The Park Road Pulpit

Judy Sworg was a wonderful kindergarten teacher. In her classroom at Huguenot Academy in Powhatan, Virginia, I got an exciting start in education. Among the many lessons that I learned, I began to gain an appreciation for poetry, and memorized a few lines that have stuck by me through the years. In addition to the other classics that I learned were these words:

Like the author, Robert Fulghum, in kindergarten most of us, also, learned “everything we really need to know.”[2] Though the Tea Party depicts a child’s very self-centered world, a world that truly revolves around “me,” in kindergarten we all learn about sharing, playing fair, taking turns, helping one another -- we learn that the group is more important than the individual. In kindergarten we teach kids that the whole is more important than the individual parts. It’s a very un-American idea. The Western world was built on the exaltation of the individual, not the group. So, after a few lessons in sharing, our children spend the rest of their academic training, and nearly all of their, “on the job training,” being convinced that they learned it all wrong. (Maybe the world really is all about me, myself, and I!)

In last week’s sermon, in which we studied Paul’s speech in Athens, and the resulting conversion of Damaris, whose biblical name, but fictional story I embellished with you,[3] I talked about diversity. I was speaking of diversity within this church, but the point could be made of the Christian Church at large – diversity is important. That we can tolerate, even celebrate, Christians whose intellectual beliefs differ from ours will be essential not just for the base survival of the Church, but for its growth and vitality in the 21^st century. Again, I commend you for your willingness to dialogue, and to sometimes disagree, but always to do so in love.

But the aim of faith, as I indicated last week, is not diversity for the sake of diversity. It is not a community centered on ideas -- a “think tank for doctrinal dispute.”[4] It is a community that centers its life on a person, not an idea. The aim of Christian faith is to create community -- community based on God’s love as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. I don’t want beautiful little Solen[5] and all of her friends here to be “wishy on grace and washy on prayer,” and I hope they are being raised in an environment that appreciates the stories and truths of scripture. These precious children are our responsibility, and Amy and I continue to celebrate the unique opportunity that we have, as a community, to truly educate our children … But when all is said and done, I hope they can state confidently, steadfastly that which is truly important. And I hope as they state their faith, they will come to use the pronoun “we” in doing so, more frequently than “me, myself, and I.”

In a 1985 trip to the Holy Land with a group of students from Furman University, I spent several nights in a kibbutz in Israel. As we traveled the fertile and beautiful region of Galilee, we returned each evening to share a wonderful family-style meal and the adequate, but simple accommodations of this Israeli “commune.”

Nothing can ever wipe away the extraordinary part played by the kibbutzim[6] in the establishment and flourishing of Israel. But why did such a glowing success end in such failure? A hint can be found by going back to [the 19^th-century. . . socialist named] Robert Owen. The [communes] that he and other. . . visionaries launched in America were of two kinds. Some. . . were created for the explicit purpose of practicing socialism. [These] were abysmal failures. . . . Others, by contrast, were religious communities, in which shared property was [secondary] to a binding faith; these. . . [communities] endured much [more successfully].

Muravchik concludes, “The kibbutzim could not survive the success of the Zionist enterprise of ‘normalizing’ the Jewish people.” In other words, when the Jewish community became “secular” (‘normal’) -- when the people lost their specifically religious reason for being -- they could not maintain these communities.[7]

In Jesus’ prayer before his ascension, he prays for his disciples -- those remaining eleven apostles and the women who followed[8] -- and by extension, his prayer is an intercession for all who seek to follow in his Way. What was his prayer to Abba (his “father”) for us?

Jesus prayed that we might be Saved From Ourselves. Jesus’ prayer on our behalf is that God might grant us, the church (the Church), oneness in that which really matters. In the words of this final prayer of Jesus it is abundantly clear that this gospel writer saw as inseparable the relationship between God (the Father) and Jesus (the Son). According to John, in relationship they were one. It is Jesus’ prayer for us.

As a practical matter, oneness in relationship must inevitably work itself out in administrative ways in any institution. Park Road Baptist Church is the Church. But Park Road Baptist Church is also an institution. The church and the institution live together, the ideal and the real, in tension, but in harmony. This church has lived together in such tension and harmony now for 51 years, and amazingly to me, without any set of governing rules or bylaws, to this point. Such a church might be commended for living its ideals without the confining legalism of “following the rules.” But no person or institution ever lives without rules. The rules may be a person or a group of people. The rules might be an understood tradition or even a superstition, but where people live together, “the rules” always exist.

