- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: John 13:31-35

When I asked Dr. Allen about the focus for this service, he said this, the next to last chapel service, should focus on vocation and leave-taking. He reminded me that this is the season for graduation, for sending, for commissioning. This is the time of year when students leave the seminary environment and make the transition to full-time ministry in a local church.

So I guess it is appropriate that I preach a topical sermon with advice to seminary students. After almost forty years of service in the local church, I thought that I must surely have some advice for today's seminary student.

I do not deem myself to be a particularly successful minister. I have struggled along in small churches for most of my career. But I have persisted, and in this business persistence counts for something.

Not everyone persists. I have known of far too many seminary graduates who begin their work in the local church with enthusiasm and energy. But quite often the reality of life in the parish is far different from the expectations of the young minister. Many do not last long.

So today I want to share with you my best advice learned from my own personal experience. And I will at least make some connection to the text. The focal point of the Gospel text for today says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

I looked at the text and thought, "Love, yuk!" Preaching on love is almost as difficult as preaching on Easter. What else is there to say that hasn't been said?

I would much prefer preaching on a narrative passage, a parable or even a thorny, problem text, where I could attempt to impress you with my exegesis. I would like to demonstrate to a seminary crowd that I can and usually do preach the text, as I was taught in seminary long ago.

When I apply the passage about love to today's audience, the message for me is, "If we love one another as Jesus instructed, then we must love the church," and by that I mean the local church. It is not enough to love the Church Universal or the church in general. You must love the individual local church, and more importantly the people in it. There's an old joke that says, "I love the church, it's the people I can't stand." That option is not really open to the minister.

So today I want to talk about loving the church by pointing out the physical importance and the symbolic importance of two tables in the local church, the Table and the table. In order to really love the church, you must love the both the Table and the table.

The previous paragraph is hard to understand verbally because one of the tables is capitalized and one is not. If you were reading this sermon, it would be immediately clear to you because you could see the beginning letters of each. Or if I would allow a verbal distinction I could add an adjective before "table," such as "Communion Table." Then you would know which one was which. But I want to emphasize not the separation of the two kinds of table but their similarity.

Therefore, I will be using cue cards to help you listen. When I talk about the Communion Table, I will hold up this card with a capital "T" on it. When I talk about the other table, I will hold up this card with a lowercase "t" on it.

You did know that there were two kinds of table in the local church, didn't you? It is easy to forget that during the heady days of seminary. There is so much focus here on the Table, that you can forget there is another table.

As Disciples of Christ, we love to talk about the Table. In fact, the Table almost defines who we are as Disciples. In worship class, you have, no doubt, been required to write a paper about the Table. Every Sunday in our tradition, the pastor gives a brief meditation about the meaning and importance of the Table. The Table represents communion with God, our participation in the death of Christ, and a remembrance of the whole of the Christ event.

But I want to suggest that it has a broader symbolism, at least in this sermon it does. The Table represents handling holy things, spirituality, the love of God, the high calling of God in Christ Jesus and all that you have learned in seminary. The Table represents your training. It also represents the best that is in the church. It represents the highest and finest that is in people. The Table represents the very core of why one enters ministry in the first place.

And the Table represents the idealism of the seminary student. Students are eager to go to work in a local church because they think that it is surely a wonderful place to work. It's all about God there. It's a place away from the ways of the world, a place where people love one another and genuinely pursue spirituality. It's a place where people treat each other with Christian kindness, where people are trying to change themselves and the world for the better. It's all about the Table.

But after almost forty years in ministry, I must tell you that church life is not always about the Table. In fact, there is another table in the church, and it is one we must recognize and embrace as well.

This table represents the other side of ministry, for ministry is not all spirituality, theology and light. Ministry is also about the practical, about the mundane, about the lowest in human nature, about sin, about a multitude of activity, about fellowship, about recreation, about planning, and especially about committee meetings.

This table is much more common than the other Table. By now you have surely guessed what it is - the eight-foot, folding table. You will spend much more time around the table than you will behind the Table.

This table serves a pivotal role in the ministry of every church, no matter what the denomination. Churches have been known to prosper just fine for years on end without a minister, but no church could survive a week without an abundance of folding tables.

Around this eight-foot tribute to modern engineering, God's people hold committee meetings, study the Bible, and share potluck meals. The table provides the perfect place for the Bibles to rest while discussing a Sunday School lesson on the Suffering Servant. If a committee has too many people to fit comfortably around a folding table, then the committee has too many people on it. The adorning stains and grease marks reek of Aunt Sue's cherry cobbler and Sister Wilma's fried chicken. A thousand fellowship meals spread before hungry worshippers have left their indelible mark.

Wonderful inventions that they are; their very flexibility demands that they be set up, taken down, moved, and stacked away only to be unstacked and put back up for the next meeting or meal. And it's the minister who is usually the only one around when ministry to the table is needed. McDonalds may boast of their billions of hamburgers sold, but any minister's tenure can be measured in the thousands of folding-tables moved.

The children's choir director is having a lock-in at church tonight, but, of course, the tables were still left up from the Monday Night Dinner. She wants them down. Oh, sure, she could call somebody else to help, but the minister is always conveniently just down the hall.

"Would you mind?" "No, I don't mind." And I don't. Really. I'm not too good to put up or take down a few folding tables. Servant leadership means being willing to move tables. And so it happens just like that every week and has for 40 years! I'm always the one there.

And it happened again this morning. I stopped by the church before coming to the seminary for this service, and one of the CWF ladies asked me to move a table in preparation for the CWF group meeting. I guess it was only appropriate that I move a table before delivering this particular message.

