Marketing The Messiah
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
(Originally published December 11, 2005)
It's impossible to avoid -- everywhere we turn these days we are bombarded by some form of a sales pitch. Whether it's for the latest headache remedy, a political candidate, a new television show, or some sort of "self-help" program, it seems as if everyone has a product that they're certain (or so they seem intent on convincing us) will cure whatever ails us. But should this culture of hucksterism extend to the church and its message as well? In this week's installment of The Immediate Word, team member Chris Ewing examines some of the dilemmas faced by those who witness to the gospel in an era when marketing is paramount, and discusses the implications for evangelism. Additional commentary from other team members, illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon round out the installment.
Marketing The Messiah
by Chris Ewing
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28
One of those odd articles that illuminate a culture recently appeared in the New York Times. The November 28 piece, titled "Gimme an Rx!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28cheer.html) chronicles the pharmaceutical industry's practice of hiring top cheerleaders right out of college to become drug sales representatives. Apparently they have the right mix of physical attractiveness, cheerfulness, and enthusiasm to promote the latest medications to physicians. As one of them said, "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm -- they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want." The ability to deliver these exaggerations makes the cheerleaders valuable salespeople. A year out of college, and completely without reference to whatever they may have studied, successful sales reps can find themselves with a car and an income of up to $50,000 or $60,000 with bonuses.
We live in a culture of exaggeration. On television, billboards, and radio, in print and in person, we are awash in advertising. The question of genuine worth is seldom asked; it's all about pushing the product and raking in dollars, retaining market share. Churches and other non-profits have found themselves playing the same game, borrowing the world's tricks to pitch the gospel. One of the congregations in my community had a telephone answering message with a bright female voice assuring callers that the church was there to help them find success in their Christian life.
We have learned what it takes to promote a product: promise success, security, and happiness; find the most attractive representatives you can and drill them until they know the sales pitch cold; arm them with shoulder-bags full of free samples and swag such as pens and notepads; then send them forth. But in such a culture of hype, how do we even accurately hear, never mind promote, a message about "good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners; announcing the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God"?
The Witness Of The Word
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me," begins this week's oracle from Isaiah 61, "because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners." This sounds like the kind of message everyone wants to hear at Christmas -- perhaps a little too much reference to the troubles of the world, but essentially hopeful and even somewhat larger than life, promising that here at last is the end to all our troubles, from here on it will be Happily Ever After. And since, according to Luke, Jesus claimed this message with reference to his own ministry, why, that gives us every reason to trumpet inflated promises of bliss to all and sundry at Christmas, does it not?
Yes and no. The North American cultural account of Christmas bears only the most superficial resemblance to the scriptural witness of God's work in human history. If we are going to faithfully trace -- and watch for -- the activity of God here and now, we need to be discriminating in our reading of the past.
Isaiah (Third Isaiah, to be precise) delivered the message in this week's First Reading to a dispirited people in exile. He drew on the ancient tradition of Jubilee to add resonance to and elucidate the significance of God's promise of return and restoration.
The ideal of the Jubilee that Isaiah invokes is one of the most intriguing and distinctive ideas enshrined in Israelite law. Whether or not it was ever actually practiced is open to debate; but there can be no questioning its significance as an enunciation of Israelite values. Here in a nutshell we find the concern for the poor and the marginalized, the passion for justice, and the importance of each family's inheritance in the promised land. Every fiftieth year, according to the book of Leviticus (25:9ff), all the compromises and equivocations, all the desperate measures entered upon in the face of bad luck or bad management, all the large and small hardships and injustices of life were to be magnificently reversed and economic relationships restored to their original condition. Those who had sold themselves or their family members into slavery because of debt were to be released; land that had been seized was to be returned; even the fields were to know rest and release, enjoying a fallow year of restoration. After a period of "seven weeks of years," on the Day of Atonement at the turn of the year, the trumpet was to be sounded announcing the coming fiftieth year as a holy, Jubilee year: "And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family" (Leviticus 25:10).
When Third Isaiah, fifty years into the exile, announced God's Jubilee ("the year of the Lord's favor" in verse 2), he was evoking the recovery of the deepest hopes and values upon which Israel had been founded. They would return home to be again the people of God, a light to the world, to enact again God's intention to give each family a just inheritance. Beginning on a divine day of atonement, of expurgation of sins, Israel would be reconstituted as a society and live again according to God's highest intentions for the nation. Our contemporary yen to head home for the holidays is only a faint, insipid echo of this earth-shaking trumpet blast.
When Jesus, then, at the outset of his ministry, offered himself as the fulfillment of this text (Luke 4:21), he was announcing a vocation of restoring right relationships in society, embodying and enacting a disruptive restoration of justice. As his mother recognized in her song at the time of the annunciation (Luke 1:47ff, the alternate canticle for this Sunday), the Messiah was not to be all sweetness and light: "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (vv. 51-53). In restoring Israel's covenant relationship with God (vv. 54-55), he would disrupt many other kinds of relationship. No wonder the Magnificat was banned from some Latin American airwaves during the revolutionary ferment of a few decades ago! Its message is a dangerous and uncomfortable one, particularly to those of us in positions of plenty and power.
The discomforting character of the Messianic Jubilee was also recognized by John the Baptist. This week's gospel from John the Evangelist clearly characterizes his ministry of preparing a straight road in a wilderness of crooked ways. No exaggerated smiles or servile manipulation from this representative! He does not attempt to "sell" the Messianic agenda: he simply announces the way it will be, and what has to change. One can imagine that his would not be a popular pulpit among North Americans wanting to bask in Christmas cheer and coo over a sweet baby!
Yet, paradoxically, in this account he does not seem to see the Messiah coming with revolutionary fire. Rather, he announces: "among you stands one whom you do not know" (John 1:26). In the vision of John's Gospel, there is a hiddenness, a cryptic quality to the Messiah: the signs are all there, but one must be alert to read them. The world-changing work of God is hidden in plain sight; anyone wishing to be part of it must be born again into a new way of being in the world (3:3).
The Witness From The Pulpit
Advent is a difficult season to preach, particularly in the middle of North America's gaudy holiday hype. If our Advent scriptures begin with messages that are, if a little over-earnest, at least hopeful, they quickly darken into intimations of revolution and judgment. These are not messages that "fit" with either home-for-the-holidays nostalgia or glitzy consumer hard-sell. Yet in the effort to reclaim Christmas as a religious holiday, churches are often tempted to polish the Bethlehem star until it dazzles, turn the volume on the angel choirs up to china-rattling, and out-hype the hypesters. This is a mistake -- it fundamentally contradicts the nature of the message.
If there is no time when the counter-cultural character of the gospel is more difficult to communicate, there is also no time when it is more redemptive. If many will be unwilling to hear it at this determinedly happy time of year, for others it will be the saving gift of permission to walk away from the soul-destroying effects of an addicted and superficial culture. People who genuinely need the good news of release from oppression or the binding of a broken heart respond with profound gratitude to the real-world grittiness and lack of pushiness of the gospel. We should resist the temptation to clean it up, to quicken and smooth the road home from exile, deodorize the stable, and turn John's rough edges into boutique eccentricity. As Edwin Searcy notes in an article for worship leaders, despite our proclivity for domesticating the season and reducing its high voltage to a pleasurable buzz, we should heed the Advent invitation "to linger with odd texts that take the church deep into the ache and grief that cries out for a savior.... We do not sing carols, yet. We long for the coming of Christ, just as our children long for the arrival of gifts.... We practice 'waiting upon God.' " ("Advent Begins With Trouble," in Gathering, Advent/Christmas/Epiphany 2005-2006, p. 6)
It is this waiting on God that we preachers most need to invite, for it is only out of the heart of long, painful waiting that new things can come to birth. God's hidden working at the root of things cannot be faithfully conveyed with a loudspeaker and glitter. No, this is the time for the preacher's voice to drop to a whisper, so that those who pass by have to stop and listen closely, paying attention to what they ordinarily overlook.
We ministry folk have two counter-cultural ways in which to communicate the Messianic message and invite appropriate Advent waiting: the way of John the Baptist, and the way of Jesus. On Sunday mornings we stand Baptist-like in the pulpit and dare to say that the world is a wilderness, that if God is to come to us we must expect to change, that God's vision is not the same as the American Dream.
