Endowed Presbyterian Churches Conference
Worship Service
Saturday, October 5, 1991, 8:30 a.n.
THE VALUE OF OUR COMMITMENTS
John M. Buchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL
Matthew 25:14-30
"For to all those who have, more will be
given, and they will have an abundance."
[Matthew 25:29a}

The subject is not money but responsibility. The sentence

could read, "to all who have much responsibility, more
will be given, and they will have an abundance of responsibili-~
ties." They will also be very busy, Jesus might have added...

For it is the iron law of voluntary organizations, is it not?
Volunteer once, and you're caught; do a good job and your reward
is another, bigger Job. Open your mouth and offer an Opinion on
how the task might be accomplished, and you will be asked to do
it; chair the committee, raise the money, organize the dinner,
take out the trash - whatever. "Those who have, get more..."
Responsibility. What better example than us?... a beautiful fall
Saturday morning when most of the world is playing golf, taking
walks, enjoying coffee and paper, sleeping in - and here we are,
at a church meeting!

Henry Copeland, President of the College of Wooster, began a
fine convocation address on the topic by retelling Aesop's Fable,
"Belling the cat."

The mice lived in a state of perpetual fear because of the
constant menace which hovered over their very existence. So they
held a general meeting to discuss what measures they might take
to outwit the enemy, the cat.

A young mouse rose to Speak:

"You will all agree that our chief danger consists
in the sly and treacherous manner in which the
enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive
some signal of her approach, we could easily
escape from her. f venture, therefore, to propose
that a small bell be procured and attached by a

And in that tiny dynamic, which does not happen one day
once~and-for-all, but is a process, a slow retreat over the
years, in that small dynamic there is a fatal moral flaw.

"The sin of respectable people," Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,
"is running from responsibility." You know Bonhoeffer's story -
the German pastor who tock a public stand against Naziism, even-
tually cast his lot with the resistance and joined with an assas-
Sination attempt against Adolph Hitler, was arrested in 1943 and
executed in 1945 just before the end of the war. Before he was a
martyr, Bonhoeffer was an academician, a distinguished scholar.
His academic speciality was Ethics.

And for him, the basis of Christian ethics was responsibili-
ty. Bonhoeffer, the ethics scholar, taught that "personal expe-
rience of God's judgment and grace alsc included consciousness of
a larger humanity to which we belong."

That tragic 20th century divorce between private and public
discipleship, which Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified, is ironically
seen best in the people who found it possible to go to church on
Sunday morning and on Monday go to work in their jobs in a con-
centration camp where thousands of people were being gagsed. One
of his biographers put it this way: "Bonhoeffer'ts fundamental
view of ethics was that a Christian must accept responsibility as
a citizen of this world where God has placed him/her." [See Life
fogether, John W. Doberstein, p. 7-13]

Do you ever wonder what you would have done? I do... and I
conclude that we might, in a moment of impulsive heroism, have
done the right thing. But what made Bonhoeffer a martyr was not
@ moment of impulsive heroism, but a carefully reasoned theologi-
cal position. He concluded that believing in Jesus made him a
responsible citizen of this world.

Bonhoeffer's proposal - that Christian discipleship begins
with responsible citizenship - is, I would propose, terribly
important today, even more so than it was fifty years ago.

The tepic of a responsible sexual ethic will not go away,
unfortunately. If we know anything about the topic, it is that
articulating the traditional moral maxims about sex may make us
feel good, but will have absolutely no impact on the way people
behave sexually. And, in fact, because of religion's refusal to
be responsible, it may contribute - indeed does contribute - to
an epidemic of unwanted pregnancies, abortion, sexually transmit-
ted disease, child abuse and abandonment.

The kind of society we want to be, the kind of nation, con-
tinues to be before us and is determined in the political arena
as representatives struggle with the hard realities of money and
national defense and education and health care.

Endowed Presbyterian Churches Conference
Worship Service
Friday, October 4, 1991, 7:00 p-m.
THE VALUE OF YOUR MONEY
John M. Buchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian, Chicago, IL

Mark 10:17-27

How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the
kingdom of God!

