First Presbyterian Church of Watertown
Romans 5:12-19
“Garden or Gauntlet”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G.
Garry
February 10, 2008
In your first week at Princeton Seminary all students
are video taped in a speech class.
Everyone chooses a text from the Bible, stands in front of ten of their
peers, and reads. It’s simple; it’s
painless; and it there is a feel of importance.
Our speeches here in the hallowed halls of Princeton are so important
that they want to record every word.
Well, not so much, really. The video camera doesn’t reemerge until the
last week of the first year. The
scenario is the same, just as simple: Bible verse, ten peers, read into the
camera. And then you go on your merry
way. It’s merry until you meet with one
of the speech professors. Quite
unceremoniously, my speech professor- known as RJ- pressed play of my reading
nine months prior. I must not have been
the first to freak out as RJ just smiled as I squirmed and begged for the tape
to stop. Finally he said, “had enough?” I had no
money being a poor seminarian, but asked him what it would cost to burn the
tape. He smiled at this and pressed play
again.
Now came the recording taken a week
earlier, the latest one. It was as if it
were a different person; it was such a profound change. RJ made it clear as we discussed the second
tape that there were still “many miles to go and promises to keep.” But oh my. Again, the second recording wasn’t perfection,
but it was good. It was passable at
least. And then it hit me: I never
noticed the change; it was imperceptible.
I became better and didn’t know it.
I want to say that for most part the
transformation of the speech class is the only time at Princeton where such a
change happens without shame, without public ridicule, and certainly without
the use of intimidation. The speech
class was like a moment of grace amongst a sea of conflict. The seminary works from the presupposition
that they have three years to infuse in your mind and heart a deep distrust of
your own understanding and to replace what they consider false confidence with
a deep desire to know the truth without delusion or magic. To this end they feel free to render the
first year student somewhat naked.
After a year or so you get to the point where
you can smell blood- you know when there is going to be a dressing down. Someone didn’t do the work, someone is
speaking when they should be silent, someone wrote a paper that is indefensible,
and then the carnage. I can remember one
moment in particular. My pontificating
during a class discussion was disturbed by a strange sound. I could hear a thumping sound on the
ground. It took a moment to realize that
was my head rolling away. Obviously, I
surmised, the point I meant to offer had not been well received by Dr. Douglas
for she felt the need to decapitate me.
And it wasn’t just professors who
engaged in this. Your fellow students
took it upon themselves to point out your mistakes, your foolishness. And after a few years there it became a bit
of sport to listen to students as they arrived and to see how painful the first
year would be. It sounds like a cruel
gauntlet, yet it is something much more.
Every school has what can be called a pedagogy, or a theory of education. At Sherman Elementary
there is a pedagogy in place that determines the
course of the day and the teaching methods that are employed. If you talk to teachers there and mention
state mandated tests you will hear in their feelings and opinions a questioning
of pedagogy. Is teaching to a test a
good form of education, is it the right method for
helping children learn on a primary level?
That is a great question; it is a question of pedagogy.
At Princeton it is not a question of primary
education, but the formation of pastors as theologians. The pedagogy there has been questioned as
well. On a certain level the pedagogy is
a philosophy believing that “steel sharpens steel.” I can remember debating this method with a
fellow doctoral candidate and her sincere belief that such a method was for all
intents and purposes terribly misguided. It was mean and dehumanizing.
Yet if we really dig deep what we find in such
a place is not simply a challenging context, but a sincere belief in what Paul
wrote in Romans. In the seminary they believe in the power of what Paul wrote
to shape the soul of the would-be pastor.
Paul argued the soul must be put to death
before it is born again in Christ.
Before there is forgiveness and grace, there is repentance and
mortification. Before grace there is a
judgment. Paul argued,
you couldn’t speak of Christ without Adam.
He believed in Adam we have we have the reckoning that we are sinners
devoid of freedom; in Adam we are not right. And we must see this before we can
understand or appreciate or experience the power of the gift of Christ.
In Hebrew Adam means one of earth, dust,
ground. The word in Hebrew for the
earth, for the dirt, is Adamah. Adam literally means the one from the dirt. And in essence, Adam is our grounding, our
point from which we move, where we all start.
In the Old Testament as well as the New, Adam serves as our fate, our
destiny, the stuff we are made of. He is
the limit within which we move and have our being. We are all Adam, and Adam is each of us. This Adam quality is a limit, according to
Paul, and this limit defines with sin and death. Paul says sin came into the world through one
man, and death came through sin and so death spread to all because all have
sinned. We are all Adam as it were.
It’s fair to say this is not the easiest doctrine to accept; nor is it the
place we want to start in terms of belief.
It would be easier for instance if we began with a kind of universal
human condition or freedom. We are who
are in ourselves. No one else determines
us or defines. We may each have flaws,
and while not perfect we are good and just.
It would be more fun to begin our faith with the premise that our flaws
are not really profound; we need grace not as a redo but as a kind of minor
modification, tweaking. From this
beginning God becomes our helper, our inspiration, to do better to be
better. Christ is an example of love
that we need to follow. And in following
we become better people.
To this Paul basically say, no. To the Romans
he is arguing, you can’t modify, you can’t tweak death. It is as if he is saying,
I don’t want to be a better sinner; I want to be a new person. I don’t want to modify my soul; I want to be
made right with God. Paul believed in Adam we are dead in sin. You can’t be a
little better dead.
For Paul the awkward and rather gloomy place
of judgment, while not the most happy of places to start was the truth, and
simply that. And even more so he believed Christ’s life,
death, and resurrection was a gift we only truly receive if we recognize our
place in Adam, our sinfulness. If you
start anywhere else you don’t end up where Christ is waiting.
No one wants to be judgmental. There are people who seem to revel in the
moment of critique, people who seem to find strength in truth telling; that is
true. Yet, it is fair to say, no one
wants to be mean, to be not nice. So the
idea that we espouse a belief that reckons our neighbors as lost in sin, as
dying in transgression shouldn’t sit well.
And if this were the beginning and end of our
Gospel what a gloomy lot we would be.
Paul said, if Christ were not resurrected we
are most to be pitied. By this he means
if we are just telling the world we are all doomed to sin and death and that is
it, we need to get another hobby. And if
that is it, then we should.
Yet, his point, and it is the very structure
of each Gospel, is that life comes from death.
The cross comes before resurrection; sacrifice begets the gift of grace;
suffering gives way to hope. Because
this is hard to accept, Calvin said, there is no one who would trust in
repentance, accept the verdict of death and sin, if it were not in the light of
God’s mercy. No one would confess if
they didn’t believe that in Jesus Christ we will be forgiven. Again, the gloomy
lot of Adam is only entertained because we believe in new life.
I know it is a crass example, but the one that
seems to make the best case is the fellow who judges the people who want to be
the next American Idol, Simon. Simon Cowell sits
in judgment each year and passes a verdict for now more than 100,000 people a
year. He judges whether or not they can
sing; he determines whether people should devote themselves to a life of
artistic endeavor or if they chose another path.
If you have never watched this process it can
be subjective and open to debate. Some
people can sing and sing well, yet they are not what the judges are looking
for. And then there are people for whom
it is not really a debate but a kind of train wreck of delusion that the judges
must expose. Every year there are people
who enter the contest to see who is a really fabulous singer who cannot sing at
all. And for these people it is not a
question of improvement or hard work or better training, it’s just not going to
happen.
Yesterday as I was driving our daughter Zoe home from school I was crooning to Bob Dylan’s “Every
Grain of Sand.” As the song wound down I
said, “This is the song I am working on for my American Idol audition.” The
claim had the intended outcome, Zoe laughed, and her
laughter was such that my audition would not render a positive verdict. If Zoe were one of
the judges she would say, “You should be writer, Dad, not a singer.”
But such is the stuff of judgment. Not all contestants are given a harsh dose of
reality, but some are. And the one
judge, Simon, is notorious for helping the ones who really should find a
different path. This is evident in that
he has no qualms in saying you can’t sing.
Some times it is funny to watch this as people will say, “But all my
friends tell me I can sing” to which he says, “Your friends are lying.” Sometimes it is tragic.
When
the Apostle Paul says we are all in Adam, it is a very tragic verdict. We need to recognize this. This is not a good judgment. No one should ever be happy about a fate of
sin and death. Without the resurrection,
the Ash Wednesday words of “from dust you came to dust you shall return” are
just a bummer.
The theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, believed the church had grown afraid of this, sought
to avoid this verdict in attempt to affirm people. Barth was famous
for saying before you hear the Yes of God you must hear the No. When Jesus was on the cross, he argued, it
was not a positive experience, not a happy moment. It was a moment of terrible judgment. For us too, he contended, we must hear the
No, before the Yes.
At the end of every audition on American Idol the judges ask each other
“yes” or “no.” For all intents and
purposes though there is only one yes or no and that is from Simon. In the same way Barth
was saying it doesn’t matter who says yes or no to you besides God. And that before there is ever yes, there is
always a no. And then the scandal, only
in Jesus Christ is there a yes.
It is tempting to say we need to be this kind
of judge for the world. We need to proclaim to the world how sinful is our lot. For it is the truth. It is true. And there is
power in this truth. Knowing you are broken is the first step toward healing.
Yet, I want to say that the church, what we are, what we are called to do and
to be, is a much more like RJ’s speech class, than the pedagogy of Princeton or
the crass verdict of Simon Cowell, or even the
argument of Barth.
The
church lives in the midst of the “yes” and the “no” of God. But there is
something more to our life than saying this. I was speaking to Matt this week
about
As Matt described this I could sense the Holy
Spirit saying, “That is my church, my body; this is what my church is meant to
be.” Deep within Meredith’s appraisal is a verdict, a kind of no. I don’t
really feel closer to God, like a happy place, like an affirmation. And going
into the poverty of
I have all confidence that Matt didn’t spend
each night in
So it is with Paul. He can’t say Christ here
without Adam. For him it just doesn’t work if they are not together. For him
that is where the power is to be found. Is this the same power we find in
It would be tempting to say all the classes at
seminary should have worked on the RJ model of speech transformation. That
would have certainly been more pleasant, but it wouldn’t have been true to the
larger picture of the gospel and the challenge of creating a pastor in three
years. At some point you have to hear “no.”
This is the first Sunday of Lent. This is the
time where we as a church are supposed to dwell on our Adam-like qualities;
this is when we are to take up the challenge of reckoning sin as a terrible
verdict of God saying, “No.” We do this ever in the light of the resurrections.
It is a light that shines for us. Yet, we must remember it is a light shining
into the darkness, the darkness of sin and death that is our Adam.
Lent is a time for us to see that our distance
to God doesn’t mean we are not part of God’s work, God’s choice to bring heaven
to earth. Lent is for us the moment where we hear both “Yes” and “No.” We hear
and believe in Adam all sinned, and, much better, in Christ we are all alive.
Amen.