“What We Forget” - July 29, 2018

Joel 1:1-7, 2:21-24

The United States had major crop failures in 2012, and we barely noticed them.  That year there was a drought over 80% of the country.  One article I saw summarized the year by saying,

“Missouri was hit particularly hard, with corn yields down 42 percent below its 2002-2011 average and Iowa, Kansas and Kentucky were also devastated, with yields at 20-year lows. In Illinois and Indiana, yields were down by more than a third. Kentucky, not a major corn producing state, had the largest overall corn crop failure, with more than a 50 percent reduction in yield, compared to its 2002-2011 average.

In Colorado and Nebraska, where most corn crops are irrigated, far fewer acres of planted corn were even harvested in 2012. In Colorado, only 70 percent of crops were harvested, compared to an average of 85 percent between 2002-2011, and in Nebraska the harvest was down about 7 percent from the 2002-2011 average.”[1]

We are incredibly blessed to be sitting here six years later and not even remember that.  We would also be unwise to think that our situation is inevitable, or to neglect the necessary connection we have to the land and how fragile it may become when we treat it as anything less than the gift of God.

            The book of Joel is a word to the people of God in the midst of an agricultural disaster.  The very first lines say to a country in the grip of famine,

“Tell your children of it,
   and let your children tell their children,
   and their children another generation.” [Joel 1:3]

which is to say that there will be a future.  There is starvation now, which is terrible, but someone will live and there will also be future generations.  But do not let them forget.  Let them know what can happen.  Do not let them become complacent about the basics of life or take them for granted.

“What the cutting locust left,
   the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
   the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
   the destroying locust has eaten. 

Wake up, you drunkards, and weep;
   and wail, all you wine-drinkers,
over the sweet wine,
   for it is cut off from your mouth.
For a nation has invaded my land,
   powerful and innumerable;
its teeth are lions’ teeth,
   and it has the fangs of a lioness.
It has laid waste my vines,
   and splintered my fig trees;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
   their branches have turned white.” [Joel 1:4-7]

The land may be invaded by locusts or by foreign armies.  Of the two, the army is easier to turn back.  Of the two, the army is less destructive.  Don’t think, says Joel, that it might not happen again.

            In my lifetime I have known two women who grew up in Oklahoma in the 1930’s.  Both of them remembered the Dust Bowl.  One was in her seventies and one was in her eighties, but when they talked about what had happened, each had a kind of strain in her voice that was like what you hear when somebody is describing a loss that they were still suffering.  The younger woman, predictably, recalled less details.  For her, it had meant being uprooted when her family moved to California and the sudden discovery that they had become poor, so poor that food wasn’t always on the table.  (If you’ve ever seen or read The Grapes of Wrath, the struggles of the family there were what her family went through.)  The other woman’s family managed to stay in Oklahoma but her parents’ lost their farm.  She could also tell about the dust storms that turned the sky black and buried the garden that they depended on to get them through.  Both of these women were intelligent and capable.  Neither of them finished school.  The Dust Bowl put an end to that, too. 

            Part of the tragedy in the Plains States is that the disaster was in many ways the result of human activity.  Too much land was planted with wheat.  Too much land was plowed up without regard to erosion.  Too many wind-breaks had been cut down.  If greater care had been taken in the preceding years, the Dust Bowl might have been averted, even when the rain stopped coming.  But the price of wheat was up.  The new tractors called for bigger fields.  Easy loans were available.  There was an assumption brought about by years of prosperity that prosperity was permanent.  It wasn’t.

We forget, and forget to our own peril, when our decisions become based on the notion that we are in control and when our decisions look only at the short term, that we are setting ourselves up for disaster.  Joel had said,

“Be dismayed, you farmers,

wail, you vinedressers,

over the wheat and the barley;

for the crops of the fields are ruined.” [Joel 1:11]

The prophet saw the hand of God in the losses and in the hunger.  We are put into the world to tend it, not to abuse it.  We do alter nature, and that is not always bad.  I doubt it offends God that we have wiped out smallpox, dug wells, redirected rivers, and cleared land for settlement and farming, built great cities and flown to the moon and back.  But there is a degree of offense in creating conditions where nature, always a mighty force, turns against itself.  

