A Fourth Church Sermon by Joanna M. Adams

March 24, 2002 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

A Beautiful Mind

Joanna M. Adams
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 118:19–29
Matthew 21:1–11
Philippians 2:5–11

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”

Philippians 2:5 (NRSV)

Have mercy, O God, upon your humble servants, who are not always humble or faithful in service. Let whatever state we are in belong to you. And so we ask, with yearning in our heart, that your word might be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our way. For the sake of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

What a privilege it is for me to step into the pulpit of Fourth Presbyterian Church for the first time as preacher and pastor. The height of this pulpit gives new meaning to the word elevated, both in terms of actual altitude and in terms of the stature of its occupants, both past and present. If you would allow me a personal word, I would like to say what a privilege it is to me to be John Buchanan’s partner at Fourth Church and part of the promising future that is before us. I am simply being descriptive when I say that John Buchanan is the finest preacher and leader I know in the American church today. Today my soul is filled with awe, my heart with gratitude, and my palms with perspiration.

What I want to say first is something that you and I know down to the depths of our souls, but can never be reminded of often enough, and that is in the church of Jesus Christ, the only one who finally is to be glorified is our Lord. What we must do today and every day is to forgo the temptation to claim authority or status in our own name. Instead, we must rely on the power of God at work through every single one of us. When we speak of Fourth Church as “a light in the city,” we are not talking about a light that this congregation or its pastors create. We are speaking of a hope, a purpose, a message of redemption that are far beyond our own making. I love the little parable Desmond Tutu tells about “the light bulb that shined so brightly and proudly, it eventually became convinced that it was due to its own merit and skill. One day the light bulb was taken out of the socket and placed on a table. Try as hard as it could, when it was disconnected from the source of its power, it could do nothing.” (1)

As was said of John the Baptist long ago, “He himself was not the light, but he came to bear witness to the light. The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:8–9). I have come to testify among you to the light that comes from God and to serve the great purposes of Christ with John, the other pastors, and with all of you. I am not telling you anything you do not know already when I say that none of us, not a single one of us, has any hope of being anything other than simply human.

A friend sent me an email last week about a woman who had been called to senior leadership at a large church in another part of the country. Almost everyone was willing to give her a chance, except for one elder who was convinced that the search committee had lost its mind. After a few weeks, a friend of the elder, also a member of the church, decided to give her a try and invited the new minister to go with him on a fishing trip. The two of them got into a boat and motored out to the center of the lake. When they got ready to fish, they realized that they had left their tackle box back at the dock. “No problem,” the new minister said. And with that, she got out of the boat, walked across the water, retrieved the tackle box, came back, and the fishing commenced. When the elder asked his friend later how the fishing trip had gone, he said, “You were exactly right. We never should have hired her. She can’t even swim!”

Ministry is not about the performance of miracles or perfection. It is about servant leadership, grounded in the love of the Servant God. (2) It is about betting our lives on the promises of God and letting go of the need to achieve perfection in our own right.

I love these stirring sentences written by Carl Sandburg in the preface in a volume of his collected poems that was published toward the end of his life: “All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see, to hear and to write. I [would] like to think that . . . [if] I will live to be 89, and speaking my farewell to earthly scenes, I [would have the grace to say] . . . if God had let me live five years longer, I [could] have been a writer.” (3) As we begin today, we can ask for no greater blessing than the blessing of humble minds that do not seek their own glory.

We could not ask for more stirring passages to help us in that regard than the ones read in celebration of Palm Sunday. The psalm draws us into a festal procession that leads to the altar with songs of praise. “The Lord is God, and he has given us light! O give thanks to the Lord, . . . for his steadfast love endures forever!”

The Gospel lesson celebrates one of the most colorful events in our faith heritage—the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Indeed, as Matthew tells the story, he becomes so caught up in the spirit of the occasion, he has our Lord riding into town not on one animal, but on two! “The disciples brought the donkey and the colt and spread their cloaks upon them, and Jesus sat on them” (Matthew 21:7). Please do not try to resolve this conundrum in your mind during the rest of this sermon.

Matthew is careful to give us the historical background of the prophecy that lies behind the Palm Sunday parade. He quotes both Zechariah and Isaiah, making it clear that the Messiah, the king, the savior for whom the people had waited is at hand: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Look, your king is coming to you, mounted on a donkey.’” One point is unmistakable: royalty is on its way, but it is the kind of royalty that the world has never seen before.

All of this happened 2000 years ago. Two hundred years ago, “Kaiser Wilhelm entered the city of Jerusalem.” His entourage was so grand and his caravan so large, he had the Jaffa Gate in the old city widened so that his splendid large carriage could pass through the ramparts. After that parade, someone attached a sign to the Jaffa Gate. “It read: ‘A better man than the Kaiser came through this city’s gate riding on a donkey.’”(4)

What made him a better man? What was it about him that compelled the people to spread their cloaks and wave their palm branches? What is it about him that still causes millions of people to give their lives to him and for him? Nowhere has the paradoxical beauty of mind and being of Christ been more eloquently expressed than by Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians: “Though he was in the form of God,” Paul wrote, “he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.”

It was his beautiful mind, preexisting with God, which put him up on the back of that donkey. His beautiful mind led him to wash the feet of his disciples before he went out to the garden of Gethsemane. His beautiful mind opened his eyes to see who was being left out and excluded and caused him to say to them, “Come in. You are welcome here.” His beautiful mind gave him the courage to speak his message of salvation, no matter what it cost to proclaim it. His beautiful mind led him to the cross where he prayed for those who would take his life. Lifting his eyes up to heaven, he said, “Father, forgive them.” That is the mind that should shape the ministry of every faithful disciple and every faithful church that wishes to honor his name.