Then, the rest of the week, we move in our communities in the anonymity of the Savior, meeting human to human with the hopes and fears and needs of the world and inviting people to wait on God. With the common elements of prayer and conversation, provocative questions and unexpected analogies, we continue Jesus' work of turning the world on its ear so that the reign of God can be seen.
None of this has much in common with the exaggerated cheerfulness and artificial enthusiasm that our culture uses to sell things. It is important that we not give in to the temptation to go that road, for the things our culture sells can bring no lasting satisfaction, never mind right relationship; and the gospel should not be confused with one more lifestyle enhancement or quick fix. It is, rather, God's reordering of a disordered world from the inside out and the bottom up, and this must be communicated in ways appropriate to its nature.
There is great pressure upon clergy to be cheerleaders for the church, to avoid giving offense to anyone, and to bring in the masses and their donation dollars. Many in the church, whether through misunderstanding of the gospel or through preoccupation with more immediate bricks-and-mortar concerns, will handsomely reward the minister who goes the Madison Avenue route -- and cause no little grief for the one who won't. It has ever been thus. The life (and death) stories of Jesus and John remind us that the gospel frequently offers more in the long term than the short. Yet in a wilderness of oversell, this is the only road that leads home.
Team Response
George Murphy responds: I've never been a cheerleader, the kind who does handsprings and other gymnastics and shouts into a megaphone at games, but I'm sure that sometimes it's very rewarding. When your team is ahead you get to lead the fans in celebration, and when the game is tight, when the team needs just one more score or one goal-line stand, there can be a real sense of contributing to their effort by stirring up supporters. If the team wins, you've been part of it.
But how does it feel to be a cheerleader when your team is down by a huge score in the fourth quarter and is going nowhere? Think of the Big 12 championship game this past Saturday where Texas beat Colorado 70-3. If you're a player on the losing side in those circumstances you just have to slog on and hope it ends quickly. But what if you're a cheerleader? Then cheering seems pretty futile -- but it's your job, so you have to keep smiling and shouting.
I suspect that other clergy sometimes have the same feeling that I do, that I'm expected to be a cheerleader for the church. Experts at church headquarters (in whatever form that may take for the church in question) have developed some new program -- stewardship, evangelism, Bible study, or whatever -- and then want parish pastors to help sell it to the people in the pews. And it's often assumed -- not just by those at headquarters but by a lot of laypeople -- that pastors are to be good salespersons. (I've been told by people in sales that my job must be a lot like theirs.) So if cheerleaders make good sales reps (as the drug companies think according to the New York Times story Chris refers to), then I guess it fits together: Seminaries should also be recruiting college cheerleaders to train for pastoral ministry.
But how does such a view of the ministry of proclamation (which is the aspect of pastoral ministry that we're concerned with at The Immediate Word) match up with the way that ministry is spoken of in scripture? In our gospel for this Sunday (and indeed in all the accounts of John the Baptist's work in the gospels), John can hardly be described as a cheerleader, and if he's to be called a salesman, it has to be understood that he has a very specific type of sales pitch. John 1:8 says that John came "as a witness to the light" (NIV). (The words used in verses 6-8 are martyria and martyre. NRSV translates the verb as "testify.")
We see how that works more specifically in John 1:29, the verse just following the lectionary selection. John points to Jesus and says, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." One implication of course is that he will take away the sins of the hearers. But there is no "buy this product" appeal.
Some reflection on John 1 can perhaps be as helpful for the preacher in thinking about her or his approach to the task, as in providing content for the sermon this week. People in business sometimes say that a certain item "sells itself" -- all you have to do is show it to a customer. It would be helpful for preachers to keep that idea in mind -- that Christ, the embodiment of the gospel, is a product that sells itself. That is because Christ is the creative Word of God who is present and active when he is proclaimed. If Christ is proclaimed clearly and faithfully, then a lot of explanations about why hearers ought to believe the message may be counterproductive. Our calling, like that of John, is to be witnesses to the Word. Testify to Christ, and then get out of the way.
Carlos Wilton responds: Ben Campbell Johnson used to teach at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He is best known as a teacher of evangelism.
That reputation is not always easy for him to live with. I once heard Johnson tell of attending a church conference and meeting one of the attendees, a woman, for the first time. Early in the conversation, he mentioned that he was a seminary professor. "What do you teach?" the woman asked, with great interest.
"Evangelism," he replied.
"Oh," she responded. "And I thought you were such a nice man!"
The topic of evangelism does create a certain amount of discomfort in a great many of us -- even us preachers. There are probably a great many reasons for this, but one of them surely is our general sense of discomfort with sales.
We preachers have all heard the snappy comeback to the person who quips, "Come on, preacher, can't you do something about the weather today?" The knock-'em-dead reply is, "Sorry, I'm not in management, I'm in sales." We may use the quip, but we're still not all that comfortable with the sales bit.
It's one thing, as Chris reminds us, for the gorgeous ex-cheerleaders hired by Big Pharma to peddle pills to doctors to be involved in selling -- but us? Is the gospel of Jesus Christ really something that needs selling?
From some of the glitzy marketing out there, we could be forgiven for thinking so. Would John the Baptist have resorted to radio spots and direct mail? How about billboards? Would he have sent around legions of the newly baptized to deliver cardboard "door hanger" brochures to that new suburban subdivision?
Somehow, I think not. There was nothing studied, or calculating, about John's approach. He gave no thought to market share. He just told the story.
It can be that way for us -- and for our people -- as well. Christmas is a natural time for inviting friends and neighbors to come worship with us. Here are some practical tips on how to share the faith, easily and naturally, through a ministry of invitation:
FIRST, pray about your inviting. Ask the Lord to help you identify those who will be most receptive to your invitation. There are plenty of them out there: plenty who are waiting for a chance, even an excuse, to get back to church. Maybe one of them is your friend or neighbor.
SECOND, don't be content with offering a general invitation: "You know, you should come to church sometime." That's the Christian equivalent of saying, "One of these days, let's do lunch." The response will be a courteous, "Sure, one of these days," but then it will never be thought of again. Instead, make your invitation specific ... to a particular service like the Christmas Eve service -- why not this Sunday?
THIRD, consider offering your invitation in times of special need. If you know of stress in your friend's or neighbor's life ... if you've heard about a season of change, or an experience of loss ... If that's the case, then it's even more likely that the person is longing to hear some good news in the midst of the bad.
FOURTH, invite the person to come to worship with you. This is so very important. A person who hasn't been to church in a while will find it much easier to come if he or she doesn't have to walk into a church filled with strangers. People will be much more inclined to come if they know in advance that they won't be lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces.
FIFTH, and finally, be persistent. You don't need to be a nag about it, but sometimes people do need to hear an invitation more than once, just to know you're serious about it. You may fear you're being a nuisance, but more likely than not, if it's a friend or neighbor you're asking, your overture is much more likely to be received as a gesture of caring.
If you go through that simple process, you will have been an evangelist -- and all you'll really have done is to have spoken the same invitation the shepherds spoke to one another: "Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass."
Carter Shelley responds: Chris, you've done a splendid job with this week's texts. Your materials are thematically tight, rhetorically rich with sharp phrases that name our consuming approach to the Christmas season. Had I not just read the issue of the journal Encounter on preaching and plagiarism, I'd be very tempted to print it and preach it as is. What follows is a paragraph in reply and then a brief look at John the Baptist's challenge to us that I hope compliments your own work.
As someone married to a physician who is in a practice where they never allow drug reps through the door, but instead make decisions about prescriptions through studies and articles on the best and most affordable medicines -- I can say that you have the chipper young drug reps to a "tee." I think it is interesting how totally immersed North Americans are in the advertising culture. We do believe that "you deserve a break today." As David Sedaris observes in his most recent book Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim. Christmas in America means you get everything you want. And let's face it, the Old Testament Jubilee Year is a hard sell. We are good at being concerned about the poor, the disadvantaged, and those who find themselves in dire financial straits. We are good at being generous during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons -- but how many of us give even a fourth of what we spend at Christmas to families in need, church soup kitchens, the Salvation Army, and so forth? I know I don't. So how do I and others hear not only the comfort but the call of Isaiah 61 or that of John the Baptist?