            I fear that we have reached that point.  I won’t belabor you with examples.  One should do it: this past week, temperatures in Sweden, above the Arctic Circle, topped ninety degrees.  Let that sink in.  It was hotter in Lapland than in Pennsylvania.  It was only about twenty-five degrees cooler than in Arizona.

            Tell me that Joel is not speaking to us as well.  This is not a feel-good sermon.  This is a “what-now?” sermon.  We have clearly done something wrong, and have forgotten to our own endangerment that the earth is the Lord’s.  But Joel does say,

“Yet even now, says the Lord,
   return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 
   rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
   for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   and relents from punishing. 
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
   and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain-offering and a drink-offering
   for the Lord, your God?” [Joel 2:12-14]  

Joel calls out to an entire society, then and now.  Averting anything massive takes everybody doing their part.  (That was one of the understandings of the Paris Agreement, that was negotiated to address worldwide climate change.  The U.S. pulled out of it last year, which means that more individuals must pay more attention more constantly to compensate for that action.) 

Before I tell anybody else what to do, let me say publicly what I will take on.

            I live in a relatively new house, with energy-efficient appliances and good insulation.  I don’t think I can make reductions there.  Another hidden part of my carbon footprint is in the number of plastic bags and paper towels I use.  I will have to become one of those annoying people with all the canvas bags at the supermarket, and start cleaning with washrags instead of Bounty (“The Quicker Picker-Upper”). 

I drive a lot, and that’s going to be hard to curtail.  I will try to reduce my driving by 10% by this time next year.  Pray for me.  I will start making a point of walking or biking within a short radius.  I’m in charge of holding a bunch of meetings throughout the year that involve people from across the state and I will encourage them to take place by video-conferencing instead of having everyone drive. 

One website I checked out[2] says,

“It has been estimated that 13% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions result from the production and transport of food.”

It goes on to recommend:

“Buy local and eat a more diversified diet including less meat and dairy to reduce your carbon emissions resulting from the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides, and gas required to produce and transport of the food you eat.”

I admit I don’t know what that would mean for me, but I will take a good look at it.  I can easily start by saying that I will pick a day every week (it probably won’t be the same day each time) that I don’t eat meat or fish.  (I hope eggs are a responsible substitute, but I’m going to have to see about that, too).  And eating less bananas and more blueberries isn’t much of a sacrifice.

            It would be foolish to think that such measures alone, especially if they are not part of some major social shift, will make a difference.  But it is even more foolish to think that we could go on for much longer without making changes, and they have to start somewhere.  So, these are some small commitments on my part, and I could use your help in holding me to them. 

            In turn, I ask you to look at your own situation.  Find one or two options open to you to make it more likely that a hundred years after we are gone, someone will stand up and read from the book of Joel [2:21-24] and say without hesitation, but only with proper gratitude to the Maker of heaven and earth:

“Do not fear, O soil;
   be glad and rejoice,
   for the Lord has done great things!
Do not fear, you animals of the field,
   for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit,
   the fig tree and vine give their full yield. 

O children of Zion, be glad
   and rejoice in the Lord your God;
for he has given the early rain for your vindication,
   he has poured down for you abundant rain,
   the early and the later rain, as before.
The threshing-floors shall be full of grain,
   the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.”

---

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/18/drought-us-states-crop-damage

[2] https://cotap.org/reduce-carbon-emissions/

“A Heartless Prophet” - July 22, 2018

Ezra 9:1-4

            “Zeal” isn’t a word that we hear very often.  Occasionally, you do hear somebody called a “zealot”, which usually comes across as criticism, if not even an insult.  “When it comes to exercise, she’s something of a zealot.”  “He takes his dislike of messiness to the point of being a zealot for shelving and cabinets.”  “They were zealots for Bernie Sanders and for Ted Cruz, and haven’t spoken in years.”

            Zeal itself is not a bad thing, though.  Whole-hearted devotion to God is something I aim for, and urge you to do the same. 

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. … and love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Matthew 22:37, 40]

The Wesleyan Movement has always insisted that a big part of the Christian life is to nurture that zeal for holiness, that zeal for God, that puts all of life into God’s hands.  John Wesley’s “Covenant Prayer”, that we often use at New Year’s, leaves no loopholes.

“Lord, make me what you will.

