Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from February 5, 2006

“All Things to All People?”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Isaiah 40:21-31

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

In Germany in the mid-eighties, men’s groups became increasingly popular.  Most of them were trying to explore and define who or what the “new man” might be.  At that point, I had neither a job nor a committed relationship, let alone children.  So I didn’t feel qualified to participate in the conversation; but I did  watch from the balcony curious what my older and more experienced fellow men might come up with.  Even from the balconies it was clear that we all knew better how not to be a man following the lessons of feminism than having an idea what the new male identity might positively look like.

The blueprint turned out something like this: New men would be strong, but gentle, it was agreed; they would be sensitive and know how to express feelings; they still would wear tool-belts and drive nails in the walls but would gladly concede, without feeling diminished in their pride and identity, that their wives or girlfriends got the nail in straighter than they could.  New men would be able to cook a different meal several weeknights in a row and do some laundry during the time it took the pasta water to boil; new men would have jobs that allowed them to stay at home with the kids as needed and would go to see most of their offspring’s lacrosse games.  At the end of the day, new men would go to bed content, blessed with a solid sense of identity and purpose.

What happened since?  By the time I had a family and a gainful employment, most men’s groups had disappeared.  Whether it is because we had figured it all out or because we got tired of talking about it, I am not sure.

In my later seminary years, especially in this country, a whole new identity question became a favorite topic of conversation.  What might the “new clergy” be?  What might the “new pastor” look like?  Clearly not the “Herr Pastor” authority that I had grown up with in Germany and had shaped so much of the church’s life in the past in this country as well.  Do you have any ideas?

We asked questions like:  Is now the whole pulpit obsolete or is it just the fact that it was elevated, as if there was a higher truth spoken from there than in the pew?   No, the pulpit has its rightful place, as long as we know that faith isn’t a monologue, not a one-sided conversation, not a mere disbursement of truth; rather, faith is a conversation we have with one another.  As much truth is spoken from the pews as is from the pulpit.

Was the clergy collar a symbol of power and, therefore, should go; or was it a reminder of the presence of God in our lives and a reminder that when the pastor visits in the hospital, in a sense the whole congregation is there with him or her and, therefore, the collar was a symbol worth more than a thousand words?

If we are all the same, as we clearly are, and if we all do ministry together, then what was to be the function of ordination?  What would be the meaning of the robe and the stole, besides being a way of hiding whatever choice of clothing we came up with on any given Sunday morning?  Ordination, we agreed, does not bestow us with any special claim on God’s will or words; much rather, it speaks of our special need for blessing.  More important still, the process leading up to it is a function of quality control, where our individual sense that we are called by God is carefully and faithfully examined by the wider church, the same church that we hope to serve. Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, does not ordain a pastor until a specific congregation has called him or her to do ministry among them. The gatekeepers of the truth in ministry, it turns out, are you, the people in the pews.

Richard Lischer is a Lutheran minister and he writes about his very first congregation right out of seminary in a book called “Open Secrets.”  For the first few months of his ministry, he encounters his predecessor in the sacristy every Sunday morning, gravely ill and very weak with cancer, but fully vested and with a hymnal in his lap, following the service stretched out on a lounge chair , visible only to the young new pastor.  Lischer describes the old school clergyman and draws the comparison to his own generation.  Let me read to you:

Erich Martin was the former pastor of the church.  He was so weakened by cancer that he couldn’t sit in a pew.  He worshiped in the sacristy with the door to the chancel wide open.  From his lounge chair he could also keep an eye on me, and from anywhere in the chancel I had him in view.  Since no one could see him but me, he constituted my private audience of one, a second congregation.  Whenever I stood in the pulpit during those first months, Erich was a barely living blur to my right.  If I was tempted, as preachers occasionally are, to replace the proclamation of the gospel with affable chatter, the presence of a liturgically vested, dying man in a chaise lounge never failed to dissuade …

The old academy system of education had forged Erich with a discipline that was foreign to me.  I never met a person so utterly controlled by the patterns and duties of the ministry as he.  Even among farmers, who are not famous for their introspective nature, I never met anyone less absorbed in himself or driven by a personal agenda than Erich.  Unlike the therapeutically trained cleric, Erich did not compulsively insist on being a friend or a pal to his parishioners.  He was not, as one of my friends says of Protestant ministers in general, “a quivering mass of availability.”  He did not personalize his every act of ministry.  Unlike ministers who make a career of getting along with people, Erich’s approach was to do his duty, and to let the duties symbolize something larger and more important than his own personality.

It is the very sign of a solid sense of identity that what we do is not about us.  Both the congregation and the clergy are better served if there is a sense of the pastoral office that exists apart from who we are as individuals.  To be authentic and to genuinely care is essential but that is the opposite of the desperate attempt to make ourselves fit the shape of every emptiness and every need we encounter.

But what then should we make of Paul saying that, for the sake of the Gospel and winning people for the Gospel, he has become “all things to all people”?  If that phrase does not invoke the “quivering mass of availability” that Lischer refers to, then what does?

Paul’s writing is about identity as well.  He happily describes himself as a slave to the good news that he proclaims.  He says he proclaims it for free.  “For free” doesn’t mean so much that he doesn’t get anything in return, but more that the salvation he proclaims is not one that is earned by the people but comes as a gift from God, freely given.

With Paul’s utter sense of being bound and enslaved by the Gospel he serves—meaning he cannot but proclaim the good news and spread the word about God’s grace and forgiveness—comes his complete sense of personal freedom, as paradoxical as that might sound.  He has ultimate freedom because he has an ultimate sense of who he is and whose he is.  His vigor in spreading the word and winning people for the good news of God is not for one minute interrupted by the nagging question of identity or purpose.

It is when we don’t know who we are or who we ought to be that we get scared, and defensive, and sometimes lash out, because the cheapest, and the least acceptable, way of  asserting the value of who you are is by diminishing the value of someone else.

Paul describes how he tries to meet the people where they are, and to identify with them.   He can do this because he is sure about who he is, not insecure about it.  This is not being “all things to all people” in a sense of negating one’s own self to accommodate everybody; instead this is a model for church and evangelism that is rooted in compassion rather than orthodoxy and that values relationship over truth.  In other words, this is a model for church that cares for those people to whom it reaches out, and that tries to be relevant to their questions, their hopes and their needs. Only the church that knows its identity and is sure of its mission has the freedom and the chutzpah to do that.

Have you ever heard someone say, or maybe said it yourself at some point, “I’d really have to change if I ever wanted to go to church”?  Paul says it quite differently: It is the church that should change, in the best possible way, as it makes its way to you; and then, if it is as compassionate in its attitude as it is relevant in its message, it may just transform your life.

Such change is not a threat at all if we know who we are and whose we are—God’s children, bound to the good news that God invites us and all the other children of God into God’s grace and love, regardless of the divisions we have come up with amongst ourselves. Paul gave us a mission statement:  To invite all people into God’s love and grace, to act with compassion on the needs of others, and to proclaim the good news in a language that is relevant, that is our calling, in Jesus Christ.

Amen.