Comments at the Greater Austin Area Stone-Campbell Unity Breakfast

C. Kutz-Marks

Greater Austin Area Stone-Campbell Unity Breakfast

Dec. 6, 2008

Almost exactly 5 years ago now, as my then 19 yr. old son David and I were traveling through the United Kingdom, we arrived late one evening in Glasgow, Scotland – and were fortunate to find an available Bed and Breakfast there- in this special place where I anticipated experiencing the finest highlight of our trip.

Though I was still battling the fever and weakness that accompanied the lung infection I was being treated for, my excitement was growing because …I knew that we were getting close to where both Thomas and Alexander Campbell had been educated...two of the men who were at the forefront of the development of our common tradition.

Early the next morning while David was still sleeping I slipped out of our room, got a hasty breakfast and walked, what turned out to be a very short distance, to the University of Glasgow. As I approached the old regal buildings I could imagine Thomas and Alexander coming across the Irish Sea from their home in a County Court, Ireland to this incredible university atmosphere in order to get their education. There I took dozens and dozens of photographs of the major buildings of the University, looking at the architecture and the fine cut of the enormous windows, the soaring spires, the stable foundation stones. In those moments I was reveling, seeing with my own eyes what I envisioned Thomas and Alexander would have seen nearly 200 years ago, drinking in the place where a fine theological education opened their minds, changed their thinking, their lives… and later my life and yours as well.

If I’d returned to the bed and breakfast right then, like I had a mind to do, this story would have had a very different ending.

Instead, as the University was just beginning the unlocking its doors for the morning, I decided to stay a little longer, look a bit deeper, and found a disturbing brochure at the admissions desk that told me that these is glorious building I had been admiring and loving, imagining to be so significant in our history, turned out to be buildings that neither Thomas nor Alexander Campbell ever even saw when they attended the university there in the early 1800's. The building I was in was not even constructed until 1878! It turns out that the buildings of the time they attended the university had been built on lowlands of the city down near the river. The land there was marshy and bad for their health. When disease and unsanitary conditions progressively worsened, the University trustees decided to abandon the lowland property for a school higher up on the Hill. I was crushed to learn that all that still existed from that original school that the Campbells had attended was about an 80ft. span of one tottering brick wall… which I would hunt down to my great disappointment later that day. The site was abandoned, overgrown, a blight.

A few minutes later when the library opened I went looking for some of the memorabilia from the Campbells. The librarian did not know a thing about anyone named Alexander Campbell. Thomas Campbell, she knew about Thomas Campbell. But when she started sharing some of her information it was clear that she was not talking about our Thomas Campbell, co-founder of the first powerful movement towards Christian unity on American soil. She was talking about Thomas Campbell the great Scottish poet of whom a statue still stands on the central square of Glasgow!

It didn’t get any better. Nobody I spoke with on that day in Glasgow had any idea about the identities of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. As the religious history of Scotland and all the Britain would unfold, from the Campbells' day to our own, many have been so riveted to their narrow little brand of Christian faith, that the whole notion of an ecumenical Christian faith such as the Campbells promoted, an open Christian faith, a broadly accepting Christian faith… could find no purchase in Europe.

The reason I share this experience with you this morning is because my disillusionment in Glasgow is mirrored in a similar disillusionment that our Disciples of Christ branch of the forbearers in faith here in America experienced in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

You see, these Disciples of Christ scholars had read the scriptures carefully, in the Book of Acts and the Epistles of the New Testament, and expected that in those days in the early Christian church Christians had been unified, loving and caring, well-organized, and more or less of one mind about the nature of the faith that they professed. ⁱ

They found in the scriptures a picture of True Christian Community. ⁱⁱ And they were committed to restoring that in their own churches on the American frontier. Restoring the glorious harmony the earliest Christian church, the Restoration Principle, became a prime element of the message.ⁱⁱⁱ

Now, if they had just walked away from further study, if they had closed their books and their minds at this point, there would have been considerably less pain and less struggle in the spiritual life of Disciples of Christ.

At this point in our story, a poster on a campus ministries office wall in the 1970’s comes to mind. It shows a picture of an old fashioned wringer washing machine and a rag doll beside it that has been pressed nearly flat. It quotes Jesus’ words from John 8:31, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Well this poster said, “The truth will make you free, but first it’ll put you through the wringer.”

