PASS IT ON
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Matthew 23:1-12
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
This morning in my sermon, I'm going to speak a bit about Paul the Apostle. And if you know anything about Paul, the Paul who wrote a good chunk of the New Testament, you know he is a guy who had a religious experience. He had an experience that transformed his life, on a trip he was making to Damascus. He was a guy who had been persecuting the church, the new movement that was happening called "followers of the Way"--and this experience literally knocked him off his horse, and changed the direction of his life. He had an encounter with the risen Christ. And this experience provided for him his mission in life--his real vocation.
His vocation became, then, the task of passing on the message he had received in that experience--in that transformative experience. His mission was to plant churches throughout the Roman Empire, again in this attempt to pass on a transforming message, to share that transformative experience.
The thing about Paul's letters, if you read them together, and a number of us are studying them in the course that Jake and I are teaching...is, in reading them through--and I've had a chance to re-read a good number of them--what's remarkable about them is that they're not systematic theology. You know that Paul is anything but consistent in the message that you read in those letters. It's almost as if I sense his thought process in reading those letters, each one so dependent upon the context of the people to whom he's writing. It's as if I can sense him thinking as he's writing to these churches in all these different contexts, "What do I gotta to do so that they get the message? And if it means being inconsistent, then so be it. What do I have to do so I can pass on this message, by any means necessary?"
I think of that, and I think about a scene from one of Homer's epics, a scene where Zeus, the leader of the gods, is sending Hermes to deliver a message to the world of mortals. Hermes is the messenger of the Gods and Zeus is concerned that Hermes is going to do it right. And Hermes responds to Zeus by saying, "I may tell them truths, I may tell them lies, but they will surely get the message." That was Paul! By whatever means necessary I want them to know this message that transformed my life. So that they will know the spirit of Christ, that it might transform their life as well.
He was a missionary, a man on a mission. And I think of Apostle Paul, and this morning I also think about my own grandmother, Elizabeth M. Neely, who was also a missionary. She was a missionary in Africa, to the Cameroons. That's where my mother grew up. And I think of her especially today as we celebrate our Scottish heritage, because she was a woman, Elizabeth M. Neely, who was of good Scots-Irish stock. The faith that she learned had been passed onto her by her forbears, the faith that had come out of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.
And by the way, we celebrate our history and our heritage and our Scottish roots, not as a way to lift up one ethnic group over the other, or to be supremacist in any way about that, but to celebrate the particular roots of our tradition, and how God's grace worked through the very raw material of the Scottish people, out of the Reformation...we celebrate how the Spirit of God blew through those people in a new way and impelled them to share the message of the gospel far and wide. And so my grandmother was an example of that: passionate about the gospel, she went to Africa to pass on the message that she had learned. And she passed that message on to me as well.
I think about how I received my faith, I think about my grandmother, Elizabeth M. Neely. I still have notes from her Bible study in my office, you know, this three ring binder, every single white space filled up with her tiny writing. She'd do an hour of Bible study every day, not waste a bit of space on that page. But I never talked to her about the Bible. That's not how I learned--that's not what I remember about her. What I remember about her is that she was somebody who believed in me, and had faith in me, in a way no one else in my family did. What I remember about her were the stories that she told. She told a story about a boy in the African village who survived the famine by eating the potato skins that the rich people had thrown out. She was a very frugal woman. She would never throw out any part of the Thanksgiving turkey. One year it got really old, and we all said it was too far gone--throw it away, but she couldn't waste any of it. She made soup out of it, the whole house stank, and we said Grandma Neely, don't eat it! And she ate it anyway, and was sick for five days. She couldn't waste anything and to this day, ask my wife, I can't throw anything out from the refrigerator. It's an issue in our family.
And look at me. Here I am, teaching the message up here. I remember when I said I was going to seminary--I'm the only one of the 25 or so grandchildren who went to seminary, and I started getting $100 a month stipend after that. But here I am, trying to teach this message that's been passed on to me. And I want to say this with all seriousness, that it's very difficult to do from here, from this pulpit. Very difficult with me up here in these robes, conferring some air of respectability, presumably...up here bearing the title "Reverend"...difficult to try to convey the message.