John prophesied out of love. He is not a prophet of pessimism and doom. No, John's strategic presence next to Matthew's birth narratives is a sign of God's promise being fulfilled -- because John is the forerunner, the prophet sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preparing us for the new kingdom of God. Yes, John preached judgment -- but he preached God's judgment as good news -- for John knew judgment is our preparation for the good news. It clears our path of dead wood and sin and enables us to accept our savior.
As an example let's consider one woman whose life bears more resemblance to that of the Pharisees and Sadducees than to third-world dictators or first-world opportunists. Agnes Hayes had a knack for church work. Had she been 25 instead of 72 she would have been a natural for the professional ministry. The Sunday school classes she taught were excellent. Her energies were limitless. She'd served on the church session, had been to General Assembly, and was currently Presbyterial president.
Agnes' church commitment was frequently used as an illustration to other church officers, young adults, and teens as a fine example of Christian charity and commitment. She was always the first in the house of grieving, ever ready to bolster the weak or say a corrective word to a noisy child.
Neither the minister nor any of her friends could ever remember having seen Agnes angry. If she didn't like the new inclusive language "alternate lifestyles," Agnes didn't pout or get angry. She would merely discuss these unnecessary changes with others, do a little telephoning, and in no time at all things would be back to the way they were supposed to be.
You see, Agnes was a good communicator and a good source of information. If something good, bad, or interesting happened to anyone in the community, Agnes would know all the details. She could tell you which recent widower was rumored to be entertaining which recent widow, how much the MacAliley's new house had cost, and whether Mr. Jones would soon be going out of business or not.
People were shocked when a new member complained that Agnes Hayes was a gossip. No one would think of criticizing Agnes! And sure enough, not long after this it was discovered that Betty Miller had reason to be concerned. Did you know that Betty Miller had recently left a husband who had abused her for years, and that she had come to town to start a new life and put the bad times behind her? Agnes knew -- and soon everyone knew.
If John the Baptist had met Agnes on the street and demanded that she "repent, turn away from your sins," Agnes would have readily agreed to forsake the second lump of sugar in her morning coffee, would acknowledge her tendency to eat too many sweets, and that she wasted too much time watching television. Beyond that, Agnes would be hard put to know what she could do differently. With her many years of church service, committee work, and faithful participation she was as prepared as she could be for the coming Lord.
The hard part for Agnes, and perhaps for us, is in recognizing our own need to repent. After all, we're not cocaine users, child molesters, or streetwalkers. John's words aren't as necessary for us as they are for Agnes, King Herod, or Osama Bin Laden. But we are wrong.
God's judgment comes to us where we are, it exposes the lies we live -- not the easy-to-spot sins of someone else. That's why the Pharisees and Sadducees get special notice from John. You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have John Calvin as our father.
For Agnes and for us judgment comes as good news. The news is that which is rotten, selfish, and hurtful in us can be altered can be changed. Judgment comes not as a threat or a criticism, but as good news: it's our opportunity to be better, to live better! God's love calls us to account -- that's judgment. Then God's love makes change possible -- that's good news. John the Baptist preaches to a people who can repent, who can turn away from their sin. His words give them and us the opportunity to change.
Judgment exposes us, knocks us down, and makes us want to hide. But God's judgment comes not with malice but with hope, love, and forgiveness.
John the Intruder reminds us that we still have a long way to go before we can clear our path to God. But John's prophecy to us is also the inauguration of a new era, an era where peace on earth and good will to all is more than seasonal rhetoric. "For unto us a child is born," one whose life and love makes possible miracles in our own inadequate lives -- the miracle of change ... the chance to be whole.
Stephen McCutchan responds: As Chris correctly points out, the exiles had returned to the promised land in great expectation only to find the cities of their land in ruin and utter poverty among the peoples. The contrast between the cheerleaders who are hired to market pharmaceuticals and the task of the pastor is significant. The cheerleader looks at the ruined cities and poverty of the land and says that it is an issue of willpower and enthusiasm. If we will just all cheer together, we will build up our enthusiasm and unite in one great human effort to triumph over all that challenges us -- it is simply a matter of willpower and joint effort. The pastor is called upon to take a deeper look at the situation and bring some genuine good news to the afflicted. Genuine good news doesn‚t deny the challenge of the situation. Rather, it identifies the significance of the challenge before us and then points people to a source of hope beyond us.
The problem with the cheerleader type of ministry is that it focuses on surface enthusiasm while people are genuinely hurting underneath the surface. The prophet proclaimed that the spirit of the Lord had anointed him to bring good news to the afflicted. There are two critical points to that proclamation. First, and very significantly, it was God who was the source of the hope. Second, it was genuine good news for what was hurting the people. It was the fruits of the spirit of the Lord that were resting on him. These fruits addressed the practical needs of those whose lives had been devastated by the conditions of their lives. It included not only attending to their personal needs, but also to the repair of their cities.
Jesus would later take this passage as a text that demonstrated that the spirit of the Lord rested on him as well. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and raised the dead as an expression of God‚s care for those in need. Later yet, the early church would demonstrate the spirit of the Lord by addressing the practical needs of their neighbors. In contrast to much of their society, they went out into the streets, risking their own infection, and cared for those who others had abandoned. Their work became so noticeable that one pagan emperor was said to have said with a sneer, "See how they love each other." He meant it as an insult, but the early Christians found in that love of the less fortunate the power of God. Presbyterians had their most successful missionary effort in their work in Korea, where there are now more than five million Presbyterians. If you examine the nature of their early work, it becomes clear that they took their stand with the weak and the disenfranchised.
The good news of Christmas releases that sense of generosity. The problem is that it has been so commercialized that we fail to feel its power. The challenge of the pastor in our contemporary culture is to walk between the forces of negativity and the forces of false cheerfulness. The pastor is challenged to recognize the problems of our world for what they are and then to proclaim a message of hope and healing that is based on our trust in God. When we recognize that the source of our true hope is in God, then we can risk exhibiting the genuine fruits of the spirit that address the real needs of our community.
The shame of the church is that we exhibit the same tendency to fight and squabble that the world does. Not only do we exist in multiple denominational divisions, but even those denominations are constantly on the brink of splitting up. In John 13:34-35, Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." In this fractionalized world, could anyone identify a more powerful way to proclaim the good news of Christ than to demonstrate the ability to love each other in all our variety? Apparently the only way that we could do so, however, would be to open ourselves to the Spirit of the Lord. Perhaps that is what we should work on preparing ourselves for during this Advent season.
Related Illustrations
One of the things that anyone under occupation will tell you is that they refused to speak the language of the occupier.... We too should refuse to speak the language of the occupier; it is not now German or Russian but the language of the market, where they speak of service providers and clients, of stakeholders and of the bottom line.
-- Ursula Franklin, Professor of Physics (retired), Toronto
***
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in Christian Century (November 4, 1998, p. 1035) about a book by Arlie Russell Hochschild titled The Managed Heart. A study of people such as flight attendants or bill collectors whose jobs involve more of what Hochschild calls "emotional labor" than either physical or mental work, it explores the long-term emotional cost of the "deep acting" required to shape one's own feelings to produce certain feelings in others. Flight attendants, for instance, who are required to be perpetually (and genuinely) cheerful and compliant, can lose track of their own genuine feelings, even off the job. As Barbara Brown Taylor notes, the parallels with clergy are evident: very often we are regarded (and may come to regard ourselves) as hosts or hostesses and nothing more, when at heart we are really lifeguards.
Brown Taylor concludes: "It seems extremely important for those of us in professional ministry to protect our hearts from over-management. If we teach them to lie, we may never get them back. One way to safeguard them, I believe, is to separate the gift of our feelings from our salaries. As a good friend once reminded me, people can pay us to proofread the bulletin, watch the budget, attend committee meetings, and deal with denominational bureaucracy, but they cannot pay us to love them. That part of the job we do for free."
***
One year our church was asked to set up a "seasonal display" in one of our town's shopping centers. A committee went to work and built a display that featured a movie screen, with the words over the screen taken from a familiar Christmas hymn: "CHRIST WAS BORN FOR THIS." While that hymn played continuously on a tape recorder, slides of scenes from current events flashed up on the screen -- scenes of war, poverty, riots, little children, families decorating Christmas trees. Our message: Christ was born for this, for us, for now. After two days the management of the mall called us and demanded that we remove the display because "Merchants feel that it is depressing and it will be bad for business because people don't want to think about stuff like that at Christmas."