My, I wish he hadn't said that!... In his book, Harvard
Diary, child psychiatrist, teacher and author, Robert Coles,
reports his research on how children of wealthy families come to
their values. He was particularly interested in how religious,
church families dealt with the ethical issues of their own
wealth. A prosperous New Orleans attorney said...

"I can find passages to make me feel good about
this life I've always enjoyed, and always will
enjoy until I die. But I have a legal mind - [I
majored in English, liked literary criticism...so
I can't overlook what I read. I can't turn a
clear-cut message into a confusing one... He gave
us that unforgettable image of the camel trying to
get through the eye of a needle. Well, I guess
I'm one big camel, and even now, I can anticipate
the crunch I'1i be in,'t

Coles said: "It was one of the most Biblical
moments I will ever experience ~- the sight and
sound of a professing Christian aware that he was
in deep trouble." Harvard Diary, "Christ and the
Rich," p. 19-21]

It is a troublesome topic, this matter of Christ and
wealth. There was a legendary incident once involving John D.
Rockefeller, dr. and Harry Emerson Fosdick. Rockefeller was the

wealthiest Protestant layperson in the country. He was a devout
Baptist.

Rockefeller had a vision of the church of the future - non-
sectarian, rational, world-embracing. He wanted the leading
preacher of the day, Harry Emerson Fosdick, to be the pastor.

The young man fades and Jesus makes an observation about
wealth which astonishes his disciples. The official teaching of
Judaism was that wealth is ordinarily evidence of divine bless-
ing. But Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

There have been some very imaginative attempts to get us out
from under that one. In fact, the textual scholars who spend
their time examining ancient manuscripts under a microscope say
that there is evidence that this text has been tampered with
repeatedly. We aren't the first ones, apparently, to wish he
didn't say it or mean it.

Later scholars would try to help by pointing out that the
Greek word for "rope" is quite similar to the word for camel and
that what Jesus probably said was that it is easier for a rope, a
piece of twine, to go through the eye of a needle. At least the
image is consistent. The task is difficult, but, in a sense,
doable,

The most imaginative effort is the suggestion that ancient
city walls had small openings through which late arrivers might
safely enter the city without the danger of opening the gates.
This opening, they contend, was called the "eye of the needle."
A camel could get through on his knees, with his owner pushing
and pulling. It's a wonderful image. Preachers on Stewardship
Sunday have been known to suggest that loaded camels, particular-
ly, are going to have difficulty, and that the way to squeeze in
is to unioad some of the goods ~ as ina pledge to the church.
It is an approach to fund raising not to be taken lightly.
Scholars trace this interpretation to the ninth century and sadly
conclude that the whole matter is spurious.

What we really must do is go back and look again at this
interesting, wealthy young man. What actually was wrong with
him? He's not bad. In fact, he's good, admirable, upright,
generous and he is theologically sensitive. He's got courage and
character. What's wrong here? What about him causes. him to miss
the grace and love of Jesus Christ? He is, by the way, the only
person in the gospel of Mark, who Jesus calls and who does not
respond by following. He can't. He's not free to do this.
That's what is wrong. He's imprisoned, I think, by his posses-
sions. He's even sorry about it. There's a sense in which he
knows what's wrong. In point of fact, what Jesus teaches him is
that he doesn't own a thing actually. He's owned by his posses-
sions, in service to them, dependent on them for happiness,
security and joy.

He has worked so hard, been so successful, accomplished so
much that there is no room in his life for grace; maybe there is
a very fundamental character defect here. He's ina hurry, no

done all that the law required and still didn't feel right, Jesus
“looking upon him, loved him." And then later, it happened
again. The disciples are astonished at the eye of the needle
business and Jesus "looks at them" in love and compassion and
grace. This is personal. This is very near the heart of the
matter for them and for us.

J think there is a sense in which he was absolutely, liter-
ally, fundamentally, accurate about the way things are with you
and me - 2,000 years. later.

There is a sense in which you and I don't own a thing which
we are not willing to give away.

There is a sense in which you and I are owned by whatever we
cannot and will not give away: a sense in which who we are is
defined very precisely by what we can or cannot give away.