Because first of all, I mean, let's face it: most of you will forget almost everything that's said from this pulpit. Ok, let's be honest. How many of you remember a sermon that was preached even a few Sundays ago? Right? I preached this whole sermon on character--the only thing people remember about that series? The flossing sermons. You know, Jeff talked about how flossing, developing that habit, changed his life. That's all that's remembered.
And you know, that's OK--I don't remember any of it either. I'll be honest. And I grew up in church. I remember maybe one time when my dad, who was the preacher, used an illustration from McDonald's. It was when they were doing that commercial--he said, you know, in this society, the only thing you need to do to get a nutritious meal is to say, "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun." Anybody remember that one?
That's all I remember. I remember nothing about my confirmation class. Nada. Zip. In terms of the teaching content, the one thing I remember about that, was I yawned once. I was the preacher's kid. I yawned once, one among those 30 kids, and the teacher, who had a buzz cut, sent me out in the hall. And it's a good thing it's not the only thing I remember about church, otherwise I might not be here. You know, think about what you remember as you were in school, or if you grew up in church. What do you remember? It's probably not a lot, in terms of the specific content.
Now in saying all of that, I don't mean to suggest, and let me be clear, that you shouldn't pay attention to what's said in your Sunday school classes or from this pulpit. You know, Jesus in this passage talks about those who are sitting in the seat of Moses. And uncomfortably, I point out, that the closest parallel in our immediate context to that is this pulpit. You know, the folks who were selected by their community to teach the message. He says, "Listen to them. Listen to them. The message is important. Listen to their words. But don't do as they do." And if we're using the criterion of remembering something as a way to test whether it's learned--that may be a little shaky as well. I know I've told this story in a sermon before, but it's a good one, and I reserve the right to repeat myself. There's the story about a guy who was going to church for 20 years, and he says to his friend, "I'm going to quit going. Because in all that time, 20 years of sermons, I can remember maybe one or two of those sermons, so I'm quitting. It's lost on me." And his friend says to him, "You know, my spouse, my wife does all the cooking in our family, and she is an excellent cook. But in the 20 years we've been married, all the food that she's cooked, I remember maybe one or two special meals. But I've needed every single one of them."
So just because we can't remember them doesn't mean that these words aren't working on us somehow. The words in this book, and the words spoken from here, somehow they're in here. I don't remember when I learned how to conjugate a verb, or what a square root was, or how to use the nominative case of a pronoun, but it's there, somewhere. When do you remember learning that God loves you?
The question that's at stake in these scripture lessons we heard this morning is not the "what" of teaching, it's the "how." How do we communicate the message? And Paul doesn't just call it a message, he calls it the gospel, the power of God for salvation to all those who have faith. First to the Jew, and then to the Gentile. Not the what, but the how do we pass it on, what we have received from our forbearers? The question is about the mode of teaching. Because the time of Jesus, that was the time when people first started using the term rabbi, the title Rabbi. It was when the professional rabbinate was beginning. You know, there was this phenomenon, both in the Jewish culture and in the Greco-Roman culture, of teaching and learning. It was a culture more obsessed with expertise that our own. And what Jesus is saying really, is that that mode of teaching, where there's a teacher with authority up here, and learners down there, is antithetical to the message itself.
You know I have a coffee mug--it's not mine, it was in the office at one point--and I was trying to find it for this sermon and I couldn't. And the coffee mug reads something like, in small letters, it says, "Listen to me because I'm smarter than you" and the word "SMARTER" is in big letters. Whose mug is that, by the way? I couldn't find it for this. But that's the idea. In the Greco-Roman world, in that culture, there were people setting themselves up as "wisdom experts." You know, they were like setting themselves up as Dr. Phil and going from town to town, and taking on students for "my" teaching...the teaching of Jeff. And making pretty good money that way. You know, peddling wisdom.
