Texts: Matthew 4: 18-22; I Peter 2: 4-10
Building a Bridge from Sunday to Monday
The other day I attended a community gathering to speak about the work of resettling refugees that we and the two other churches in town have undertaken together. I loved doing it. I loved sharing that story with people who may not have heard it already. When it came time to eat, a request was made that I’ve become accustomed to: “Steve, you’re a minister – would you offer the prayer?” It happens quite often – at family gatherings, sometimes, but also around here. And I don’t mind – usually I feel honored to be asked. But I’d like to confess something to you this morning. The confession is that when it happens, I often wonder if the request betrays an unspoken assumption that there are two categories when it comes to matters of faith. There is the professional category, the A team, if you will – ordained ministers who go to divinity school and are trained to address matters of faith. And then there is the so-called B team – ordinary folks who might help to run the church or carry out its programs, but who must defer on the important stuff. One is equipped to do the serious work of ministry – praying for example, or visiting someone undergoing a loss – while the other is charged with performing all the other tasks needed to help a church function well. That may or may not be what anyone consciously believes, but in practice, it can often fall out that way. What I’d like to do today is to make trouble for that distinction. In part, I wish to do so as a way of following up what I had to say last week about being a community of care. But I also wish to do so in order to empower and embolden you in your own vocation as ministers. And yes, you did hear that right!
First, a little bit of history. The distinction between professionals and ordinary folk has very little basis in the New Testament. To cite the most obvious example, Jesus himself is not a religious professional. He didn’t go to school to do what he did. He’s not a Pharisee, or a priest. His profession? A carpenter. He worked with his hands. The movement he began was also composed of ordinary people, doing ordinary things – Peter and James and John were fishermen, Matthew was a tax collector. Neither the men nor the women who composed Jesus’s inner circle were religious professionals. It was a grass roots movement that he began.
But that distinction has little basis in the early church either. True, there were eventually offices such as deacon or elder or bishop, but they were never distinguished from the laity. In that regard, the Greek word “laos,” from which the word laity comes, simply means people. It was used to refer to everyone who participated in the community endeavor known as church. Those who were called upon to teach or preach – ordained – were still a part of the laos, or laity. It’s true, there was a difference in function, but not in status.
That all changed, of course. By the time Martin Luther was active, in the sixteenth century, there were two classes of people within the church. One, made of priests, was active, while the other, made up of the laity, was passive. The priests dispensed God’s grace. The laity received it. The priests ran the church, while everyone else went along for the ride. But most importantly of all, it was the priests alone who were viewed as God’s ambassadors or emissaries in the world. Anyone could be a part of the church, but if you were really serious about living out your faith in day to day life, you found a way to join the ranks of the clergy.
One result of the Protestant Reformation was a rediscovery of the New Testament idea of ministry. Luther reveled in the insight he discovered in the passage we heard earlier from I Peter: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness and into the light.” Luther understood that those words were addressed not to some category of persons called “clergy,” but to everyone who had become captivated by the unfolding story of Jesus. He came to the conclusion that all such people, not just a few, are representatives of God or Christ in the world. He understood that all people have the capacity to be “priests” in their interactions with others.
The priesthood of all believers is what it came to be called. It’s a concept that requires some careful translation. The very word “priest” is likely to be a stumbling block for some. It’s an archaic word, and I would venture to say that most among us don’t spend their days wishing to be thought of as a priest. In truth, however, it means something rather ordinary. It means one who mediates God before another. If that still sounds a little too formal, translate it further. Perhaps it’s better to say that a priest, in the simplest sense, is one who bears a trace of God, a trace of grace. What the Reformers rediscovered, in other words, was the New Testament sense that we each bear the responsibility and privilege of being that trace, of bearing that grace, before one another. That’s ultimately what it means to be a minister. Whatever our occupation or profession, even if we have none, even if we’ve retired, we share a common vocation with one another: to be ministers of this thing called church, which is not a building. It is a community, and a form of life.
This morning, on this first Sunday of the “new” year, with its cycle of activities and events, what I wish to do is to encourage you in your ministry. I don’t know if it’s true for everyone, but I wonder sometimes if you realize the significance of your ministry. You may not even recognize that you’re engaged in ministry, when in fact you are.
I am not, by the way, dismissing what I do, or what Carleen or Laura does, as unimportant. Churches will always need leadership, and a church like this one, with nearly 1000 members and friends on the rolls, and programs that run seven days a week, require more rather than less professional leadership if our collective work is to remain vital and energized. All three of us consider it a great privilege to enact that form of ministry in this place. I can say for myself that it’s a responsibility that I take very seriously, but one in which I find an immense amount of pleasure and joy.
But there is another kind of ministry, which is entirely in your hands. And it happens not here, not on Sunday mornings, where you spend, at most, a few hours a week. It happens out there, in your everyday life where you spend the majority of your time. It happens in your homes and in your workplaces. It happens at the gym and at civic functions. It happens in the way you conduct yourself on your social media accounts. And it happens in the sort of policies that you lend your support to, or choose to challenge. It’s what we can think of as the bridge between Sunday and Monday.
That bridge doesn’t simply exist – it has to be built and maintained. A faith that is practiced on Sunday without any connection to other parts of life is irrelevant and pointless. Our hymns and prayers, our unison readings and sermons, our anthems and children’s programs have little impact on the world, to say nothing of ourselves, unless there is a bridge between this place and the rest of our lives. When it falls into disrepair, we become anachronistic at best. At worst, it means that the false idols and pernicious values that do sometimes gather force in the world remain unchallenged, and unmasked. We need well maintained bridges between Sunday and Monday, between what we say and believe here, and what happens in every other part of our lives. Not only do we need the bridge – we each of us need to travel across it often.