And our Disciples forbearers, especially our lead scholars- in the late 1800’s went through a theological wringer, alright. They discovered as they opened their ears and eyes to the discoveries of higher biblical criticism,^iva careful and scholarly study of the texts, highly influenced by Enlightenment notions –as it was being propounded in the universities of Europe and quite a bit later in the universities of America, using various new techniques of study that would come to be known as Literary Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Textual Criticism, Tradition Criticism, Form Criticism, Canonical Criticism…. what they discovered was that the unity and simplicity and harmony of life that they had believed existed in the early Christian church, most likely really never did exist at all.

In the same way that the University I had expected to be the Campbells' university didn't exist anymore, our Disciples forbearers reluctantly came to the conclusion that one of the great pillars of the early movement in the early 1800's, wasn't there either.

What these new biblical study tools uncovered was that instead, the early church was a patchwork of beliefs, styles of organization, and perspectives. When these intellectual leaders resisted the tendency to turn back a previous way of seeing the Bible, when they continued to embrace this higher biblical criticism they inevitably had to give up Restorationism as one of our key Disciples of Christ identity bases. This was a fateful decision, a decision that to this very day affects the way that Disciples think, the way that Christian Education is done in Disciples churches, and maybe most clearly, in what it is that Disciples of Christ seminarians studying for the ministry learn in our seminaries.

The real issue becomes how we're going to interpret the Bible. Unlike the early Stone/Campbell movement, most 21^st century Disciples of Christ members cannot see the Bible as a simple blueprint for being church any more. In fact, early Stone/Campbell movements insistence that the Bible is straight-forward, understandable by any who will put their minds and spirits to the understanding of it, is also another casualty of the fateful decision to embrace Biblical criticism. Biblical study is vastly more complicated now, and like other complicated fields, professionals have arisen in it. Today it seems that only professional Biblical scholars alone can come close to a thorough understanding of the Bible.

That notwithstanding, we still remind our membership that it is, indeed, their responsibility as church members to “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling”^v even though in lifetime of study they’ll never deeply understand the Bible and the history of our faith as they would wish. And as Jesus in the Gospel of John teaches, “the Truth will set you free” contemporary Disciples of Christ will in essence add the poster’s message, “but first it will put you through the wringer.”

In Bible studies in our congregations, Disciples of Christ ministers commonly experience that their sharing of some important insights from their seminary education with a jaw-drop response from study members, who then say often with some anger in the voice, “if you knew this all this time since your seminary days, why have you not told us this earlier?”

And the truest answer in most circumstances is that the pastor has been weighing what the church member or the whole church can bear, because what the higher criticism is in essence, is the possibility of blowing someone’s faith out the water, or the possibility of miracle healing of an ailing faithfulness, depending on the readiness of the hearer.

As a denomination, we are only just now beginning to our heads around the very real challenges. We are good at teaching the basics of the faith and the Bible. There is a solid foundation built in one who is brought up and active in a Disciples congregation. We know how to teach Bible stories in ways that can be remembered. Let’s call this first , naïve stage the pre-critical stage of spiritual development.

And over the last half-century we’ve gotten much better at posing faith challenging questions in high school & college age ministries, that draw out from within them the tension they might have felt but not dealt with when, as just one example, they hear of the two stories of God’s creating the earth in Genesis 1 & 2 when in church, but get a thoroughly scientific explanation of creation through evolution over a vastly different time scale, without need of God, when at school. We Disciples are getting somewhat better at raising up members who can both understand and also express to others a more sophisticated relationship of science and religion, natural law and miracle. Some of our people are now reading deeply profound theological works on their own that are quite challenging, in order to faithfully “work out their salvation…”on an intellectual level.

But we only rarely get beyond this stage, I am sorry to say. Our finest teachers and models of the Christian faith become such because they make one further quantum jump in their spiritual development. These models of Disciples faith, not only experience their naïve faith; not only had that faith challenged by the world, by science, by personal experience, by encounters with others of different faith, and made it through to a new synthesis; but have entered into the a state that the Philosopher Paul Ricouer called, “a second naivete,” a new way of relating through the Bible, through Christian worship and service, through personal and sometimes mystical encounters with the Spirit of God, what I can only call True Freedom.

This third phase is no longer captive to Biblical literalism, nor is it captive to the questioning spirit that I confess, is so strong in the minds and spirits of many Disciples of Christ members. Those in this 3^rd stage have, to use the metaphor of Barton Stone, fallen head over heels in love with God. They become so enthralled with the actual reality of their relationship with God, that there is no gravity left from those earlier stages.