That's the issue here. Let's not resolve it too easily and
let's not compromise it. With the disciples, T am astonished -
not simply by the demands he seems to be making of me - but by
the truth I know in what he said. I identify with that rich
young man. I don't own anything I can't give away. You can't
Live until you know something for which you are willing to give
everything, including your life.

The final word is grace. Truly. Costly grace. With God
all things are possible. You don't have to force it, or drag it
in. He said it. "All things are possible with God," including
that most unlikely thing of all ~ our salvation. He's not done
with that young man. "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him." God
wants all of us to live fully, joyfully, free from frustration,
anxiety and fear.

It's what the Gospel is about.

There is no resolution in text, nor is there much of a
concluding resolution to these reflections. The words must take
their own shape in your life - in ways known best and only to
you. But do hear them again:

" ~ go - sell - give ~ come ~ follow ~- and you will have
treasure in heaven."

Endowed Presbyterian Churches Conference
Worship Service
Friday, October 4, 1991, 8:30 a.m.
THE VALUE OF YOUR SOUL
John M. Buchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL

Mark 8:34-37

Some time ago I was part of a seminar in Washington which
brought together a group of Presbyterian ministers and government
officiais who happened to be Presbyterians. There were twelve of
us. We were in a van, waiting at the gate of the White House. A
Secret Service man asked us for our driver's licenses in order to
@o a security check. Mine was lost; more accurately, it had heen
stolen. In any event, all I had on my person with my name on it
was a church business card and the church credit card. I tried
the business card. The Secret Service man disappeared into his
office, returned with security badges, the kind you wear around
your neck, with the licenses clipped on. When he came to me, he
said, "Mr. Buchanan, may I taik with you?" I climbed out of the
van amidst the laughter of my colleagues who were telling him
that I was indeed a very real threat te national security. He
asked if I didn't have anything which would simply assure them
that I was who I claimed to be. Apparently I had lost more than
my wallet and some money... my identity was at stake. So I
pulled out the church American Express Card which does have my
name on it. He seemed to be greatly relieved. I was approved.
American Express got me in the White House when my word, the
assurances of my distinguished colleagues and my employment at
the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago were brushed aside.
I'm glad I had not left home without it.

Shortly thereafter, I encountered a John Updike short story
entitled The Wallet. It is about Fulham, a retired broker, who
Yhad assembled a nice life after thirty years of marriage,...
handsome white house in the older suburbs."

Fulham spends his time managing his own investments and
those of a favored few old clients in an upstairs room. Every
morning he goes to his room with the Wall Street Journal, a
second cup of decaffeinated coffee, to make phone calls, look out
the window at his neatly manicured lawn, to survey and enjoy the
world he has gained.

And it is a particularly relevant topic for our day. We are
asking strong and tough and courageous questions in a renewed way
these days. Perhaps the notoriety of the television preachers
has embarrassed us into taking our religion more seriously,
inspiring us to an inquiry as to what exactly this stuff we say
we believe is all about. For sure, their financial indiscre-
tions, while not as interesting as some of their other indiscre-
tions, have forced all of us to look carefully at how we collect
and manage and use the resources our people give us. Perhaps the
challenge of the new biology, the environmental crisis, the
continuing tragedy of urban deterioration... Rosemary Radford
Reuther says that all the accumulated and neglected problems the
world has ignored for centuries are demanding attention in the
next decade. In any event, I am convinced that there is a new
integrity and urgency of spirit alive in our culture. We want
substantial religion, We want religion that can assume a place
of respectable dialogue in the university. The most popular
course at Harvard recently, is Harvey Cox's basic Christianity
ang Culture. We want a faith capable of conversation with the
world about the great issues confronting us. We are embarrassed,
resentful in fact, when our faith becomes a caricature, a reac-
tionary bastion of worn-out and irrelevant moralisms.

We're ready for tough, courageous religion - which doesn't
hide behind pious gestures and cliches.

For another thing, we now know that the "new narcissism,"
the whole gospel of happiness through materialism, acquisition,
accumulation, "whoever dies with the most toys wins" is a lie.
It doesn't work. Jt isn't true.

In the current hestseller, Fire in the Belly, about men, but
not exclusively for men, Sam Keen talks about how we tie identity
te work and income and consumerism. Our rites of passage in-
clude the games which prepare men for the battles of business and
life...the first full-time job...and then getting a credit card.
"The credit card," Keen says, “is for the modern male what kill-
ing prey was to a hunter... The Visa Card is an insignia of
membership, a sign that the system trusts you to spend what you
have not yet earned. In modern America going into debt is an
important part of assuming the responsibilities of manhood and
womanhood. Debt, the willingness to live beyond our means, binds
us to the economic system that requires both surplus work and
surplus consumption. The popular bumper sticker 'I owe, I owe,
so off to work I go,' might well be the litany to express the
commitment of the working man." [p. 51-53]

Sam Keen and other writers are joining a growing chorus of
voices suggesting that our models are wrong and that if our soul,
identity, is defined in economic terms alone - profits, consumer-
ism, acquisitions, security - we are working with a very low and
inadequate view of our humanity.

"My strategy is to consolidate the various name
brands, even the strong flagship brands like
Southern Baptist into one identifiable. Exxon-like
entity. The target audience here is Mom, Dad,

Butch and Sis =~ solid suburban Americans who want
a little God in their life and somewhere to go
before brunch. After test- marketing various

possibilities, I have decided upon the name Middle
American Christian Church, or MacChurch, for ad
purposes. I will not be sure of MacChurch's
theology until focus groups are run, but I plan on
following the promotional path blazed so success-
fully by Holiday Inn. In other words, this will
be your 'no surprises’ church. When Dad brings
the family here, he can be sure that they will not
be asked to speak in tongues, handle snakes or
give money to the Sandanistas."

Now, no one is quite that bold about it, but there is among
us the sense that if we were a little more market conscious, if
we stopped asking people to give and started giving them what
they want, we might be more successful. And there are plenty of
success models to emulate.

However, just at the moment we begin to be convinced that
the market strategy is correct, just when we inquire seriously of
the super suburbhan churches booming with growth, just as we shift
the weight of our theology to the supply side of the ledger, here
comes Jesus - saying things like:

"Tf any comes after me and does not hate his own life -
renounce ali that he has...he cannot be a disciple..."

and

"What does it profit to gain the whole world and lost one's
soul..."

and

"Whoever would save life will lose it and whoever would lose
life for my sake will save it..."

and

"If one would come after me - deny self ~- take up a cross
and follow..."

The psychiatrists and psychologists know that the more we
give away the more we have. The more we hoard, save, protect and
squeeze ~ the less we have and are. The issue is our own souls.

BLEST BE THE TIF

October 27, 1991
9:30 and 11:15 a.m. Worship Services
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York
John M. Buchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Hebrews 11:1~3, 13, 12:1-2

“Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,...let
us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,?!
“Hebrews 12:1 (NRSV)

Robert Shaw, who is a poet and a professor of English at Mt.
Holyoke, has described his formative memories of church ang
religion in a way that sounded familiar to me and which may cause
you to smile in recognition as well. He was writing an essay in
a wonderful collection entitled Incarnation, Contemporary Writ-
ers on the New Testament. Mr. Shaw's assignment was to write on
the Book of Hebrews.

"My mother's father was a Presbyterian minister,
and until I was four Wy parents, my brother and I
lived with my grandparents next to the church. We
Spent a lot of time there perforce. My first
impressions of Christian worship were vividly
sensory in ways that my age would explain. Par-
ents attempting to make small boys look proper for
Sunday dressed them in suits with short pants
then, and I remember how the cushions of the pews,
stuffed with horsehair, prickled my legs as they
dangled above the floor. Sitting next to my
grandmother I would loeok at the stained glass or
the people around us, most of whom seemed very
old. The white-haired ladies, always wearing
hats, all knew my name, although =I could never
tell them apart. They carried large pocketbooks,
which were black in the winter and white in the
summer, and out of which came lavender-+~scented
handkerchiefs, change purses, Spectacles, pepper-~
mints and much else, My grandmother had her own
supply of peppermints which she doled out to me if
I seemed restless." [p. 268]

"There are times when together we discover that we
make up a single body, that we belong to each
other and that God has called us together as a
source of life for each other." [Weavings,
July/August 1990]