-- William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 21, no. 4 (Logos Art Productions, 1993), pp. 52-53
***
The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, was once involved in raising money for a pet project of his -- an international student-exchange program. Oppenheimer was convinced that getting people of different cultures together would make for peace. In a speech he remarked, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person."
***
As I cannot render on my piano anything but the echo of the symphony which the Philharmonic can really play, so my single example can be but the faintest echo of the profound harmonies of the Gospel. I cannot play what the Philharmonic can play, but I can tell people about the Philharmonic and get them to listen for themselves. What I cannot reproduce adequately, I can nevertheless talk about and point to. It is so with Christ.
-- Sam Shoemaker
***
Now, a person who believes the doctrines that underlie the Christian life but who does not vitally trust the Person whom those doctrines present has missed the heart of faith's meaning. That person is like one who cherishes a letter of introduction to a great personality but has never used it; he has the formal credentials, but not the transforming experience.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Faith
***
We want only to show you something we have seen and tell you something we have heard ... that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
-- Paul Tillich
***
William Willimon, former Chaplain at Duke University, says that John the Baptist reminds us of boundaries we must respect and gates we must pass through. At Duke, Willimon reminded the students, "If you are going to graduate, you must first get past the English Department. If you are going to practice law, you must pass the bar. If you want to get to medical school you must survive Organic Chemistry." Likewise, "If you want to get to the joy of Bethlehem in the presence of Jesus, you must get past John the Baptist in the desert."
-- Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy For A Shallow World (CSS Publishing Company, 1997)
***
A little girl dressed as an angel in a Christmas pageant was told to come down the center aisle. The child asked, "Do you want me to walk or fly?" You feel as though she almost could have flown. Don't ever lose the wonder and mystery of Christmas.
Every year I'm reminded of those words of the late Peter Marshall: "When Christmas doesn't make your heart swell up until it nearly bursts and fill your eyes with tears and make you all soft and warm inside, then you will know that something inside of you is dead."
-- James T. Garrett, God's Gift (CSS Publishing Company, 1991)
Worship Resources
N.B. All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.
MUSIC
Hymns
"Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus"
WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1744;
MUSIC: Rowland H. Prichard, 1830; harm. from The English Hymnal, 1906
(c) public domain
as found in:
UMH: 196
"Toda le Tierra" (All Earth Is Waiting)
WORDS: Catalonian text by Alberta Taule, 1972; English trans. by Gertrude C. Suppe, 1987;
MUSIC: Alberto Taule, 1972; harm. by Skinner Schavez-Melo, 1988
(c) 1972 Alberto Taule, trans. (c) 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House; harm. (c) 1988 Skinner Chavez-Melo
as found in:
UMH: 210
"The Voice Of God Is Calling"
WORDS: John Haynes Holmes, 1913; MUSIC: William Lloyd, 1840
(c) public domain
as found in:
UMH: 436
"Savior Of The Nations, Come"
WORDS: stanzas 1-2 Martin Luther, 1523; trans. by William Reynolds, 1851; stanzas 3-5 Martin L. Seitz, 1969;
MUSIC: Enchiridion Oder Handbuchlein, 1524; harm. J. S. Bach; alt.
Stanzas 3-5 (c) 1969 Concordia Publishing Co.
as found in:
UMH: 214
Songs
"Sing Unto The Lord A New Song"
WORDS: Jewish folk song; MUSIC: Jewish folk song; arr. by J. Michael Bryan
Arr. (c) 1996 Abingdon Press
as found in:
CCB: # 16
"Blessed Be The Name"
WORDS: USA campmeeting chorus;
MUSIC: USA campmeeting melody; arr. by Ralph E. Hudson
(c) public domain
as found in:
CCB: # 18
"All Hail King Jesus"
WORDS & MUSIC: Dave Moody
(c) 1981 Glory Alleluia Music
as found in:
CCB: # 29
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: Rejoice always in God.
People: We offer prayers to God continually.
Leader: Give thanks to God in all your life.
People: We are always open to the Spirit of our God.
Leader: May the God of peace sanctify you entirely.
People: May we be kept blameless forever.
Leader: The One who calls us is faithful.
People: God will bring us to full salvation.
COLLECT / OPENING PRAYER
O God who anoints folks to proclaim your reign: Grant that in the busyness of the holiday season we may not forget that you come to turn our world upside-down, to lift up the lowly and to bring down the haughty. Grant us the grace to stand with our Master and announce the arrival of your reign; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
or
We come and present ourselves to you, O God, who calls all the world to a reckoning and a time of justice and equality. We praise you for your holiness and ask that by the power of your Spirit we might participate in your reign of justice and peace, now and forever. Amen.
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION / PARDON
Leader: Let us come with confidence into the presence of the One who judges us and renews us. Let us confess the state of our lives to God and before our sisters and brothers.
People: We confess to you, O God, that we prefer to put on a happy face and go out into the marketplace to buy things we can't afford than to deal with the thought of your coming to bring justice to the poor around us. We would rather focus our thoughts on your coming to make us comfortable than on your coming to judge us. We want to think of ourselves as those you have chosen rather than as those who by their lifestyle oppress the poor and needy. Forgive us our blindness to the needs of the world. Open our eyes so that we may see as you see. Give us a passion for justice and a thirst for righteousness, that we may truly be your children. Amen.
Leader: God comes to judge us, not to condemn us to death but to stop our heedless flight to destruction. God comes to judge us so that we might repent and turn and live. In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANIES, ETC.
We worship you, God of the poor and the downtrodden, for you are truth and justice and righteousness. You are all that we are meant to be but are not.
(The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We look at our lives and realize how much we consume and waste while many are denied the bounty of your creation. We seek only to put on a happy face and celebrate the abundance of creation. We do not desire to become aware of all those who are without because of greed and hatred.
We give you thanks for all the blessings you have bestowed on your creation. We thank you for the beauty of the earth and of the stars. We thank you for those who stand among us and remind us of the need for justice and righteousness, even as we know we are among the guilty. Most of all we thank you for our Master Jesus, who comes and calls all into your reign.
(Other specific thanksgivings may be offered.)
We lift up to you those who are far from the wholeness you desire them to have. We pray for those who are sick in body, mind, or soul. We pray for those who have lost their way in life. We pray for the hungry, the homeless, and the refugee. We pray for ourselves, that we may catch the fire of your vision and your desire for all your people.
(Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray, saying, "Our Father...."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
Hymnal '82: The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Renew: Renew! Songs and Hymns for Blended Worship
Children's Sermon
The guiding light
Object: a flashlight
Based on John 1:6-8, 19-28
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever gone into your backyard at night and turned on a flashlight? (let them answer) The flashlight helps you see in the dark, doesn't it! Flashlights bring us light. I brought this flashlight to tell you about a man named John. He was a messenger from God. He came to tell people that Jesus was coming to help them. John told people that Jesus would be like a great light in darkness. I want to tell you a story about a family who became lost in the dark. As you listen to my story, tell me if you can decide who is John in my story and who is Jesus.
A family took a hike one night in the woods. As they walked it became darker and darker. Soon there was no light. They couldn't see where they were going. They were lost and frightened! Soon in the distance they saw a small light. The light was coming toward them. It was getting brighter and brighter. It was the light from a flashlight like this one. (hold up the flashlight) As the light became brighter they heard a voice. A man was carrying the flashlight. He asked them if they needed help. They replied that they were lost. Then the man said, "Don't worry. I have a flashlight to help you find your path." The family was very relieved. They said to the man, "You have saved us." Then the man said, "No I haven't saved you. Soon there will be a very bright light. It will be so bright that you won't even need my flashlight to see." The man was right. Soon after that the sun began to rise in the east. The sun shone so bright that the family didn't need the flashlight to see. They were able to find their way to safety by the sunlight.
Now, who can tell me which person in this story was John? (let them answer) John was the man with the flashlight. Who can tell me who represented Jesus? (let them answer) Jesus was the rising sun.