I put myself fully into your hands:

            put me to doing, put me to suffering,

            let me be employed for you, or set aside for you,

            let me be full, let me be empty,

            let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and with a willing heart

            yield all to your pleasure and disposal.”

            Many people living in Judea at the time of Jesus’ ministry sought to develop that kind of devotion.  For them, says Reza Aslan,

“Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master-to serve any human master at all-and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God. To be zealous for the Lord was to walk in the blazing footsteps of the prophets and heroes of old, men and women who tolerated no partner to God, who would bow to no king save the King of the World, and who dealt ruthlessly with idolatry and with those who transgressed God‘s law. The very land of Israel was claimed through zeal, for it was the zealous warriors of God who cleansed it of all the foreigners and idolaters, just as God demanded. ‘whoever sacrifices to any god but the Lord alone shall be utterly annihilated’ (Exodus 22:20).”[1]

One of those “zealous warriors of God” was a man named Ezra, sometimes called Ezra the Scribe, and we read his memoirs just like they did.  But when we read them, it doesn’t sound quite as heroic.  In fact, there’s a kind of tragedy involved in how he went about things because he did great harm as he tried to do great good.

            To summarize the background: when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and most of the survivors were carried off to Babylon as prisoners, there were a handful who were not considered worth the trouble or who had run for the hills just in time and they slowly began to build up life again among the ruins.  These were like the folks we see in our day who survived the bombings in Iraq and Syria and who came out of their cellars shell-shocked and starving when ISIS was scattered.  Their children grew up among the ruins and, as happens, when they came of age they began to marry.  But the people they married were not necessarily Jewish, since they had been greatly reduced and ethnically cleansed.

            After decades passed, Nehemiah led a party of exiles and their children back from Babylon and they began to rebuild Jerusalem.  Some of the survivors (not all) welcomed them back and slowly the city walls began to rise again, and the Temple would also be restored.  At some point, another outsider came from Babylon: Ezra the Scribe, who brought with him scrolls that he called the Book of the Law (basically an early edition of the Hebrew Scriptures, with at least the Torah, the first five books, and possibly more). 

He was welcomed, too, at least at first, because when these books were read out publicly, people heard the voice of God speaking to them in their words.  They restored their sense of purpose.  They talked about God’s formation of and care for a people, from the start of time, and gave them a place within his eternal plan.  Hearing it, people broke down and cried, so deeply were they touched.

Then something happened.  Ezra himself tells it this way:

“After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, ‘The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons. Thus the holy seed has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands, and in this faithlessness the officials and leaders have led the way.’ When I heard this, I tore my garment and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.”  [Ezra 9:1-4]

After that, he gave and enforced an ultimatum.  Anyone who had entered into a mixed marriage could either divorce his wife and renounce any children, or else be cut off from the people of Israel forever, shunned and outcast.  And, yes, he did follow through.

            Before we condemn him utterly ourselves, let me point something out that we don’t like to discuss.  We don’t see too many people marrying Hittites and Perizzites these days, but we do see Christians marrying someone who has no faith at all or who, for some reason, has renounced all religion.  Garrison Keilor used to refer to them as people who attend the Church of the Brunch, whose Sunday mornings revolve around pancakes and eggs.  It takes courage and persistence for the believing partner to continue to worship regularly.  It becomes even harder when there are children, and they reach the age where it is natural to test the parental limits, and they start saying, “Why do I have to go to church?  None of my friends go to church.  Even Mom doesn’t go.”  At the same time they get the message from their sports coaches, “If you want to be part of this, you have to be at every game.  We have a tournament every Sunday starting at 9:00.”  Those go together a lot of the time, and prey on the adolescent fear of being left out. 

Ezra was right about what can happen.  He was wrong, as both history and our gut reactions tell us, about the solution.  Family separation does not do anyone any good.  The gospels, written centuries later, point out over and over that the Jews and the Samaritans held onto deep distrust and even hatred for one another.  Guess where a lot of it began.  Guess what happened to the people whose connections were sliced off at the time of Ezra?  Maybe part of the Good Samaritan’s motivation in helping a wounded traveler was to be able to say to himself how clearly he and his people were better than the Jewish priests and Levites who had rejected his ancestors and now, concerned with the same religious purity, could leave a bleeding man at the side of the road.

