaving and how the worst have been promoted.

But there are some phenomenal people who have managed to stay at Yale.   A few things you need to know about a few of them are:

1. Dean of Students Dale Petersen and Old Testament Professor John Collins already know your face and every detail of your life story.  But I haven’t met them, you say.  Doesn’t matter.  They already know and have memorized an FBI-background-check level of information about you. Also, no matter where you did your undergraduate degree, John Collins has had your favourite professors over for dinner to talk and they talked about you.  There is nothing you can do about this.  You need to trust that the Dean and Professor will use this information for good and not evil.  Dean of Students Dale Petersen, you should know, is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.  This seeming ontological contradiction is one of those divine mysteries you must work out slowly through life.  Also, he is already your best friend.
2. Old Testament Professor Joel Baden will never give you a hug or tell you he loves you.  You’re just not going to get that kind of affirmation from him.  Professor Baden is the most honest man you will ever meet.  You will occasionally find this both theologically and personally hurtful.  If he insults you and it’s not funny, it’s because it’s true.  If he insults you and it’s funny, he may like you, but this is still not guaranteed.  Nonetheless, a funny insult is as close to a hug as you are going to get.
3. Hebrew Professor Eric Reymond would personally lead you all across Middle Earth to throw the ring back in Mordor before he would allow a pesky blizzard to reschedule a quiz.  If there is a snow storm, do not shovel out your car, study your Hebrew.
4. New Testament Professor Adela Collins is the best person in the world to have lunch with.  Luckily for you, she will have lunch with you often.
5. If you ever break down and cry, no matter where he the world he is, Bill Goettler willl intuitively and immediately e-mail you ask if you would like to swing by his office for a chat.  Accept this offer.

Class Discussions

Class discussions can be the most stimulating part of a course.  Your classmates are brilliant and you will often feel stupid in their intellectually mighty presence.  To help you cope, let me tell you a secret: they’re often faking it.  They use big words they don’t understand knowing they can get away with it because nobody else, including the professor, knows that word, and nobody can admit it, so everyone nods like it was a great comment.  On the other hand, and this is rough, sometimes they are just simply smarter than you.  If that happens, use a big word that you don’t understand…

A few guidelines, though, to help class discussions go smoothly:

1. Accept that “postmodernism” will come up, in every discussion, in every course, every time.  There is nothing you can do to stop this.
2. Certain people will never, ever agree with you.  Ever.  Stop trying.  Remember this Biblical wisdom: ”Avoid stupid controversies.” – Titus 3:19 NRSV
3. Keep perspective.  The world, it turns out, cares very little what consensus a bunch of Yale graduate students reached one Wednesday afternoon.
4. When tearing apart an argument from a reading as “idiotic,” double check that neither your current professor nor your professor’s spouse was in fact the author of that reading.
5. If you didn’t do the reading, skim for a good quote and speak up early, so that when more obscure parts are being discussed, the professor has no desire to hear from you again.
6. There is a segment of the Yale Divinity School population who believe spirituality is measured in how easily offended they can be about the reading or your opinion of it.  Do not let them suck you into that insanity.  Not everyone who disagrees with you is oppressing you.

Grades

They don’t matter.  Don’t worry about them.  Don’t talk about them.  Do not ever brag about them.

Yale gives you the option to take nearly every class pass-fail.  If your motive in coming to Yale is to learn and to serve God and your neighbours, I highly recommend you get off the academic treadmill and take Yale up on this offer.  You don’t need grades anymore. You already have been admitted to an Ivy League graduate school.  I’m on track to graduate with a GPA of “Not Calculable,” and it feels great.

Libraries

Yale has mediocre libraries with terrible hours.  If you are a full-time student living on campus, it is workable.  If you have a job, a family, or a commute, you will never be able to get the books you need.  Luckily, if you’re desperate for a really obscure book and you can wait, Yale will order it for you from Harvard Divinity School.  (Have you no pride, Yale Divinity library!)

Your Denomination and Your Seminary

If you want to be an ordained minister, it helps if your denomination and your seminary could work together smoothly about what your requirements are.  However, expect that sometimes you’ll feel like a kid listening to your parents fight about you in front of you while you’re just crying, “All I want to do is serve Jesus.”  Just keep reminding yourself of that goal, and you’ll be okay.

Yale Divinity School is an open, tolerant ecumenical setting where you are free to share your ideas.

No, it isn’t, and that generally makes me sad.

First let’s discuss “open and tolerant.”

There is a pre-approved set of opinions you are welcome to have and discuss.  Any variation from these “ultra-liberal orthodoxies” may result in public accusations of ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, hatefulness, Evangelicalism, or Fundamentalism, these last two being particularly vicious accusations at Yale.  Yes, Jean-Daniel, but I’m not conservative.  Well, that helps very little.  Please note that you can vote Democrat, believe in marriage equality, support women’s ordination, and eat only organic, vegetarian food and STILL be considered controversially conservative.

Unfortunately, the list of pre-approved opinions is not published.  You can only discover what it is permitted through witnessing someone cross this line or worse doing it yourself.  But some general tips:

1. Do not ever imply that any historic oppression has in any way, shape, or form improved or lessened.  Everyone who ever, and their demographically similar contemporary counterparts, has suffered injustice still is and everyone who ever has oppressed, and their demographically similar contemporaries, are still oppressing.  This is still true even if the oppressed party is significantly richer than the oppressor.  (That is because classism, the most prevalent form of social injustice at Yale, is officially denied, and thus the only form of oppression that does not exist at Yale.)
2. Some historically-oppressed groups have not suffered oppression, among those Mormons, the Irish, and French Canadians.  Whether or not Catholic have ever been oppressed in America is still undecided.
3. Do not show sympathy for conservatives by suggesting that maybe they are motivated by their understanding of what it means to love God.  They are hateful and evil, and so are you if you don’t hate them.  Do not under any circumstance point out the irony of this.

