TAKING MY OWN ADVICE

We preachers often, okay, sometimes, have a difficult time taking our own advice. In other words, we do not always practice what we preach. Now I am not thinking about our taking the high moral ground in the pulpit and then, in our personal lives, taking the road that leads otherwise. We all do that at times as we are all sinners. Ordination does not exempt one from succumbing to the temptations of the flesh as we preachers are all humbly aware.

What I am referring to is our sometimes inability or lack of resolve or whatever we may want to call it when we do not follow our own good advice that we hand out from the pulpit or newsletter or simply conversation. For instance, I have over my forty-six years of ministry always encouraged those over whom I had pastoral responsibility to make and take the time to get away from it all.

In other words, take a vacation. A real vacation, not one where we take our work with us. Not one where we have to keep constant ties on what is going on back home. That may be getting away but it is not taking a vacation – vacating, as the word means, from what is daily filling our lives. And the reason why I could and still can preach the necessity of getting away from it all on occasion is that Jesus did it as a regular part of his life and ministry. If you don’t believe me, read the Gospels.

My ultimate dream vacation is two weeks on the beach somewhere. That is still on my bucket list although my brother Fran is beginning to put that reality on the front burner as he and his wife just came back from a one-week on-the-beach-with-nothing-to-do-but-relax vacation. And they needed it much more than I ever have, Jesus did, going somewhere to get away from the maddening crowd who were always chipping at his heels no matter how tired he was.

In lieu of the two-week- beach getaway, Arlena spent eleven days and thirty-four hundred miles driving to Austin to visit daughter Autumn and see her new home. The we headed to Des Moines for the Iowa State Fair and then to Nanny’s (Arlena’s Mom) to make sure her refrigerator was full and her meds were in order, and then home. No one in his or her right mind would call that a relaxing vacation. But it was.

My cell phone was mostly off. We listened to no news or read no newspapers. I did have to check what the Pirates did each day, but the Pirates are part of my DNA, so what can I say? And, yes, I know, Arlena and I are very blessed to be able to take such a trip when so many, many people are not. We are very thankful.

Vacation time is over: the kids are back in school. Even so (putting on my preacher’s hat), even if we never get away, never get to a beach, we can still take quiet time on a regular basis to refresh, reflect, and be still. We must. Our health depends on it.

PROGRESSIVE CONVERGENCE

Because of my personal spiritual journey, throughout my active ministry I have been involved in the ecumenical movement. Back in the day – the late Sixties, Seventies and the early part of the Eighties – ecumenism was at least on the back burner of most denominations and, for some, on the front burner if only heated by the pilot light.

One of the leaders in the movement was the late Roman Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles. He believed that Jesus’ prayer “that we all may be one” would someday become a reality. He knew it would take much time, certainly, for this unity to become realized given that Christianity has been divided for over a thousand years when the Eastern Church broke away from the Western Church. The Reformation only made the break and the division wider and more difficult to mend.

Nevertheless, Dulles believed in, taught and preached what he called a progressive convergence. He believed that if the churches kept working at ecumenism, stressing what we hold in common more than what divides us, if they were sincere in the belief that this is what Jesus wants of us, in God’s good time, progressively we would converge into one church. If only.

It did not happen. It has not happened. And we are probably further away from unity than we were when the ecumenical movement really took off in the late Sixties. We are not converging as much as we are diverging. Added to that, less and less people are attending church let alone joining one. Yes, the so-called mega churches are springing up all around the country. Unfortunately, the central figure in the majority of these churches is the charismatic pastor and not Jesus. This is not sour grapes as it is the simple truth.

I suspect Dulles is not rolling over in his grave so much as he must be grieving because it is the church’s fault that we are more divided than we have ever been. What is worse, in my humble opinion, is that our society, the world over, reflects this continuing division. The church is supposed to be the institution that models what God wants us to be: one in heart and mind and spirit. If we cannot as spiritual leaders get our act together, is it any wonder that our political leaders are so at odds one with another?

None of this sounds in any way optimistic and it is not. Our leaders in Church and State have failed us. But maybe we have failed them as well. We’ve certainly failed God. Real change, and becoming one is one of those real changes, comes not from the top down but from the bottom up. Unless and until those of us who are followers speak up and speak out, our leaders will continue to look out for Number One. And that is not one as in unity but one as in oneself.

Convergence is a possibility and a Gospel demand. Do we believe in the possibility and what will we do to make it a reality?