(on Highland Games Sunday) As soon as I decided to wear the kilt today, I knew that in some way I would need to talk about tradition. Rather than focusing on the somewhat distant traditions of my Scots heritage, I decided to look back on some aspects of traditional Church life that will be familiar to many of us.
Diana Butler Bass is a Theologian and Church
Historian who is about one year older than me.
She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, in a neighbourhood called Hamilton. As
she looks back to her growing-up days in the 1960s, here is what she recalls:
“When I was a little girl, Hamilton was
populated by hard-working families, many of German ancestry, almost all of whom
were Catholics, Lutherans, or Methodists.
My ancestors were among the founding members of Saint John’s United
Methodist Church of Hamilton. My grandpop owned a flower shop in the center of
Hamilton, a family business began by his grandfather in 1884. The entire extended clan, including my
parents, worked there.
“From my house, it was one mile to Saint
John’s. In that mile, a tiny urban
village existed – a complete world of school, work, play, relations, and
worship. When I was 7 or 8, I used to
walk the entire mile – from home to school to the public library to the florist
shop and, finally, to the church – by myself.
All along the route, friends, neighbors and other small business owners
looked out for me. Everybody knew them;
everybody knew me. We all looked out for one another.
“Not only did we look out for one another, but
everyone in the village seemed to believe the same things about God and
morality. Parents, pastors, teachers,
librarians, politicians, businessmen, and police officers – specific religious
preferences aside – shared a common view of what it meant to have a good
life. From an early age, I knew the
answers to every ethical question: ‘Be nice,’ ‘follow the rules,’ or ‘do unto
others as you would have them do unto you.’ “(Butler Bass, pp.15-16, excerpts).
Although I grew up in the Whitmore Park
neighbourhood of Regina, rather than the Hamilton neighbourhood of Baltimore,
when I hear Diana Butler Bass talk about her childhood it’s as though we were
walking side-by-side down the same streets.
Regina was quite a bit more secular than Baltimore, so not many of my
school friends went to Sunday School – I think the “every kid in Sunday School”
experience was more part of my brother’s experience, 10 years before me, in
Ontario – but us south Regina kids absolutely lived in a culturally Christian
context, with those same three answers to every ethical question: ‘Be nice,’
‘follow the rules,’ and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’
For the next few Sundays, we’ll be encountering
readings from the epistle of James.
James is one of the more practical books of the Bible, so much so that
many high-thinking Theologians, including Martin Luther, have regarded it with
a degree of scorn. It’s a lot about
ethics, and less about higher-order thought about such things as the meaning of
God’s salvation history with Jews and Christians, and the meaning of the cross
of Christ. But the words of James align well with the
1960s congregants of Saint John’s United Methodist Church, Baltimore, or
Whitmore Park United Church, Regina.
“Every generous act of giving” says James, “is from above,” which leads
us to understand that when we are kind or generous in our dealings from others,
our actions are God’s actions. Grace
comes from God, but is enacted by human hands.
Another way of putting this, oft-heard in the
United Church, is that we are the hands and feet of Christ – God’s love and
mercy don’t just fall out of the sky; those of us who are committed to Christ
are his body in the world and thereby, are responsible for putting God’s love
into real, tangible, helpful actions.
The idea that Christianity is primarily about positive, direct action
with those in need was instilled in me from a very early age, and was
undergirded by the hymns of the day, like “they will know we are Christians by
our love.” And while I would now argue
that it is vitally important to have a solid spiritual core behind our actions,
at another level I absolutely accept the validity of what James says: acts of
Christian generosity are not just a matter of being nice, they are directed and
activated by God’s own Holy Spirit. For being a Christian is not primarily
theoretical, it is an active force. In
many nations the only reason that the Christian Church is still permitted at
all is because of this orientation toward providing practical assistance to
people in need – we may assume that helping people in need is just “human
nature” but that’s not necessarily so.
A few verses later in the first chapter of
James, is this mighty declaration: “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only….