When you see a flashlight, think of John. He came to tell people that Jesus was coming. When you see the sun rise in the morning, think of Jesus. He came to save us from darkness.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, December 11, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
It's impossible to avoid -- everywhere we turn these days we are bombarded by some form of a sales pitch. Whether it's for the latest headache remedy, a political candidate, a new television show, or some sort of "self-help" program, it seems as if everyone has a product that they're certain (or so they seem intent on convincing us) will cure whatever ails us. But should this culture of hucksterism extend to the church and its message as well? In this week's installment of The Immediate Word, team member Chris Ewing examines some of the dilemmas faced by those who witness to the gospel in an era when marketing is paramount, and discusses the implications for evangelism. Additional commentary from other team members, illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon round out the installment.
Marketing The Messiah
by Chris Ewing
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28
One of those odd articles that illuminate a culture recently appeared in the New York Times. The November 28 piece, titled "Gimme an Rx!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28cheer.html) chronicles the pharmaceutical industry's practice of hiring top cheerleaders right out of college to become drug sales representatives. Apparently they have the right mix of physical attractiveness, cheerfulness, and enthusiasm to promote the latest medications to physicians. As one of them said, "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm -- they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want." The ability to deliver these exaggerations makes the cheerleaders valuable salespeople. A year out of college, and completely without reference to whatever they may have studied, successful sales reps can find themselves with a car and an income of up to $50,000 or $60,000 with bonuses.
We live in a culture of exaggeration. On television, billboards, and radio, in print and in person, we are awash in advertising. The question of genuine worth is seldom asked; it's all about pushing the product and raking in dollars, retaining market share. Churches and other non-profits have found themselves playing the same game, borrowing the world's tricks to pitch the gospel. One of the congregations in my community had a telephone answering message with a bright female voice assuring callers that the church was there to help them find success in their Christian life.
We have learned what it takes to promote a product: promise success, security, and happiness; find the most attractive representatives you can and drill them until they know the sales pitch cold; arm them with shoulder-bags full of free samples and swag such as pens and notepads; then send them forth. But in such a culture of hype, how do we even accurately hear, never mind promote, a message about "good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners; announcing the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God"?
The Witness Of The Word
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me," begins this week's oracle from Isaiah 61, "because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners." This sounds like the kind of message everyone wants to hear at Christmas -- perhaps a little too much reference to the troubles of the world, but essentially hopeful and even somewhat larger than life, promising that here at last is the end to all our troubles, from here on it will be Happily Ever After. And since, according to Luke, Jesus claimed this message with reference to his own ministry, why, that gives us every reason to trumpet inflated promises of bliss to all and sundry at Christmas, does it not?
Yes and no. The North American cultural account of Christmas bears only the most superficial resemblance to the scriptural witness of God's work in human history. If we are going to faithfully trace -- and watch for -- the activity of God here and now, we need to be discriminating in our reading of the past.
Isaiah (Third Isaiah, to be precise) delivered the message in this week's First Reading to a dispirited people in exile. He drew on the ancient tradition of Jubilee to add resonance to and elucidate the significance of God's promise of return and restoration.
The ideal of the Jubilee that Isaiah invokes is one of the most intriguing and distinctive ideas enshrined in Israelite law. Whether or not it was ever actually practiced is open to debate; but there can be no questioning its significance as an enunciation of Israelite values. Here in a nutshell we find the concern for the poor and the marginalized, the passion for justice, and the importance of each family's inheritance in the promised land. Every fiftieth year, according to the book of Leviticus (25:9ff), all the compromises and equivocations, all the desperate measures entered upon in the face of bad luck or bad management, all the large and small hardships and injustices of life were to be magnificently reversed and economic relationships restored to their original condition. Those who had sold themselves or their family members into slavery because of debt were to be released; land that had been seized was to be returned; even the fields were to know rest and release, enjoying a fallow year of restoration. After a period of "seven weeks of years," on the Day of Atonement at the turn of the year, the trumpet was to be sounded announcing the coming fiftieth year as a holy, Jubilee year: "And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family" (Leviticus 25:10).
When Third Isaiah, fifty years into the exile, announced God's Jubilee ("the year of the Lord's favor" in verse 2), he was evoking the recovery of the deepest hopes and values upon which Israel had been founded. They would return home to be again the people of God, a light to the world, to enact again God's intention to give each family a just inheritance. Beginning on a divine day of atonement, of expurgation of sins, Israel would be reconstituted as a society and live again according to God's highest intentions for the nation. Our contemporary yen to head home for the holidays is only a faint, insipid echo of this earth-shaking trumpet blast.
When Jesus, then, at the outset of his ministry, offered himself as the fulfillment of this text (Luke 4:21), he was announcing a vocation of restoring right relationships in society, embodying and enacting a disruptive restoration of justice. As his mother recognized in her song at the time of the annunciation (Luke 1:47ff, the alternate canticle for this Sunday), the Messiah was not to be all sweetness and light: "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (vv. 51-53). In restoring Israel's covenant relationship with God (vv. 54-55), he would disrupt many other kinds of relationship. No wonder the Magnificat was banned from some Latin American airwaves during the revolutionary ferment of a few decades ago! Its message is a dangerous and uncomfortable one, particularly to those of us in positions of plenty and power.
The discomforting character of the Messianic Jubilee was also recognized by John the Baptist. This week's gospel from John the Evangelist clearly characterizes his ministry of preparing a straight road in a wilderness of crooked ways. No exaggerated smiles or servile manipulation from this representative! He does not attempt to "sell" the Messianic agenda: he simply announces the way it will be, and what has to change. One can imagine that his would not be a popular pulpit among North Americans wanting to bask in Christmas cheer and coo over a sweet baby!
Yet, paradoxically, in this account he does not seem to see the Messiah coming with revolutionary fire. Rather, he announces: "among you stands one whom you do not know" (John 1:26). In the vision of John's Gospel, there is a hiddenness, a cryptic quality to the Messiah: the signs are all there, but one must be alert to read them. The world-changing work of God is hidden in plain sight; anyone wishing to be part of it must be born again into a new way of being in the world (3:3).
The Witness From The Pulpit
Advent is a difficult season to preach, particularly in the middle of North America's gaudy holiday hype. If our Advent scriptures begin with messages that are, if a little over-earnest, at least hopeful, they quickly darken into intimations of revolution and judgment. These are not messages that "fit" with either home-for-the-holidays nostalgia or glitzy consumer hard-sell. Yet in the effort to reclaim Christmas as a religious holiday, churches are often tempted to polish the Bethlehem star until it dazzles, turn the volume on the angel choirs up to china-rattling, and out-hype the hypesters. This is a mistake -- it fundamentally contradicts the nature of the message.
If there is no time when the counter-cultural character of the gospel is more difficult to communicate, there is also no time when it is more redemptive. If many will be unwilling to hear it at this determinedly happy time of year, for others it will be the saving gift of permission to walk away from the soul-destroying effects of an addicted and superficial culture. People who genuinely need the good news of release from oppression or the binding of a broken heart respond with profound gratitude to the real-world grittiness and lack of pushiness of the gospel. We should resist the temptation to clean it up, to quicken and smooth the road home from exile, deodorize the stable, and turn John's rough edges into boutique eccentricity. As Edwin Searcy notes in an article for worship leaders, despite our proclivity for domesticating the season and reducing its high voltage to a pleasurable buzz, we should heed the Advent invitation "to linger with odd texts that take the church deep into the ache and grief that cries out for a savior.... We do not sing carols, yet. We long for the coming of Christ, just as our children long for the arrival of gifts.... We practice 'waiting upon God.' " ("Advent Begins With Trouble," in Gathering, Advent/Christmas/Epiphany 2005-2006, p. 6)
It is this waiting on God that we preachers most need to invite, for it is only out of the heart of long, painful waiting that new things can come to birth. God's hidden working at the root of things cannot be faithfully conveyed with a loudspeaker and glitter. No, this is the time for the preacher's voice to drop to a whisper, so that those who pass by have to stop and listen closely, paying attention to what they ordinarily overlook.
We ministry folk have two counter-cultural ways in which to communicate the Messianic message and invite appropriate Advent waiting: the way of John the Baptist, and the way of Jesus. On Sunday mornings we stand Baptist-like in the pulpit and dare to say that the world is a wilderness, that if God is to come to us we must expect to change, that God's vision is not the same as the American Dream.
