On Rainbows & Church Unity

Sometimes I pull an old sermon from my father's barrel and I find that it reads as though it were newly penned to be preached today. With Christians now so sharply divided over hot-button political, social and theological issues, these words that my dad wrote for his congregation in 1984 might as well have been meant for us over thirty years later:

"Too often we see partnership and unity in the Church replaced with factionalism and suspicion. An outsider observing us would wonder whether we consider it more important to be about our mission or to quarrel over issues such as female ministers in the Church, or whether we should use only male terms to refer to God, or conservative versus liberal theology, or the place of homosexuals in the church and its ministry, or many others.

Unfortunately, today in many people's eyes it is not enough to say you are a Christian. If you do, you will be pressed further to reveal whether you are a liberal or a conservative, whether you're straight or gay and where you stand on those issues, whether you're high church or low church, whether you're charismatic or fundamentalist or evangelical, whether you advocate a theology of liberation or feminism, whether you are part of a denomination or an independent.

Christians are preoccupied with choosing up sides over various hot issues and consolidating their strength to protect their own turf. This is a very serious challenge to partnership and unity within the Church; it is damaging to our credibility and our Christian witness before the world. In the days of the early Church it is reported that outsiders looked at the Christian fellowship and said, 'See how they love one another!' It seems today that our factionalism is more of a distinguishing mark than our love for one another.

Our partnership and unity as Christians comes from the fact that before the cross all of us are absolutely equal. The criminal and the PTA president, the unemployed laborer and the corporate executive, black and white, male and female, socialist and capitalist, gay and straight. Before the cross, the only thing that differentiates us is whether or not we have accepted God's forgiving, transforming love. All of the other stands we take on social issues, political issues, economic issues, moral issues are minor compared to the stand we take at the foot of the cross. The cross may have been on a hill, but at the foot of the cross the ground is perfectly level. No one stands higher than anyone else there.

Solidarity is often little more than an enlarged form of self-interest. Communities and churches that are made up only of 'birds of a feather' are not the fulfillment of the Gospel. We call Jesus the Light of the World, so it might be helpful to think about how light works. We know light by what it lights up, by the way it is reflected. Light is the perfect mixture of the full spectrum of colors. Most objects which the sun's rays hit will absorb some colors in the light and reflect others. We see only the colors that are reflected. Those colors, we know, are an outstanding variety of shades and contrasts -- never just one uniform color.

It is exactly the same with each different person on whom the Light of Jesus Christ shines. He shines on each one of us, and we each look slightly different because we each reflect slightly different parts of his light. And so, one of us under Christ's light is a fighter against social injustice, while another is zealous for personal conversion. One advocates order and dignity in worship, while another calls for freedom and spontaneity. One pushes for change, while another cautions us not to lose the value of tradition. Doesn't every human being color the pure light of Christ to some degree and in some direction? Should this always be understood as the tragedy of our imperfection? Or might it be a blessing of diversity, like a rainbow that in a sense opens up or unfolds the sunlight?

Through his cross, Christ revealed himself most fully as the Light of the World -- a light that at one and the same time enhances our differences and yet draws us together because it shines on all of us from one true source. We should not be frustrated with diversity and contrast in the Church. We must thank God for every new tint that shines forth to the world. None of us individually, but all of us together in true partnership, can reflect the pure light of God to a darkened world. This is the Good News we have to give: 'God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.'"  

From: "Toward a New Partnership in the Church"
Scripture: Philippians 1:1-11; II Corinthians 8:1-7, 9:10-15
Preached at: Paoli U.M. Church, Paoli, PA  (1984)

Spiritual Weariness

I'm on vacation ... a week away from the pressures of work and the daily grind of life. This break came at a good time, at a point when I felt like weariness might have otherwise swamped me. I'm sure you've been there. Who hasn't? Getting away from it all certainly helps to give us a fresh perspective and to refuel us for the journey ahead.