The apostle Paul took a different view.  He said that if there is a believer in the household, that person could be like a missionary stationed right there. 

“For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband.  Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.” [I Corinthians 7:14]

Nobody said that would be easy, but very little about marriage is simple or clear-cut.  In practical terms, one of his great helpers was Timothy, whom Paul says came to faith through his mother and grandmother.  (In other words, don’t rule out the beneficial influence of meddlesome grandparents, either.)

           

            In Ezra’s day, somebody wrote down a story already old at that time, yet one that we still read.  It’s about a Jewish woman who had lived abroad for many years but was forced back to her hometown by poverty following the death of her husband and her two sons.  One of her daughters-in-law wouldn’t leave her and it happened that when they got back to Israelite territory and sought out what was left of her family there, one of this woman’s relatives took a shine to this foreigner who had tagged along from the land of Moab.  Eventually the two hooked up and then married and had children.  Her name – this foreign woman – was Ruth.  Her husband, whom Ezra would have cut off from Israel for marrying her, was named Boaz.  They lived in a town called Bethlehem, from which Ezra would have banished them.  They had a son whose name was Obed, whom Ezra would have barred from among the people of God.  Obed’s son was Jesse, the Bible tells us [Ruth 4:22] and Jesse’s son was David.

---

[1] Reza Aslan, Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Random House, 2014), 40-41.

“When the Promise Is Wrecked” - July 15, 2018

II Chronicles 36:15-20

                             

            When a sports team takes a championship, the fans start shouting this like, “We did it!  We did it!”  When they calm down just a little bit, they may start singing,

“We are the champions, my friend! 

We’ll keep on fighting ’til the end! 

We are the champions, we are the champions! 

No time for losers,

’cause we are the champions

of the world!”[1]

Of course, when the season ends poorly, what you hear is, “They blew it again,” or, “Game three is where they went wrong.”

            The Chronicler records a national disaster far worse than losing the Stanley Cup.  The Chronicler writes about how Israel was destroyed and how Judah failed to learn any lessons from that disaster.  How did a people who started out with such promise, and to whom God himself had pledged support, end up nothing but a wreck?  It is too much to bear to say, “What happened to us?”  Let’s look, says the Chronicler, at them.  He gives a recap:

“The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling-place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy.”

It wasn’t that God broke his promises.  It was that the people broke away from his promises.  God said that he would be with them, but they said they didn’t need his help, thanks.  So he let them go.

“Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand. All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon. They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons…”

Notice here, it is not only the nation that suffers – and that suffering is profound – but God also suffers.  Their homes are destroyed and their children carried away.  So, too, is the Temple, which they understood as the House of God (often in very literal terms) is destroyed and pillaged.  Judah and Jerusalem are leveled and God loses his own people, with those who survive turned into slaves.  This is a massive failure for God himself.

How do you make sense of that?  If you’re honest, you cannot pretend it didn’t happen.  Jack Miles won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for a book called God: A Biography.  It has a chapter called “Does God Fail?” that opens with the question

“If the rupture of the covenant and the resulting genocide are only too obviously a catastrophe in the life of Israel, what are they in the life of God?”[2]

The Chronicler’s explanation of Israel and Judah’s failure was that God was going back to the start, as he had done with people across the ages.  He looked at the words of Jeremiah, who had seen the trouble coming, and who said something that moved the Chronicler to look beyond what was in front of him, and to break out of the tunnel-vision that comes in the midst of grief.  Jeremiah said:

“Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.  For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” [Jeremiah 29:10-11]

That, said the Chronicler, was what was happening.  God was going to let the land lie there as a time that it would be fallow, getting a necessary rest for the new start that was to come.  It was, he said, as if the land were keeping a Sabbath.

            The human heart, too, needs to lie fallow at times.  Everyone’s life is filled with failures of all types, and the pain that comes with them.  We have to live with it to discover what is going on in a larger way.  People who hide from their troubles in substance abuse or in their work or by jumping from relationship to relationship or never looking away from a screen: they never let reality sink in long enough to discover that God is with them in the shadow as well as in the sunlight.

The story of God and his people, with the shared sense of loss and the changes, for good or for ill, that arise through them, is a shared experience in all respects.   When I was very young I had a friend who was born one month before me and who lived three doors away, so we grew up together.  Every year on his birthday, his sister re-posts something she wrote four years ago.

