Holding on to What Holds Us
July 11, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Luke 10:25-37; Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Often during the summer, people gather in family reunions. When I lived in and around Chicago, you could often on the weekends see signs at parks anywhere in the area: Hamilton family reunion, Kitowski reunion, Cummings family picnic. I’ve only been to one family reunion – 24 years ago Carl, Jason, and I went to the Schendorf family reunion – the gathering of my mother’s father’s family. My mother’s father, Winfield Schendorf, was the firstborn of eight, and so this was a large family. The thing that made the reunion a little odd for me was that I had only met one person there (other than Carl and Jason). For a few reasons, the kinds of reasons that sometimes develop in families, we didn’t have much of a relationship with my grandfather’s family, and yet, we were invited to the reunion, and so I went. It was a wonderful, and interesting experience. Although I didn’t know them, many of the people there were my mother’s cousins, and we heard time and time again of how much they loved her. I kept looking around, trying to see if I looked like any of these people.
It is said sometimes that there are three essential questions of faith – indeed, of being human: those questions are: who are we? Who is God? And, how then shall we live? Or if you prefer, questions of identity, theology, and ethics. Identity: what does it mean to be human? Who are the people who are like me? What are my particular gifts, and what are the distinctive of our community? Who are we together? Theology: what is the nature of God? How is God in relationship to me, to us? Ethics: how, then, shall we live? How do we behave in relation to ourselves, to God, to other people, to all of life, and to the earth?
And those were the questions that arose in one way or another, again and again, during the great family reunion that is the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. in Minneapolis over the past ten days. As most of you know, I was a commissioner to General Assembly. The PCUSA gathers its congregations into presbyteries, mostly regional bodies – there are 173 presbyteries, and we belong to Winnebago Presbytery, which includes 40 churches in eastern and central Wisconsin. We are a small presbytery, and so we sent one minister commissioner, one elder commissioner, and one Young Adult Advisory Delegate (commonly called YAAD). At General Assembly, there were 710 commissioners, and plus YAAD’s and advisory delegates who are seminary students, or missionaries, or ecumenical representatives.
Each of us was assigned to a committee and we spent most of the first few days in committee work, except for gathering in plenary to elect a moderator of General Assembly. The moderator, with their vice-moderator, presides over the meetings of General Assembly, and becomes the public face of the PCUSA for the 2 years until the next General Assembly. There were six candidates for moderator – showing the breadth of our church: 5 ministers and an elder; 3 men, 3 women; 1 African-American, 1 Korean-American, 4 Caucasians; they came from California, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Eau Claire, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. And the commissioners elected as moderator Cindy Bolbach, an elder from Washington, D.C., an attorney who is bright, capable, and extremely funny.
She was, for the past four years, the co-moderator of the Form of Government Revision Task Force – a group charged with writing a new constitution that would be more flexible, less legalistic than our current form of government, and they did a marvelous job. My committee was the Form of Government Revision committee and so I spent some months in advance of the assembly studying it, and then several days with my committee of 42 persons trying to tweak it.
But I don’t want to get bogged down in trying to report all the details of the assembly. What I do want to share with you is how we did our work, and what the nature of that work was, because that relates very much to our scriptures this morning, and to those eternal questions of: who are we? who is God? and how then shall we live? And this sermon has become longer because of some of the publicity around the General Assembly, and responses to that.
Every time we gathered in committee or in plenary, we prayed. And during our meetings in the plenary session, there was an area in the meeting room, curtained off, where presbytery executives took turns praying for the meeting. When we met in plenary, we began by praying together in small groups, and then being led in prayer by a youth, a theological student, a missionary or an ecumenical representative. And often we paused before a significant vote to pray.
And this is a distinctive of the Presbyterian Church – we gather to make decisions together. We are not commissioned to represent our presbytery, our congregation, or our own opinion – we are commissioned to represent Christ to and with one another. We gather to discern the will of God together, and we listen for the Word of God in Scripture, in our hearts, and in the voices of others – those who disagree with us as well as those who agree with us. Or as our former moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow, said in his sermon last Sunday morning: “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
This is one of the greatest contributions our church makes to the world. A friend of mine from our trip to Israel was there – he is an African-American Baptist minister who is also the Dean of Students at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And he was so excited by what he saw – he said to me, “You all have such an important thing going on here – this may be the only place that civil discourse is happening in our society.”
