A Fourth Church Sermon by John Buchanan

November 25, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Finding Ourselves in the Story

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 138
Luke 1: 68–79

As people of the Word,
throughout Christian history,
we have helped one another to discover
a new word and new life in an old book.

Lillian Daniel

I want to start today by telling you two of my favorite stories.

When my friend Scott was a bright-eyed, curly-haired eight-year-old, he went with his dad to a conference at a big resort hotel. What Scott remembers most about that trip is the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. The first morning, Scott went to the buffet and loaded up his plate, only to turn around and find that all of the tables were taken. So he walked up to a table for six that had one empty seat and asked if he could sit down with the five strange-looking characters at the table. That night, when Scott was telling his dad about his day, he said, “Dad, I ate breakfast with these nice guys, and I’m kind of worried about them. They say they’re in a band, but I didn’t recognize any of the names of their songs, and I didn’t know them when they sang the lines to me either. I don’t think they’re going to make it, Dad, because they don’t even have a good name. They call themselves the Rolling Stones.”

My second story is a little closer to home.

My friend Judy is a member of this congregation. She told me that a few weeks ago she was on her way to church, running late, barreling down Sheridan Road when, at a stoplight, she noticed a woman she knew waiting for the bus. So she pushed open her door and said, “Hey, are you headed to church? Hop in and I’ll give you a ride.” They made small talk as they drove until, around the Fullerton exit, the woman turned to Judy and said, “So what church are we going to?”

“Well, we’re going to Fourth Church,” answered Judy.

“Fourth Church? But I go to St. Paul’s.”

“Well then why did you get in my car?” asked Judy.

“Because you look just like this woman who goes to St. Paul’s with me.”

“Well, I asked you to get in because you look just like this woman who goes to Fourth Church with me.”

I love stories that show that life isn’t as predictable as we think and that sometimes things take a turn down a road we don’t expect. I think what the very best stories do—and I’m not sure the ones I told fit this category—is slow us down (or stop us right in our tracks) and get us to notice things we would not otherwise see.

I’m not a very observant person, mostly, I think, because I get lazy or desensitized about things I’ve seen before. I can remember when I moved here, walking down Michigan Avenue and noticing how tall the buildings are, but now I get annoyed when I have to slow down my pace on the sidewalk because some other newcomer is taking a picture of the Hancock. I get even more annoyed when they don’t stop for a picture but just continue slowly down the sidewalk, swerving back and forth in front of me as they notice how tall it is. I really don’t care to notice anymore.

That example is pretty harmless, but what happens if we ignore things at someone else’s expense? John Buchanan noted a few weeks ago that he’d never really noticed how high and treacherous some of the curbs are in this neighborhood until he had his hip replaced.

More to the point for people of faith is the fact that many of us approach our faith stories the same way that I ignore the Hancock and John ignores the curbs. We say the Lord’s Prayer every week, but when is the last time you really thought about what it means? And when we read a story from the Bible, do you really think it has anything to do with you, or do you tend to assume that it doesn’t because it was written so long ago?

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It’s the last Sunday in what we call the liturgical year. Next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we start our story once again, looking forward to the birth of Jesus. So today, on the last Sunday, it’s time to look back at the whole story and see if there are any surprises—things that might slow us down.

And so this morning I want to remind you of a story, a story that should really make us stop in our tracks. There are a number of places in scripture where, often poetically, the Bible tells us its whole story; it sums up everything we really need to know in just a few lines, and today being Christ the King Sunday, I read you one of those poems.

The passage from Luke that I read this morning is a poem sung by Zechariah. Zechariah is a priest, as the story goes. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are righteous and blameless before God, but they have no children, and in the ancient world, barrenness was a huge problem. As long as we’re talking about stories, it seems worth mentioning that the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis starts off the same way—maybe God is trying to tell us something through a story. Well, back to the story: Zechariah and Elizabeth are old, so they might have finally gotten used to the idea of not having children, but then, like in Abraham’s story, an angel visits Zechariah and tells him that he and Elizabeth will have a child—and Zechariah doesn’t believe that it can be true. As the story goes, because of his unbelief, he is struck dumb and his voice doesn’t return until his son is born. After five months, Zechariah gets his voice back, and the first thing he does is sing the song that I recited as our reading for today. It begins, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably upon his people and redeemed them.”

How many of us, having been without a voice for five months, would make our first words a beautiful, carefully crafted song about the story of the Bible? My hunch is not very many. You might be overjoyed about your ability to speak again, but would you have the presence of mind to craft a poem about the mighty acts of God over the history of your people? Probably not. This is what is so different about the story. Zechariah thinks about God first.

Thinking about God first has been the point for Christians throughout history. In monasteries, monks rise at dawn and sing a song called the Benedictus, which is the name given to the song Zechariah sang. Only after singing this song would they begin their day. It’s not that you’re expected to think about nothing other than God, but you’re supposed to start by thinking about God and then let that disposition inform the way you think about everything else.

So that’s my first point: Try making God the first thing you think about. That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s a pretty abstract directive for most of us. How in the world would you do it? I want to tell you about a normal twenty-first-century person who tried.

A. J. Jacobs is a pretty normal guy. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Julie, and his son, Jasper. A. J.’s extended family is at least nominally Jewish, but A. J. is not religious. As Jasper becomes a little older, though, A. J. gets more interested in religion. It’s not uncommon to go down this road when having a first child, but A. J. takes it a little farther than joining the church. He decides that in order to find out if there really is anything to religion, he has to immerse himself in it. So he reads the Bible and writes down all of its instructions, and he decides that for one year he is going to live the Bible as literally as possible.

