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PRESBYTERY OF CHICAGO = pu yte’h OD Jew Celvir,

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CHURCH OFFICER DEVELOPMENT ¢, Chowk Of veos Wpitshe 1:

"CALLED TO CARE" 4 Qesvytion eiuivalond of
FEBRUARY 22, 1986 Cowrce\ oT “Bishogs -

WORSHIP SERVICE ~~

Diakowia YF [aos -.

JOHN M. BUCHANAN
PASTOR, FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Scripture
Isaiah 58:6-8
Matthew 25:31-46

You are our genius. | You are what makes us anigue.| Your presence
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here today is a sign of great hope and strength for the Presbyterian
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branch of the Christian family.

Keclegion Se tetistionlly we're not accustomed to thinking in terms of hope.
In fact it is almogt obligatory at gatherings like this for speakers to

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scold us for evangelistic sloth and to issue dire predictions of our demise
een pe re oy

as a denomination in several decades if someone doesn't do something -
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Sow. el pfu Sovi Uso pvt +L. dele On Creve +

and quickly!
| chose to be hopeful.} And my choice is not a naive whistlin
sabes Y — por ames
in the dark - or even a def jau*___ call to res as the great ship slips
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under the water\\ My hope is based on a trust in the Lord of the. church -

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which it says somewhere.will withstand a lot - @ime powers of heli, and

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| conclude that compared to the power of hell this Presbyterian neurosis
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is small potatoes. | And | ground my hope in yon Pot are here and
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Sake

you don't have to be. | You are here because you care about your church
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and you love the Lord of the Church. | And you are a_ good reason to

be very hopeful about the future.
Resto

That is not to say_that God's Kingdom will come if we simply have

enough Presbytery meetings or if we get enough of us to create a critical

mass. In fact, if our own Veter teaches us anything it is that
God will shape and mold us and make us into something new.] We'll

have to be brayg.and faitagyl and open.
Y genius. Laity} th | - io-
ou are our genius \ ih the people of God - the ecclesio.

all of us_together.
Smears oe

God bless you as you pray and work and lead your congregations

in the days ahead.

Leonard Bernstein was asked once to reflect on the process of
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writing music. He said:
ents

"| sit for long nights all by myself and don't have a thought in
my head. }I'm dry. I'm blocked, or so it seems. \| sit at the
piano and just improvise - strum some chords or try a sequence

oe)
something else.\ The whole point of composing, you see, is not
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of notes.\ And then, suddenly, | find one that hits, that suggests

to find one chord or one note you love. \ It is only when they

progress to another chord or note that you have meaning... This

is the most exciting moment that can happen in an artisti's life.\.and
everytime it happens...! am grateful for that gift."] (cited by
Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion, p. 129)

"The whole point_of composing is not to find one chord or one note

you love. |r is only when they progress to another chord or note that

you have meaning. | Thats the point of human life as well, | submit:
RRS TA
to live and lgyglend then tg. move out.of self, beyond self, to connect

with the totality of humanity ,|to know oneself not as an isolated drop

AGREE: Tae
of humanness, but as part of a vast, wonderful ocean |\ The point is

to reach out, to make connections, to be wholly alive by being a part

of the life all around you.

|
Jt is what Jesus Christ is about..¥God so loved the world...so

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cares about the individual human beings who live in the world, that

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Gre gave ES only son, that whoever believes in fae son...believes

him to be the truth about human life,

trusts him to be the saving truth

about one's own life - that person will live a quality of life, a depth

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of life that can be described as eternal.) That eternal life, that salvation,

keeps looking in the Biblical idiom like life in relationship, life connected,

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life deepened and authenticated by love and carring for other life.
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It's almost as if God has given us this magnificent gift of our
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lives, but we really can't have.the gift, certainly can't enjoy the gift,

until we learn to value and care about it passionately in others. |{ aga
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various devices to save our souls seem to have as their first objective

persuading us to forget about saving our own souls - or skins - and
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starting to care more about the souls and skins and bodies and spirits
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of others.

