Convocation
McCormick Theological Seminary
October 1, 1992
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Ih

Talk about having the rug pulled out from one, homiletical~
ly! Every preacher has had interruptions: the day a stray dag
walks in the front door and down the center aisle, the free and
happy soul who decides to lift his arms and pray outloud during
the sermon, or the woman - a few months ago, who, as I carried
the baptized infant down into the nave and up the aisle, saying,
"This child is now received into the Holy Catholic Church," said,
full voice, "Catholic Church? I didn't know this was a Catholic
Church!" and stomped out. Thinking about and preparing to preach
at the opening convocation of McCormick Theological Seminary and
then two weeks before, the President and the Dean/Vice-President
announcing his retirement - is one of those homiletical rug

pulls.

Or - opportunities perhaps. It is the end of an era, an
extraordinarily important and creative time in the long and
distinguished history of this institution. These Ramage years,
will be, I think, a defining moment for McCormick and I have been
pleased to be part of them and I have valued and will continue to
value Dave's and Betty's friendship and comradeship in ministry.

But I'm here to tell you that this is not a time for grief
and regret. I'm here to remind you that every time is some kind
of transition, between this and that.

I think it was a New Yorker cartoon. Adam and Eve are on
their way out of the garden. The Guardian Angel, fiaming sword
in hand, is pointing the way out through the gates of paradise -
into an ominous looking wilderness. Eve is turning pensively to
Adam and saying, "Let's look at it as a transition period, dear."
And we all know that outside Eden is when the real story starts,
that human history does not happen in paradise but on a journey,
in transit, on the way.

I came to Hyde Park in the fall of 1959 to be part of a
wonderful experiment in Ecumenical Theological Education. It was
called the F.T.F. and it brought together the Divinity School,
cts, Meadville, and Disciple Divinity House, in one collaborative
enterprise, and about sixty days after I unpacked the FTF explod-
ed, or imploded and was no more.

And so I have concluded that transitions are very creative
times, pregnant times, times when all of us involved in the
dynamic process of living the present in light of an unknown
future, which is to say, living life in the real world - pay
attention and live with intentionality.

Part of what I wish to affirm therefore is that the ongoing
process of theological education will, I know, be extraordinarily
creative for the whole community. [I think it will give students
an edge. Students need to know that teaching faculty will be
more than ordinarily attentive. Faculty need to know that stu-
dents will come with a little more of the vulnerability which
allows education to happen. Students and faculty need to know
that the board with its management types will do its very best to
assure that the transition is deliberate and deliberative,
thoughtful and creative.

And so, because I had the rug pulled, I have added that
brief homily to my remarks. This is going to be a good time.
And its going to be fun.

My second homiletical excursion is to say to students that
something is going to happen to you in the process of theological
education that you may not be expecting and may not know about
until a few decades from now. It is called Formation - spiritual
formation, faith formation, personal formation, what James Fowler
calis formation of your affections.

The Dean of that other Presbyterian Seminary in Louisville,
Steve Hancock, did some research recently and concluded that
important spiritual formation happens in the midst of theological
education, whether it is intended or not, and that it happens
largely outside the classroom. The thing about formation is
that, like physical growth, it is not apparent to the ene to whon
it is happening. But you will, we know, be shaped -— your spirit
will be formed - by what happens to you during the process of
theological education.

When the Presbyterian General Assembly authorized the found-
ing of seminaries in 1810, the resolution contained the follow-
ing:

"Filling the church with a learned and able minis-
try without a corresponding portion of real piety
would be a curse to the world, and an offense to
God and the people, so the General Assembly think
it their duty to state that, in establishing a
seminary for training UP ministers...it will be
their endeavor to make it...a nursery of vital
piety, as well as of sound theological learning,
and to train up persons who will be lovers as well
as defenders of the truth as it is in Jesus."

Lovers as well as defenders ~ it could happen!

In his novel, Roger's Version, John Updike describes what he
thinks happens at a University Divinity School.