A. J. learns some interesting things about how hard it is to follow the law. Imagine living in Manhattan without lying or coveting; imagine stoning adulterers in Central Park; imagine not cutting your hair and imagine wearing tassels on the ends of your garments, none of which are made of mixed fibers because that is forbidden in Leviticus. A. J. did it, or tried very hard, for a year. By the way, he wrote about it in a very fun book called The Year of Living Biblically. What was most interesting to me is what the laws taught A. J. about other things in his life.

A. J. obsessively checks his email, which he realizes when he finds it so very hard to keep the Sabbath.

He spends a tremendous amount of time paying attention to women or cars he sees in magazines or the child of a friend whose vocabulary is progressing more quickly than Jasper’s, but he never realizes how much time until he tries not to covet or make images.

A. J. has been concerned for a long time about the lack of discipline in Jasper’s life, but he never really thinks hard about how to do better until he reads about God’s balance of justice and mercy as a father.

In short, A. J. does something much like those Benedictine monks in the fifth century and Zechariah at the birth of his son: He pays lots of attention to putting God first in his mind, and in doing so, he learns a lot about the rest of his life.

But there’s more. Toward the end of The Year of Living Biblically, A. J. and Julie have twins. When Jasper, their first son, had been circumcised, A. J. and Julie went in the bedroom and talked as loudly as they could about nothing so as to avoid seeing or hearing the process. But when the new twins are born, A. J. stays in the room. He knows that circumcision is a big part of the Bible, but he admittedly doesn’t understand it. He finds it to be one of the “Five Most Perplexing Rules in the Bible.” He watches as the mohel lays out a towel, places his son upon it, and lines up the instruments that will be used for the circumcision. He observes the ritual. He hears and sees his new son cry out in pain. Lew, the mohel, says a prayer: “May He who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, David and Solomon, bless this tender infant,” and in response, A. J. writes of his son, “[My son] has sacrificed a part of his body to join an ancient community.” Hearing these biblical names spoken out loud at the conclusion of his year of living biblically, A. J. reflects, “These are no longer meaningless names. These are the men I’d spent my year with. This was a chain that—if Lew continued spouting names for several hours—would presumably reach [my grandfather, and my father, and me]” (pp. 320–321).

By spending some time learning the Bible and trying very hard to pay attention to the stories in it, A. J. not only learns about himself; he begins to find himself in the story. He discovers that the stories carry the power to draw us outside of ourselves and cause us to see things another way.

Back to Zechariah. When Zechariah has five months to think about the visit from the angel and the surprise pregnancy of his wife, what really happens is that he starts to see Abraham, who also fathered a child in his old age, and all of Abraham’s descendants like A. J. saw them: “These are the men I’ve spent my years with. This is a chain that I am a part of.” That’s why Zechariah can’t do anything but sing a song about what God has done. The story draws him outside of himself.

Listen again to the words of the song that sums up our story: “God has shown us the mercy promised to our ancestors,” Zechariah sings. “God has remembered the promise he made to Abraham, and he has granted it to me, and to us, so that we can live without fear. God has promised to save us and forgive us of our sins.” “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” This is Abraham’s story. This is Zechariah’s story. This is A. J.’s story. This is our story. Let me tell you one more story.

On the night of his arrest, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, saying, this is my body, broken for you. When you eat this bread, do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, he took the cup and said, this cup is the new covenant, the renewal of the promise God has made to you, sealed in my blood, poured out for you and for many, that our sins might be forgiven. Whenever you drink of it, do this in remembrance of me.

In much the same way that I don’t notice the height of the Hancock building and Zechariah didn’t notice how similar his story was to Abraham’s and A. J. didn’t notice that that same promise was still in place for himself and for his sons, you might not have paid much attention to the fact that whenever you hear those words, spoken at the Communion table, they are spoken only after we listen to our story.

At that table in a few moments I will remind you of God’s call to Abraham and to Moses. I will remind you of the ways God called Israel to live and of the ways they fell short. I will remind you of a story of kings and queens and prophets, farmers and peasants, teachers and doctors and parents. It’s a story that draws us outside of ourselves and connects us to one another and to the ones who came before us. It’s about people who long to follow God and people who fail. It’s about people who are overworked and covetous and who wish they were better parents. And here’s the twist, here’s the surprise in the story, here’s the thing that is entirely different from what we get in every other part of our lives: all of those people, all of the ones who have fallen short and failed, and all of us, you and me, are invited to this table. “Jesus’ Supper offers hope [to every one of us] for [our] future because it is connected to memories of the past,” writes William Placher (Jesus the Savior, p. 123). When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” we don’t just remember that he died or that he ate this meal with his disciples once upon a time; we remember all of the things he said and did and all who went before him. We’re supposed to put ourselves in all of the places where Christ has been. Jesus knew joy and laughter and holiness, and he knew brokenness and pain and betrayal. He knew what it felt like to be side by side with God, and he knew what it felt like to feel forsaken by God. Wherever you are in your story, Christ invites you to this table to be a part of his.

Exactly how this happens is a mystery. I do not understand it. If I wrote a book about living biblically, this meal would be one of my “Five Most Perplexing Things in the Bible.” But while I don’t fully comprehend how it works, what I can tell you is this: there have been times in my life when I have come to this table empty and I have been filled.

The gift that is given at this table is for you and for me and for many others and for many who have come before us in the story. We share the bread because we share the story with all of them. We share the bread to remind you that you are not alone.

In this meal, we look forward to the reign of Christ. We look forward to a time when we will live without fear, when we will know that we are fully forgiven. We look forward to a time when Christ will come to give light to the darkness and, in the shadow of death, will guide our feet into the way of peace.

Amen.