[those] who persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they
will be blessed in their doing.” Once
more, James rings the bell of practicality in a memorable way. “Be doers or the
Word and not hearers only” – what a great reminder to even the most faithful
Church attender that what we do with Christ’s word of life validates that we
actually heard it in the first place. As
I think back to my Sunday School days,
nobody could accuse us of being “hearers only” because we had almost
completely made the switch over to being “doers only,” with practical instruction toward Christian
living being much more memorable than the scriptural underpinnings of those
actions. Hopefully all Christians will
find a healthy balance between hearing and doing, but if given a choice between
just sitting and absorbing God’s Word for our lives, or being too active in our
Christian response, James quite rightly points us toward robust action in
response to God’s input.
Much of what I’ve done so far this morning has
been a bit nostalgic in nature – seeing the connections between the reading
from James, and those days gone by when many of us developed our first
Christian understandings. But I’d like to return to Diana Butler Bass, as she
speaks a bit about what has happened in her family and in the Hamilton
neighbourhood of Baltimore since the 1960s:
“We all knew our place in the world. I knew what would lie ahead for me: marriage
to a high school sweetheart, children and working for my cousin Eddie (the
first son of the first son) in that same flower shop.
“[Then] I remember Harford Road changing,
brought on by family pressures and cultural change – from women resisting their
assigned roles and black people protesting in the streets. In 1972 my parents moved to Arizona. Most of
the cousins went to college – none became florists; none still live in
Baltimore. After my grandfather died in
1985, my uncle sold the flower shop. And
that period of my family’s history, a history that unfolded on one mile of a
Baltimore street since their arrival in the New World a century earlier, came
to a close.
“The village vanished. I feel ancient when I return to Hamilton’s
haunted streets. Everyone I knew is
gone; we have all become wanderers in a different world.
“[On the] Saint John’s website, few people
appear in the pictures of the Church; most of the shots are of an empty
sanctuary and parish hall. There is talk
of closing or combining the church with another. Clearly, the remaining congregation is trying
hard to find its way in this new world – it recently joined an organization
called the Center for Progressive Christianity and is reaching out to gay and
lesbian persons. The church newsletter
boldly proclaims, ‘Faith for a New Age and Time.’” (Butler Bass, pp.17-20,
excerpts).
Two years ago my wife, Rev Shannon Mang, went
on a sabbatical from her ministry at St. Andrew’s United Church in
Calgary. She spent time with a number of
Churches in the UK, United States and Canada which were either newly-emerging
Christian communities, or established congregations which had reinvented
themselves. One of the things that she
found, particularly in the UK, was that the Churches that survived rather than
being sold and transformed into a Coffee shop, rehearsal hall or condominium,
were those that were most authentically engaged in the most pressing social
issues of their surroundings. Shannon’s
findings are consistent with those of Diana Butler Bass, who has identified at
least ten different patterns by which congregations are making these kinds of
new paths. The Churches of 50 years ago have had to change their understanding
of “being doers of the Word and not hearers only” as they have started to take
literally the challenge of ministering to widows and orphans, feeding the
hungry, housing the homeless, befriending the lonely, visiting the prisoner,
demanding release for the captive; in short, reaching out with the love of
Christ in costly, challenging new ways. Being nice, following the rules, and obeing
the golden rule have been pushed aside by something closer to the heart of
Christ.
As a part-time, mostly non-resident minister in
your midst, I have not yet been able to really measure how we’re doing as a
congregation in assessing and addressing community needs. I absolutely affirm what is being done with
the building, with the Seniors day program, Alpenglow school and AA groups
finding a home here – it says a lot that the building is available for all ages
and needs. Evensong and your healing
pathways ministries, from what I’ve heard, have a definite reach into the
spiritual and emotional needs of the community, and we’ve begun some important
discussions about community role played by our Christmas Eve services, too. I’m looking forward to having Ray McGinnis
come on the 11th, to help us develop new ways to work through some
of the heavy grief issues that are impacting many lives inside and beyond the
congregation. I do, however, still wonder what our engagement should be with
the large number of young people working in the service industry, waiting
tables and working in housekeeping, renting bikes and running chair lifts; and this fall I will learn more about the breadth
of supports that are needed by Canmore parents, children and youth. At this point, after 2 months with you I have
mostly questions, and will be relying on you for the unfolding answers. Knowing the needs and finding Christ’s voice
within those needs has always been important for congregations, but
particularly now that we cannot assume that we live in a homogenous, small-c
Christian environment where everyone has the same understandings of how life
goes.