“July 8th, 1964 was a life changer for me. My mother placed a beautiful baby boy in my arms and from that moment on I understood unconditional love. My parents graced me with being his god mother and I took that role very seriously. My heart broke 4 1/2 years ago when you passed away. I believe with all of my heart that I did everything I could to save you from your addiction. God had a different plan for both of us. He was instilling strength in me for what was to come.  You are forever in my heart and I thank you for all the lessons you taught me.”

I think the Chronicler would have approved of that.  Through suffering, we gain strength, compassion, and wisdom.  I am grateful to say that it is often true, by God’s grace. 

However, there has to be more to it, though, because not everyone comes out of suffering as a better person.  Even those who do often bear scars.  The exiles did return and they did rebuild Jerusalem, but it was not the same as it was.  Nevermore, either, did God work through a nation.  Judah became a province of the Persian Empire, and later of the Greeks and the Romans.  And anyone who tells you that any nation since then has been chosen by God in the same way as David’s kingdom is lying.  No political leader is the Messiah.

God used the time of the exile to let something new spring up, but it would not be a new version of the old nation.  It would be something far, far larger.  It would be the awareness that real salvation, real wholeness, would come from embracing failure, rather than by anything the world would call greatness or success.  Salvation, healing, and hope were all connected to the history of Israel in that it would come, at the right time, in God’s time, through a descendant of David.  But he would not be born in any kind of palace and would not hold any formal office. Far from repeating the glories of the kings who sat on the throne of David and Solomon, he would die abandoned and degraded at the hand of the nation’s occupiers and his people’s oppressors.  The redemption of all the world’s suffering would come when God himself, in Jesus, would take on all the failure and sin of the entire human race on a cross. 

Through that moment of utter failure, not through some grand conquest, he would enter the great exile of death itself to bring back those who lie hopeless, farther even than life, and to gather them once more to himself.

“Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.  When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” [Jeremiah 29:12-14]

That promise is not tied to geography.  It is not conditional on time or place.  Sin is not limited to any ethnic group or nation and neither is salvation.  Look at your own life and wherever you and God parted ways, he is waiting there for you.

            The invitation is to be part of a people of new life, not looking back to the good old days.  They are over.  Look ahead, always ahead, walking by faith in the Lord and with trust, and you will find yourself by God’s grace, not only walking but soaring.

           

---

[1] from “We Are the Champions” by Freddie Mercury

[2] Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 187.

“Bureaucracy and Blessing” - July 8, 2018

I Chronicles 18:14-17, 29:26-30

            So we continue this summer’s sermon series on the books of the Bible that are most overlooked, and we come to I Chronicles.  I and II Chronicles tend to take a back seat to I and II Kings because they cover a lot of the same territory, but the books of the Kings tell the story of Israel with a focus on – obviously enough – the kings and queens, the movers and shakers, the generals and armies.  The Chronicles include those folks, of course, but are not exclusively focused on them.  The Chronicles remind us that governments and military are made up of people, each of whom plays a part in the histories, and each of whom has a life, even if it doesn’t make headlines.

            At the end of I Chronicles there is an appreciation of King David, appropriate and well-earned.

“Thus David son of Jesse reigned over all Israel. The period that he reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned for seven years in Hebron and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. He died at a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor; and his son Solomon succeeded him.” [I Chronicles 29:26-28]

One thing you pick up as you read the historical books of the Bible is that you cannot count on a king dying peacefully, nor on a smooth succession, nor that whoever steps up to the throne will be competent to rule.

            Earlier in the book, though, we read about one of the things about David’s rule that left a good feeling about this period for the people of God was that David paid attention to the organization of his kingdom, put capable administrators in place, and made sure that it was a multigenerational project with on-the-job training for younger folks.