But what is the best prescription when our weariness is spiritual? What if our frustration is not simply from the stresses of a job, but with a God who seems absent or at least asleep at the switch? My father once wrote that such spiritual weariness "is epidemic among us today. It's easy to grow weary of a God whose only claim to divinity is what he did back in the hazy past. It's like dozing off while listening to the reminiscing of a once-great person, all of whose excitement and accomplishments in life lie in days gone by. That kind of god becomes dull and old-hat, lacking in power and relevance for the now of our lives. Consequently, our church-going, our praying, our Bible reading, and even our Christian service becomes obligation, dull routine. Finally, it may even fade away entirely."

"People lament. They say, 'What has happened to the Church? It has lost its power, its zest.' The answer is that the Church -- you and I (for the Church is not something other than you and I) -- the Church is looking for God in the past rather than in the present. It is not enough to study the Bible to find out what God did back then. It is not enough to recall what God did in years past in any congregation. Isaiah says, 'Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.' Now he didn't meant that it was wrong to go back to those things. He certainly did enough of that himself in his prophecies. But we go back to what God did then in order to get a handle on the present, to be able to discern what God is doing now, not to live back there. We are failing to ask, 'What is God doing among us now?'"

"What is God doing in my life, my job, my family, my marriage? What is God doing in my church? What is God doing in the world? These are important questions. The Biblical promise is: 'Ask and ye shall receive.' It is absolutely certain that if you ask these questions in faith, really wanting to know, you will be overwhelmed. Your life, your church, the world around you will dance, alive with the Spirit of God. You cannot grow weary of a God like that."

"I recently heard of a pastor who begins each meeting of the congregation's governing Board by asking the members a question: 'Where have you seen God at work -- at work anywhere -- since the last time we met?' The answers bring a sense of excitement and thrill to the meeting and to the church itself. These people are training themselves to look for God's activity, and they are finding God every day, in their families, in their neighborhoods, in their church, even in the news headlines. It is a search that never goes unrewarded."

"God is alive and moving right now. The more you sensitize yourself to this, the more you realize that the earth is crammed with heaven, and no situation, no matter how terrible, is outside the redeeming activity of God. The Bible is not God's prison, and heaven is not just our retreat where we go in the sweet by-and-by when the world is finished using and abusing us. 'Behold, he is doing a new thing right now. Do you not perceive it?'" 

So now I have some questions to ponder as a paddle my kayak across the lake: What new thing is this God doing in my life, my family, my marriage, my workplace, my church, my world? I'm guessing that the answers to questions like these could be as energizing as any vacation.

From:"Weary of God"

Scripture: Isaiah 43:14-25    

Family: It's A Given

Cousin Jeanie, who had organized our family reunion, stood at the front of the picnic pavilion and exclaimed to the assembled Newcomers,"This all began with four knucklehead brothers: Bill, Ray, Bob and Charlie Newcomer." Those four men -- my grandfather and his three younger brothers -- are no longer with us. But all of their living children, plus my mother who represented my dad, came forward to stand on the stage. Soon spouses joined them, then their children, then the spouses of their children, then their grandchildren, until all the Newcomers were standing to form a living family tree. It was quite a sight: the most Newcomers I've ever seen in one place. Some I've known all my life, others I've only seen sporadically, and a few I was meeting for the first time. Yet, we were all family. 

  

My Mom (far left) with the Children of Bill, Ray, Bob & Charlie Newcomer

My father once wrote that being with family gives you "an appreciation for what it means to learn to live with people who are given to you, not people you choose to live with, but people who are given. Certainly the particular children we have are given to us; we did not choose them from a large selection. Sometimes this is true of someone else you might live with -- an uncle or a grandparent. One time a number of years ago, two college girls in tears knocked frantically on our door. They had been put out of their rooming house across the street by a local density ordinance. They had no place to go. We took them in and they became a part of our family for a year, and a real blessing, too! What else could we do? They were given to us. I've always felt it important to accept those who are given to me."

"You say, 'Yes, but there's one person in my family whom I choose -- my wife or my husband.' That's true, and there's a real sense of free choice in the first months or even years of marriage, but it's not too long until that wears off and our marriage partner has a certain 'given-ness' about him or her in our eyes. You know what they say: 'You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family.'"