A few moments ago, I said that the
congregations that continue to have an impact are those with authentic
engagement of the most pressing social needs of their surroundings. Engagement comes with paying attention and
being prayerfully courageous in wading in there, no matter what. But what about
authenticity?
As I have watched my three children progress
through their teenage years – our youngest turns 20 two weeks from today – this
call for authenticity has been loud and clear from them and from their peer
groups. Youth are unyielding in their
demands that the institutions related to their lives, school, Church, businesses,
even recreation, be truthful. Say you’re
non-judgmental, be non-judgmental. Say
you’re looking out for the environment, look out for the environment. Say you’re against Child poverty, do something
about it. And in the eyes of many
youth, Churches as a whole are still stuck back in the 1960s or even earlier,
with conformity and good manners holding more sway than a communal banding
together to address social needs. Now on
this front, I’d say a chunk of the problem is in communication rather than
action, because I do think that Churches, on the whole, are a lot more
authentic than they were before. I don’t
sense the same separation between what we say and what we do, I do sense an
openness to get on board with important issues, I do sense that the
judgmentalism that was such a roadblock in many congregations and denominations
has largely drained away. I am hopeful
that if we can make some inroads with youth they will find authenticity here,
with the immense side benefit of developing relationships with people of all
ages, rather than just their own age group.
As I look back at the days described by Diana
Butler Bass, I don’t want to portray it as all quaint and well-intentioned but
meaningless, nor would she. There has
been strong Christian formation in every age of the Church, and much of who I
am as an adult was formed by my Christian experiences as a child. Seven years ago, when Peter Short was
moderator of the United Church, he gave a talk which started with a solid 15-20 minutes of
thank-yous, to the volunteer Sunday School teachers and Junior Choir directors
who taught him the faith, and the men of the AOTS who taught him about
hospitality and helpfulness and civic duty by showing him how to stack chairs
and fold tables. Those thank-yous
brought tears to the eyes of the entire audience because nearly all of us had shared
in those same formative experiences to some degree. Those tears tell me that there are aspects of
“the old days” of Church life that can speak to future generations… but the
call of authenticity and engagement, not just being nice or compliant, MUST be
at the forefront of whatever we say and do.
As a bit of an epilogue: in 2006, Diana Butler Bass had a look at her
home congregation’s website and the future was not looking good, so I figured I
should take a look at it in 2012. At
first it looked like the most gloomy predictions had come true – Saint John’s
United Methodist was nowhere to be found online. But a bit more digging revealed that Saint
John’s is now Faith Community Church, still a United Methodist Congregation in
the Hamilton community of Baltimore, Maryland.
Their re-framed mission statement is, “we are ever growing in Christ,
inviting each one to make a difference.”
Pastor Jackie and the congregation have committed themselves to 5
spiritual practices which have, not coincidentally, been strongly influenced by
the writings of Diana Butler Bass: “risk-taking mission and service, radical
hospitality, passionate worship, intentional faith development, and extravagant
generosity.” And as a really interesting aside, they are approaching their
building in a similar way to what is happening here, seeing it as an asset to
serve the needs of community groups rather than a protected shrine for the sole
use of the congregation. Their building
is now used by everyone from Narcotics Anonymous to Scouts, Guides and
Playschool, to the “Cellar Stage” folk music series, along with their own
faith-formation activities.
I’d like to close on that high note. At times, congregations can get stymied and
depressed by the gap between who they were, who they are, and who they would
like to be. As a community fully reliant
on the grace of God, I have no doubt that the Ministry of Christ in this place,
which has been going strong for over 120 years now, has all kinds of
future. May it be so! Amen.
Works cited:
Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity
for the Rest of Us: how the neighborhood Church is transforming the Faith. San
Francisco: Harper, 2006.
Re. Saint John’s
Church, see http://www.faithcommunityhamilton.org/index.html and http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeyk8mc/uptownconcerts/id8.html
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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