I’d like to call your attention to some places that you might work to build that bridge, places that, without you, there would be no ministry. To start, you can cross that bridge from Sunday to Monday in and through your work. I’m not speaking only to those who have a “job.” Some of us are paid to work, and some of us are not, but most all of us work. That’s one of the defining features of our humanity – we are those who work at something – a job, a calling, a long term goal. A parent who stays home to raise a child works. An unpaid volunteer works. And in and through our work, there are opportunities for ministry.
Doing your work competently and well should be understood as a form of ministry. No doubt you remember the story of Captain Sullenberger, or Sully, as he’s known, the United Airlines pilot who landed his aircraft on the Hudson River. After a flock of birds disabled the engine of the plane, he stayed absolutely level headed, took stock of the situation, and determined that if he brought it down just right, he could skim it across the water. “It’s my aircraft,” he said to his crew, taking over the controls and steering above the George Washington Bridge and onto the surface of the water. No one was lost. Everyone was safely evacuated. Here’s how Sully himself put it: “One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15, 2009, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”[1] I would suggest that each of those passengers can thank God that he was a man of such high competence.
But it’s not only in such rare or dangerous moments that competency counts. It counts if you’re running a business, and you’re tasked with making wise decisions that will affect the well being of employees who depend upon you for their well being. It counts if you’re a nurse, doing your work with skill and compassion. It counts if you’re a builder, choosing not to take short cuts or substitute inferior materials. It counts if you’re a reporter or writer, trying to tell the truth about a given situation. It counts if you’re a teacher, charged with shaping the minds of the young. It counts if you’re a researcher or scientist, working to understand processes within the natural world. It counts if you’re a parent nurturing a child. Ordinary competence should never be underestimated in the world. I believe it to be a form of ministry, where the bridge between Sunday and Monday can be witnessed.
Another way that bridge can be crossed is in your relationships – as a spouse, parent, colleague, friend, or neighbor. I wonder if you’ve ever thought of yourself as a minister, or priest, in those relationships, as someone who mediates the love of God, or more simply, who mediates grace. That could happen in what you do. Whenever you stop and listen to a child, or go by to check on someone who’s unable to get out, or when you write a note to someone whose spouse has died. Whenever you forgive a wrong, or greet a stranger, or make room in your life for a refugee, or those recently arrived from another country, I believe that you’re acting as a priest, a mediator of grace. It’s a simple form of what we call around here a “ministry of presence.” It’s just being there for another. That too is a place where the bridge between Sunday and Monday can be crossed.
Yet another way to cross that bridge is through the institutions you’re a part of. It might be the Rotary or some community foundation, it might be a museum or a town committee. It might be one of the boards you sit on, the professional association you belong to, and yes, the political parties on whose behalf you organize. I believe it’s important to have people of faith on those boards and committees, because you can help to humanize them, to steer them in ways that might help to remind others of the importance of things we learn from our faith: the dignity and value of all human persons, the need to care for and protect the most vulnerable in our society, the need to enact care for our planet, to name a few. It’s true, we’re not the only ones who can do that, and thankfully, people do it with or without the help of churches. Still, we do bear a responsibility to do our part to shape the culture around us, reminding it and ourselves of deep seated values that are too often ignored or minimized. That’s especially important when versions of Christian faith are ascendant that would have us pursue narrow or limited goods for a limited number of people. In this particular moment, the bridge between Sunday and Monday entails reminding the world that other forms of Christian faith exist, ones that, I submit, have far deeper roots than what is on display in the popular imagination.
In truth, there are all kinds of ways to cross the bridge between Sunday and Monday. What is required is the kind of imagination to see a situation where the influence of faith might be needed, and then to respond: to see a lonely person and respond with a gesture of friendship, to see some poisoned area of life and to respond with a reconciling act, to name a truth that no one else is willing to speak our countenance. What is required is an awareness that in your law practice or your laboratory, in the media and in medicine, in the corporate office or the union hall, in your clubs or your civic engagements, you are there as a representative of Jesus and his reconciling ministry. For those of you who are reluctant about Jesus language, let me put it like this: you’re there as an agent of that reconciling, healing, transforming, challenging and mending power that courses through the world and through each of our hearts. That’s serious stuff.
So far I have only spoken about the crossing that all of you are making between Sunday and Monday. But I actually think we as clergy need to do it too. Clergy especially are prone to sequester themselves in a Sunday world. And so here’s an ask: I wonder if you’d be willing to allow us to visit you in your Monday world, wherever that might be. Maybe it’s at work over a lunch break or a coffee break. Maybe it’s in your home, as you’re taking care of your kids. Even if you think it would be embarrassing or boring to show off your Monday world and the work that you do, I hope might consider it. For me, it would be a privilege to see you on both sides of the bridge between Sunday and Monday. More than that, it would help us as clergy to build that Sunday/Monday bridge, little by little, bit by bit. So if you’re willing, let me know, and I’ll come find you!
I’ll conclude with this: if the ideals of our faith are to be realized, if the values which we profess are to thrive, if the word of prophetic grace that we proclaim is to have any relevance, it will be because you’ve managed to cross the bridge from Sunday to Monday, wherever that might finally be. That is your calling. That is your vocation.
And oh, one more thing. If you ask me to pray, I’ll be pleased to do it. But I might turn the request back on you, because you too are a minister in this endeavor of grace!
[1] As quoted in “Wisdom of the Elders,” by Bill Newcott, AARP Magazine, May/June 2009.
