Credo: Pressing On (Trinity; 1 Samuel 7:3-6, 12-17; May 27, 2018)

Credo: Pressing On

Trinity
1 Samuel 7:3-6, 12-17
May 27, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Long ago, when what is now Iowa was covered by a shallow inland sea and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was a seminary student preparing for ordination as a deacon. As part of that process I had to write responses to the ordination questions and submit them to the Probationary Membership Committee of the Board of Ordained Ministry. They required me to lay out my theology in a more or less systematic way. I had to tell the Committee what I believed. They would judge whether I was close enough to the mainstream to be acceptable to serve as a pastor in the United Methodist Church.

True to my personality type, I wrote a theology that was consistent throughout, almost crystalline in its purity and beauty. I was proud of it. I had pulled together much of my thinking about the church, about God, about the world, and about my calling into a single work of art, an impressive architectural edifice. Did I mention that I was proud of it? This, I thought, will serve me well as I continue this journey of faith and ministry. I was certain and confident that these answers and the theology that I expressed were stable and perhaps even everlasting. I knew the truth.

Fast forward thirty-four years. I don't remember any of my answers. I don't even remember the questions. What happened to my certainly, my confidence, and the assurance that all the really hard thinking was already behind me?

To make a short answer of it, my faith was misplaced. I had missed the point of the exercise pretty much completely. Oh, I had done the assignment well enough it turned out. At least the Committee didn't hold me back or ask for revisions. What I had failed to see was that they were not all that interested in the results of my thinking (although it needed to be located somewhere within the limits of the Christian tradition). They were much more interested in the thinking itself. What was my process? Did I reason soundly? Did I consider the things that needed to be considered? Was there room for growth? In short, could I carry on a theological conversation in the Church, both with my colleagues and with lay people?

To use a different metaphor: Was I ready to step out of theological apprenticeship? Did I know how to use the tools of the trade? Would the results of my work embarrass the guild? Did I know how to continue to learn as I practiced my craft?

I had regarded the writing that I did for the Committee as a goal to be accomplished. And it was, in a way. Because I did that, and because my later conversations with the Committee went well enough, I was admitted to Probationary Membership in the Conference and ordained as a deacon. Three years later a similar thing happened and I found myself a Full Member of the Conference and an ordained elder. Mission accomplished.

As we know now that using the phrase, "mission accomplished," is risky. Did I really understand the mission? Had I really "accomplished" it? And, as it turned out, the answers to both of those questions were, No. No, I didn't understand the mission. And, No, I hadn't accomplished it in any meaningful sense of the world.

What I had done—and it wasn't a small thing—was to set up an Ebenezer. When Samuel set up a stone and called it Ebenezer, it didn’t mark any destination. It was a waypoint on an itinerary, a place marked “Yahweh has helped us get this far.” Israel couldn’t live in it.

I don't want to give the impression that writing a theology is a waste of time. As long as we don't imagine that we are building a place to live out our days in comfort rather than setting up a waystone to mark where we have been, it will be a useful thing to do. Thomas Aquinas spent a lifetime writing his theology. He called it a "summary" of all the theological questions and his answers to them. They were arranged beautifully and addressed with crystalline clarity. They exerted and still exert a powerful influence on the Catholic church. The Dominican Order has never quite left the shadow of its most famous member. The Summa theologica was a work to be proud of. And yet, legend has that shortly before Thomas finished it he came from his evening prayers and told his servant that he had seen in a vision "such things as rendered all of his work into straw." He died a few days later without finishing the Summa. He had mistaken a waystone, an Ebenezer, for a place to live.

If beginning work of the ordained is a waystone, then so is retirement from that work. So you'll not be terribly surprised that I've been thinking about where I've come from, where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going. And not just in terms of the places, although there has been some of that. It's been more about the questions that I've wrestled with (so far), the ways that I've thought about them (so far), and what I've learned (so far).

Although I didn't wait until then to begin to think about theology, I started serving as a pastor in 1980, thirty-eight years ago. I've been here in Decorah for nearly a quarter of that time. Let's just say that you have been an important part of my own journey.

I'll have just three more chances to stand here and share my thinking with you. I have to resist the temptation to squeeze too much into them. And, of course, this waystone is not the same in my life as it is in yours. You get a new pastor. You've done that many times since Rev. Bishop knocked on the door of a house in Decorah, introduced himself with the words, "I am seeking the lost sheep of Israel," and received "You have found them!" as the answer from within. And you will do it many times.

I was told that I will go through what I am going through alone. And that's true in one sense. But in another it is not. For the next month I am still your pastor and "what I am going through" will have its effect on our relationship. So I've decided to let it do that out loud, on purpose, and in front of God and everybody.

My intention during my next three trips to this pulpit is to share with you some of what I have learned during our shared journey. I will finish where I started by asking some questions and risking some answers. One of the things that I have learned should be obvious: the life of following Jesus is never a finished thing, not in our thinking, not in our doing, not even in our feeling. It is an on-going thing. There are Ebenezers but, short of the end of our lives, there is no final destination. We may rest for a while, but then we press on. God is at work in us and we are at work.

There are three other learnings that are the result of the questions that have been my nearly constant companions for three and half decades. Here they are (You might want to make a note of them.):

What is the Bible?
Who is God? and,
What is the church?

Be warned that these will not be my final answers, only snapshots that are blurry because their subjects don't sit still.

And let me leave you with a suggestion: Take your own snapshots. Try your hand at answering the questions yourselves. My dissertation advisor told me, "Until you have written it, you haven't thought it." She stretched the truth a bit, I think, but she wasn’t completely wrong, either. At least writing a thought forces us to be more clear. It tends to reveal faulty logic and inconsistencies and encourages us to deal with them head-on. There is something about the empty page (or the empty computer screen with its cursed blinking cursor) that holds us accountable in ways that day-dreaming or reverie do not. That's my invitation. Write your own answers to those questions:

What is the Bible?
Who is God? and,
What is the church?

And may the God of wandering, exile, and return be with us as we reflect on our shared journey now approaching the place where our shared path will divide and--in faithfully following the same God--we will take different forks.

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