If the Table represents your training, then the table represents the actual reality in the local church. And there is often a disconnect between your training and the day-to-day life on the job. One of my church members says that there is a disconnect like that in most jobs; it's true for nurses; it's true for teachers. And it is the reason that many teachers and nurses don't last when they get to their real jobs.

In seminary, they train you for service at the Table, but in the local church, it will be the table that demands your time.

And sometimes events that take place behind the table are every bit as transformative as what happens behind the Table. Quite often churches are transformed because of people gathered around a table. Committee meetings are both the bane of a minister's existence and the tool by which individuals and the church are changed.

Some of the best things in church happen around the table. I will never forget Betty because she was the best third grade Sunday school teacher I ever knew. She was faithful and true, and exhibited the spirit of Christ as well as anyone I ever met.

We were seated around a table serving as the personnel committee with the responsibility of hiring a new minister of music. When an openly gay man applied for the job, most people in the church opposed him without ever even getting to know him or his credentials. One man even gave an irate speech at the end of a worship service and stormed out of the building, never to return. But Betty said this gay man just might be the one God was leading our way.

Some people in the church said that if we hired him, our church just might die. And Betty replied, "A church that's not willing to die doesn't deserve to live."

I must tell you that I have learned more theology during a small group Bible study with a handful of laity than I learned in my seminary days. People are transformed by studying the Bible around a table. The discussions and interactions that take place around the table are holy ground.

But the table can also represent the negative side of church life. It can remind us that the church is made up of sinful, sometimes dysfunctional people. I believe I have persevered in ministry because my mentors were honest with me about the negative-side of church life.

When I was an associate, one of my mentors shared openly with me his struggles with the negative side of church. He told me he wanted me to be close enough to the kitchen that I could see the fire, but not have to take the heat - not just yet. But my turn would come.

My mentors' horror stories prepared me for my own difficult times. Sometimes we can learn the most from looking at the harsh realities. The table can represent that part of church life as well – the sinful, negative, hurtful side.

One of my first mentors was Dr. John McClanahan, pastor in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. As a young pastor in small Southern town, he took courageous stands fostering improved race relations between blacks and whites. In the mid-60s, the local newspaper wrote an article about his ministry and labeled him as a "maverick." It was a title he would wear proudly.

One day, the "church boss" came into his office and said, "I've studying you, and I have decided that you are an egghead." Don't think that church members won't call you names, and they will say them to your face. But John waited a moment and replied with a perfect response. He said, "Mr. Sanders, I have been called a lot of names in my time, but I have never been called a coward."

My next mentor was Dr. Don Harbuck, pastor in El Dorado, Arkansas. He was a profound scholar and courageous pastor, in spite of the fact that he had been stricken by polio when he was about 20 years old. His right arm was totally useless to him. I will never forget how he swung that arm up to the pulpit each Sunday and delivered an oration with an almost Elizabethan rhetoric.

The Sunday after Martin Luther King died, Dr. Harbuck ended the service with a tribute to the civil rights hero, then walked to the back of the sanctuary as usual to greet the worshippers. The first man out the door had a scowl on his face, and he knocked Dr. Harbuck to the floor. I have always wondered what kind of man it takes to knock a cripple to the ground.

Dr. Harbuck always reminded me of the realities of in the local church. He often told me, "The church is not your mother." Your mother will encourage you, nurture you, forgive you and always think the best of you. The church is not your mother. It's good advice.

But his most memorable warning was this, "For some people, the pastor is just the paid whipping boy." I feel sure that in this case, "boy" can be a demeaning term for women pastors as well as for men pastors.

I remember being shocked when he said that. But I have since learned that he was right. One of the harsh realities of church life is that dysfunctional people bring their dysfunction to the church. Quite often the abuse we receive has nothing to do with us or what we have done. But sometimes we invite it by our failures, sometimes small, sometimes large. I promise you, sometimes you will feel like "the paid whipping boy."

The words and examples of my mentors helped me to persevere when I had difficult moments around a folding table.

The Table and the table remind us of the best and the worst about church life. And my message to students is that you must be prepared for both the best and the worst.

Around these tables, you will learn that church people are the best and most wonderful, loving people in the world, and they will treat you far better than you ever deserve. But I must also tell you that around these tables, you will learn that church people can be the meanest, rudest, smallest people in the world, and they will treat you far worse than you deserve.

If your ecclesiology does not encompass both extremes, you will not survive the local church. If you are not stable and strong, you will not last. If you need them to provide your emotional security, you will not make it. If you do not have your eyes wide open to this reality, you will be blind-sided.

One of the ways I have kept my sanity about me is by pursuing sailing as a hobby. I love to sail. Not long ago I sailed all the way across Kentucky from Pikeville to Hickman. But sailing can be a dangerous sport. There are many ways to sink a boat, and I have discovered most of them.

Someone has said that sailing is 95% boredom and 5% sheer terror. I have found that to be true. In order to enjoy the peaceful days of a pleasant sail on the lake, you have to be prepared for the 5% of sheer terror, when the winds howl and sails shriek. Many people give up on sailing the first time a big gust of wind knocks them down. But I am willing to put up with the 5% sheer terror because I love the 95% good sailing so much.

Serving as a minister in the local church is like that. It is 95% sheer pleasure. But never forget that it is also 5% sheer horror. The table tells you that.

In a few moments we will go the Table, and be reminded of our high calling in Christ Jesus. But never forget that other table and all that it symbolizes, both good and bad. If we are to truly love the church, we have to love them both.