Some of you may have seen an Associated Press article on the Huffington Post which quotes – actually misquotes – remarks I made in one of the two times I spoke in the plenary session. I’d like to give you a fuller picture. There was a lot of passion around many issues facing this General Assembly. Members of our congregation feel strongly about many of these issues. As I prepared for serving as a commissioner, I tried to learn as much as I could about the issues. I spent particular time trying to understand the issues around the report prepared by the Middle East Study Committee – it was a long report, with several appendices. Many people were very excited about this report, as they felt it finally brought needed appropriate attention to the conditions experienced by the Palestinians. Others felt that it was imbalanced, and not fair to the Jews. As most of you know, following my trip to Israel last year, I have been increasingly concerned about the human and civil rights abuses that Palestinians experience in Israel. At the same time, who among us can forget the centuries of anti-Semitism that reached a new low point in the Holocaust in Germany?
I studied the whole report. Our Session discussed it. Both our Session and the presbytery passed resolutions urging further study. The situation in the Middle East is extremely complex, and I did not know how I would be able to vote on this. I met with my colleague and friend Dan Danson who is the rabbi at Mt. Sinai Synagogue in Wausau. He shared his concerns with me, and another rabbi, Rabbi Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, NC, wrote to me of similar concerns. Both of these favor a two-state solution in Israel. Both are colleagues who care about Christian-Jewish relationships. I talked with Cynthia Campbell, President of McCormick Seminary. I studied the report of the proceedings of the Middle East Peacemaking Committee which made important changes to the report. I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to speak out regarding what I see as imbalance in the report, though significant improvements were made.
Let me share with you the complete content of what I said during the plenary session, which was,
The AP got the words close, but not exact. I wanted to share my complete statement with you so that you might understand the full context of my remarks. This morning, when I arrived at church, there was a message on the answering machine from an anonymous caller who said, in part,
I’m sharing this with you because my friend Kilen is right: civil discourse is in short supply, and it may be the greatest witness that we as Presbyterians have to offer the world.
One of the members of my committee was seated near me during the plenary sessions. Lon is from Western Kentucky, and he and I rarely voted the same way on issues. But Lon said, yesterday morning, that he had grown to believe during his time at General Assembly that the people he had met there truly had a “Christ agenda” and not their own agenda. This is huge. Many people are very disappointed at many of the decisions made at General Assembly – they decry the decisions that I welcomed. Our church is not of one mind on some very important issues. But if people who disagree are open to the possibility that the decisions represent God’s will for the church, and if people trust that others are sincerely seeking to serve God faithfully as we all vote, then that is significant. “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
Most people in life are trying to do the right thing. In our reading from Deuteronomy, we are told to obey the voice of God and to turn to God with all our heart and soul. And we are assured that “…this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” But we in the Presbyterian Church have learned how easily we, as individuals – even as faithful, prayerful individuals – can be mistaken, and so we entrust ourselves to God and to each other. We believe that we can discern together, by talking and listening to one another, and to the Word of God together. We recognize that our sense of things has changed over time – there was a time when we didn’t allow women to serve as deacons, or elders, or ministers; there was a time when we didn’t welcome children to the Communion table until they had been confirmed – our understanding of these things has changed.
And as we discerned together, my understanding of particular things changed – I found myself, on more than one occasion, voting for something that didn’t represent the option I favored, but in accordance with what I had grown to understand, by listening to others, was best for the whole church. “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
And, turning to our other scripture, the story of the Good Samaritan – we all shared the understanding that part of who we are together as people of God is being people who love and care for our neighbor – but some of what we sought to discern together was how best to do that? What’s the best way to reach out to the immigrants in our midst? Is it time to speak out against the war in Afghanistan? How do we make choices in how to spend our money? Should we fund education around coastal wetlands or increase funding to collegiate ministries? How should we be in relationship with Muslims and Jews? Should our ordination standards be changed? How do we grow Christ’s church deep and wide? Not all the votes went the way I wanted. But I trust the process, and I trust that they went the way that is best for our church to serve God faithfully right now.