"Jesus ... [uses] the family to teach us how to love and appreciate and care for those who are given to us. It is easy to love and appreciate and care for the people you choose. But the family is where we first learn to deal with people who are given. And the main blessing that Jesus provides for us in this respect is to teach us that love is a matter of the will, even more than a matter of our feelings. Chosen people are easily loved because we feel like loving them. Given people are not as easily loved, and so we must will to love them. The will to love is largely unknown in the secular world. It comes from Jesus Christ when we want it and ask him for it. It transforms the family into a group of people who, though they did not choose each other, have a strong mutual love that sets them apart from so many other families where there is mutual distrust and dislike and bare toleration of each other."

"This love for those who are given is such an important thing to learn in the family because it is a valuable asset to have in so many other areas of life where people are also given to us. A choir and its director are given to each other; a United Methodist Church and its pastor are given to each other; a teacher and a class are given to each other; an employee and a boss are often given to one another; neighbors are given to each other. Every day we can, by God's grace, will to love those who are given to us. And we can first learn how to do this in the Christian family." 

From: "The Family: Conformed or Transformed?"

Scripture: Romans 12:1-2

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

May 8, 1988 

No Forgiveness, No Peace

The news this past week has been horrible. One morning, I picked up the newspaper and read a headline saying, "Traffic-Stop Sheer Horror."  A black man from Minnesota had been shot and killed by a police officer in a mere traffic stop for a broken tail light. It was the second fatal police shooting of a black man in as many days, the other occurring in Louisiana. Then, when I picked up the newspaper the next morning, the banner headline read, "Dallas in Shock." A man with a rifle, looking to avenge the week's earlier deaths, turned a peaceful protest into a blood-bath -- shooting twelve police officers, killing five of them. How do we effectively address such violence, such anger, such injustice? Where does it end? 

My father's ministry began in the Boston area during the racially turbulent 1960s. On the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., my father preached a sermon he simply titled, "Reconciliation." There, Dad said that racial reconciliation has two key ingredients. The first is justice: "Justice is making up for past wrongs. It is everyone getting what is deserved and enjoying equal rights and equal opportunities."  My father said that "[e]very muscle of our bodies and every cell of our brains and every dollar in our pockets must be strained to the limit to achieve justice in our society." 

As vitally important as he believed justice to be, my father saw that justice alone is insufficient to bring about true reconciliation: "So many leaders will tell us falsely that 'justice' is the be-all and end-all of reconciliation between the races, or any other at-odds groups, of which there are so many. They are wrong! Justice alone will never bring reconciliation because, strictly speaking, as long as men are men and sinners, there will never be total justice. ...

"You know, there are some debts we owe to other men that we just cannot pay. There are other debts that we can only begin to pay. At the point where my ability to pay my debt to you falls short, that is where you must begin to forgive. And only because you forgive can we be reconciled. Forgiveness is the meat of reconciliation, its main ingredient. Dr. King realized that the meat of reconciliation is forgiveness -- thus his philosophy of non-violence. ...

"Men are human; they sin against each other. Even in a perfectly ordered society, they hurt each other. And so if there is to be peace, there must be a constant flow of forgiveness. The history of the church -- from the day Stephen was stoned to the day Martin Luther King was shot -- shows us that sometimes no reparation is possible and forgiveness is the only practical action which can be prescribed. We must recognize that we are indebted to each other. If we want to live together and work together, we must learn to forgive."

So where do we go from here? From the evil, loss and division we witnessed last week? My father believed that, "as Christians on this day, we have the audacious right to proclaim that unless the  divided world recognizes and understands the word of reconciliation spoken by God at the cross, it is without hope of survival in any sense."

"What does God do at the cross that reconciles us to him? He forgives. He forgives. In Christ, God bears our sin and suffers. Loving us with unfathomable love, he forgives us the thousands of misguided ways we have attempted to be masters of our own fate. He forgives. By the cross, God shows us that he forgives the great corporate and social evils that we have helped set in motion, but over which we no longer have control. He forgives. ... There is nothing I can do to pay the debt I owe God for what I have done to my neighbor and therefore to God himself. But God loves me, and so he forgives. ...

"Who would think that the cross would give us the pattern and the source for ordering our social relations? But I submit to you that if it did not, what would it be worth?