And it's this business of peddling wisdom that Paul's enemies are accusing him of. That's what's going on in his letter to the Thessalonians. You know, people accusing him, people who are enemies of Paul, saying, "You're pimping the gospel for your own personal gain!" And how does Paul defend himself? He says to them, "Forget about what I might have said about the message. Look at what I did. Look at my MO among you. My attempt was to be as a father to you. You know, I could have charged you money for the teaching, but I didn't do that. I worked night and day as a tentmaker so I wouldn't take money from you." Paul says, "Don't' pay attention to my ability to speak well, any kind of slick technique. Pay attention to what I did--my life, as a way of communicating the message."
So the question is...how do we teach the message? And how do we pass it on? The words are important. The content, the gospel, is important. But the way we teach it isn't through the words, really. It's in putting the words in action through our lives. We need to become living words. It's by what we do that we teach it.
Jesus didn't teach us just with his words. The Sermon on the Mount--one of the most eloquent and powerful theological statements ever written. But the real message is the one Jesus taught with his life: the message of the cross.
You know the kicker in this passage from Matthew about the Pharisees and the Sadducees is the last two verses, where he says, "Yeah, listen to what they say, but not what they do." And the model of teaching that he lifts up basically, is this; he says, if you really want to teach this message, don't be up there in robes. Be a slave. If you really want people to get this message, be like the person to whom no one usually pays attention: a slave; a servant. If you want to be great with this message, be like that.
You know as parents...I think about things through the lens of parenting quite a lot these days. The humbling thing about parenting, in terms of how we might transmit and pass on our values--because we're doing it whether we realize it or not, we're passing on values to our children. You know, they might listen to some of what we say, but what they're really going to learn from is how we are--how we are with them, and with each other. I learned when I was a youth leader--and I'm sure that Rich and Jeremiah, you know, we've talked about this too. You could have the greatest confirmation lesson plan and teaching technique in the world, and they are excellent at it--and by the way, confirmation class, this sermon isn't about not paying attention--I just want to get clear about that, OK? But the way those kids are going to learn the faith, is by what we do as leaders among them. How we are with them.
How did I get the message? I didn't get it from the pulpit. I got the message in ways like this: when my father had a manic episode--he was manic depressive, and hospitalized for several months--that church took care of us as a family. Every night, there was somebody with a casserole. Not because we needed it, but because they were showing the love of Christ to us. When that was happening, there was a guy named Mr. Foster, a retired shop teacher, and he knew I loved woodworking but didn't have any money. So he appeared at our door one day with a router from Sears. And a router back then wasn't an electronic gizmo, it was--it is--a woodworking tool, because he knew I loved woodworking. And he wanted to show the gospel. That's how I got the message.
You see, the real sermon on any given Sunday isn't the one preached from here. It's important, but the real sermon is what you all do, what we all do, what I do when I take these robes off...after we leave this building. That is the real sermon. What we do on the mission field that is our community, that is our workplace. Preaching is important, but it's meant to do what St. Francis sought to do, what he sought to teach his followers: preach the gospel everywhere, and use words only if you have to.
The most eloquent sermon that's been delivered in this congregation in the last month hasn't come from this pulpit. And Dana gave an excellent sermon last week, don't get me wrong, but I'm not speaking of that. But the most eloquent sermon that's been delivered in this congregation over the past month--and I promised I wouldn't use her name, but many of you know who this person is anyway--somebody who after the children's Sunday service, wrote a letter to every single one of those children who led worship, and pointed out their gifts, and showed them how loved they are. Who took her vows, the ones that we all take when we baptize those kids, very seriously. That's a sermon more eloquent than I could ever preach--because I get paid to do this. That's how you pass it on. Those kids won't remember many of the words taught them in their Sunday School class. But I doubt they will forget that.
You know, this All Saints Sunday is a time to realize what Mary Alice was talking about. That we're part of a great cloud of witnesses, stretching back through time and history. That we're part of a great bucket brigade that stretches back in time to John the Baptist--that stretches all the way back to the River Jordan. And right now I'm carrying the bucket, or maybe we could say right now I am the bucket. I'm a leaky bucket, frail and at times dysfunctional and flawed...but I've got the most precious thing that's been passed on to me, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the grace of God, which has transformed my life. And my question is, how are we going to pass it on? How are we going to pass on this precious, precious stuff: the Grace of God?
Amen.
November 2 , 2008
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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