Then, the rest of the week, we move in our communities in the anonymity of the Savior, meeting human to human with the hopes and fears and needs of the world and inviting people to wait on God. With the common elements of prayer and conversation, provocative questions and unexpected analogies, we continue Jesus' work of turning the world on its ear so that the reign of God can be seen.
None of this has much in common with the exaggerated cheerfulness and artificial enthusiasm that our culture uses to sell things. It is important that we not give in to the temptation to go that road, for the things our culture sells can bring no lasting satisfaction, never mind right relationship; and the gospel should not be confused with one more lifestyle enhancement or quick fix. It is, rather, God's reordering of a disordered world from the inside out and the bottom up, and this must be communicated in ways appropriate to its nature.
There is great pressure upon clergy to be cheerleaders for the church, to avoid giving offense to anyone, and to bring in the masses and their donation dollars. Many in the church, whether through misunderstanding of the gospel or through preoccupation with more immediate bricks-and-mortar concerns, will handsomely reward the minister who goes the Madison Avenue route -- and cause no little grief for the one who won't. It has ever been thus. The life (and death) stories of Jesus and John remind us that the gospel frequently offers more in the long term than the short. Yet in a wilderness of oversell, this is the only road that leads home.
Team Response
George Murphy responds: I've never been a cheerleader, the kind who does handsprings and other gymnastics and shouts into a megaphone at games, but I'm sure that sometimes it's very rewarding. When your team is ahead you get to lead the fans in celebration, and when the game is tight, when the team needs just one more score or one goal-line stand, there can be a real sense of contributing to their effort by stirring up supporters. If the team wins, you've been part of it.
But how does it feel to be a cheerleader when your team is down by a huge score in the fourth quarter and is going nowhere? Think of the Big 12 championship game this past Saturday where Texas beat Colorado 70-3. If you're a player on the losing side in those circumstances you just have to slog on and hope it ends quickly. But what if you're a cheerleader? Then cheering seems pretty futile -- but it's your job, so you have to keep smiling and shouting.
I suspect that other clergy sometimes have the same feeling that I do, that I'm expected to be a cheerleader for the church. Experts at church headquarters (in whatever form that may take for the church in question) have developed some new program -- stewardship, evangelism, Bible study, or whatever -- and then want parish pastors to help sell it to the people in the pews. And it's often assumed -- not just by those at headquarters but by a lot of laypeople -- that pastors are to be good salespersons. (I've been told by people in sales that my job must be a lot like theirs.) So if cheerleaders make good sales reps (as the drug companies think according to the New York Times story Chris refers to), then I guess it fits together: Seminaries should also be recruiting college cheerleaders to train for pastoral ministry.
But how does such a view of the ministry of proclamation (which is the aspect of pastoral ministry that we're concerned with at The Immediate Word) match up with the way that ministry is spoken of in scripture? In our gospel for this Sunday (and indeed in all the accounts of John the Baptist's work in the gospels), John can hardly be described as a cheerleader, and if he's to be called a salesman, it has to be understood that he has a very specific type of sales pitch. John 1:8 says that John came "as a witness to the light" (NIV). (The words used in verses 6-8 are martyria and martyre. NRSV translates the verb as "testify.")
We see how that works more specifically in John 1:29, the verse just following the lectionary selection. John points to Jesus and says, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." One implication of course is that he will take away the sins of the hearers. But there is no "buy this product" appeal.
Some reflection on John 1 can perhaps be as helpful for the preacher in thinking about her or his approach to the task, as in providing content for the sermon this week. People in business sometimes say that a certain item "sells itself" -- all you have to do is show it to a customer. It would be helpful for preachers to keep that idea in mind -- that Christ, the embodiment of the gospel, is a product that sells itself. That is because Christ is the creative Word of God who is present and active when he is proclaimed. If Christ is proclaimed clearly and faithfully, then a lot of explanations about why hearers ought to believe the message may be counterproductive. Our calling, like that of John, is to be witnesses to the Word. Testify to Christ, and then get out of the way.
Carlos Wilton responds: Ben Campbell Johnson used to teach at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He is best known as a teacher of evangelism.
That reputation is not always easy for him to live with. I once heard Johnson tell of attending a church conference and meeting one of the attendees, a woman, for the first time. Early in the conversation, he mentioned that he was a seminary professor. "What do you teach?" the woman asked, with great interest.
"Evangelism," he replied.
"Oh," she responded. "And I thought you were such a nice man!"
The topic of evangelism does create a certain amount of discomfort in a great many of us -- even us preachers. There are probably a great many reasons for this, but one of them surely is our general sense of discomfort with sales.
We preachers have all heard the snappy comeback to the person who quips, "Come on, preacher, can't you do something about the weather today?" The knock-'em-dead reply is, "Sorry, I'm not in management, I'm in sales." We may use the quip, but we're still not all that comfortable with the sales bit.
It's one thing, as Chris reminds us, for the gorgeous ex-cheerleaders hired by Big Pharma to peddle pills to doctors to be involved in selling -- but us? Is the gospel of Jesus Christ really something that needs selling?
From some of the glitzy marketing out there, we could be forgiven for thinking so. Would John the Baptist have resorted to radio spots and direct mail? How about billboards? Would he have sent around legions of the newly baptized to deliver cardboard "door hanger" brochures to that new suburban subdivision?
Somehow, I think not. There was nothing studied, or calculating, about John's approach. He gave no thought to market share. He just told the story.
It can be that way for us -- and for our people -- as well. Christmas is a natural time for inviting friends and neighbors to come worship with us. Here are some practical tips on how to share the faith, easily and naturally, through a ministry of invitation:
FIRST, pray about your inviting. Ask the Lord to help you identify those who will be most receptive to your invitation. There are plenty of them out there: plenty who are waiting for a chance, even an excuse, to get back to church. Maybe one of them is your friend or neighbor.
SECOND, don't be content with offering a general invitation: "You know, you should come to church sometime." That's the Christian equivalent of saying, "One of these days, let's do lunch." The response will be a courteous, "Sure, one of these days," but then it will never be thought of again. Instead, make your invitation specific ... to a particular service like the Christmas Eve service -- why not this Sunday?
THIRD, consider offering your invitation in times of special need. If you know of stress in your friend's or neighbor's life ... if you've heard about a season of change, or an experience of loss ... If that's the case, then it's even more likely that the person is longing to hear some good news in the midst of the bad.
FOURTH, invite the person to come to worship with you. This is so very important. A person who hasn't been to church in a while will find it much easier to come if he or she doesn't have to walk into a church filled with strangers. People will be much more inclined to come if they know in advance that they won't be lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces.
FIFTH, and finally, be persistent. You don't need to be a nag about it, but sometimes people do need to hear an invitation more than once, just to know you're serious about it. You may fear you're being a nuisance, but more likely than not, if it's a friend or neighbor you're asking, your overture is much more likely to be received as a gesture of caring.
If you go through that simple process, you will have been an evangelist -- and all you'll really have done is to have spoken the same invitation the shepherds spoke to one another: "Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass."
Carter Shelley responds: Chris, you've done a splendid job with this week's texts. Your materials are thematically tight, rhetorically rich with sharp phrases that name our consuming approach to the Christmas season. Had I not just read the issue of the journal Encounter on preaching and plagiarism, I'd be very tempted to print it and preach it as is. What follows is a paragraph in reply and then a brief look at John the Baptist's challenge to us that I hope compliments your own work.
As someone married to a physician who is in a practice where they never allow drug reps through the door, but instead make decisions about prescriptions through studies and articles on the best and most affordable medicines -- I can say that you have the chipper young drug reps to a "tee." I think it is interesting how totally immersed North Americans are in the advertising culture. We do believe that "you deserve a break today." As David Sedaris observes in his most recent book Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim. Christmas in America means you get everything you want. And let's face it, the Old Testament Jubilee Year is a hard sell. We are good at being concerned about the poor, the disadvantaged, and those who find themselves in dire financial straits. We are good at being generous during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons -- but how many of us give even a fourth of what we spend at Christmas to families in need, church soup kitchens, the Salvation Army, and so forth? I know I don't. So how do I and others hear not only the comfort but the call of Isaiah 61 or that of John the Baptist?