"Believing souls are trucked in like muddy, fra-
grant cabbages from the rural hinterland and in
three years of fine distinction and exegetical
quibbling we have chopped them into coleslaw
saleable at any suburban supermarket. We take in
Saints and send out ministers, workers in the
vineyard of inevitable anxiety and discontent."

1

Of course it's not that simple. I wouldn't describe people
who enroll in seminary as "believing souls" so much as "seeking
souls" - souls in transit, ona journey, and for many of us the
process was exactly reverse. We came in looking and left believ-
ing. We got formed, became lovers. But he does have the bottom
line right. Theological education is the context for spiritual
formation. And theological education becomes effective prepara-
tion for ministry insofar as it knows that, nurtures it, witness-
es to it, enables it and celebrates it.

My personal bias is that it happens in community, and the
fundamental community - whether we love it or despise it, is the
church. And so the second homily concludes with an affirmation
and invitation. The church - the autonomous collection of faith
communities - has an enormous stake in what happens to you here
and wants and needs to be a part of the enterprise. The invita-
tion is to come - to be part - to not isolate and retreat from
the institutional and therefore the most vulnerably human expres-
sion of our faith - the local church.

I wouldn't have been caught dead while I was a student in a
church like the one I now serve. And it was a mistake, ina
sense, an elitist, arrogant mistake. I wasn't sure the church had
much to do with the Gospel. Now I know - it's all we have - for
better or worse it's the body of Jesus in the world. Some stu-
dents do come by that way. It's one of the privileges and chal-
lenges of ministry in a city where theological education happens.
It always reminds me of the nearly impossible task of relief
pitching in major league baseball...one small mistake, one fast
ball - too high, and the game is over. So, after worship I see
them coming - Moody students, Bibles already open. McCormick
students are a little less determined and visible. They more or
jess look like everyone else only slightly more rumpled. They
don't have a Bible open and ready for battle. They ask questions
like, "What do you think about the authorship problem and the
Pastorals?" as someone did last Sunday. And I had to say I
hadn't thought anything much about it for a few decades, but II
Timothy sure sounds like Paul to me.

And that, finally brings me to what I really want to say and
it really isn't about the life of the institution - important as
that is: nor is it about the future of Theological Education -
every journal, every T.F., every denomination, every Christian
with a brain has something to say about that. Rather it is about
the heart of this matter... it is about the cost of business —
this costly venture - this enterprise of preparation for minis-
try. This enterprise of carving out a significant chunk of
prime-time life to get exercised about things like who actually
wrote Titus, and learning Hebrew. It is expensive. It costs a
lot of money for one thing, and above and beneath it is the most
costly venture of all, living faithfully and honestly as disci-
ples or followers or lovers of Jesus Christ.

ft The cost factor comes up one time in the middle of Jesus!
mihistry. It was probably the high point in terms of numbers.

My mental picture of a day in the life of Jesus and his disciples
is of a small group of people, walking from village to village,
dealing with small gatherings wherever they went.: teaching,
healing, discussing. But, in the middle of the story he was
attracting a lot of attention apparently. "Great multitudes
accompanied him," Luke tells us. They were there when he taught.
They straggled behind as he traveled. They were there at meal
time and night time. They were following because of the fresh-
ness and winsomeness of his teaching, and perhaps because they
found hope in his description of God's coming Kingdom, and per-
haps they followed because they were poor and had nothing better
to do, and perhaps - at least one New Testament scholar proposes
- they followed because they sensed a disaster about to happen
and they didn't want to miss the excitement.

And so there they were, for whatever reasons, following him
around, hundreds of them, maybe even several thousands. Whenever
there are a lot of numbers in this religion business we need to
check and see if we're getting it right, and so one time he
turned around and said to them with no warning, "If anyone comes
to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and
children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple...whoever of you does not renounce all that
he has cannot be my disciple."

And then he told two small parables about a builder who had
not accurately calculated the cost of the building and was not
able to complete it. And a king who underestimates his opponent
and has to settle for peace on his enemy's terms.

