"Getting It Right!"
First Congregational Church -- Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost -- August 24, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Exodus 1:6-2:10/Romans 12:1-8/Matthew 16:13-20]

I am a fan of Katzanzakis' Zorba the Greek. I liked both the book and the movie because it gives insight into a whole culture and the way outsiders try to look in. There's a scene in the book which describes the reaction of the town when the expatriate French woman, who owned the local cafe, or taverna, dies. No one will have anything to do with her, so her body is just left on its bed. Zorba's young English companion, who narrates the story, is aghast. "Why?"he asks. And his answer, "She crossed herself wrong." Because she did not worship in the 'orthodox' manner, she was not truly Christian and thus excluded, even in death.

Our narrator encountered 'orthodoxy' at its most basic, popular level. 'Orthodoxy,' literally means 'right glory,' 'correct praise.' Because, as the old saying goes: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief), it has come to mean 'right belief.' At root we can say that it simply means “getting it right.” But can we even talk about such a thing as "correct belief" or "right worship" – is there a “getting it right” in spirituality? It seems quite repugnant to us in America, and especially to us freedom of conscience loving Congregationalists, to say that one way or another is right or correct. Yet, Paul seems to be telling the Romans just that in the twelfth chapter of his letter to them.

Paul says that appropriate worship is the presentation of the whole self to God. What is translated in most places as "spiritual" is the Greek word logike. Logike can mean 'spiritual' in the sense of inward, interior; it can also mean 'rational,' our word 'logic' derives from it. We worship God as rational beings, "enfleshed spirits," because we have been made in God's image and given the power of intellect and creativity. So, what we're to do is to give ourselves -- spirit, mind, body -- over to ascribing the worthiness (which is what worship means: to ascribe worth) to God. In short, we don't check any parts of ourselves at the door of the meeting house. We bring to God our intellect and all of its complexity (including doubt), our emotions, and our physical selves; all together these make us up and that is what we offer God. (Our Puritan forebears, children of the Enlightenment that they were, tried to reduce worship to a purely intellectual, non-bodily exercise -- it wasn't long before that changed, it doesn't work.)

Paul goes on to say, and here I'd like to use J. B. Phillips' translation, "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity." Here he's telling us not be conformed, but be transformed, remolded by God so that our minds are on the same wavelength as the very mind of God. The technical word for what Paul is calling us to do is 'discernment.' We're to strive to become attuned to God's will at work in us and in the world around us. Elsewhere Paul will say, "Let this mind be in you which was in Jesus Christ;" so we're to become more and more Christlike in our thinking, in our attitudes, and in our outlook by allowing God to remold our minds from within. Discernment will, ultimately, lead us to conversion -- the ongoing process of becoming more and more what God intended for us to be.

Our renewed minds, then, allow us to offer renewed worship. We worship with our whole body because we, in turn, have become a part of a whole new body made up of many members: the church. Orthodoxy -- right belief or worship -- should always lead to orthopraxy -- right practice -- which is why Paul tells us our renewed minds prove themselves in practice. So the new mind God gives us allows us to discern new gifts -- the Greek word here is charismata -- and these gifts are to be exercised in service to the body, the community of faith. By the way, if someone asks you if Congregationalists are 'charismatic' tell them YES! Our churches depend upon the Spirit for guidance and for the gifts which are to be shared -- that's what charismatic really means. As Congregationalists we are charismatics in the truest sense of the word, and our churches are servant communities. When we live in that manner, then we are getting it right.

Paul goes on to talk about the proper exercise of the various gifts which build up the servant community. I've long been a fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's marvelous little book Life Together and I think he offers some insights which parallel Paul. He talks about the various ministries which are undertaken in our life together, there are seven of them, and all of them help us to come to the point where we get it right in terms of being the Lord’s people, the church.

First there is the "ministry of holding one's tongue." Here is the "sober judgment" of Paul which allows us not to think too highly of ourselves, or too harshly of our sisters and brothers.. When we hold our tongues we don't allow evil thoughts the opportunity to pop out and take a life of their own. Bonhoeffer says, “Where this discipline of the tongue is practised right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his particular place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person. Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be.” As the "Lord's Free People" we have to exercise our freedom to serve others and to promote their freedom. When we hold our tongues, eliminate gossip and hurtful words we are well on our way to offering God the "acceptable worship" required of us – we get it right.