The Academy Awards ceremonies will take place in just a few hours. In the Oscar-nominated movie A Beautiful Mind, the character played by Russell Crowe “discovers a law of equilibrium that applies to both mathematics and economics.” (5) For that discovery, the real-life Princeton professor on whose life the movie is loosely based received the Nobel Prize. In both the film and in real life, the teacher’s brilliance cannot stave off the mental breakdown that descends upon him, which manifests itself in his inability to distinguish what is real from what is not real. (6) This is precisely the problem with which the world struggles. The world cannot distinguish between what real power is and what it is not. The world thinks that real power is power you can leverage or earn or purchase or win or take by force, but exactly the opposite is the case. Look at the one who reveals both the true nature of God and the true nature of human beings. He refuses to grasp for status. (7) He sets aside competition. He acts without an eye for gain. He adopts a posture of humility. He radically challenges the values and assumptions of the society in which he is a part.

“Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul admonishes us, but not in the sense of being able to transplant the divine perspective and way of being into ourselves, but in the sense of receiving the gift of transformation through him who became completely one with us and thereby defeated everything, and I do mean everything, that would keep us from our full humanity.

What does a Christ-like mind look like as it is lived out in the world? We see it so clearly in the great saints and martyrs, in people whom we admire, such as Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer, but I am always drawn to an idea that our friend William Placher has suggested in his book Narratives of a Vulnerable God. He uses an illustration from the world of basketball.

In basketball, the players who are always asking ‘How am I doing? Am I getting my share of shots at the basket?’ they are the ones who never reach their potential. It is the players who lose themselves in an effort to be a part of the group. A kind of self-forgetfulness is assumed that makes them the best players. And isn’t that the case with all of us in whatever we do? An artist becomes lost in the work; lovers become lost in their beloved; workers are excited about a common enterprise. You toss aside that part of yourself that is always watching how you are doing. And in that self-forgetfulness, you become most fully yourself. (8)

There was a great Atlantan named Robert Woodruff, also known as Mr. Coca-Cola. He often said, “It’s amazing what a person can accomplish if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.”

I read last week about a church called the Winners’ Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the world, with branches in 32 nations. It lives by the motto its leaders say comes from American religious culture: “Be happy. Be successful. Join the Winners” (New York Times, 13 March 2002). Where did this come from? That kind of approach does not come from the pattern of Christ who revealed the mind of God and showed us how we ought to live.

I have seen many real winners in the years that I have been a minister. One who comes to mind this morning is a young man who was an advertising executive on the rise in his profession. At that time, both he and I were part of a downtown church in Atlanta. I saw him often, because every Tuesday evening he volunteered at the foot clinic for the homeless people who made their home in our church gymnasium. Robert was the nattiest dresser I believe I have ever seen. I can picture him in my mind’s eye now, wearing red suspenders and sitting on a stool before a chair on which one of our homeless guests sat. I can see him taking the guest’s feet and placing them in a basin of warm mater. I can see him taking a towel and drying the feet, then applying ointment to their sores. The ritual always ended with a gift of a clean, white pair of socks. Often the recipient of the socks would be moved to tears, a tough man who had not been touched with such tenderness since his mind could remember. I once asked Robert why he came every week. He brushed me aside, saying, “I just figure I have a better chance of running into Jesus here than most other places.” As I watched him week after week, I realized that I was developing double vision. I was seeing Christ in the stranger and also seeing Christ in the one who found the true meaning of his life in serving others.

To see what the world cannot see, then to do something about it—these are the marks of a beautiful mind.

The beautiful hymn in Philippians ends with a celebration of the ascendancy of Jesus Christ. Last week, John Buchanan called our attention to the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed “He descended into hell” and its powerful assurance that there is no place so terrible that God has not gone before us. Today, I want to lift up another splendid phrase from the Apostles’ Creed, “He ascended into heaven.” There is no terrible place, no tragedy, no ambiguity, no act of violence, and no terrible death that somehow, through the power of that suffering, the risen Lord has not already redeemed. Getting the word around about that—that is the job of the Christian church.

I think of the words of Karl Barth, written just after World War II: “Poor is the church,” he wrote, “that fails to know its Lord as the coming Lord in Glory! And poor is the world if the church . . . is not . . . a place of hope!” (Credo)

“He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the father.”

Perhaps you saw in Friday’s New York Times (22 March 2002) the account of one of the recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem. It took place on King George Street at 4:20 p.m. in the afternoon. Among those lying on the sidewalk was an elderly woman who stopped a passerby. Together they contemplated “the three nasty holes in her tattered stocking.” She asked, “They put nails in those bombs. Isn’t that right?”

The one who rode into Jerusalem long ago would say, “It is true. They put nails there, but it is not right.” There are so many things that are so wrong and so terrible that finally he stopped talking about them. Finally he let them put nails in his own hands. Finally he was obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. That is the way he made things right. By God, that was the way he made things right.

“Who is this?” the people wondered, as he entered the city. He was earthquake, wind, and fire. He was majesty, and he was lowliness. He was everything that ought to shape our life and our lives together. Amen.

Endnotes
1. As told by Michael Battle in “The Other Kingdom,” Christian Century (November 2001): 13.
2. Sims, Bennett J., Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997), 14.
3. As noted by Bennett J. Simms from Carl Sandburg’s Harvest Poems (New York: Harcourt, Bruce, Jovanovitch, 1960).
4. Walton, Jan M., “Truly, This Man Was God’s Son,” Westminster Presbyterian Church, Wilmington, Delaware. March 23, 1997.
5. Salfen, Ron. “A Beautiful Mind,“ The Presbyterian Outlook (February 11, 2002): 15.
6. Ibid.
7. O’Day, Gail R. New Proclamation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1998): 237.
8. Placher, William. Narratives of a Vulnerable God (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994).