These are unusually harsh stories and the teaching about
hating one's family and renouncing everything seem impossibly
difficult. Do you suppose he meant it, that following him means
denying what we generally regard as one of our better character-
istics - love for family? Did he really expect them - us - to

hate our parents, our spouses, children, in order to be a Chris-
tian?

The simple fact is that he didn't hate his parents. His
mother continued to be a part of the story, accompanying him to
weddings, following him all the way to Jerusalem. She is there
when he is arrested and as he dies on the cross, she is still
there; and one of the last things he is able to say has to do
with her care. So of course this one who taught the redemptive
power of love ~ love of brother and sister, love for the poor,
love for the enemy ~ did not mean that his followers must hate
parents, children and spouses or anyone!

Then why did he put it that way? What did he mean? ‘The
linguistic scholars who know about these things help us to under-
stand that the Aramaic language Jesus spoke was extraordinarily
vivid, and that it is common in Semitic language to make a strong
point by dramatic contrast or hyperbole. Of course, he did not
mean that you have to hate your parents. But he did mean that
following him was demanding and costly; that it can mean serious
self-sacrifice and it does mean a serious reordering of priori-
ties. What he meant to tell them, and us, was that there is a
jot at stake here: the meaning and significance of our lives;
that the nature of this enterprise is salvation, wholeness, self-
realization, and not just a very peripheral pursuit of peace of
mind, or, in the their terms, a pleasant two week sojourn in the
countryside waiting for the disaster to happen. He used the
strongest language possible because the issue is human life.

There is important truth here. There is truth here about
the limits of human love. The psychologists know that if the
total meaning and significance of your life is tied up in your
children, for instance, or your spouse, or lover or parents - if
you have no identity apart from them, if you live through them -
you are in trouble. Anne Wilson Schaeff calls that co-dependen-
cy. Parental love that knows no limits becomes smothering, op-
pressive and deadly. Part of loving as an adult is to know the
limits of Love.

And there is truth here about life. Life begins, the cur-
rently popular adage proposes "when the last child goes off to
college, the mortgage is paid and the dog dies." Life begins,
the slick magazines promise, when you can afford Gucci, BMW, to
ski St. Moritz and drink Dewars. Bbut what Jesus said is that
life begins when you find something to live for other than your-
self: that full human life is given when a great cause calls out
of you total loyalty, faithfulness and commitment. It is the
Singular Christian proposal that in giving life to Jesus Christ,
true life is discovered. It is there throughout the story... It
is the Christian counter proposal to the absolute commitment to
consumerism which is characteristic of our time. True life is a

gift you are given when you discover something important enough
to give your life to it.

That is not fashionable talk these days in the culture which
continues to be motivated at its deepest level by the terror that
we might have to pay more taxes. And it's not particularly
fashionable - even in the church - as we wring our hands about
numerical decline and sign up for the slickest "church growth"

seminar we can find.

The Wall Street Journal published a delightful article by
a Kansas City advertising executive who, with tongue in cheek,
has come up with a marketing plan for revitalizing America's
Major religious faiths.

"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 McChurch, for ad
purposes. I will not be sure of McChurch theology
until focus groups are run, but I plan on follow-
ing the promotional path blazed so successfully 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."

Among the ad man's proposals are a new brand of Judaism for
baby boomers and a "market segmentation" approach for Roman
Catholicism. “RC Light for post-Vatican II liberals, RC Classic
for traditionalists and RC Free for those more interested in
liberation theology than Papal Bulls."

"Protestantism," he says, "presents marketers with
special problems: the individual churches will
have to understand that there is just so much
theological shelf space, that product differentia-
tion is not viable for go-as-you-please Protes-
tantism. Thus, the Middle American Christian
Church or MacChurch." [see American Mainline
Religion, Roof and McKinney, p. 229]

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 money or time or to think criti-
cally or to love and care.. to give their lives, that is and

started giving them what they want, we might be more successful.
And there are plenty of success models to emulate.