The idea is that we become more in relationship than we are
in isolation. And furthermore, that human communities, even the
smallest and most modest, have generative and healing and life-
giving power. Everybody has a church, someone ebserved; whether
or not you belong to the institution. Everyone has a small group
of people - maybe only one other - with whom you share joys and
sorrows, whose presence affirms and supports you, whose company
you seek. When someone you love dies, the hands of that communi-
ty begin to reach out to you and to gather you in. When your
grandchild is born, it is to these people you bring the pictures.
“A church within a church" it has been called...realistically
acknowledging that in a large, diverse, urban congregation like
this one, not everyone can be connected to everyone else...

Group therapy, a family reunion, coffee together, a phone
call once a week... the religious word for it is Communion; the
creedal designation is "Communion of Saints." The Biblical image
is that "cloud of witnesses" which surrounds each of us.

You don't have to be saintly to get into that cloud of
witnesses. "Saintly" has come to mean pious or a paragon of
moral virtue. “She's a saint," "he's no saint," are moral de-
scriptions, ordinarily. originally "saintly" didn't mean that at
ali. The writer of the Book of Hebrews was addressing a communi-
ty of Christians in the First Century who were facing almost
certain persecution and who were not at all certain that they
were strong enough to endure. Some of them were going to suffer,
be arrested, maybe tortured, executed. So instead of admonition,
the writer calls the role of heroes and heroines from the past:
men and women who were faithful against all the odds and in the
midst of some very frightening circumstances. "That's who's in
the cloud of witnesses for you," he told them. "You aren't alone!
Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Gideon and David and
Samuel are with you... and Rahab the harlot!"

Just in case you are thinking that only saintly people get
inte the communion of saints, there's Rahab, a prostitute whose
clients one day include two Israelite spies who are on a recon-
naissance mission in Jericho for Joshua, but end up at Rahab's
establishment. She hides them from the authorities and thus
piays a major role in Joshua's successful campaign against Jeri-
cho, Rahab the Saint. Rahab who was faithful by doing what she
had to do when she had to do it. Rahab whose presence in the
cloud of witnesses encourages us to see that there are many
people there who were our enablers, our supporters, whose timely

LO/27/91

else, something larger. Saints are those who point sometimes ta
something in us that we could not see in ourselves.

In his autobiography, Frederick Buechner tells about writ-
ing a florid, over-blown essay at prep school and being stunned
when Mr. Martin, the teacher, gave him an unheard of 100%. "I
think it is not too much to say that from that moment on, I knew
that what I wanted to be more than anything else was a writer.
Mr. Martin may just have changed the whole course of my Life with
that preposterous grade." [The Sacred Journey, p. 74]

Your saints pointed the way by having confidence in you, by
aspiring much for you, by giving you opportunities, and most of
all by showing you strength and resolve and competence in your-
self that without them you never would have discovered. Some-
times your saints jolted you. Sometimes a saint has to be pushy
and almost rude, sometimes uncompromising in expectation of you
and hope for you.

And sometimes by example your saints showed you how to
Live; showed you how to believe, how to trust, how to love and
forgive, how to weep and laugh, how to be a Christian.

At the time of the Reformation the new Protestant church
discontinued the tradition of canonizing saints.

Of course there are saints. And on All Saints!’ Day it's a
good idea to identify them and acknowledge their presence in that

cloud of witnesses and to thank then. "Mentally populate your
own cloud of witnesses," Robert Shaw urges us. Do it today -
over lunch - identify your saints. Take a quiet moment, and

Write out their names and thank God for them.

-~ The elementary teacher who recognized something in you and
would not let you go.

~ The scout leader who helped you learn that even your
twelve-year-old fingers could function and actually tie a clove
hitch.

- The coach who caught you accepting mediocrity in yourself
and insisted that you had more to give physically and mentally
than you had ever given to anything and therefore didn't know was
there.

~ The friend who accepted you and overlooked your foibles
and stood with you and showed you what loyalty is, or the one

who stepped in and fought a fight that was yours and taught you
courage.

~ The parent who taught you to share and to be strong and to
be brave and to forgive.

10/27/94