From "Reconciliation"
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Preached Good Friday, 1969
Adams Shore Community Church, Quincy, MA  

P.S. - For more from Bill on Christian faith and racial reconciliation, I urge you to read the post: Bill on Martin: A Call to Action. 

Jesus Scares Me

I recently came across a sermon my father preached when I was two years old. Examining the relationship between parents, children and faith, Dad asked, "Parents, where do you supposed your child first begins to pick up an idea of what God is like? From you, of course. From the way you cuddle and nurse and talk to the child. And as the child grows, his or her concept of God is further colored by contacts with other significant adults. We call God 'father' because we think of God as being like a good father. Children have no other way to visualize God except in terms of adults.

Bill with Phil

The other day, my young son Philip looked at a picture of the bearded Jesus and asked me who it was. I said, 'Jesus.' Philip answered, 'Jesus scares me.' And that set me to thinking about how Philip or any child will come to know God. Not by first seeing pictures or hearing stories, but by experiencing God's love channeled through me."

It turns out that I did come to learn many valuable things about God's nature from the love that was channeled through my father. 

Dad was always concerned for my well-being, was always looking out for me ... and so is God.

Dad was both playful and serious ... and so is God.

Dad was called to serve many others beyond his family. There were the members of his congregations who looked to him for guidance, the grieving who needed comfort, the sick who needed to be visited, the needy who came looking for aid. So it was for Jesus.

And with the many demands that others made on my Dad's time and attention when I was a kid, there was plenty of opportunity for me to be resentful of his ministry ... to wish that he was just my dad and not everyone else's pastor. But I understood -- no doubt because Dad made such a point of it -- that his ministry was our family's ministry. We all were part of it. He wasn't appointed to a church; our whole family was. His work was our work, too. God is like that -- choosing to work with us and through us for the good of others, for the good of all.

Dad ended his sermon by saying, "I thank God, as I look back across my life, for the people who disciplined me, the people who taught me, the people who spoke the words and who gave the gentle shoves that challenged me. I have forgotten the people who didn't care, those who were afraid to advise, the ones who were too busy to teach. I remember only, and I thank God for the men and women who saw to it that I came to love and serve God in Jesus Christ through the church."

Thank you, Dad, for seeing to it that I know and love God. I'm happy to report that Jesus doesn't scare me any more. (Well, at least his beard doesn't.) Happy Father's Day!

From "Lent to the Lord"

Scripture: 1 Samuel 1:19c-28

January 21, 1968

Adams Shore Community Church

Quincy, MA   

A Mother's Nurture

Something felt a little upside-down as we sat around the restaurant table, eating a meal with my mom to celebrate Mother's Day. It was a real treat, I'm sure, for Mom to have all three of her kids there to celebrate with her. After all, my brother, Mark is living in the UK and rarely gets to come state-side. But, as conversation continued, it dawned on me that we were engrossed in discussing everything that was going on with Mom's kids and grand-kids ... not so much about what was going on with Mom. As she so often does, Mom was focused on us, more than on herself. 

Mark, Lisa, Mom (Barb) and Phil

When I think back on my childhood, the word that I would use to describe Mom is "nurturing." In a sermon my dad preached on Mother's Day in 1982, Dad observed that "nurture" comes from the same root as does the word "nourish." That was Mom (and it still is)! You never lack for nourishment at Mom's house!

In that Mother's Day sermon, Dad explained that nurturing "has to do with feeding for growth -- nourishing us physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally for mature adulthood." Dad went on to say that "[o]ne of our basic modern problems is that no one wants to nurture anymore. Women used to do it, and because it was all we ever let them do, now they are reacting against it and doing it less and less. Men have hardly ever done it, although they are certainly capable of it. Old people want to leave it to the young. The young want to have their freedom and not be tied down. ... With all the emphasis these days on power and self-determination and doing your own thing, we view the role of nurturer as something to do if you can't find anything better. It's as if it were unmanly -- or now unwomanly -- to nurture children or those in our society who are weak or need help.

Where did we ever get the idea that nurture is beneath us -- as women, or as men? Where did we ever get the idea that we are being less than we can be if we feed and comfort and teach and listen and care? Are we not created in the image of God? And are we not supposed to grow in God's likeness? What is God like? ...

We call the God we worship 'Father,' and we picture a creator and judge, but that is not the full Biblical revelation of God's nature. Think of the Lord as gentle shepherd, the one who nourishes and cares. God is the one who provides manna in the wilderness for God's hungry people.

I always have found it interesting that one of our most precious Christian doctrines -- the doctrine of new birth -- sheds a light on the nature of God that is not traditionally masculine at all. We can be 'born of God,' we can be 'born of the Spirit.' Do you know what that means? God is our spiritual mother as well as our spiritual father. What I mean by that is: As one person, God does for each of us everything that we traditionally have divided up between male and female roles. God combines within God's self the creating function as well as the sustaining function, strength as well as tenderness, self-control as well as the free flow of emotions. God is the perfect person, and by God's grace we strive for that wholeness. 

Strength and tenderness ... Yes, in spite of what we may think the two can combine. And they can combine in each one of us, regardless of our sex, because they are combined perfectly in the God in whose image we all have been made."

Thank you, Mom, for the life-giving nurture that you provided (and still provide) for your children and grandchildren. And thank you to my wife, Dorry, who is an amazing nurturing presence in the lives of our kids. May we all learn from the nurturing example of our mothers ... and of our God ... so that we can mature into whole and healthy people.  Happy Mother's Day!

From: "Nurturing for Maturity"

Scripture: John  19:23-30

Preached: Mother's Day 1982

Calvary United Methodist Church, Easton, PA

The Cost of Discipleship

On this date in 1945, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi regime for playing a role in a movement that resisted Hitler, even to the point of attempting assassination. Bonhoeffer was my father's favorite theologian, not only because of what he wrote, but also because of how he lived and died.

A couple of Bonhoeffer's works from Bill's library:
The Cost of Discipleship & Letters and Papers from Prison

My father's sermons include many references to Bonhoeffer's life and writings. In one of those sermons, Dad described the fateful choice Bonhoeffer made which set him on a path toward his death:

"Bonhoeffer, who along with other Germans fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, came to America seeking refuge and peace. And yet there was no peace for him. In the steamy heat of a Summer night in 1939, Dietrich walked up and down Times Square in New York, agonizing over the news from Europe. Alone, he tried, as Christ did so many years before, to reject the cup of suffering he knew would be his. The next day, he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: 'I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this same time with my people.' And so he returned to Germany; he led the underground Confessing Church; he plotted against Hitler; he was arrested, imprisoned and finally hanged. Neither Bonhoeffer nor Jesus were stupid or foolhardy. They recognized the dangers and the cost involved. But they also recognized that they would be less than they were meant to be, if they stayed in America, or in Galilee."

My father never expected that every Christian would be called upon to make the same sacrifice as a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he did believe that all Christians are called to the single-minded devotion to Christ that landed Bonhoeffer in Tegel Prison:

"What is involved in following Jesus? We must put Him and His Kingdom of love and justice and righteousness first in our lives. Don't let anyone kid you. This is difficult, and if you do it seriously it will get you into as much trouble as missing your father's funeral. We are called to be totally committed to Christ in the midst of, within, all our daily routines and responsibilities ... to follow Him in our work, our home, our marriage, our leisure, our civic responsibilities.

This will mean raising your children in a distinctly different way from many of your neighbors. It may mean conducting your work or business life according to principles that cause you to make less money or to get passed over for a promotion. It will affect what you eat, drink, wear, ride in or live in. It will mean that you will not automatically go along with the crowd in your opinions about social, political or economic issues. And you know those bull sessions with the boys or the girls? You may not be able to roar with laughter at all the jokes, or agree with prejudices that are expressed there. It will mean taking unpopular stands and getting used to feeling out of place around some of your neighbors and friends and relatives. 

Total commitment is the Lord's expectation of every Christian. Our duty is to single-mindedly translate Christ-likeness into every area where we play out our lives, regardless of the cost." If we do anything less, won't we be less than God meant us to be?

From: "A Trip to Jerusalem" & "Total Commitment"

Scripture: Luke 9:51-62