John prophesied out of love. He is not a prophet of pessimism and doom. No, John's strategic presence next to Matthew's birth narratives is a sign of God's promise being fulfilled -- because John is the forerunner, the prophet sent to prepare the way of the Lord by preparing us for the new kingdom of God. Yes, John preached judgment -- but he preached God's judgment as good news -- for John knew judgment is our preparation for the good news. It clears our path of dead wood and sin and enables us to accept our savior.
As an example let's consider one woman whose life bears more resemblance to that of the Pharisees and Sadducees than to third-world dictators or first-world opportunists. Agnes Hayes had a knack for church work. Had she been 25 instead of 72 she would have been a natural for the professional ministry. The Sunday school classes she taught were excellent. Her energies were limitless. She'd served on the church session, had been to General Assembly, and was currently Presbyterial president.
Agnes' church commitment was frequently used as an illustration to other church officers, young adults, and teens as a fine example of Christian charity and commitment. She was always the first in the house of grieving, ever ready to bolster the weak or say a corrective word to a noisy child.
Neither the minister nor any of her friends could ever remember having seen Agnes angry. If she didn't like the new inclusive language "alternate lifestyles," Agnes didn't pout or get angry. She would merely discuss these unnecessary changes with others, do a little telephoning, and in no time at all things would be back to the way they were supposed to be.
You see, Agnes was a good communicator and a good source of information. If something good, bad, or interesting happened to anyone in the community, Agnes would know all the details. She could tell you which recent widower was rumored to be entertaining which recent widow, how much the MacAliley's new house had cost, and whether Mr. Jones would soon be going out of business or not.
People were shocked when a new member complained that Agnes Hayes was a gossip. No one would think of criticizing Agnes! And sure enough, not long after this it was discovered that Betty Miller had reason to be concerned. Did you know that Betty Miller had recently left a husband who had abused her for years, and that she had come to town to start a new life and put the bad times behind her? Agnes knew -- and soon everyone knew.
If John the Baptist had met Agnes on the street and demanded that she "repent, turn away from your sins," Agnes would have readily agreed to forsake the second lump of sugar in her morning coffee, would acknowledge her tendency to eat too many sweets, and that she wasted too much time watching television. Beyond that, Agnes would be hard put to know what she could do differently. With her many years of church service, committee work, and faithful participation she was as prepared as she could be for the coming Lord.
The hard part for Agnes, and perhaps for us, is in recognizing our own need to repent. After all, we're not cocaine users, child molesters, or streetwalkers. John's words aren't as necessary for us as they are for Agnes, King Herod, or Osama Bin Laden. But we are wrong.
God's judgment comes to us where we are, it exposes the lies we live -- not the easy-to-spot sins of someone else. That's why the Pharisees and Sadducees get special notice from John. You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have John Calvin as our father.
For Agnes and for us judgment comes as good news. The news is that which is rotten, selfish, and hurtful in us can be altered can be changed. Judgment comes not as a threat or a criticism, but as good news: it's our opportunity to be better, to live better! God's love calls us to account -- that's judgment. Then God's love makes change possible -- that's good news. John the Baptist preaches to a people who can repent, who can turn away from their sin. His words give them and us the opportunity to change.
Judgment exposes us, knocks us down, and makes us want to hide. But God's judgment comes not with malice but with hope, love, and forgiveness.
John the Intruder reminds us that we still have a long way to go before we can clear our path to God. But John's prophecy to us is also the inauguration of a new era, an era where peace on earth and good will to all is more than seasonal rhetoric. "For unto us a child is born," one whose life and love makes possible miracles in our own inadequate lives -- the miracle of change ... the chance to be whole.
Stephen McCutchan responds: As Chris correctly points out, the exiles had returned to the promised land in great expectation only to find the cities of their land in ruin and utter poverty among the peoples. The contrast between the cheerleaders who are hired to market pharmaceuticals and the task of the pastor is significant. The cheerleader looks at the ruined cities and poverty of the land and says that it is an issue of willpower and enthusiasm. If we will just all cheer together, we will build up our enthusiasm and unite in one great human effort to triumph over all that challenges us -- it is simply a matter of willpower and joint effort. The pastor is called upon to take a deeper look at the situation and bring some genuine good news to the afflicted. Genuine good news doesn‚t deny the challenge of the situation. Rather, it identifies the significance of the challenge before us and then points people to a source of hope beyond us.
The problem with the cheerleader type of ministry is that it focuses on surface enthusiasm while people are genuinely hurting underneath the surface. The prophet proclaimed that the spirit of the Lord had anointed him to bring good news to the afflicted. There are two critical points to that proclamation. First, and very significantly, it was God who was the source of the hope. Second, it was genuine good news for what was hurting the people. It was the fruits of the spirit of the Lord that were resting on him. These fruits addressed the practical needs of those whose lives had been devastated by the conditions of their lives. It included not only attending to their personal needs, but also to the repair of their cities.
Jesus would later take this passage as a text that demonstrated that the spirit of the Lord rested on him as well. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and raised the dead as an expression of God‚s care for those in need. Later yet, the early church would demonstrate the spirit of the Lord by addressing the practical needs of their neighbors. In contrast to much of their society, they went out into the streets, risking their own infection, and cared for those who others had abandoned. Their work became so noticeable that one pagan emperor was said to have said with a sneer, "See how they love each other." He meant it as an insult, but the early Christians found in that love of the less fortunate the power of God. Presbyterians had their most successful missionary effort in their work in Korea, where there are now more than five million Presbyterians. If you examine the nature of their early work, it becomes clear that they took their stand with the weak and the disenfranchised.
The good news of Christmas releases that sense of generosity. The problem is that it has been so commercialized that we fail to feel its power. The challenge of the pastor in our contemporary culture is to walk between the forces of negativity and the forces of false cheerfulness. The pastor is challenged to recognize the problems of our world for what they are and then to proclaim a message of hope and healing that is based on our trust in God. When we recognize that the source of our true hope is in God, then we can risk exhibiting the genuine fruits of the spirit that address the real needs of our community.
The shame of the church is that we exhibit the same tendency to fight and squabble that the world does. Not only do we exist in multiple denominational divisions, but even those denominations are constantly on the brink of splitting up. In John 13:34-35, Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." In this fractionalized world, could anyone identify a more powerful way to proclaim the good news of Christ than to demonstrate the ability to love each other in all our variety? Apparently the only way that we could do so, however, would be to open ourselves to the Spirit of the Lord. Perhaps that is what we should work on preparing ourselves for during this Advent season.
Related Illustrations
One of the things that anyone under occupation will tell you is that they refused to speak the language of the occupier.... We too should refuse to speak the language of the occupier; it is not now German or Russian but the language of the market, where they speak of service providers and clients, of stakeholders and of the bottom line.
-- Ursula Franklin, Professor of Physics (retired), Toronto
***
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in Christian Century (November 4, 1998, p. 1035) about a book by Arlie Russell Hochschild titled The Managed Heart. A study of people such as flight attendants or bill collectors whose jobs involve more of what Hochschild calls "emotional labor" than either physical or mental work, it explores the long-term emotional cost of the "deep acting" required to shape one's own feelings to produce certain feelings in others. Flight attendants, for instance, who are required to be perpetually (and genuinely) cheerful and compliant, can lose track of their own genuine feelings, even off the job. As Barbara Brown Taylor notes, the parallels with clergy are evident: very often we are regarded (and may come to regard ourselves) as hosts or hostesses and nothing more, when at heart we are really lifeguards.
Brown Taylor concludes: "It seems extremely important for those of us in professional ministry to protect our hearts from over-management. If we teach them to lie, we may never get them back. One way to safeguard them, I believe, is to separate the gift of our feelings from our salaries. As a good friend once reminded me, people can pay us to proofread the bulletin, watch the budget, attend committee meetings, and deal with denominational bureaucracy, but they cannot pay us to love them. That part of the job we do for free."
***
One year our church was asked to set up a "seasonal display" in one of our town's shopping centers. A committee went to work and built a display that featured a movie screen, with the words over the screen taken from a familiar Christmas hymn: "CHRIST WAS BORN FOR THIS." While that hymn played continuously on a tape recorder, slides of scenes from current events flashed up on the screen -- scenes of war, poverty, riots, little children, families decorating Christmas trees. Our message: Christ was born for this, for us, for now. After two days the management of the mall called us and demanded that we remove the display because "Merchants feel that it is depressing and it will be bad for business because people don't want to think about stuff like that at Christmas."