Fundamental to the whole enterprise is developing the capacity
eg ES OT,
to care passionately about human life. And it is based on a very radical
theological assertion: \}pamety, that God cares that way about human
eamseenen - eo ae
fg, |The most extraordinary thing the Bible says about God happens
early, at the beginning of the story of the Exodus when the Hebrew
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slaves are down in Egyet | suffering under their taskmasters, groaning

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in their oppression and_Gi e the groaning, and it affects God,
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it get's under God's skin and in God's heart, and some passion begins
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to occur and before you know it God is deeply involved in the revolutionary

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process of freeing his people. | The God of the Bible isn t hidden away

in the recesses of the universe, or amusing himself on Mt. Olympus.
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This God hears and sees and knows and responds to the condition of
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every —_—
his people. | This God is a God of compassion, quo si
—_
The God-life, the human life lived in relation to this ground of & hy ye
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being then, is, similarly, compassionate. It is marked by caring, by we &
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lee wh hearing, seeipg.knowing and responding to the condition of others.
ead > To livelethically in the Bible is to live compassionately.
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? The lesson of history which the world was taught_again, as the

sista j ae pee?
wreaths were laid at Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen ase with the release

of the Metrw Picture, Shoah, is that not-caring is as dangerous
ad esol Se

and more common than unvarnished evil) The Holocaust was only possible
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in an atmosphere, not of total depravit , but moral neutrality. | The world
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oldmery fos ~{ be le ard 7 Zaeiv
jobs, / loved fleiv on aw ad
knew baw 4 Mind leer a bisives 7

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must not forget that, and its clear lesson that on the complex issues
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of our_time the only morally indefensible position 9s indifference. .-
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Jesus gathered up the genius of the Judeo tradition and painted

cf Mey Sr
a memorable word, picture near the end aiorriwsewnnbiée that could not

be more clear on this issue. It is the ys detailed description of the
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last judgment in the New Testament. | lt is the apocalypti ic bottom line

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according to Jesus.| The sheep are at the King's right hand because

they have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the

naked, welcomed the stranger and visited the prisoners. The. goats
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don't ke it.) Th have been ilt f in. impl

fe) make i \ ey hav een gui > of no gross sin \ They simply

saw hunger, thirst, nakedness, loneliness, oppression, and turned

their heads. | They were probably too busy to do anything about it.

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They didn't care4| Robert McAfee Brown, In a painfully honest exegesis

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of this passage, comments thath "there are going to be a lot of goats," y
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and then observes that, in this picture, at least, what counts is not
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what we thou ...not praying, knowing the Apostles' Creed, re ular
ght praying ling the Apo g

———

church attendance, even Sonicssing Jesus Christ as Lord | "They do

not even rate a passing nod in Jesus' assessment All that counts

is helping those in need. (Unexpected News, p. 133)

ony genius, | submit, is in identifying sompassion as the life-
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giving component in the human conscience |\ What we have to tell the

wrold about is a God of compassion and what we have to offer the world
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is a fullness of life lived compassionately.
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What is it? \Compassion is not adequately described as pity, or
sympathy, or sentimentality. \ Rather it is a learned ability to identify

with, feel with another human being. \ is not to know intellectually
TE, .

L aameal SERRE

about suffering of other people, it is to suffer because those people

are suffering.\ Therefore, it is not always fun, nor cheerful, nor very
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pleasant.\\ is connected, directly, to passion: fo the learned ability
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in ourselves, to care deeply and profoundly.
Our @v\%vrt_ is suspicion df passion \ Ever since the Greeks
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divided us in two, the Western world has been suspicious of the human
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heart\ and has cast its lot with the brain.\ When in doubt, think -

don't feel.| That has served us well, mostly. \ But when it becomes
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our guiding principle, our summum bonum, we miss the glory of our
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humanity and the opportunity to live thoroughly in the world God has
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given us \\ Why. if.people begin to live out oie hearts instead of
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their minds, they might make love and not war. \ They might even decide
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at protecting.life; jn i | i ing, i
that protecting e:| urturing, cele rating, healing, and extending

human life is at least as high a national priority as killing it.
Seon By aa —n

ion is s ct. and its extension - compassion - is re arded
Passion is suspect, Pp g

as weak, soft, naive.|\What a tragedy that in our gross misunderstanding,
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= te,

we have allowed Marxism to appear to the world as the ideology of compassion.
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What a tragedy that the more the dynamic happens in the Third World,