And in the midst of all these decisions and discernments is a central question about what we hold onto in a changing world. The hymn we will sing in a few moments is one we sang more than once during our time together: Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing. It is a wonderful hymn, with very traditional language, some of which I wouldn’t choose, but most of which I love. And in the second verse there is a line that is kind of odd: “here I raise my Ebenezer.” What’s an Ebenezer? The word comes from a story in 1 Samuel about a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines. Israel won the battle, and afterwards, the story continues (1 Samuel 7:12-14) “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jesha'nah, and called its name Ebene'zer; for he said, ‘Hitherto the LORD has helped us.’ So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath; and Israel rescued their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites.” The word Ebenezer comes from two Hebrew words meaning “safe stone”.
What do we hold onto for safety? As Presbyterians, we hold onto the love of God, the word of God, and the people of God – we are people of compassion, discernment, and community. We hold onto these, because these are what holds us, too. As the Presbyterian Church discusses and votes over the next year whether to affirm the decisions of the 219th General Assembly, these votes will be in large part about what is our Ebenezer: is it the rules of the current Form of Government, or is it our ability to discern together and trust one another? Is it one single understanding of who and how God is, or trusting that we are each faithfully seeking understanding? “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.” The love of God, the Word of God, and the people of God – the compassion of God for the earth and all who live in it, the truth we discern as faithful people seeking understanding, and the community who loves God and carries God’s love to the world – these together are our Ebenezer. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Luke 10:25-37; Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Often during the summer, people gather in family reunions. When I lived in and around Chicago, you could often on the weekends see signs at parks anywhere in the area: Hamilton family reunion, Kitowski reunion, Cummings family picnic. I’ve only been to one family reunion – 24 years ago Carl, Jason, and I went to the Schendorf family reunion – the gathering of my mother’s father’s family. My mother’s father, Winfield Schendorf, was the firstborn of eight, and so this was a large family. The thing that made the reunion a little odd for me was that I had only met one person there (other than Carl and Jason). For a few reasons, the kinds of reasons that sometimes develop in families, we didn’t have much of a relationship with my grandfather’s family, and yet, we were invited to the reunion, and so I went. It was a wonderful, and interesting experience. Although I didn’t know them, many of the people there were my mother’s cousins, and we heard time and time again of how much they loved her. I kept looking around, trying to see if I looked like any of these people.
It is said sometimes that there are three essential questions of faith – indeed, of being human: those questions are: who are we? Who is God? And, how then shall we live? Or if you prefer, questions of identity, theology, and ethics. Identity: what does it mean to be human? Who are the people who are like me? What are my particular gifts, and what are the distinctive of our community? Who are we together? Theology: what is the nature of God? How is God in relationship to me, to us? Ethics: how, then, shall we live? How do we behave in relation to ourselves, to God, to other people, to all of life, and to the earth?
And those were the questions that arose in one way or another, again and again, during the great family reunion that is the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. in Minneapolis over the past ten days. As most of you know, I was a commissioner to General Assembly. The PCUSA gathers its congregations into presbyteries, mostly regional bodies – there are 173 presbyteries, and we belong to Winnebago Presbytery, which includes 40 churches in eastern and central Wisconsin. We are a small presbytery, and so we sent one minister commissioner, one elder commissioner, and one Young Adult Advisory Delegate (commonly called YAAD). At General Assembly, there were 710 commissioners, and plus YAAD’s and advisory delegates who are seminary students, or missionaries, or ecumenical representatives.
Each of us was assigned to a committee and we spent most of the first few days in committee work, except for gathering in plenary to elect a moderator of General Assembly. The moderator, with their vice-moderator, presides over the meetings of General Assembly, and becomes the public face of the PCUSA for the 2 years until the next General Assembly. There were six candidates for moderator – showing the breadth of our church: 5 ministers and an elder; 3 men, 3 women; 1 African-American, 1 Korean-American, 4 Caucasians; they came from California, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Eau Claire, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. And the commissioners elected as moderator Cindy Bolbach, an elder from Washington, D.C., an attorney who is bright, capable, and extremely funny.