And if Disciples of Christ have all too often been broken on the rock of scientism in a noble search for integrity, for Truth, we have also been given these Free Ones, even in the 21^st century, to challenge us to get up and to be about the healing work of God’s Spirit, never more needed than today.

i Thomas Campbell wrote in The Declaration and Address:

“all such things, by simply returning to the original standard of

christianity--the profession and practice of the primitive church,

as expressly exhibited upon the sacred page of New Testament

scripture, is the only possible way, that we can perceive, to get rid

of those evils. And we humbly think that a uniform agreement in

that for the preservation of charity would be infinitely preferable to

our contentions and divisions: nay, that such a uniformity is the

very thing that the Lord requires, if the New Testament be a

perfect model--a sufficient formula for the worship discipline and

government of the christian church. Let us do, as we are there

expressly told they did, say as they said: that is, profess and prac-

tise as therein expressly enjoined by precept and precedent, in

every possible instance, after their approved example; and in so

doing we shall realize, and exhibit, all that unity and uniformity,

that the primitive church possessed, or that the law of Christ re-

quires.”

ii As Mark Toulouse notes in Joined in Discipleship: the Maturing of an American Religious Movement, 1992, Chalice Press, p. 68, “Disciples of the nineteenth century believed that all local gatherings of Christians in the first and second centuries were perfectly unified in all essential matters of faith and organization. This presupposition was central to the clearly Disciples commitment to the restorationism.”

And then on p. 69 “The context provided by higher criticism challenged all these earlier affirmations. Beginning with their renewed theo­logical understanding of the church as an organization which, try as it may, can never escape its historical relativity. Disciples have concluded that the church has never seen a golden age when it was pure and without blemish. Though inspired and driven by a sincere commitment to divine purposes in history, the church can never completely escape either its historical existence (and, therefore, its relative and finite existence in history) or its humanity (and, therefore, its sinfulness).

Historical research over the last century has collaborated what the increased theological sensitivity of Disciples has concluded about the nature of the church. Disciples, and other mainline Protestants, now know that the early church only gradually developed in its self-understanding. Jewish, Greek, and Roman elements all combined to affect its development as an institution, both in its structure and in its thought. History has revealed very clearly the fact of diversity in the early church. There never was one ancient church, but instead, an assortment of early churches. The practices, church government, and, yes, even the faith of these early congregations were quite diverse depending on geographical location and cultural influences. For example, the congregation in Antioch differed considerably from the congregation in Jerusalem. Even as these two fellow­ships undoubtedly shared a common love for Christ, they defined the nature of the Christian life, for the individual and for the church, quite differently (refer to Acts 15, for example). In other words, there really never existed some singular unified early church Disciples could restore in the modern period.”

iii Ibid. Toulouse’s work is not only central in the focus of this sermon, but of each of the following two in this sermon series. His evaluation of the major principles of the Disciples mindset is widely regarded as accurate, in my experience.

iv Fields of Literary Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Textual Criticism, Tradition Criticism, Form Criticism, Canonical Criticism all having bearing on these developments. See for example the summary treatments found in “Modern Biblical Interpretation” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 1993, Oxford Univ. Press.

v Phil. 2:12 “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

The Gospel Accordig to Mary

University Christian Church – Austin C. Kutz-Marks

The Gospel According to Mary

Advent 3, b, Dec. 14, 2008

Luke 1:46-55

Last week we looked at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark as it pointed out the ministry of John the Baptist and how John’s ministry held the seeds of Jesus’ ministry that would soon follow. Today we look at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke to how the ministry of Mary, Jesus’ mother, bears the seeds of Jesus’ ministry as well

As we turn to the content of this passage, known as the Magnificat, this great song of praise to God, if we did not know that it came from the mouth of Mary, meek and mild, we might have expected it from the lips of some kind of political revolutionary! For it proclaims that God is in the process of turning the world's order as they knew it upside down; a reversal of fortunes, in favor of God's preferred way.

Even as we begin talking about Mary, I imagine that there are those of you out there this morning who are already thinking virgin birth, angels visiting…. And are busily trying to

>separate the wheat from the chaff;

>the true historical story from the embellishment;

>Mary the historical woman from the image of Mary that the church has built of her up over the years.

And that is an important critical function to exercise at some times, especially when making theological judgments and determining what is factually true. But I encourage you this morning, for just a few minutes, let us instead, bracket those questions and try to simply enter into the story. Let us see what the story will teach us if we take it simply at face value. Instead of questioning her, let’s see if she would question us.

The first thing that we might would note, is the shape and tenor of God’s inbreaking that Mary prophesies:

Ø God’s mercy is for those who “fear God,” that is, are respectfully obedient to God. She says, “ God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things.” This sounds hauntingly familiar to Israel’s earlier prophets on the one hand and on the hand very similar to what Jesus teaches later in the Gospel of Luke when he says,

Ø "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.” (Lk. 6:20-21)

As a Jewish girl growing up in those heady days in Palestine, she would have been deeply enmeshed in the history of her people so that she would be making connections with her own situation and her forbearers in faith.

For example, remember that in this same revelation from the angel Gabriel in which she was told that she, even though as a virgin who could not normally possibly be pregnant with God’s child, she was pregnant, remember that the angel had also told her that her childless infertile older cousin, Elizabeth, was also 6 months into her own impossibly miraculous pregnancy. Perhaps it was the shock & awe of these mighty deeds of God that brought to Mary recollection the words of another heroine of Israel’s faith, Hannah, who was also barren until her old age when God blessed her with a son destined for a major role in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel.

In her own rapturous joy at what God had done in giving her Samuel, as she dedicates the boy to the service of the Lord, Hannah uses words that are most reminiscent of what Mary would sing hundreds of years later. Hannah prayed,[i]

2:1 …. "My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.

2 "There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

3 Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

4 The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.

5 Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn….

7 The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts.

8 He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor”

Do you hear the similarities with Mary’s Magnificat? There is this excitement that God is in the process of doing a new thing, bringing a reversal of fortunes. [ii]

As we study our faith story deeply we find this continuity, this thread of connection that weaves its way all through the Bible, this sense that the past’s trajectory is advanced through God’s working in the present generation as they, as we, are ready to be faithful to the call of the Holy Spirit.

And did you also notice that what Mary sings out months before Jesus is born, turns out to be an accurate prediction of what Jesus teaches and demonstrates to those who followed him? Consider the story of the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and is told by Jesus that to inherit eternal life he should:

“22…Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

23 But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.

24 Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!

25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

26 Those who heard it said, "Then who can be saved?"

27 He replied, "What is impossible for mortals is possible for God." (Lk. 18:22-27)

There they are again, both (1) God’s reversal of fortunes on the one hand and the pointed truth that (2) “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” on the other.

Did you ever wonder what your life would have been like if your mother had had a vision like Mary did of what it is you should become? It seems that we humans have a tendency to resist our parents’ plans for us when we get to those rebellious teenage years, but perhaps, just perhaps, one such as Jesus might have perceived in his mother's strong intuition and in her recounting of her revelations, His own vocational calling, as one that is high, demanding, dangerous, and quite right for Him.

Follow me here, as we delve into the imagination a little. What if it was indeed Mary’s perception of the work of the Spirit, that both inculcated in Jesus that earliest sense of his call to mission and as He grew in faith and if it was her continued belief in him that finally cut him free of the constraints that tie the rest of us humans to lives less lofty.

If this were the case, if it was Mary's conviction of who Jesus would become, that provided the booster stage that rocketed Jesus’ life out of the gravitational pull of normal human living, does that in any way undermine the heroic character of the decisions and actions that Jesus on his own would later take? I think not. I think a mother with such vision, providing such encouragement, just might be another one of the essential ingredients that was needed in order to launch the course of Jesus as the Christ the Messiah.

*

If we look back to the Gospel of Mark we find the mention of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is made only one time. But here in the Gospel of Luke, Mary appears 13 times by name and many other times by pronouns. She is clearly a much more major factor.

In fact, many have said, that Mary in our passage this morning becomes the model of a faithful response to the activity of the Holy Spirit. In spite of the fact that her life would be turned upside down - and probably not for the better- because of her readiness to follow in the way that God wanted her to, she went boldly forward.

I can hear her question us…. Could we do the same? Would we have, do we have, the gumption to put our lives on the line and follow where we hear the Spirit of the Lord is calling us to go?

*

Finally, one notices in the demeanor of Mary in this passage; the blessed, peaceful character that flows from one who has given herself deeply and completely to the guidance of the Spirit of God.

This afternoon and evening as we watch the story of Amahl and the Night Visitors develop we will enjoy the music and the movement and in our spirits we will be moved with a fresh appreciation of what it means to give deeply of oneself to the often unclear future that God offers each of us.

Again, I can hear Mary challenge us. Is it possible for a play, an opera, or perhaps a few verses in an early chapter of Luke’s Gospel to challenge us to look deeply into our own lives and see if we can find in them that same hopefulness, that same conviction, that same deep down joy that the Gospel According to Mary sings out? Can rehearsing the bedrock stories of faith, lead our souls, too, “to magnifiy the Lord, and our spirits to rejoice in God our savior.”

I pray so, and I believe so, my friends.

Have a Mary, that is M-A-R-Y Christmas.

Amen.

---

[i] 1 Sam. 2:1-10

[ii] Hannah says, “The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust.” Mary says, “ He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Lk1:52-53)