April 2, 2011
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Seeing as God sees
I think everything you need to know as a congregation going through a change in spiritual leadership and seeking to learn healthier ways of being church can be found in the scripture readings for this Sunday. Perhaps, I will use these scriptures for my introduction weekend for new congregations. The story from First Samuel talks about how you look for a new leader using God’s eyes. The letter to the church at Ephesus tells you about focusing on the important stuff and let go of the busy work. And the story of Jesus healing the person born blind tells us about how we can miss the good news when we get so caught up in trying to determine if things were done the way they have always been done and whether the person that did them had the authority to do so. That is pretty much it in a nutshell. But not to worry, I am going to crack this nut open and spend a little more time thinking about what this means for you and me today.
I am going to start with the whole busy work thing. There is going to be a temptation on your part to just be busy about the tasks of getting your profile completed and getting your search committee together. It is possible that in the business, you will lose sight of why you are doing these things. Unless you are willing to examine yourselves in the light of Christ, your efforts to draw a picture of who you are will be incomplete and inaccurate. You don’t go into a dark room to paint someone’s portrait, unless you think you know what they look like and don’t want any evidence to the contrary. You cannot paint an accurate picture of this congregation, where it is now and where it is going unless you are willing to turn the light on bright, and have open and honest exploration of who you are and where you want to go. To do otherwise is just busy work.
You, like Samuel, are going to be charged by God to find a new leader and anoint them to lead this congregation. The first thing God charged Samuel to do was to let go of the past leader, or leaders. It will do you no good to seek a spiritual leader for this congregation if you have not resolved your issues with the past leaders and that includes me. If you go into pastoral search with the intention of judging the candidates based on how much they are like or different from past leaders, you will be looking as humans look and not as God looks. You may have had a real sense of connection with a previous pastor and you want to hire a pastor just like that one. You won’t be successful and you will be disappointed. You may have had a bad experience with a previous pastor and you are going to make certain you don’t make that mistake again. The person you interview may seem like the other pastor but they are not them and if you pass them over because they look or act like the other, you may miss the one God has chosen for you. You will be tempted to find the person you think looks like a pastor to you, God says, you look on the outside but I look on the inside. You need to be open to God telling you what is on the inside. Like Samuel, you may be tempted to anoint the first one who comes to you and says, “here am I.” Do not anoint anyone until you here God saying, “This is the one!”
Probably the most important lesson is how not to be church from the story of the blind person healed by Jesus. Who can read this without a sensing the humor intended by the story. This person has been blind from birth and the disciples see him as a theological discussion point. You will be tempted to see the needs of the community as an opportunity to discuss God’s intention by allowing this to happen. We sometimes want to debate whether poverty is the fault of the person who is poor, the fault of society, or ordained by God. We debate whether illness is the result of life choices, the result of a failed medical system, or God’s punishment. We discuss crime as the fault of parenting, a character flaw, oppressive society, or a lack of religious connection by the perpetrator. Jesus dismisses this debate and says that human need is an opportunity for the people of faith to respond with God’s love without looking for fault or blame. And then, when the person goes to the religious authorities, they don’t care about the miracle that has happened. They want proof this is the person that was blind, and they want to know who did this, and what authority they had to be doing what they did. We, as church, will miss the miracle if we focus on determining the facts, analyzing the methods, and debating whether what was done was done in the proper way and by the proper persons. We can be too concerned about preserving our way of doing things, and protecting our authority than we are with being about what God has called us to do. We need to have structure but the structure is meant to support the ministry, not the ministry to support the structure. When you question what has happened it should not be to deny what has happened, or to question the motives of those involved. The questions should be directed at how does this serve the mission and vision of this church. And, if it doesn’t, the second question should be, should this be part of our mission and vision.
Simply put, we must all get better at seeing as God sees and not as humans see. Amen.