She was, for the past four years, the co-moderator of the Form of Government Revision Task Force – a group charged with writing a new constitution that would be more flexible, less legalistic than our current form of government, and they did a marvelous job. My committee was the Form of Government Revision committee and so I spent some months in advance of the assembly studying it, and then several days with my committee of 42 persons trying to tweak it.
But I don’t want to get bogged down in trying to report all the details of the assembly. What I do want to share with you is how we did our work, and what the nature of that work was, because that relates very much to our scriptures this morning, and to those eternal questions of: who are we? who is God? and how then shall we live? And this sermon has become longer because of some of the publicity around the General Assembly, and responses to that.
Every time we gathered in committee or in plenary, we prayed. And during our meetings in the plenary session, there was an area in the meeting room, curtained off, where presbytery executives took turns praying for the meeting. When we met in plenary, we began by praying together in small groups, and then being led in prayer by a youth, a theological student, a missionary or an ecumenical representative. And often we paused before a significant vote to pray.
And this is a distinctive of the Presbyterian Church – we gather to make decisions together. We are not commissioned to represent our presbytery, our congregation, or our own opinion – we are commissioned to represent Christ to and with one another. We gather to discern the will of God together, and we listen for the Word of God in Scripture, in our hearts, and in the voices of others – those who disagree with us as well as those who agree with us. Or as our former moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow, said in his sermon last Sunday morning: “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
This is one of the greatest contributions our church makes to the world. A friend of mine from our trip to Israel was there – he is an African-American Baptist minister who is also the Dean of Students at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And he was so excited by what he saw – he said to me, “You all have such an important thing going on here – this may be the only place that civil discourse is happening in our society.”
Some of you may have seen an Associated Press article on the Huffington Post which quotes – actually misquotes – remarks I made in one of the two times I spoke in the plenary session. I’d like to give you a fuller picture. There was a lot of passion around many issues facing this General Assembly. Members of our congregation feel strongly about many of these issues. As I prepared for serving as a commissioner, I tried to learn as much as I could about the issues. I spent particular time trying to understand the issues around the report prepared by the Middle East Study Committee – it was a long report, with several appendices. Many people were very excited about this report, as they felt it finally brought needed appropriate attention to the conditions experienced by the Palestinians. Others felt that it was imbalanced, and not fair to the Jews. As most of you know, following my trip to Israel last year, I have been increasingly concerned about the human and civil rights abuses that Palestinians experience in Israel. At the same time, who among us can forget the centuries of anti-Semitism that reached a new low point in the Holocaust in Germany?
I studied the whole report. Our Session discussed it. Both our Session and the presbytery passed resolutions urging further study. The situation in the Middle East is extremely complex, and I did not know how I would be able to vote on this. I met with my colleague and friend Dan Danson who is the rabbi at Mt. Sinai Synagogue in Wausau. He shared his concerns with me, and another rabbi, Rabbi Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, NC, wrote to me of similar concerns. Both of these favor a two-state solution in Israel. Both are colleagues who care about Christian-Jewish relationships. I talked with Cynthia Campbell, President of McCormick Seminary. I studied the report of the proceedings of the Middle East Peacemaking Committee which made important changes to the report. I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to speak out regarding what I see as imbalance in the report, though significant improvements were made.
Let me share with you the complete content of what I said during the plenary session, which was,
Madame Moderator, I am Susan Zencka, minister member of Winnebago Presbytery. As I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s , it seemed that the position of most Americans was a simple one: “Israel good, Palestine bad.” I was proud of the PCUSA as it was one of the bodies who began, earlier than most, to understand that issues in the Middle East are more complicated than that. I have long understood the importance of speaking out for Palestinian rights and against Israeli abuses. After traveling to Israel and the West Bank last summer, and becoming even more deeply aware of the oppression of Palestinian people, I looked forward to reading the report of the Middle East Study Committee and when it came out, I did read it. In studying it, especially in conversation with Jewish rabbis who are committed to a 2-state solution, colleagues who are deeply committed to civil rights and human rights, I became aware that there are many long-time friends in the Jewish community who believe that this report misstates Jewish theology and ignores Jewish voices. We have come to a new, simple position of “Palestine good, Israel bad.” Life is not that simple. I urge us to study this further, and to reject the report.
The AP got the words close, but not exact. I wanted to share my complete statement with you so that you might understand the full context of my remarks. This morning, when I arrived at church, there was a message on the answering machine from an anonymous caller who said, in part,
“I think you are shameful. I think you don’t have the Spirit of whatever God you believe in in you… You are deluded and you know nothing about what you are talking about. You obviously preach more on the Old Testament than about Jesus… You are deluded and you are a disgrace as a pastor and as a human being….”
I’m sharing this with you because my friend Kilen is right: civil discourse is in short supply, and it may be the greatest witness that we as Presbyterians have to offer the world.
One of the members of my committee was seated near me during the plenary sessions. Lon is from Western Kentucky, and he and I rarely voted the same way on issues. But Lon said, yesterday morning, that he had grown to believe during his time at General Assembly that the people he had met there truly had a “Christ agenda” and not their own agenda. This is huge. Many people are very disappointed at many of the decisions made at General Assembly – they decry the decisions that I welcomed. Our church is not of one mind on some very important issues. But if people who disagree are open to the possibility that the decisions represent God’s will for the church, and if people trust that others are sincerely seeking to serve God faithfully as we all vote, then that is significant. “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
Most people in life are trying to do the right thing. In our reading from Deuteronomy, we are told to obey the voice of God and to turn to God with all our heart and soul. And we are assured that “…this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” But we in the Presbyterian Church have learned how easily we, as individuals – even as faithful, prayerful individuals – can be mistaken, and so we entrust ourselves to God and to each other. We believe that we can discern together, by talking and listening to one another, and to the Word of God together. We recognize that our sense of things has changed over time – there was a time when we didn’t allow women to serve as deacons, or elders, or ministers; there was a time when we didn’t welcome children to the Communion table until they had been confirmed – our understanding of these things has changed.
And as we discerned together, my understanding of particular things changed – I found myself, on more than one occasion, voting for something that didn’t represent the option I favored, but in accordance with what I had grown to understand, by listening to others, was best for the whole church. “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.”
And, turning to our other scripture, the story of the Good Samaritan – we all shared the understanding that part of who we are together as people of God is being people who love and care for our neighbor – but some of what we sought to discern together was how best to do that? What’s the best way to reach out to the immigrants in our midst? Is it time to speak out against the war in Afghanistan? How do we make choices in how to spend our money? Should we fund education around coastal wetlands or increase funding to collegiate ministries? How should we be in relationship with Muslims and Jews? Should our ordination standards be changed? How do we grow Christ’s church deep and wide? Not all the votes went the way I wanted. But I trust the process, and I trust that they went the way that is best for our church to serve God faithfully right now.
And in the midst of all these decisions and discernments is a central question about what we hold onto in a changing world. The hymn we will sing in a few moments is one we sang more than once during our time together: Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing. It is a wonderful hymn, with very traditional language, some of which I wouldn’t choose, but most of which I love. And in the second verse there is a line that is kind of odd: “here I raise my Ebenezer.” What’s an Ebenezer? The word comes from a story in 1 Samuel about a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines. Israel won the battle, and afterwards, the story continues (1 Samuel 7:12-14) “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jesha'nah, and called its name Ebene'zer; for he said, ‘Hitherto the LORD has helped us.’ So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath; and Israel rescued their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites.” The word Ebenezer comes from two Hebrew words meaning “safe stone”.
What do we hold onto for safety? As Presbyterians, we hold onto the love of God, the word of God, and the people of God – we are people of compassion, discernment, and community. We hold onto these, because these are what holds us, too. As the Presbyterian Church discusses and votes over the next year whether to affirm the decisions of the 219th General Assembly, these votes will be in large part about what is our Ebenezer: is it the rules of the current Form of Government, or is it our ability to discern together and trust one another? Is it one single understanding of who and how God is, or trusting that we are each faithfully seeking understanding? “We best discern the mind of Christ and the will of God together. It’s not about me, it’s about the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ.” The love of God, the Word of God, and the people of God – the compassion of God for the earth and all who live in it, the truth we discern as faithful people seeking understanding, and the community who loves God and carries God’s love to the world – these together are our Ebenezer. Thanks be to God! Amen.