Lectionary Preaching in Times of Change and Transition: June 2012

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Year B Proper 10 (15) Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 10 (15) Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

Episcopalian friends joined me in a visit to one of the Presbyterian churches for which I had oversight in my interim governing body executive capacity. One recognized the organist as a neighbor and approached the chancel steps and spoke across the chasm to greet him. He invited her up closer but my guest stood back, aghast to be asked to go into the “holy place” of the chancel area. The musician chuckled and said, “we are Presbyterians, nothing is holy up here”.

The Ark of the Covenant for David’s kingdom was the place of God’s abode. It was so holy and sacred that to touch it was to die. It had been “lost” in battle, was now found and on its way to being the center of holy worship again. I can’t help but wonder how, during the interim transition, the interim minister might introduce the holiness of God along with the meaning of being God’s holy people?

In a parallel account in 1 Chronicles 13:12-14, the Ark was stolen by an enemy of Israel and then restored. On the way to Jerusalem, the soldiers were ambushed and the Ark was taken to the house of Obed-Edom for safe keeping. Obed-Edom household was blessed by the holy presence of God represented by the Ark. Here is one more path for using the transition “lens”. Here, the transition journey “home” to Jerusalem was one that brought blessing and joy because of God’s holy presence in the household. This is a worthy exploration for the interim ministry preacher and worship leader.

For some of our traditions, nothing may be holy but then, aren’t all things holy in that God created them and we use them for God’s glory? In that spirit of reverence perhaps we will catch our “spiritual breath” and rediscover the presence of God that is so critical to the future leadership of our congregations. We can give a radical twist to the interim developmental task of renewing congregational identity.

Ephesians 1:3-14

The identity theme of God’s Holy People continues in the Epistle lesson for this Sunday. For the interim minister and preacher, this text could become a series sermons focusing on our identity. We are blessed by God, made to be a blessing, adopted, heirs, redeemed, made righteous and much more.

As an interim pastoral leader it is too easy to stick with the technical organization concepts of church size, our style, or our place on the theological spectrum of evangelical – progressive. Or, are we simply a “friendly” church that is a civic leader or servant “non-profit” outreach? One of the challenges of the interim transition can be to stretch the congregation’s theological thinking about who we are, why we are, and whose we are.

As poetry and hymn, there is ample opportunity to continue the theme of worship and praise. One could reflect on David’s praise in 2 Samuel. David’s exuberance is a bit over the top for our (often) intellectualized worship. An interesting preaching approach using both texts might be to reflect on the the (proper?) place of emotion in worship. As a friend of mine told me, “we are Presbyterians and we need to learn to worship with decency and ardor!

Bob Anderson

Interim Ministry Specialist

Life Coach for Ministry Professionals

Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Proper 9 (14) Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 6:1-13

We hear the phrase, “a prophet isn’t accepted in his own country”. When I was in radio broadcasting it was an informal maxim that you couldn’t get an “on air” job in your home town unless you left for a few years and then came back. Jesus had the courage to keep on keeping on even in the face of public ridicule, incredulity and rejection. Creating a faithful life amidst spouse, children and close family is the most challenging and difficult task we can know. Sharing a deep spiritual moment in one’s life is often easier to share with a stranger than a spouse. The spouse knows me and how I measure up. He or she may hold me accountable and I will take it as criticism. Been there, done that. The preacher’s challenge may be personal rather than homiletic. Our lives speak.

We can flip this around, too. The interim pastor is the “stranger” in the community. Parker Palmer writes in his fascinating book, The Company of Strangers, that the strangers we meet – those who are different from us, speak another language, are from a different racial background or culture – are the very people who challenge our assumptions, make us think, change us. I am the interim “stranger” whose very presence may create some cognitive dissonance in the congregation’s life. How will I live and preach so that I can authentically witness the life of Christ to the community in the spiritual journey of leadership transition?

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Interestingly, for me at least, is that these two texts speak to more to me about the preacher than the sermon. I hate to admit it but I’m old enough to recall the day that the homiletics prof in seminary carefully warned us about the dangers of using our own “testimony” in a sermon. Personal stories, I was told, focused on the person of the preacher, not the person of Christ. There is truth in that, of course. However, my own story line, when woven into the Gospel can be an illuminating move at times.

Paul seems to be caught in the same dilemma here. The Corinthians were hungry for ecstatic experiences and the Apostle shares his own personal encounter with heaven. There probably no words available for him to say much and he doesn’t. His letter moves the reader, not to the “mountaintop of a spiritual high” but to weakness that is a gift from God. His authenticity and authority is not the power of ecstasy. Paul moves us to the end that a perspective that sees the power of the experience as “viewed through the cross, not power viewed through the cross, not the power of spectacle or domination, is the power that can make us whole. (Sally Brown, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=7/8/2012)

For an interim transition congregation, discovering God’s grace in the midst of transitional discontinuity (a thorn in the side of the congregation?) needs to be part of the interim pastor’s role as teaching elder and resident theologian.

Bob Anderson

Interim Ministry Specialist

Life Coach for Ministry Professionals

Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Year B Proper 8 (13) Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Year B Proper 8 (13) Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 130

“I wait for the Lord…” Waiting and interim ministry are a matched set. The congregation awaits the pastor’s final day, it awaits the arrival of the interim pastor, it waits through the pastor search process and waits still for the new pastoral leader to arrive onsite. They wait in expectant hope like the watchman for the dawn. The promise of God is as sure as the sunrise.

The Psalm creates a spiritual context for the interim transition congregation. Waiting becomes a spiritual practice that examines the past and lays it aside in forgiveness with hope for a new future. Waiting becomes contemplative and active. Waiting is active when full of hope and expectancy. Waiting is a womb where the future is conceived and born in the right time.

Sue Monk Kidd in her reflective book, When the Heart Waits, creates another kind of word picture for this Psalm:

I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means "to endure." Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It's a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives falsely. It means struggling with the vision of who we really are in God and molding the courage to live that vision.( SUE MONK KIDD, When the Heart Waits)

The Psalm is rich with images and metaphors. Consider the Psalm as the “frame” for the flow of worship – Call to Worship, Prayer of Confession and so forth. I used the following in one setting:

Prayers for the Waiting Place

May I begin, O God – merely begin, and begin

Again to wait, be still, to listen ….