Secondly, let’s look at the idea of Yale being “ecumenical.”  Naïvely, one might think that means a diversity of Christian beliefs and practices are treated with equal respect.

1. To clarify, at Yale, “ecumenical” means liberal and mainline, ideally if at all possible Episcopalian.
2. If you belong to a traditionally conservative tradition, you can earn toleration by being an outspoken opponent of your own tradition.   (If you belong to a traditionally conservative tradition and you agree with it, speaking will only hurt you.)
3. Despite the obvious trends in American Christianity away from denominationalism, and despite Yale’s self-conscious obsession with being so modern, Yale Divinity School loves denominations.  Being nondenominational is worse than belonging the wrong kind of denomination.
4. Episcopalians will occasionally forget that Yale admits non-Episcopalians.  This is an innocent, but frequent, mistake that comes with being part of a very well-funded majority.  If you are being criticised for not following an Episcopalian rule, not knowing a Book of Common Prayer liturgy, or denying apostolic succession, gently remind your friend that you are not Episcopalian.  They will look at you with some initial confusion, but then invite you over for dinner.  If you consistently accept this dinner invitation, eventually you will be asked why you are not Episcopalian yet, but this awkward question is a small price to pay for dinner.

Am I saying that being a conservative is hell on earth at Yale?  No, but what is defined as conservative is so far left of what you may have seen anywhere else that a lot of us who came to Yale because it was a safe space to be liberal after growing up in often controlling, conservative denominations have had the very odd experience of suddenly being attacked from the left for the first time in our lives.  You can handle it, but it is jarring and surprising.

One thing I have discovered is that no matter what your view is, there are other students who agree.  There really is a culture where liberal viewpoints dominate, but I think the student body is more diverse (and often far more traditionalist) than the faculty, and the solution is for people to be more bold, not more politically correct with their ideas, tongue-in-cheek-advise above notwithstanding.   Mutual tolerance based on everyone politely watering down their opinions is FAKE; real tolerance is listening to ideas we hate and loving the person who holds the idea anyway.

Spiritual Life

Marquand Chapel

Marquand is Yale’s daily “ecumenical” chapel service.  Services represent a wide variety of upper-class, liberal, mainline American worship styles.  Okay, sometimes it’s broader than that, but Evangelical style praise music is incredibly underrepresented, often because of its offensive language derived by quoting the Psalms verbatim.

Part of being ecumenical that Marquand does exceptionally well is incorporating enough variety that no matter what your background, it will occassionally get weird and make you squirm.  This is good for you.

The part of being ecumenical Marquand does very poorly is forcing a liberal viewpoint onto everyone lest any liberal be offended.  This is done especially in the realm of “inclusive language,” which manifests itself in rewording prayers, hymns, and even the words of Jesus. Offending traditionalists is okay.

My honest experience with going to Marquand for five days a week is that:

• Three days will be okay, a refreshing, if not especially memorable, break in the day.
• One day will be the most uncomfortable, ridiculous, and heretical waste of time.  Perhaps it will be a prayer to the flowers, perhaps it will be a liturgical conga dance, perhaps it will be another political rant in sermon form…
• One day it will be profoundly touching, warming my heart, challenging my life, and renewing me for a closer walk with God.

Here’s the trick: you cannot guess which day will be which.  Just go every day.  I certainly have learned as much from the worst services as I have from the best.

Another tip, Marquand is the best place to discover great music not in your traditional’s hymnal.  I save programs and put stars next to the songs I’ve loved so I can go back to them years from now in planning liturgies.

The Refectory

The refectory is where we eat.  You have been forced buy a meal plan, so you might as well pull up a chair and have lunch with us.

The food is awful.  I’m vegetarian and I am thoroughly exhausted at the prospect of two more years of eating the same three mediocre meals that are offered to vegetarians.

But sitting around with classmates has been my favourite part of divinity school.  These connections, built day after day at the tables, are priceless to me.  Despite all that frustrates me about Yale Divinity School, the idea of being at a table in the refectory makes me want to go to school every day.  Being in touch with such great future pastors, priests, and scholars for the rest of my life will likely be the absolutely most valuable part of my Yale education.

More photos to come.  Out of respect for the privacy of those with whom we worked, some worksites were not photographed.

A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.  Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” - Mark 4:37-41 NIV

Last spring when a deluge of rain fell upon Nashville—a city whose Christian dedication is visibly obvious in the church on nearly every corner—countless people asked, in a variety of phrasing, but all echoing the Biblical question, “Jesus, don’t you care if we drown?”  Don’t you care if my home is destroyed?  My city is paralyzed? Like the disciples of the Bible, the disciples of Nashville saw God slumbering in their hour of need.  But Jesus did not stay asleep!  With a redeeming, “Quiet! Be still!” Christ calmed the storm.

One woman in Nashville told me that when the flood came it was one trial too many, and she said, “I doubted there was a God, and was sure if there was, he wasn’t anybody I wanted anything to do with.”  But like the ancient disciples, her fear was transformed into amazement as she saw the city of Nashville come together, and her life took dramatic changes for the better as her community helped her overcome challenges even bigger than the flood was.

If being a follower of Christ means doing what Jesus would do, the miraculous calming of the stormy seas seems like an impossible example.  Yet this week taught us who went to Nashville that we can in fact be the hands of God in calming storms.  No, we don’t have the power to say “Quiet! Be still!” and have even the winds obey us, but in every damaged home and fallen tree, it was clear that the flood and subsequent storms and tornadoes were not gone yet.  Thus with each branch sawed and hauled and with each wall painted, we did a little to make the storms go away for our sisters and brothers.  Each task was part of the re-creating Jesus’s miracle on the Sea of Galilee anew.

Sunday

After being commissioned in the ten o’clock service to serve the people of Tennessee with the support and prayers of Mystic Congregational Church, we piled into minivans and drove to Providence airport.  Twelve youth and four adults—including Pastor Ann, Doug Aaberg, Kathy Parker, and me—in all were traveling.  Our matching bright yellow t-shirts, despite some protest from our stylish teens, helped keep us together and gave us lots of opportunities to share with curious fellow passengers about our church and our mission.  (My favorite question was on the flight to Nashville when a concerned man asked me, “What in the heck is a Mystical church?”  He was greatly relieved, it seemed, to learn Mystic was the name of our town.)

We rented three minivans for the week.  We set out from the airport to Bellevue United Methodist Church, whose parish hall would be home for the coming week.  Two drivers with old fashioned directions given by a local over the phone made it to the church easily.  One driver, your truly, took his youth on a forty-five minute scenic detour prompted by a fierce, and ultimately misplaced, faith in the TomTom GPS.

We were greeted at Bellevue United Methodist by a group of hospitable parishioners who showed us around and invited us to join their youth group night on Wednesday, an offer we happily accepted.

The boys and girls sides of the parish hall were determined.  The girls quickly arranged air mattresses and cots in an artistic geometric pattern.  The boys did not follow the girls example.

Monday

Our first work day took us to Joelton, Tennessee, to a private residence gutted by flood waters.  Though the home was up on a hill above the river, a damn of a reservoir higher up had burst.  The backyard swimming pool had fish from the pond in it.  We dissembled a wooden fence, did various yard work, and weed-whacked.  Two other Connecticut UCC youth groups worked alongside us, one from Ellington and one from Saugatuck.

Monday night, we visited downtown Nashville, starting with dinner at Jack’s BBQ, a highly-recommended rib joint on Broadway, Nashville’s tourist strip.  We explored downtown Nashville, including visits to boot and hat stores and passing by shrines to country stars none of our non-country-music-fan youth recognized.

For me, the visit to the riverfront was most striking.  Across the river, high up a hill is Nashville’s football stadium, which in pictures from last year was flooded like a lake.  To get from the flooded neighborhoods to the river involved a walk down long, steep stairs.  I admit sometimes when I see flood news reports, I wonder why people would build so low and close to rivers, but visiting Nashville it was clear: they didn’t.  This flood was truly enormous and unimaginable.

Tuesday

Tuesday we travelled south of the city to Columbia, Tennessee, where we repainted the fellowship hall of Saint Luke’s United Methodist Church.  The drive from Nashville took us through beautiful rolling hills and elegant equestrian estates.  The variety of tasks involved in repainting a large room were well-suited to our varied personalities.  Some youth eagerly grabbed rollers while some youth took tape and brushes for the detail-orientated trim work.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we took our vans in different directions.  The boys went to East Nashville to saw and clear fallen trees from recent tornadoes and storms.  The City of Nashville provided orange reflector vests, a favorite souvenir of many of our youth, and access to chainsaws (after safety training, of course), definitely the highlight of the trip for many.

The girls, Pastor Ann, and I went to Thistle Farms, an urban women’s ministry where one of my seminary classmates is an intern.  Thistle Farms helps women overcome addictions and prostitution by providing a 12-step program, a place to live, and a job making natural bath and body products.  One of the women in the program gave us a tour, told us her story, and then helped us get started helping for the day.  Our group helped make “thistle paper,” a tough card stock from recycled cardboard and thistles.  The women use thistle paper for greeting cards and gift boxes.  Our whole group was touched by the remarkable work this ministry is doing for women in Nashville and the stories of the women we met.  We would encourage you to visit their site and buy their products!  The girls especially enjoyed Thistle Farms lip smoothies.

On Wednesday night, we reunited.  The boys smelled like rotting trees and sweaty teenage boys and the girls smelled like lavender body butter, exaggerating the rapidly increasing difference between the boys and girls sides of the parish hall.  Our host church, Bellevue United Methodist, invited us to have pizza and play games, including an intense crab soccer match, with their youth.  Based on text messages and Facebook friend requests since Wednesday, it appears the joint activity was quite successful at bringing Tennessee and Connecticut youth together.

Thursday

On Thursday morning we sent Pastor Ann off to Tampa for the UCC General Synod.  e joined the youth of Belmont United Methodist Church to their weekly summer activity of visiting refugee children from Myanmar/Burma.  Our youth divided into “reading” and “math” groups who led games and songs with the children.  After the teaching time, we stayed and played outside games with them, learning lots of new activities that we’ll use in our own youth group.

After tutoring we went to Percy Priest Lake for a much needed cool off and afternoon of swimming.  It was warmer and calmer than our youth were used to, but on a nearly 100 degree day, there was not much complaining.

Friday

On our last work day we all returned to East Nashville for more chainsawing and debris removal work.  We were reunited with the Connecticut churches we had worked with on Monday.  The heat was intense and the work was exhausting, a perfect way to conclude our trip.

At night we unwound with souvenir shopping for our sponsors, writing thank you notes, cleaning, and a games of Sardines, for which some of the youth of our host church rejoined us.

Our youth had some great experiences.  Through the wide variety of projects, each was able to find a way to serve others that matched their own gifts and interests.  Through spending time together, they also became a stronger Christian community as a youth group.  Thank you to all those at Mystic Congregational Church who shared their prayers, their time, their financial support, and their teenagers!

In order to understand the shift that took place, we must first understand the ways in which Mormonism saw itself as an orthodox part of Christianity and a contributing party to American society.  Mormonism was not established to refute orthodoxy, it was established to embody it.  That is not to say that Mormonism modelled itself intentionally after its contemporary denominations.  Like Alexander Campbell, Joseph Smith had a Restorationist impulse.  God had revealed to Smith that other churches were “all corrupt” and that “they teach for doctrines the commandments of men.”[2] However, the solution to Smith’s problem was not Alexander Campbell’s aphorism “no creed but the Bible.”  Smith knew from the outset that strict Biblicism was the road to interdenominational strife in the first place.  While maintaining a belief in Biblical inspiration, Smith denied the Bible as the ultimate determiner of truth and error.  He wrote, “the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.”[3] To solve this conundrum, Smith concluded he must do an end-run around the text to its author.  Smith wrote:

“At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James [1:5] directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to ‘ask of God,’ concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.”[4]

Thus, like Campbell, Smith wanted a Restoration of pure, New Testament Christianity.  However, he unfettered himself and his hermeneutic from the Bible text, setting the stage to eventually be at stark odds with the text while proclaiming loyalty to it.

When Smith organized Mormon church in 1830, it was as the very Restorationist “Church of Christ,” a name he would later elaborate into “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”[5] The proceedings of the organization meeting are part of the Latter-day Saint canon, as Doctrine and Covenants section 20.  With the notable exception of accepting the Book of Mormon as scripture, the creed outlined in verses 1 through 30 is entirely affirmations of previous Christian tradition and creeds.  For example, the passage proclaims, “We know that there is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them.”[6] Smith understood himself as revealing hidden truths that former, ancient Christians had already known.  He did not see himself as a theological innovator. A paradox in early Mormonism, never cleanly resolved, was that Joseph Smith simultaneously was trying to build a restoration of the New Testament church based on extra biblical revelations.

In regards to Mormonism’s place in society at large, Smith saw himself as the quintessential American and his church as a patriotic endeavour.  The church was “regularly organized and established agreeable to the laws of our country.”[7] While numerous nineteenth century Christians exalted America as the culmination of God’s plan for the earth, Smith argued that America had always been central to God’s work.  Smith said the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, that Christ had visited the Americas, and that Christ’s political kingdom at the second coming would be headquartered in Missouri as well.   Smith further considered the Constitution to be an inspired document:

“The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner; it is, to all those who are privileged with the sweets of liberty, like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a weary and thirsty land. It is like a great tree under whose branches men from every clime can be shielded from the burning rays of the sun.”[8]

Even when Smith barged through the walls of church-state separation by serving as mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois, and took the radical step of declaring his candidacy as president, Joseph Smith saw himself as demonstrating a commitment to working within the American constitutional framework.

For Joseph Smith, his vision of Christian restoration in the American framework had met colossal complications by 1844.  He was politically overwhelmed, serving as local mayor and earnestly running for U.S. President.  Boatloads of converts were arriving in Nauvoo, Illinois, the Mississippi riverfront community where Mormonism was headquartered.  Disease was rampant.  His wife was pregnant.  Finally, rumours, which would be revealed as true, had begun to spread that Joseph Smith was teaching and practicing polygamy.[9] It was a most inopportune time to give the most heterodox sermon of his ministry, but as Smith biographer Richard Lyman Bushman writes, “Joseph’s revelations drove him beyond prudence.  Once a doctrine or project came to him by revelation, he was indomitable.”[10]

Shortly before his martyrdom in June of 1844, the Prophet Joseph Smith spoke at the final preaching session of the April conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his final address to the gathered assembly of the whole church.  According to the notes made by his advisors, “about twenty thousand saints”[11] were in attendance.  The sermon, now known as the King Follett discourse, so named after the church elder whose eulogy this sermon doubled as, represented a stark theological turning point in the development of Mormonism.  Yale literary critic Harold Bloom notes it as “one of the truly remarkable sermons ever preached in America.”[12] The King Follett discourse is most frequently noted for its radical redefinition of the nature of God the Father, toppling the view of an eternal God while elevating the human spirit to the status of uncreated and eternal.

Smith opened the grand sermon:

“I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own hearts, what kind of a being God is? Ask yourselves; turn your thoughts into your hearts, and say if any of you have seen, heard, or communed with Him? This is a question that may occupy your attention for a long time. I again repeat the question—What kind of a being is God? Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen Him, heard Him, or communed with Him?”

The implicit answer, which would have been obvious to a Latter-day Saint audience both familiar with and convinced by Smith’s visions, would be that Joseph Smith knows and that he knows because of he has “seen, heard” and “communed with” God, not because of his intellectual superiority. “I suppose I am not allowed to go into an investigation of anything that is not contained in the Bible,” Smith explains. “If I do, I think there are so many over-wise men here that they would cry ‘treason’ and put me to death. So I will go to the old Bible and turn commentator today.”  While one can sense an exasperation in his tone. “I thank God that I have got this old book; but I thank him more for the gift of the Holy Ghost,” he explains.  As Smith’s revelations grew more complex, the Bible was as much an impediment to Restoration as an aid.  One way in way Joseph Smith coped with this in the King Follett discourse. Despite his insistence, that his new revelation on the nature of God is simple, he offers this analogy for its complexity:

“When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel—you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It is not all to be comprehended in this world; it will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.”

The reason he is faced with an increasingly complex Gospel vision is that his view of Restoration has been unbound from New Testament orthodoxy, whatever that may be.  “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret,” he proclaims.  To substantiate this claim he not only relies on adding scholarly tools to his prophetic witness, he claims to be restoring fundamental truths that have been hidden since long before the New Testament church, essentially restoring eternal knowledge form beyond the veil.  “If the veil were rent today,” Smith says, “and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man.”  This innovation changes the fundamental claim of Mormonism as a restoration of New Testament practice into a far grander narrative of total restoration.

Joseph Smith had stripped God the Father of both His pre-eternal divinity and his uniqueness. A modern apologist for Smith, Bushman argues that “critics are wrong when they say Joseph Smith created a heaven of multiples gods like the pagan pantheons.”[13] Bushman argues that the model for Joseph’s endless gods was the Christian trinity.  “The gods are one,” Bushman writes, “as Christ and the Father are one.” [14] Yet one man’s Restored Truth is another man’s blasphemy, and to converts who had joined Mormonism seeking a restoration of Biblical Christianity, this had drifted too far.  William Law, a devout Mormon and one of Smith’s closes advisors as a member of the First Presidency, was driven out of the church by the discourse, calling it “some of the most blasphemous doctrines ever heard of, such as other gods as far above our God as He is above us.” [15]

The King Follett sermon was the first general public admission of Mormonism’s radically heterodox view of God.  It is in crossing this line that Mormon detractors, up to this day, make arguments not that Mormons are simply wrong Christians, but that they are not at all Christians, for the God of Mormonism is not the God of Christianity.  Mormons, for their part, simply believe that they have a proper understanding of who God has been all along.

Joseph Smith’s dual career and prophet and politician guaranteed that this theological discourse would not remain in a theoretical realm.  It struck a nerve that reverberated throughout the greater Nauvoo, Illinois, area.  Bushman argues that the sermon is pro-American:

“The King Follett doctrines can sound profoundly American.  Every man a god and a king fulfilled democratic aspirations to a degree unknown in any other religion.  Joseph’s assertion that ‘all mind is susceptible of improvement’ opened up the possibility of limitless growth.  Mormons themselves have labelled the doctrine of eternal spirits ‘ eternal progression’ as if it meant rising ever higher in society, the essence of the American dream.  It is the one teaching of Joseph Smith that Americans are most likely to admire.”[16]

Yet, rather than rousing enthusiasm, the reaction to it led to a series of tragic events.  William Law, so offended by the sermon, formally gathered a meeting to reform Mormonism by rejecting Smith as a “fallen prophet.”[17] Joseph Smith, already a man with a long history of legal troubles and neighbourly disputes, faced unprecedented opposition from within his own inner circle, especially with the apostasy of William Law.  The opposition of so many who knew Smith so well meant that exposés of his actions, especially regarding polygamy, still not officially unannounced even with the church, would soon come out and further turn opinion against him.  In May, one month after the King Follett discourse, Law led the publication of the first and sole issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, a paper full of anti-Smith editorials.  Enraged, Smith and his city council ordered the press destroyed, declaring it “a nuisance” which promoted a “mob spirit.”[18] The irony, though, was the Expositor provoked a mob spirit far less than did its destruction.  For all of Bushman’s views on the Americanism of the King Follett discourse, the post-King Follett Smith merged political and religious authority as mayor and prophet and did so with anti-free speech tyranny.  In June, Joseph Smith was in prison for the illegal destruction of private property when he and his brother were shot and killed in Carthage, Illinois.  The following winter, under threat of further mob violence, Brigham Young led the Latter-day Saints out of Illinois and to Utah, which at the time was outside of the United States, in Mexico.

For the next hundred years, Mormonism would fight with an identity as an un-American “other.”  Its right to home rule was questioned by the US Army when Mormons once again combined political and religious powers in the Governor and Prophet Brigham Young.  Statehood was denied until polygamy was rescinded in 1894.  In the last fifty years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been creeping along in its journey back to recognition as a Christian church and a truly pro-American institution.  Yet, to this day, Joseph Smith’s vision of an evolving God among many gods, hinders Mormon mainstreaming efforts.  When President Gordon B. Hinckley, the last president of the Church, was asked by Time magazine about multiple gods, he “dodged the question,” according to the journalist.  “On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain, ‘I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it … I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don’t know a lot about it, and I don’t think others know a lot about it.’”[19] It remains the biggest doctrinal fuel to evangelical accusations that Mormonism is a “cult,” which haunted Mitt Romney’s presidential ambitions.   American Christianity thrives on the bold and the grand, and from Joseph Smith until today, Mormonism has been at once the boldest and grandest expression of American Christianity and the home-grown faith held most suspect by American Christians.

I first met Peter Gomes when I was a pilgrim.  As a teenager, I worked at Plimoth Plantation, a recreation of the 1627 village of the Mayflower passengers.  I was a teenage high school drop out expected to recall vast amounts of historical and cultural details, convincingly interpret them in a daily eight-hour improvisation, and do it all in a precise seventeenth-century Norfolkshire dialect while wearing a burlap suit in the New England summer humidity.  In all the memorization of Spanish-Dutch wars and historic methods of constructing thatched roofing, I found my niche in the Reformed faith of these settlers.  I immersed myself  in the writings of John Robinson, the Pilgrims’ pastor-in-exile during the Separatists’ stint in Leyden, Holland.  Armed with the sixteenth-century, pre-King James, Geneva Bible, I was sitting in the meetinghouse at Plimoth Plantation one day when Peter Gomes walked in.

Shorter than even my teenage frame, he was an intimidating figure.  In his hometown of Plymouth, especially among those of us in the field of history, he was a celebrity.  Even at seventeen, I had learned a fundamental principle of academia: to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on a given topic is indeed achievable, if you choose an obscure, specific topic.  And so when it came to exegeting Bible passages in the Geneva translation as illuminated by the commentaries of the Rev. John Robinson, I was already a leading scholar.  I was not intimidated in my interpretations by museum guests in clergy collars or with history degrees, or really even by my own supervisors at the museum whose own ridiculously specific historical inquiries into colonial musketry or bread recipes were so distinct from my own.  But in this portly, bespectacled, exceedingly overdressed tourist, was the one man with whom I had no margin of historical or theological error.

He never once was interested in being the expert that day.  He listened to my railings against the gross darkness of popery—Gov. William Bradford’s words, not my own—with patience.  He asked me how I knew that I would be saved, perhaps seeing if I would let any hint of my Evangelically-raised self peek through the Calvinist costume.  I think he approved of my answer, “I can only hope.”

“Indeed,” he said, in his trademark slow baritone.  “One can only hope.”

It was years later before I managed to transform myself from the high-school-drop-out historical reenactor to the Harvard undergraduate, starting college as 23-year-old.  One morning after the Memorial Church’s morning prayers, he introduced himself to me and asked, “Where have I seen you before?”  I told him that he had not ever seen me on campus before, but in Plymouth, we had once bantered over a Geneva Bible. “Of course,” he said.  “I remember.”  I am nearly certain it was a lie, but if so, what a white and pastoral lie it was.

While an undergraduate religion concentrator, I had the opportunity twice to preach at Harvard morning prayers.  If only every young man and woman discerning vocations to Christian ministry could preach once or twice in the pulpit of Peter Gomes.  But Peter’s powerful presence was not wholly mysterious.  He earned it.  It is most famously seen in his preaching.  His delivery was deep and slow. I was convinced that Peter could make a two-page manuscript into a forty-five minute sermon. The Kennedyesque Boston Brahmin accent, punctuated by tangents of equal humor and commentary.  Brothahs… and… let us not be sexist, at so venerable and progressive an institution… sistahs… Sometimes he would look to heavens in his soaring prose, but I was always preferred when he would look you in the eye over his rounded glasses.

Famous as he was as a preacher, on campus he relished the title of professor as passionately.  In lectures, he paced slowly back and forth in the front of the room.  Tweed coat, bowtie, round glasses, and that accent, he was the epitome of “Harvard professor.”  In fact, in all my classes at Harvard, he was the only professor who looked or sounded like that kind of “Harvard professor.”

He was also a gracious pastor.  Although he was often absent to live his second life as a world-renowned preacher and theologian, he found his way back to Cambridge to open his home every Wednesday afternoon to students for afternoon tea.  It was at once the most pompous and traditionalist sort of Harvard social activity one can imagine, but the most intimate and casual occasions I participated in as a student.  Being a bit older than most of my fellow undergraduates, I had toddler twins who would accompany me to tea each week.  His official residence on campus was the least childproofed place on this earth.  His home was lined with extraordinarily fragile, sharp, and expensive antiques all perfectly placed at toddler level.  Yet, his welcome to us always generous.  He refused to talk to them like toddlers, but always addressed them as “the little ladies,” and directly asked them if they would like something to eat.  “I have strawberries, and pound cake,” he would begin his list, smiling as my daughters grew excited.  Seeing how this world renowned author treated my daughters, I realized that Wednesday afternoon tea, as posh and Harvardian as an event it was, was not about ostentation. It was pure hospitality.

My own life changed because of Peter Gomes’s hospitality.  He organized a vocations dinner, and invited students who were seeking, questioning, or dodging God’s call to Christian ministry to dine in his home with a dozen of his closest clergy friends.  I vividly recall exactly when during that dinner I realized that there is no job on earth I could do better or that I would love more than being a Christian pastor.  I wonder how many churches today have formerly self-doubting Harvard alumni in their pulpits because of the ministry of Peter Gomes to the least of those in academia, the confused undergraduates.

Peter was a living contradiction.  Much has been said of Peter Gomes the gay, black, Republican Baptist, with a high-church penchant for vestments and liturgy.  How did he reconcile all those conflicting identities?  It teaches me much that he did not.  The societal expectations that one’s race must equate to a certain party affiliation or that one’s sexuality to a certain religion are nonsense.  Much is made of his accent.  To those who have never lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, hometown of Peter Gomes, all I can say is, no, that was not a Plymouth accent.  But to deride it as an affectation or fraud is wrong as well.  Peter believed in self-defining.  The son of an immigrant cranberry bog worker was as entitled to speak like John F. Kennedy and drink fine tea at Harvard as anyone else.  Perhaps another accent may have been more authentically “Plymouth,” but no other dialect or cadence would have been authentically Peter.  A refusal to be defined by circumstance, Peter Gomes teaches, is not dishonest.  It is the most profoundly honest way to live.  And as posh and refined he was, he was not greedy or selfish about it, but threw open the doors of church and home alike to any who wished to join him.

As news of Peter’s death has spread, I can hardly believe I am reading about him in the New York Times and in the Boston Globe.  That friends far removed from Plymouth and Harvard have shared their sadness is further tribute.  It is not that I ever doubted his impact through his public persona and books, but to those of who had the honor of knowing Peter in Plymouth, he was a neighbor and to those of us at Harvard, he was a pastor and professor.  That I got to know him in both place settings is an honor I will forever cherish.

One afternoon as my daughters and I were leaving Wednesday Tea, he said to me. “One day you will tell these little girls that they used to have tea at my house, will you not?”  Yes, Rev. Gomes, I will tell my daughters that when they were just two, they played every Wednesday afternoon in the living room of the Rev. Professor Peter Gomes, Pusey Minister of the Memorial Church, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, historian, neighbor, and pastor.

This sermon was originally given at the 2011 Festival of Young Preachers in Louisville, Kentucky.

A reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 4, verses 5 through 10.  Let’s listen for a Word from God.

The devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus said to him, “‘Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’

Again the devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan!’

The Good News of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray together.

O God, our loving parent, you have given us all that we have as generous gifts, our lives, our faith, and our voices.  Bless us to study your Word with the powerful presence of your Spirit, that we may have your strength uphold us as we strive to live your commandments through the grace of Jesus Christ our Savior, and in the name of God, creator, redeemer, and comforter, Amen.

Hallelujah for Christ our exemplar, our perfect example.

As a sisterhood and brotherhood of young preachers, those of us from all over, from California, to Canada, to Kentucky, from Pentecostal to Orthodox, conservative literalist to liberal Christian socialist, we are all here because we want to follow Jesus.  But how do we follow Jesus as young adults?  From ages 12 until 30, the Bible is quiet about his youth, saying only, from the Gospel of Luke “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (2:52).  So we assume that He was every bit as good as the Son of God ought to be. But if we are to be truly Bible-believing, we have to accept that as a young adult there was much He still did not know.  After all, only those who are yet lacking in wisdom have room to “increase” in it.

And who needs wisdom more, who needs God’s affirmation and guidance more, than a young adult wrestling those divine pokes and prods out of worldly pursuits and into ministry? So while he was good, in the most complete and perfect sense, he was still young, he was still learning, and he was called by God.  So we confront a mystery, a perplexity of His holy incarnation.  So truly God, yet so very much like us.  Don’t we feel a portion that sacred restlessness the twenty-nine-year-old Jesus was feeling at home and at his carpentry shop.  Let me be clear.  Being a Nazarene carpenter is honorable.  But no matter how honorable it is to craft wood with our hands, or catch fish in our nets, or sew tents on the street corners, once God’s call comes, God must be followed.  So Jesus left home, left his mother, his younger siblings, and the family business, and followed his crazy, loudmouthed locust-eating cousin John—and don’t we all have that cousin—into the wilderness.  Just as Jesus ascended from the  water of Jordan, the Holy Ghost descend upon like a dove.  When the calling of God leads you from the woodshop to wilderness, and the voice of God bursts through the heavens to you, perhaps we should all follow the example of Jesus, to pause, to think about it.

If we think the call to ministry leads to nothing but affirmation and self-assurance, watch for the example of Christ.  Just when Jesus was refreshed and renewed in the waters of holy baptism and retired to the wilderness, true to form, that’s when Satan arrived.  I wonder if Jesus felt any dim memory of his premortal life.  When Satan presented that sweeping vista of earthly possibilities, did something feel familiar to Jesus?  Did Jesus, in His divinity, have a glimmer of memory that the all those earthly kingdoms and splendors were rightfully His?  Did Jesus, in His humanity, long for the instant gratification of power and possessions?  Had Satan been tempting me on that mountain, the story would have ended badly. I am going to exegete, extrapolate, but not exaggerate.  You see, Satan had counted on covetousness.  Let me say it again.  Satan counts on covetousness.

Satan, in his characteristic ludicrous arrogance, wanted the Son of God to bow down and worship he who has been a liar from all eternity.  But he was clever, but he knew Jesus would not be tempted directly into idolatry, the sin Satan was really after, so he tried to pry the Son of God with covetousness.  If Satan can pervert our desires for what God has not given us, he can distract us from all that God has given us.  We sure learn a lot about Satan in this story—first, that he knows the Bible better than we do, second, he attacks the servants of God on the heels of great spiritual experiences at the gateways to great spiritual promise, and, third, he will manipulate us, he will pry, try, and trick us into giving him want he wants by offering us what we want.

But listen for the Good News of the Lord.  This time, in the wilderness with that lowly fasting young carpenter from Nazareth, with Jesus, it turns out that Satan had made a terrible miscalculation.  Now, in Satan’s defense, it is strategy that surely had worked for him before and surely works still.  But, sisters and brothers, we’re not here to talk about Satan.  We’re here to praise Jesus.  Jesus who did not blink or budge; Jesus who did not falter or fall; Jesus who stared down the Fall-down-and-worship-me devil with a holy Away with you Satan!

Jesus knew who He was and, if He were still learning what He was called to do, He did know who He was called to follow.  Moses warned us clearly in the tenth commandment:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).

Covetousness is a silent sin.  Jealousy for what is not ours that wells up inside of us.  It makes us bitter.  And it eventually erupts.  Perhaps it erupts in the betrayal of adultery, in the greed of theft, in the violence of murder, in the ingratitude of idolatry, or scapegoating of bigotry.  But erupt into our lives, it will.  It is a gateway drug into the clenching addiction of sin.

We need to be careful, though, that we don’t subvert God’s view of covetousness.  Moralizing against covetousness can be perverted by those who oppress.  So let me be clear, to be free from the sin of covetousness does not mean we are blind to inequalities or that we do not strive for better lives for ourselves or others.  It does not mean staying passive in our place, the place where the world has placed us, the place where our language, our bank account, our appearance, has placed us.  The warning against covetousness is a warning against gaining our own advantage at the expense of others through the same sinful path of oppressors.  It is a warning, do not long for that which is not yours so much that you abandon God’s principles, having what they have, but sacrificing the godliness they have sacrificed on the altar of materialism.  Oh indeed, we avoid covetousness by knowing our place, but the place where God, God who creates, and gives life, God who calls and qualifies, has placed us.

Coveting is the distraction that gives our mind time for ingratitude.  I don’t just mean forgot-to-send-a-thank-you-note ingratitude.  I mean the kind of ingratitude that is so all-consuming we no longer see what we have.  When we’re too busy obsessing over what God has not given us, we do not see what God has given us.  We’re too busy lusting after our neighbor’s house that we aren’t shouting hallelujah for the tent God freely gave us.  Now for those of us here who have heard God’s call to preach the Good News, covetousness will cripple our ministries if we spend our energy lamenting the gifts we don’t have so much we miss opportunities to use the gifts we have.

Some gifts in ministry are obvious.  Paul lists some in 1 Corinthians 12—eloquence, knowledge, wisdom, healing, administration—to name a few.  As we ponder the gifts of ministry, covetousness is what makes us hear the things we are not good at more loudly than the things we are.  Personally, I often feel that I am the only youth minister in all of Christianity who cannot play acoustic guitar.  In our modern churches, there are more gifts the Lord’s work needs—the gifts of understanding PowerPoint and web media (check), the gifts of music (not mine), the gifts of understanding teenagers (check), the gifts of understanding adults (in progress).

But rather than a check list of talents or spiritual gifts, no matter how Biblical, we need to see that God has prepared us for the ministries to which we are called in all that we have been given. And now sisters and brothers, this is the hard part, in all that we have not been given.  And we must not let coveting what could have been distract us from what God calls us to do now.

Let’s look once again to God’s Word.  During the reign of King Ahasuerus of Persia, about four hundred years before the common era, a stunningly beautiful young Jewish woman had found herself, much to her own surprise, Queen of Persia.  When Haman, one the king’s advisors, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia, the prophet Mordecai approached Esther.  As a Jew and as the king’s most beautiful wife, she was in a unique position to stop the genocidal plot.  We read Mordecai’s words to her in Esther 4.  Listen to verse 14.  “Who knows?  Perhaps you have come to this royal dignity for just such a time as this.”  It would be easy to covet Esther’s beauty, power, and position, but that would miss the point.  Esther was given royal dignity; you and I may have been given poverty or riches, loneliness or popularity, instead.  But what is universally true is Mordecai’s question.  Who knows?  Perhaps we are each are where we are—with the gifts we have and those we don’t—for just such a time as this.

Now, I am not often mistaken for a stunningly beautiful Persian Queen, but I am convinced that God has placed me where He needs me, and that everything we have and everything we wish had, is part of a divine plan.  As Paul says in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good.”  But the covetous will not notice.  This leads to another observation about coveting.  The coveted objects are not necessarily sinful.  There is nothing wrong with having a wife, or an ox, or a donkey.  In fact, coveting is perhaps most tempting, or at least most easily self-justified, when we covet truly honorable things.

When I was eleven years old, my mother died of cancer.  That was seventeen years ago now, but if I am to be truly honest with myself and with you, I would admit that I really have not outgrown my sense of loss one bit.  Young adulthood is full of moments that remind me. My wedding, the birth and blessings of my daughters, my college graduation, my sermons, Christmas, this festival, in every grand event I notice her absence.  A painting of my mother hangs in my daughters’ bedroom.  My wife and I tell our daughters who it is, Grandma Ginger, Daddy’s mommy, and that she lives in heaven.  One day my three-year-old Lanéa walked up to me and said, “I miss Grandma Ginger, I want Grandma Ginger to visit.”  Oh, I want her to visit too.  How dare God rob me of my mother, how dare God rob my beautiful daughters, my nieces and nephews of their Grandma Ginger.

Just last week, I saw a Facebook photo of a fellow seminarian’s children snuggling their grandmother before the flight home at the end of Christmas break.  To my friend’s family, this was a sad moment, but all I saw was happiness, and I looked at the picture teary-eyed, and honestly, covetously.  I could not rejoice for my friend, because I was mourning for myself.  I covet mothers and those who have them.  Even in the miraculous story of Jesus at the wedding at Cana, I covet Jesus.  How I wish my mother would boss me around when I am thirty.

One warm summer night in Sonoma, California, hundreds of teenagers filed out of a dance at a church youth conference where I was a counselor supervisor.  As the dance hall emptied, a frantic counselor ran up to me and said, “Jonathan, only you can help.”  A girl in her group, a fifteen-year-old, had just been called by her father.  He was coming to take her home from the conference early.  Her mother had been battling cancer for years, and the latest rounds of treatment failed.  The doctors gave this sweet girl’s mother only days to live.  And as much as I struggle with my own grief, as much as I covet those whose mothers are alive and well, my co-worker was right.  Of all the staff at that conference that night, God had prepared me to sit by that precious daughter of God under that moonlight.  To cry with her.  To tell her that I understood, and that I didn’t understand.  To tell her that it would not be okay—that it would suck, that it would ache more painfully than anything she had ever felt.  To tell her that it would be okay, that she would emerge a stronger and more loving saint.  To tell her that faith in God may no longer mean trusting He will heal your mother, but trusting He will sustain her family even when she dies.  Who knows?  Perhaps my life brought me to that young woman for just such a time as that.

Because friends, even in our suffering, God is good to us.  Sometimes God is denying us curses that look like gifts, while pouring down gifts that feel like curses.  To covet is assume we see better than God does, and to deny God’s goodness, and to deny ourselves opportunities to minister where and how God calls us to serve.  To covet does not just lead to idolatry, it can be idolatry.  If I see better than God, if I know what I need better than God does, I have made myself my own god.  There is nothing dishonorable about an eleven-year-old boy mourning his mother, or even the twenty-eight-year-old grown son yearning for her child raising advice.  But how grand was God’s vision that he took that grieving boy in 1994 Massachusetts and led him to that grieving girl in 2005 California.  When we are coveting, we are not rejoicing, we are not serving.  So, may God our creator, redeemer, and comforter, say, away with Satan, and may we follow Jesus by His grace and with joy, wondering always if our circumstances have prepared to serve in just such a time as this.  Amen.