-- William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 21, no. 4 (Logos Art Productions, 1993), pp. 52-53
***
The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, was once involved in raising money for a pet project of his -- an international student-exchange program. Oppenheimer was convinced that getting people of different cultures together would make for peace. In a speech he remarked, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person."
***
As I cannot render on my piano anything but the echo of the symphony which the Philharmonic can really play, so my single example can be but the faintest echo of the profound harmonies of the Gospel. I cannot play what the Philharmonic can play, but I can tell people about the Philharmonic and get them to listen for themselves. What I cannot reproduce adequately, I can nevertheless talk about and point to. It is so with Christ.
-- Sam Shoemaker
***
Now, a person who believes the doctrines that underlie the Christian life but who does not vitally trust the Person whom those doctrines present has missed the heart of faith's meaning. That person is like one who cherishes a letter of introduction to a great personality but has never used it; he has the formal credentials, but not the transforming experience.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Faith
***
We want only to show you something we have seen and tell you something we have heard ... that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
-- Paul Tillich
***
William Willimon, former Chaplain at Duke University, says that John the Baptist reminds us of boundaries we must respect and gates we must pass through. At Duke, Willimon reminded the students, "If you are going to graduate, you must first get past the English Department. If you are going to practice law, you must pass the bar. If you want to get to medical school you must survive Organic Chemistry." Likewise, "If you want to get to the joy of Bethlehem in the presence of Jesus, you must get past John the Baptist in the desert."
-- Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy For A Shallow World (CSS Publishing Company, 1997)
***
A little girl dressed as an angel in a Christmas pageant was told to come down the center aisle. The child asked, "Do you want me to walk or fly?" You feel as though she almost could have flown. Don't ever lose the wonder and mystery of Christmas.
Every year I'm reminded of those words of the late Peter Marshall: "When Christmas doesn't make your heart swell up until it nearly bursts and fill your eyes with tears and make you all soft and warm inside, then you will know that something inside of you is dead."
-- James T. Garrett, God's Gift (CSS Publishing Company, 1991)
Worship Resources
N.B. All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.
MUSIC
Hymns
"Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus"
WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1744;
MUSIC: Rowland H. Prichard, 1830; harm. from The English Hymnal, 1906
(c) public domain
as found in:
UMH: 196
"Toda le Tierra" (All Earth Is Waiting)
WORDS: Catalonian text by Alberta Taule, 1972; English trans. by Gertrude C. Suppe, 1987;
MUSIC: Alberto Taule, 1972; harm. by Skinner Schavez-Melo, 1988
(c) 1972 Alberto Taule, trans. (c) 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House; harm. (c) 1988 Skinner Chavez-Melo
as found in:
UMH: 210
"The Voice Of God Is Calling"
WORDS: John Haynes Holmes, 1913; MUSIC: William Lloyd, 1840
(c) public domain
as found in:
UMH: 436
"Savior Of The Nations, Come"
WORDS: stanzas 1-2 Martin Luther, 1523; trans. by William Reynolds, 1851; stanzas 3-5 Martin L. Seitz, 1969;
MUSIC: Enchiridion Oder Handbuchlein, 1524; harm. J. S. Bach; alt.
Stanzas 3-5 (c) 1969 Concordia Publishing Co.
as found in:
UMH: 214
Songs
"Sing Unto The Lord A New Song"
WORDS: Jewish folk song; MUSIC: Jewish folk song; arr. by J. Michael Bryan
Arr. (c) 1996 Abingdon Press
as found in:
CCB: # 16
"Blessed Be The Name"
WORDS: USA campmeeting chorus;
MUSIC: USA campmeeting melody; arr. by Ralph E. Hudson
(c) public domain
as found in:
CCB: # 18
"All Hail King Jesus"
WORDS & MUSIC: Dave Moody
(c) 1981 Glory Alleluia Music
as found in:
CCB: # 29
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: Rejoice always in God.
People: We offer prayers to God continually.
Leader: Give thanks to God in all your life.
People: We are always open to the Spirit of our God.
Leader: May the God of peace sanctify you entirely.
People: May we be kept blameless forever.
Leader: The One who calls us is faithful.
People: God will bring us to full salvation.
COLLECT / OPENING PRAYER
O God who anoints folks to proclaim your reign: Grant that in the busyness of the holiday season we may not forget that you come to turn our world upside-down, to lift up the lowly and to bring down the haughty. Grant us the grace to stand with our Master and announce the arrival of your reign; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
or
We come and present ourselves to you, O God, who calls all the world to a reckoning and a time of justice and equality. We praise you for your holiness and ask that by the power of your Spirit we might participate in your reign of justice and peace, now and forever. Amen.
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION / PARDON
Leader: Let us come with confidence into the presence of the One who judges us and renews us. Let us confess the state of our lives to God and before our sisters and brothers.
People: We confess to you, O God, that we prefer to put on a happy face and go out into the marketplace to buy things we can't afford than to deal with the thought of your coming to bring justice to the poor around us. We would rather focus our thoughts on your coming to make us comfortable than on your coming to judge us. We want to think of ourselves as those you have chosen rather than as those who by their lifestyle oppress the poor and needy. Forgive us our blindness to the needs of the world. Open our eyes so that we may see as you see. Give us a passion for justice and a thirst for righteousness, that we may truly be your children. Amen.
Leader: God comes to judge us, not to condemn us to death but to stop our heedless flight to destruction. God comes to judge us so that we might repent and turn and live. In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANIES, ETC.
We worship you, God of the poor and the downtrodden, for you are truth and justice and righteousness. You are all that we are meant to be but are not.
(The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We look at our lives and realize how much we consume and waste while many are denied the bounty of your creation. We seek only to put on a happy face and celebrate the abundance of creation. We do not desire to become aware of all those who are without because of greed and hatred.
We give you thanks for all the blessings you have bestowed on your creation. We thank you for the beauty of the earth and of the stars. We thank you for those who stand among us and remind us of the need for justice and righteousness, even as we know we are among the guilty. Most of all we thank you for our Master Jesus, who comes and calls all into your reign.
(Other specific thanksgivings may be offered.)
We lift up to you those who are far from the wholeness you desire them to have. We pray for those who are sick in body, mind, or soul. We pray for those who have lost their way in life. We pray for the hungry, the homeless, and the refugee. We pray for ourselves, that we may catch the fire of your vision and your desire for all your people.
(Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray, saying, "Our Father...."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
Hymnal '82: The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Renew: Renew! Songs and Hymns for Blended Worship
Children's Sermon
The guiding light
Object: a flashlight
Based on John 1:6-8, 19-28
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever gone into your backyard at night and turned on a flashlight? (let them answer) The flashlight helps you see in the dark, doesn't it! Flashlights bring us light. I brought this flashlight to tell you about a man named John. He was a messenger from God. He came to tell people that Jesus was coming to help them. John told people that Jesus would be like a great light in darkness. I want to tell you a story about a family who became lost in the dark. As you listen to my story, tell me if you can decide who is John in my story and who is Jesus.
A family took a hike one night in the woods. As they walked it became darker and darker. Soon there was no light. They couldn't see where they were going. They were lost and frightened! Soon in the distance they saw a small light. The light was coming toward them. It was getting brighter and brighter. It was the light from a flashlight like this one. (hold up the flashlight) As the light became brighter they heard a voice. A man was carrying the flashlight. He asked them if they needed help. They replied that they were lost. Then the man said, "Don't worry. I have a flashlight to help you find your path." The family was very relieved. They said to the man, "You have saved us." Then the man said, "No I haven't saved you. Soon there will be a very bright light. It will be so bright that you won't even need my flashlight to see." The man was right. Soon after that the sun began to rise in the east. The sun shone so bright that the family didn't need the flashlight to see. They were able to find their way to safety by the sunlight.
Now, who can tell me which person in this story was John? (let them answer) John was the man with the flashlight. Who can tell me who represented Jesus? (let them answer) Jesus was the rising sun.
When you see a flashlight, think of John. He came to tell people that Jesus was coming. When you see the sun rise in the morning, think of Jesus. He came to save us from darkness.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, December 11, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