“Joab son of Zeruiah was over the army; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder; Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; Shavsha was secretary; Benaiah son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and the Pelethites; and David’s sons were the chief officials in the service of the king.” [I Chronicles 18:15-17]

            All of us have had to deal with incompetent or stupid bureaucrats from time to time.  I can still remember a woman who worked for the city of Philadelphia when I submitted a form to reimburse the Frankford Group Ministry for some paint we provided for a neighborhood mural.  The receipt I submitted had a “Sold to” line.  I’d picked it up at the factory and that line read, “Showroom Counter Sale” because it was not on account and they weren’t delivering it.  She would not refund the money to us because the city had agreed to pay the Frankford Group Ministry and obviously this paint was sold to someone named “Showroom Counter Sale”.  There was no arguing with this woman, no reasoning was possible.  I ended up driving back to the factory and having a completely new receipt issued to the Frankford Group Ministry, and then the same woman was suspicious of the date, because the same paint seemed to have been sold to Showroom Counter Sale.  On that one she had to give way, though, because the paper had the right wording.  That’s the kind of stupidity you cannot make up.

            On the other hand, consider (for all the times that it drives any of us crazy) all that PennDOT, for example, gets right.  I had my license renewed a few weeks ago, and went to the Malvern office expecting the usual three-hour experience.  They had reworked their system since I was there, and I was in and out in fifteen minutes even though there were people all over the place, taking drivers’ tests and filing registrations and who knows what-all.  The woman at the front desk was handing out the right forms and sending people to the right counters, and everything functioned well.  Maybe I just hit the right time on the right day, but I had a sense of order and productivity that isn’t always associated with government offices.

            Things go well when people understand their work, and when there are clear guidelines.

           

“Joab son of Zeruiah was over the army; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder; Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; Shavsha was secretary; Benaiah son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and the Pelethites; and David’s sons were the chief officials in the service of the king.”

Recorders and secretaries are important, right there beside the generals and the priests.  We have no idea what Benaiah son of Jehoiada did when he was overseeing those Cherethites and Pelethites, but we can be pretty sure that Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud made sure that they were paid and that Shavsha kept track of the laws they worked under.

            Church administration echoes the work done by those ancient administrators, and always has, and buried in the petty details are both long periods of boredom and moments of heroism.  Last Sunday afternoon, I finished reading a fascinating book called Voices of Morebath.[1]  The title sounds like it would be science fiction, but it’s actually an historian’s analysis of the account books of St. George’s church in the village of Morebath in southwestern England over a period of fifty-four years, beginning in 1520, when Henry VIII was still friends with the pope and ending when Shakespeare was ten years old.  Throughout those decades, the place had one priest who audited the books twice a year and made notes about how much wool the church sheep had produced and what it cost to repair the roof and who was in charge of the parish beef-and-beer each summer.  (Don’t even go there…)  He also noted, when royal officials began to confiscate church property, where various items were quietly distributed for safekeeping, and when they were returned years later and in what condition.  Most of it, however, reads like a memorial book, which it was, with thanks for people who left gifts to the church in their wills and notes certifying that the gifts were used for the purposes they were given.

            One other thing that happened in both David’s Israel and in that distant corner of Henry VIII’s England was that younger leaders were consciously paired up with older leaders, so that nobody would feel that they had to re-invent the wheel or go into anything unsupported, nor would anybody get stuck in the awful position of holding a job beyond when it was someone else’s turn. 

            So here is your chance to be part of that long chain of unsung and sometimes thankless ministry without which nothing worthwhile would ever happen.  This week our Nominations Committee is going to begin its annual duty of matching people’s gifts and graces to jobs that need to be done.  Around the sanctuary are the names of some of the ministries we depend on, with a short description of what they do and space to sign up.  Please do not put your spouse’s name on any of these sheets unless you are prepared to let them know before we contact them.  We are not responsible for what happens in such a case.

            Do take a look at them, though, because there are names there already of people whose activities in these areas are recorded in the Bible, so that you know you would be in good company.  Find which one your name belongs on, or talk to me and we will see if we can ask the Lord together about it.

            And let me add one more name to past contributors: that of C. Howard Peters.  He headed up a committee that wrote and published a book in 1926 that was called The Story of One Hundred Years of Methodism in Phoenixville, in which he says,

“What the future has in store for this society, we may not record.  But to say this is in the hands of God would not be the whole truth.  As God works through the agency of man, His purposes and plans concerning this church will be wrought, according to the obedience, fidelity, and loyalty of those who shall read these lines, and of the generations which shall follow.  …May God be the more honored in the days that are to come, and may their ministry be even more blessed, and their history yet more glorious than thine!”[2]

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[1] Eamon Duffy, Voices of Morebath (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

[2] Op. cit., p. 175, 176.