Deeper still there is the old ambivalence within Presbyteri-
anism about anything resembling a hard-sell approach to faith.
Our commitments have been to a theology of grace, not discipline.

But how sad, if for intellectual and aesthetic reasons we
miss the real issue.

Because at the heart of the matter is the issue of our
lives: Will we live them fully? will we experience them as
completely as we can? At the heart of the matter is paradox that
in giving our lives away we receive them; that in picking up a
cross and following we are alive as we never were before.
of Sometimes history and circumstance draw the issue very
clearly for us. If you visit Dachau, the point will be made
eloquently. One of the remaining barracks is the "Priesterbunk-
er," the barracks for ministers and priests and nuns who saw in
Nazism an absolute conflict with devotion to Jesus Christ, who
acted on that perception and who ended up in a concentration
camp. And there is not a clerypersen - or a layperson for that
matter, who does not look at that barracks and wonder, "Could I
have done that? Would I have done that?" I stood a month ago in
Wester Kirk Amsterdam admiring the gorgeous adjacent and archi-
tecture, Ann Frank's history place. And I understand again.
There are times and circumstances when the issue is clearly
drawn. That was one of them. And so Dietrich Bonhoeffer, know~
ing what was ahead, could write about cheap grace and costly
grace and those familiar and stirring but also distressing
lines:

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
The cost is not always dramatic. Lamar Williamson writes:

"The woman who devotes her life to raising chil-
dren in need of a home, the man whose faithful
devotion to a mentally ill wife is quiet and
steady, the youth whose civil disobedience for
conscience's sake leads to prison or exile, and I
would add - the pastor who labors in a church of
120 members years in and year out without much of _
this world's rewards ~ these are among the count—
less thousands who through the centuries and in
many contexts, have interpreted the text with
their lives." ([Interpretation, Mark, p. 156-7] ,

One who paid with everything she had was Eva Jane Price,
Congregational missionary wife, in China in the 1890s. Her long
correspondence with her parents in Des Moines has been published

under the title China Journal. It is a fascinating, informative
and moving story. She was 33, her husband 41, when they decided
to go to Oberlin College with their two children to prepare for
Missionary work. She was very human and winsome: wife, mother
of three ~ two of whom died in childhood. She loved God, but she
also loved her own Life, children and her mother, and the farm in
Towa. It took three months to travel to China so a letter to her
mother took six months to be answered. The letters are full of
the stuff of humanity ~ the daily details of Life in an utterly
alien culture - which she did not understand and never understood
her and which called her "foreign devil." And, of course, the
isolation which the missionary spouses experienced - confined to
compounds -— which caused one of her friends to go mad and another
to decide to commit suicide. In an early letter she writes,
“Mother, what do you think I wanted the other day? Well, f'11
teil you if you'll promise never, never to tell - one of your big
aprons so I could put my head in it and cry and imagine it was in

your lap." [p. 29]

In 1900, eleven years after they left Iowa and Oberlin
College, the Prices and their remaining daughter were murdered in
the S¥xer Rebellion. In her last letter, as the rebellion closes
in On the small missionary compound she wrote:

"Our lives are worth nothing unless the Lord keeps
them. We are all expecting to die and pe is
giving us grace, and we pray that you at home may
be abundantly blessed by him. We would not choose
to die now and in any horrible way, but pray
without ceasing that God will choose for us and
make us glad to go the way he says." fp. 236]

Time and circumstance do not draw the issue as sharply for
everyone. Pray God that we do not have to face the issue as
dramatically as Eva Price did, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did.

But pray God that our good fortune does not protect us also
from the opportunity to decide to live. Pray God that we are not
so anesthetized by comfort and security and the orderliness of
our lives that we never get around to living them by giving them
away.

It is one costly venture. It means deciding to be his
manfhis woman with everything you are and everything you have.
It means living for him. It means deciding to be his man/his
woman every day. It means deciding to be alive.

I invite you to it.