The Truett Pulpit Sermons Preached During the Community Gathering for Worship at George W. Truett Seminary 2010-2011 The sermons in this volume of The Truett Pulpit were preached in the seminary’s Paul Powell Chapel during the 2010-2011 academic year. The sermons by Truett faculty members were all part of a two part series encompassing Community and the People of God and Worship and the People of God. In doing so, each professor offer his or her own unique insight into life as the people of God. The audio and video versions of all of these sermons can be found in the Truett Media Library at “http://www.baylor.edu/truett” under “Resources”. The Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at George W. Truett Theological Seminary Baylor University Waco, TX W. Hulitt Gloer, Director Edited by Kessa Payne 1 The Truett Pulpit The Community and Worship of the People of God 2 Table of Contents Dedication Dennis Tucker, “A Shared Life” Stephen Reid, “Don’t Be Dumb” William Willimon, “How Do You Keep at Joel C. Gregory, “Gazing at the Glory: Closer to the Center David Wilhite, “Your Community is Too Small” Robert Creech, “The Church of the Future” Cynthia Hale, “The Madness of Ministry” Austin Fischer, “Who’s Missing?” Todd Still, “Grateful” Terry York, “Hymns, Hymnals and Heritage” Angela Reed, “Audience of One” Brian Brewer, “Shall We Pray?” Roger Olson, “Community: The Impossible Possibility” Matt Snowden, “The Pulpit & the Table Phil Christopher, “Suffering in Silence” Chris Gordon, “Access Granted” 3 Dr. David E. Garland Dean and William M. Hinson Professor of Christian Scriptures George W. Truett Seminary 4 “A Shared Life” John 14:15-24 W. Dennis Tucker, Jr. Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures Fall 2010 Convocation In his book Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools, Daniel Aleshire, the executive director of the Association of Theological Schools not only ponders the future of theological education, but perhaps more significantly, articulates a case for what we are all about in this place. In the beginning of the book Aleshire reflects upon his own seminary experience. He writes, ―More than any other educational institution I have attended, seminary changed me. Theological education is formative and in many cases transformative. It weaves together two powerful human activities, believing and learning into a common cloth. Seminary affected parts of me that other school‘s never touched. I did not realize how much it impacted me at the time, but the longer I work in ministry, the more I find myself going back to seminary experiences that defined reality, defined me, and defined Christian faithfulness.‖1 1 Daniel Aleshire, Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools (Grand Rapid: Eerdmans, 2008), 2-3. 5 When I visit with our alumni at various gatherings, they speak a similar language. They speak of learning and believing, believing and learning as the strands of a cloth woven together during their sojourn in this place. But without fail, they will say something of the people in this place. In some way, perhaps difficult to articulate, the people were a third strand woven into this cloth. Like believing and learning, the people aided them, transformed them, in ways that ―defined reality, defined them, and defined Christian faithfulness.‖ In your time at Truett, there will be great focus on the strands of learning—after all we one of the few seminaries embedded within a major research university. Learning is critical to who we are and what we do. There will be great focus on the strands of formation and transformation—after all, we are a place that takes seriously the call each has received and the calling we have received together as the people of God. We learn best when we live in community. We believe best when we live in community. It is in community that we discover best what it means to the people of God. Many of you are familiar with the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Having completed his doctorate in theology by the age of 21, Bonhoeffer made his way to the United States for further study and to teach at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. When he returned to Germany, he found that the German Evangelical Church had fallen under the sway of the Nazi movement. He aided in organizing a group called the Confessing Church, a group of Christians clearly at odds with what the state church had become. When things grew worse under Nazi pressure, Bonhoeffer accepted a two-year pastorate in London, hoping that while in London he could leverage ecumenical pressure on the German regime. While in London, he was invited to go to India to study non-violence with Gandhi. But in that moment, as Nazi 6 suppression of the church intensified, members from the Confessing Church asked Bonhoeffer to return home and to lead an underground seminary to train ministers. He returned to found this clandestine seminary at Finkenwalde. It was based on life, this shared life under Nazi suppression, that Bonhoeffer wrote his small work Life Together. Bonhoeffer wrote, ―Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of year, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.‖2 The remainder of his book focuses on questions of learning and believing, believing and learning. Yet the notion of community, of shared life together, permeates all that is said. ―We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.‖ That sentence has lingered with me all summer. What does it mean to belong to one another through and in Jesus Christ? What does it means to live in this kind of shared life? While I believe in that statement, I rarely tend to the meaning of it for my life, for the lives of those with whom I share community. To Whom are We Committed Our text today appears near the start of a series of Farewell Discourses in the Gospel of John. While John 14 is often noted as the first mention of this allos parakletos, ―another Advocate,‖ I would like to suggest that this text also calls us, as disciples of the Risen Christ, to enter into the kind of shared life envisioned by Bonhoeffer and experienced by those gathered at that clandestine seminary in Finkenwalde. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper San Fransisco, 1954), 21. 7 John 14 calls us to a new way of living predicated upon our commitment to Jesus. Three times in this short text we are told to love Jesus. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the theme of loving God reverberates. In the Old Testament, when the community failed to love God rightly, the prophets called the people of God back to their first love. And while one may note that the repeated call to love God with all that we are appears frequently in both the Old and New Testaments, one is hard pressed to find language in the New Testament that calls us to love Jesus. In fact, the call to love Jesus occurs only twelve times in the New Testament.3 Six of those can be found in the Gospel of John. But we should be clear about the nature of this kind of love, lest we trail off into some notion of sentimentality. The writer of the Gospel of John has carefully embedded throughout allusions, references, and connections to the Old Testament. This language of ―love‖ is no different. Throughout the Old Testament the word ―love‖ is used in covenant language. Even among political parties in the Ancient Near East, the term was used to indicate a binding covenant. Just as the covenant God demanded at Sinai that his people love him exclusively, so too does Jesus demand exclusive love, unbending love, a love that at times calls us to live in radically new ways. Henri Nouwen knew something of this kind of love. Having taught early in his career at Notre Dame, then moving on to teach at the Divinity School at Yale, he assumed a prestigious position at Harvard late in his career. But it was his next move that proved most surprising. He left Harvard to work at a community named L‘Arche, a community for the mentally handicapped. He left the hallowed halls of an Ivy League institution to enter into the sacred 3 Agape is used in John 8:42; 14:15, 21, 23; 21:15, 16; Eph 6:24; 1 Pet. 1:8 and philein occurs in Matt. 10:37; John 16:27; 21:17; and 1 Cor. 16:22. 8 ordinariness of life shared together. In commenting on this abrupt transition to a small, relatively obscure community he spoke of life and said, ―The question is not: How many people will take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show me some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus?‖ He continued, ―To live a life that is not dominated by the desire to be relevant but is instead safely anchored in the knowledge of God‘s first love, we have to be mystics. Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-formed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the Incarnate Word, Jesus.‖ Did you hear his last line? Our ―leadership must be rooted in the permanent intimate relationship with the Incarnate Word, Jesus.‖ Or put differently, we might say, ―Our leadership must be rooted in our love of Jesus.‖ Or even more simply, our lives must be bound to his.