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the more determined we are not to cave in to it not to be affected
qeners T, ene Trae. - RTT

injusti ‘essi is al the fertil
by the hunger, and injustice, and oppression that is always the fertile

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breeding ground for Marxist revolution. aA, ‘
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We discovered, 25 years ago, that we were forgetting how to care; 7)

and in a burst of altruism which was occasionally too ambitious perhaps,
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but always compassionate, we set off a small revolution in this country
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to eliminate institutional racism, to extend constitutional rights, and
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to end poverty. {\We lost the war on poverty and now - a quarter of
eis Pp’ quarter

Geen etna,

Ceég{— .
a century later - we seem caguenoess to blame the poor for their poverty,
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and the sick for their illnesses ,\and the illiterate for their ignorante o

tele. We seem to be moving away from, not closer to, the idea that
compassion is a fundamentalamdrtue, that we are responsible for one

another.

Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah's mew book on rampant individualism

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in our country suggests that the move away from caring and compassion
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for others, into a self-contained narcissism, is destructive of the life
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and hope of our republic. It is reflected even in our religion, the

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authors conten& |The most popular theologies focus almost entirely

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Aiseofers wl medic TEAS, tem | Aston
\pores ‘Xs @Qpee! om Cova —_ avrouw }
o& seif jst | E> Orewa “ko Waele ypu
\Loppa = SR \ed = Sovede-: le Ake wyisaue of
Nuvvlunde wit cumlody else Jeep

—
on the individual - in a way Jesus wouldn't recognize The altar
inns oe
t
at which we bow, apparently, is sett ll is based on a series
eerecante scar Gwe ere oD

of interviews and one which was included was Sheilark arson who said:
Seep ee _ * .

"! believe in God. Jim not a religious fanatic. | | can't remember the
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last time | went to church. \my faith has carried me a long way. It's

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Sheilaism. | Just my own little voice."| [Christian Century, 5/15/85,

p- 499-500]

Compassion begins with passion for life 1 begins when we cut
enemas Ma soe en |

through the idolatry of individualism and allow ourselves to care profoundly

about the lives of SR begin to discover that our_own lives make

sense in that exercise.\\ But it will make you terribly vulnerable.

Matthew Fox, a Dominican priest and po ular theologian, writes:
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"it is a matter of our own will to survive.\ Each of us does build
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a wall around ourselves. | If my brother bleeds, | bleed too. \ 1s he
ce ad ‘ieee:

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hurts, | hurt. \ 1 can't feed them all, or even_very many. |And so it's
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simply easier not to know, not to care. | [op. cit., p- 3] a “argue Ut
The Gospel of Jesus Christ begins with an astounding assertion as
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about the nature of God. it is that God cares about. the human condition, rut hh
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and about your condition, ‘and mine in particular. \ The, Gospel offers Eww
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good news about a creator who is compassionate: | and a summons to
ee ae initia) ee eee eerie! —— |

live life in connection with other life; \to live fully by caring deeply

about and feeling the pain and joy, the suffering and the exaltation

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of other life.

Spates

In our time, supremely in the years ahead of us now, that Christian

model looks like the world's salvation. Matthew Fox observes: [Now
—_inany rm ent amnaing

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that the world is a global village we need compassion more than ever,

not for altruism's sake,...or theology's sake, but for survival's sake."
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[op. cit., (i)] When all the popular vocalists got together and sang

ee Are the World, We Are the Children,"|they were telling a new and
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qeorarS at
important truth. {Jang when they san aed re e saving our own lives...
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| aansiiiiiiaiedi!
so 1 start-oiving,*|they were rediscovering the model for life Jesus
eon"? ngs ET

offered in Matthew 25.

In Jesus Christ, God has shown how much he carss for human
Sauce
Sy Wins

Be, In Christ, God us to care, to live fully by caring

profoundly about human life. I!" Christ, God has poured compassion
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into the human condition. ‘\ The SUMMODSsis to care ape enmtipr to risk being
burts|to be open_to the whole human family \) red orgeDs God's

Cell

blesgingi| God's precious aitt of full lifes

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Jesus sal
eso

my sisters - you did it to me."| Amen.

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Vu ~ Vos GOS le

: | "As you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers -