Heavy Burdens for Somebody

Matthew 23:1-12; I Thessalonians 2:9-13; Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37

Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37

{1} O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. {2} Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those he redeemed from trouble {3} and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. {4} Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; {5} hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. {6} Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; {7} he led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town.

{33} He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, {34} a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. {35} He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. {36} And there he lets the hungry live, and they establish a town to live in; {37} they sow fields, and plant vineyards, and get a fruitful yield.

I Thessalonians 2:9-13

⁹ You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. ¹⁰ You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. ¹¹ As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, ¹² urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

¹³ We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.

Matthew 23:1-12

{1} Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, {2} “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; {3} therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. {4} They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. {5} They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. {6} They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, {7} and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.

{8} But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. {9} And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. {10} Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. {11} The greatest among you will be your servant. {12} All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

The Sermon

They gathered for worship in the immaculate sanctuary of their beloved small church, and 50 minutes later—after the call to worship, the prayers of confession and pardon, the scripture readings, the hymns, the sacred music and prayers, the sermon, the offering, and the affirmation of faith—they wrote their votes on small slips of paper.

After ten months of church meetings, special committees, studies, and negotiations, three small Presbyterian churches, all within a few miles of each other, were taking simultaneous votes within their own congregations to determine whether the three would merge into one. While the most positive spin was that each would continue to live on through one united church, everybody understood the reality that, especially for the two churches who would be moving into the central church’s facility, it would be in some ways the end of their church’s individual life. There was no way it could be approached as anything other than a gut-wrenching decision.

And so, on that Sunday morning after 11:00 worship, a yes vote meant that that active but aging and occasionally dwindling Presbyterian church would merge with the other two. A no vote meant they would keep going along the way they had been, until whenever the day came when the bills could no longer be paid, and the mission had evaporated, and the last member would go on to his or her great reward.

The slips of paper were collected and set on a table that was set up in the front of the sanctuary, where two elders, universally known and trusted, were seated. The part-time minister stood by an easel, with a marker in his hand.

One elder opens each folded piece of paper, looks at it, and hands it to the other. The second elder calls out the vote written on that piece of paper, yes or no, and the pastor makes a tally mark on the newsprint.

After three minutes, the tally is complete, and the result is conclusive: yeses, 18; no’s, 25. The motion fails. And the church goes on as before.

One person clapped one time, before realizing that this was not the time. Everybody else silently took it in for a minute before the meeting was closed with a prayer.

I was the pastor of that church, still one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had—and not because of some sentimental affection for small mainline churches in general, although I am probably guilty of that. They were, and are, phenomenal, genuine, unpretentious, deeply faithful, appreciative, generous people—all of them. And their church reflected all those characteristics.

I didn’t used to get many phone calls from the members of that church. If they were going in for surgery, or worried about something, or if for any reason or no particular reason, they just needed a visit from the pastor, the people in that church tended to go to one lady in particular—a sainted pillar of that church—and she would relay the call to me.

But in the 24 hours following that vote, my phone rang off the hook. Opinions, beliefs and feelings I had never known about in the previous ten months, they’d been kept so private, were suddenly being offered up without reservation.

In retrospect, as it turns out, those who were in the church on that day, for that vote, will always wonder what might have happened if, instead of marking down “yes” or “no” on a secret ballot, those who voted yes had been asked, and had been willing, to stand up and be recognized.

Because among those standing would have been the half dozen people who did 90% of the human work of making that church’s ministry happen.

You would have seen standing the session; the musicians; the Sunday School teachers; the treasurer; and most of the circle leaders and leaders of the Presbyterian Men among those 18 people who voted in favor of the merger.

Standing there for all to see would have been those who, some for five decades, had demonstrated that no one’s love of that church, and its ministry, no one’s love was deeper or more profound than theirs. Nobody was more faithful—to Jesus Christ, or to that particular church—than those 18.

You would have seen standing those whose deep sacrifices came from their pockets and their calendars, even in times when no one else had been willing to step forward. You would have seen the people who carried on their labor of love, even when they were tired, or uncertain, or disillusioned.

If those 18 had had the chance to stand up and be seen as a body, saying, “We believe God is calling us to join our ministry with these other two churches because we can no longer carry this burden alone,” it would have been all but impossible for anyone, in good conscience, to disagree.

Instead, the 25 who—as a group; with maybe one or two individual exceptions—tithed less, did less, showed up less, volunteered less, worked less than the others, sentenced those 18, who carried the burdens of ministry, to however many more years of hard labor they could last.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when the very next Sunday, the New Testament text in the lectionary was Matthew 23.

Do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

That was going to be an awfully tricky sermon to navigate. And so I handled it the only way I could think to do so.

I chickened out.

I read the passage in worship, but completely ignored it in preaching. I had no idea how to even broach the subject.

Most of those 18 people, who were the ones who worked so hard to make sure that church functioned, and had decided, in their agonizing prayer, that the one thing they had sacrificed the most to preserve, they would now be willing to give back to God, even if it would cost the survival of the thing itself—into which they had invested so much of themselves—most of those 18 were craving vindication, or at the very least, affirmation.

But in my youthful shortcomings, I simply couldn’t think of a way to preach that text, in that church, on that Sunday, without it sounding like unbridled condemnation.

So, knowing that church was going to have to find a way to hold itself together—the no voters and the yes voters—I chickened out.

In the months that followed, and in the years that have followed since, it has become ever more obvious that those 18 would never stop doing what God had called them to do: to love and serve the Lord through the body of Christ, the Church. If you would ask any of them why, their answer would probably be something like: what else would I ever do, in response to the God who loves me unconditionally, who forgives my sin, and accepts this flawed servant?

In that church and in every church, the things that make the Church the body of Christ—and make it such an enriching, fulfilling place to be—are going to be burdens for somebody to carry. By definition, where there is ministry, that means there is someone who is ministering. Someone is doing the actions, the work of being the Church.

I’ve noticed throughout my ministry that from time to time, we are asked to put someone’s name on the prayer list, which is excellent: the least a Christian can do, or a church can do, is include someone in their prayers. It’s an honor and a privilege to pray for anyone you hear about who needs it—and it doesn’t matter how you hear about it; you pray for them.

But there are times when a church adds a name into the prayer list by someone’s request, and then they never see the person who asked for those prayers—sometimes literally, even people whose names are on the church roll. Fair enough. But it always makes me wonder: we’re praying for you; why aren’t you here to pray for us?

Sometimes, we experience the great miracle of being able to contribute something that we love to do, to give something that we are genuinely, almost selfishly happy to provide.

But there are also times when we are asked to give something, to do something, to become someone, that may not have been originally part of our plans for ourselves, and doesn’t exactly fit our plans now, either. Bills will have to be paid. Work will have to be done. By God’s grace, someone carries it out.

When Jesus said what he said about the way he saw the Pharisees acting, he not only spoke to us about humility. He also gave all the succeeding generations of the Church the great gift of affirmation.

He recognized what the Pharisees were doing, blithely adding to the burdens that the people of faith would have to carry out. And in recognizing what was going on, he gave those people of faith the acknowledgement that your ministry, your work, means something. It has not gone unnoticed or been forgotten.

It’s an acknowledgement for the people who do all the things that allow a church to minister to its congregation and community and the world, the contributions great and small that serve the mission of the Body of Christ.

It’s for the cooks, and the knitters, and the drivers, and the teachers; the cleaners and the workers; the ushers and the people who provide refreshments; the telephone callers and the visitors; the newsletter and bulletin folders; the treasurers and committee members; the musicians, and the nursery keepers, and the sanctuary-picker-uppers who take turns to come in, weekly, and make sure things are all straightened up before Sunday morning.

It’s for the people who prepare the table for communion before every single communion service.

For the guy who fixes the stops on the doors so they don’t make as much noise in worship when they close behind someone.

For the family who matched $50,000 in contributions in order to get the land paid off so we could start organizing for the building expansion. And for the little girl who contributes out of her allowance. And for the lady who contributes what she really can barely afford to contribute out of her fixed income.

For the people who think to ask for improvements in accessibility, and for the people who reconfigure entrances and facilities and hearing aid systems and large-print bulletins to make the improvements.

For each of those roles, there are probably ten more that, as usual, will go unsung this morning.

But for each part, for each element of church life, each piece of the exuberant jigsaw puzzle of a church’s ministry—no matter how great or how tiny, how inspiring to us all, or how privately given in anonymity—“We give thanks to God for this,” said Paul, “that when you received the word of God, you accepted it not as a human word, but as what it really is: God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.”

When Jesus finally came to Jerusalem, he was sentenced to the cross by a perversion of justice on the part of the government,

by an absence of mercy on the part of the people,

by a failure of loyalty on the part of his best friend.

How many times have we strapped that shameful burden to his shoulders, and not bothered to lift a finger ourselves?