Second there is the ministry of meekness. Again, we're "not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought." When we begin to lay aside our concerns for our own rights and prerogatives we free ourselves to truly be instruments of God's service to others, because others have become more important than ourselves. God's power works in those situations, just as he took those powerless women and made them instruments for the rescue of Israel's savior, Moses. God would do the same again in choosing an obscure woman from an even more obscure village to bear the Savior of the world. The ministry of meekness can become the means by which God's power is made manifest.

Third, there is the ministry of listening. Had the women in today's reading from Exodus not been listening attentively, they could not have heard God's voice calling them to be so creative. Had the disciples not been listening they could not have answered Jesus' question, "Who do people say the Son of man is?" Listening is a ministry our community, our country, our world is in dire need of -- we're so busy communicating these days there's no one to hear what we've communicated! Listen to what Bonhoeffer says: “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that he not only gives us his Word but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. . . .Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking when they should be listening. . . . Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”

The fourth ministry of the servant community is that of helpfulness. Here we're talking about just being present to assist in the trifling small things of everyday life. Helpfulness, 'neighborliness' used to be a big thing in our society, but now we've become so self-focused that we don't serve as we should. Our schedules and precious time simply doesn't allow for us to take the time to be helpful. Bonhoeffer speaks volumes when he writes: “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed by the man who had fallen among thieves, perhaps -- reading the Bible. When we do that we pass by the visible sign of the Cross raised athwart our path to show us that, not our way, but God's way be done. . . . it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

The servant community also exercises, fifth, the ministry of bearing. Paul writes the Galatians "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6.2). The ministry of bearing is lifting up the burdens of others in the servant community and helping them to carry them -- even when the burden is the person him/herself. God bore our burdens so personally that he took them with Him in the Christ to the Cross. The Cross should be a constant reminder to us that the brothers and sisters with whom we live and work are not objects to be manipulated, but persons of value to be borne. Again, Bonhoeffer speaks volumes, “It is, first of all, the freedom of the other person....that is a burden to the Christian. The other's freedom collides with his own autonomy, yet he must recognize it. He could get rid of this burden by refusing the other person his freedom, by constraining him and thus doing violence to his personality, by stamping his own image upon him. But if he lets God create his image in him, he by this token gives him his freedom and himself bears the burden of the freedom of another creature of God....all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it”.

Sixth, the servant community takes up the ministry of proclaiming. This ministry is tied with Peter's answer to Jesus' question, "Who do people say the Son of man is?" The ministry of proclaiming is the communication of our answer, with Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. We proclaim this answer, however, not only with our lips, but by undertaking to do the ministries we've already talked about. We proclaim the Word with our lips and with our lives. Again, it involves us living together in honesty, respect, and freedom as each of us seeks to follow Christ and to, as our Covenant binds us, “grow in the knowledge and expression of our faith.”

Finally, the servant community exercises the ministry of authority. This can become the most problematic of all, since there seems to be more concern for power and authority in churches than just about anywhere else. Here I'm simply going to quote Bonhoeffer, because what he says, I believe. “‘Whoever will be great among you, shall be your minister’ (Mark 10:43). Jesus made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service. Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the ministry of hearing, helping, bearing, and proclaiming is carried out. Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christian community. . . . The question of trust, which is so closely related to that of authority, is determined by the faithfulness with which a man serves Jesus Christ, never by the extraordinary talents which he possesses. Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who himself is a brother among brothers submitted to the authority of the Word.”

I think we can conclude by saying that getting it right, true worship, orthodoxy, is accomplished only in part by what we do here in this meeting house on a Sunday morning. Rather, it is accomplished fully by our living in response to the Living Word of God and trying to conform ourselves to his life in our life -- the renewal of our minds from within and achieving true maturity. Our orthodoxy, then, must lead to orthopraxy -- the right practice -- of our faith in our daily ministering to those of this faith community and all we encounter. If we've served as we should, loved as we should, we'll have crossed ourselves the right way, Christ's church will be built upon the solid ground of the servant community. In other words, we’ll have gotten it right and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Amen.