Several years ago more than one professional consultant made a recommendation to this church that it formulate and adopt a set of governing bylaws. The people, the traditions, the commitments and convictions that had been the unwritten rules of this community for five decades should be written and affirmed by the Body.

At that time a committee was formed and began to work. For more than a year they worked diligently, evaluating the bylaws of other churches and working on a document befitting this Unique Baptist Community. The committee’s work was then detained by a ministerial interim period and then, again, by the calling of new ministerial leadership to the church. But following the initial recommendation of the consultants, in March of this year, the committee presented a set of bylaws to our Deaconate, who has now studied and deliberated these bylaws in three monthly meetings. Changes have been made. Language has been refined. Concepts have been distinguished and modified.

This week each of you should receive a letter from the committee stating the reasons we believe such a document is needed, and giving a detailed summary of these bylaws and a schedule for their delivery to you. You will have ample time to examine the summary, and then the bylaws in their complete, proposed, form. You will then have several opportunities to make your suggestions, to voice your opinions before the bylaws are presented to the church for approval, hopefully, in our July Church Conference.

These bylaws are not a binding statement of doctrinal beliefs. They are not rules written in stone. They are guidelines which will continue to allow Park Road Baptist Church to be who you have been for more than half a century now. They are guidelines for relationship. They may at some point in the future save us from the arrogance of any “self,” as they bind us to one another.

As you consider these guidelines, I want to remind you that it is your duty -- the duty of every single one of you -- to speak your voice, to participate in this process, to be a living individual, a constituent part of the greater whole that is Park Road Baptist Church. Please -- in this process, as in every opportunity for dialogue here, speak now -- and then commit yourself to live in peace with this community[9].

In Luke’s telling of the ascension of Jesus, he emphasizes the “power” of the disciples. They will receive power to be witnesses, even to the ends of the earth. In John’s telling, he emphasizes “unity.” Unity in relationship. Scott Bader-Saye insightfully puts these together and writes, “The solidarity of the church not only enables our witness, [the solidarity of the church, our oneness in relationship] is our witness.”[10]

A common discipline infuses each of these passages. In Acts we find the disciples praying together after he is gone. In John, prayer is Jesus’ final act. Maybe this strange discipline called prayer, which continues to be marginalized by the skeptics as antiquated, superstitious, or just down-right goofy, is the key to humility, which may just make us one in relationship, which may “Save Us From Ourselves.”

[1] I memorized this poem (along with other classics, such as “I Think Mice Are Nice”), but, unfortunately, I did not learn the name of the author at that time.

[2] Fulghum’s book is entitled, “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

[3] “The Last New Idea” is taken from Acts 17.16-34. A copy of the sermon can be obtained on the church’s website: www.parkroadbaptist.org. Follow the links for “Sermons,” and then “Sermons from 2002.”

[4] A church member used this phrase in an e-mail this week concerning some recent discussions that have followed from our past few sermons and Wednesday night discussions. I am amazed at how “dynamic” preaching is (this should not surprise me) -- at how frequently the context of the week (conversations and events) shapes the Sunday sermon. Church members who hear their own words in my sermons should not think I am preaching “at them,” but should recognize that I take seriously the sermon as a dialogue. It is our ongoing conversation together.

[5] Solen Blye Sweatt and her mother, Robin, participated in a “Parent/Child Dedication earlier in the service.

[6] Plural of kibbutz.

[7] Quoted in “Context, Martin E. Marty on Religion and Culture,” May 15, 2002. Claretian Publications, Chicago IL. Emphases added.

[8] I refer to all of these as “disciples.” I believe that the designation of only “twelve apostles” is probably an editorial creation by the gospel writers, to strengthen the symbolism of the Church as a “New Israel.” (Israel had Twelve Tribes, from the twelve sons of Jacob.)

[9] “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Romans 12.18.

[10]“ The Christian Century,” April 24-May 1, 2002, “Long Division”, 16.