Losing our Lions

a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine

on Sunday, April 27, 2008

 at The First Parish in Lincoln

To listen to this sermon click here.

“A friend of God is one who argues with God.”

– Krister Stendahl (1921 - 2008)

READINGS:

1.  Our first reading is from an article written last year by Dr. Krister Stendahl.  Krister died two weeks ago – he was 86 – and during his long life he was many things: a world-class professor of New Testament studies, dean of Harvard Divinity School, Bishop of Stockholm, and a champion of women’s studies and interfaith dialogue.  Here are a few lines from his article,“Why I Love the Bible”:

It is usual when one is describing love to describe it in positive and glowing terms. But my friendship with the Bible gave me the joy, and the courage, to express my love in five statements of “not.” The first is: It is not primarily about me. Second, it is not always as deep as we think. Third, even Paul is not always totally sure. Fourth, don't be so uptight. And fifth, it is probably not as universal as we think.

It is perhaps odd to express my love in such negative terms. But somehow I became friends with the bible.  In the biblical tradition, and in the Jewish tradition, to be called the friend of God, you had to be one who argued with God.  Abraham, arguing about Sodom and Gomorrah, was called a friend of God.  Job was called the friend of God.  To me, Jesus is the friend of God, because he argues with God. 

2.   Our second reading is a single verse from 2 Corinthians – chapter 3, verse 18.  In the last paragraph of his piece on why he loved the bible, Krister Stendahl wrote:  

“Finally, let me leave you with a word which is the one that, in my own long love relationship to this book, I want to have in my mind when my end comes. It reads, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, like this: ‘And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’”

Have you ever felt that you were in the company of greatness – of a truly great person?

Not only someone who is magnetic and multi-talented and doing admirable things,

but a person who is all of those things and something more –

someone with an added aura of authenticity and transcendence

that we have reserved the word “great” to describe.

I am sure that I have known at least two such people – William Sloane Coffin and Krister Stendahl.

We have lost both of them in the last two years, both in the month of April,

and to me it feels as if, in the field of religion, we are losing our lions –

people who brought true greatness to what they did.

But they left some tracks for the rest of us to follow if we have the vision and the will to do it,

and so I want to use my time with you today

to give you at least a glimpse of Krister Stendahl.

His rule for a sermon was that “it should be light, it should be quick, and it should be tender.”

So I’ll do my best.

Krister was born in Stockholm is 1921.

He grew up in a family that never went to church –

his father was a harbormaster who thought the Lutheran church was “too drafty” –

but Krister, when he turned 12, started sneaking off to church on Sunday mornings.

It was his version of a teenage rebellion.

He grew up, earned a doctorate in theology, and joined the faculty at Harvard Divinity School.

He was tall and lean, and since English was his second language, he spoke with a Swedish accent.

He usually wore a dark suit over a pale purple shirt and a white clerical collar.

A fusion of the bones in his neck and upper spine

had forced his head into a slight downward tilt,

so he looked at you with upturned eyes which often had a smile in them.

He once wrote that God knows that none of us are all that strong,

but our weaknesses are a special kind of gift,

because they remind us that we need to be careful and tender with each other.

By the time he became dean of Harvard Divinity School, in 1968, he was universally admired

as a theologian, preacher, pastor, and as a model of spiritual hospitality –

for Krister, there were always many good paths to God and to the holy.

He brought women’s studies to the forefront at Harvard

and spoke out for the inclusion of women and gays in the church and in the ministry –

when the Episcopal church chose a gay man to be bishop of New Hampshire a few years ago,

Krister helped officiate at his consecration.

 He had to leave Harvard in 1984 because he was elected Bishop of Stockholm,

but returned four years later to become the divinity school’s first chaplain,

and you may wonder: why does the divinity school need its own chaplain?

The reason, well known to every divinity student,

is that reading theology all the time can chew away at your soul –

you start wondering why you ever wanted to go into the ministry.

So it’s good to be able to go talk to someone who is wise and whose soul is intact.

Krister spent a few years at Brandeis leading students there in interfaith dialogues,

and then went to Jerusalem, where he was Director of the Center for Religious Pluralism –

a role which helped sharpen his universalist instincts.

One piece of advice he has left to us

is what has come to be known as Stendahl's three rules of religious understanding –

how to go about looking at religions other than your own.

The first rule is: “when you want to understand another religion, ask its adherents, not its enemies.”

Second, “don’t compare your best to their worst.”

And third, “leave room for holy envy.”

Which means: leave room for true admiration of something about the other person’s religious tradition,

a practice, a belief, a way of thinking that you wish could be reflected in your own faith.

He belonged to a Lutheran church in Cambridge,

and I once heard him explain why he thought it was important to go to church.

He said, “I think what it does to me is that, more often than not, when I come out of church,

some things that were serious when I went in are less serious now,

and some things that were very unserious when I went in have moved up on the priority list...”

He believed in what can happen when we give ourselves to the words, the hymns,

and the silence we create together on Sunday morning.

Because sometimes what happens is that it all takes off,

and we’re never sure when the wheels leave the ground, we just know that for us, they did.

He thought the downside of the church is that on matters of justice and human rights,

it’s almost always a “Johnny-come-lately” – we talk a lot about loving our neighbor,

and there’s nothing wrong with love, but love doesn’t automatically translate into justice.

That’s where we fall short.

If we won’t get our hands dirty, we don’t close the deal.

Back when Krister, at age 12, first started sneaking off to church,

he was soon invited to join a bible study group and they gave him a pocket New Testament.

“I was told to read it as if it was all about me,” he says,

“my life, my conscience, my duties to God and to neighbor.”

The idea that the bible was “all about me” carried him for a long time.

But as you heard in our first reading, he came to a different conclusion in his later years.

The first of his five “not’s” about the bible is: the bible “is not primarily about me.”

Because God is up to much more than me, or you, or any one church, or any one way of believing.

The bible is about all of us.

And he warned us not to be too sure of ourselves when it comes to what the bible is saying.

He was a master at taking a very familiar passage and giving it a new twist.

He would read the verses in Genesis which describe the sixth day of creation:

“God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind...”

Cattle and creeping things and wild animals all come alive.

“And God saw that it was good.”

“Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,”

and God creates the first man and woman and blesses them.

With a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye,

Krister would point out that we human beings don’t even get a whole day to ourselves –

the animals are created in the morning and we’re created that same day, in the afternoon.

Why didn’t we get our own day?  Why did God make the animals on the same day as us?

Krister thought the author of Genesis could have added a verse to explain:

the verse would say, “When Darwin comes along, they will understand.”

His last “not” about the bible was: it’s “not as universal as we think.”

There are other holy scriptures.

It has never been God’s hottest dream that everybody should become a Christian or a Jew

or a Buddhist or a Muslim – we are called, first, to love each other,

and as the apostle Paul wrote, “love does not insist on its own way.”

As many of you know, before I came here to The First Parish

I was the director of an adult education center in Cambridge called Interface,

which was dedicated to the education of mind, body, and spirit.

We invited Krister Stendahl to be one of the presenters at a conference on spirituality and he said yes.

I scheduled him to speak on the same morning as Margot Adler,

who was then the New York bureau chief for National Public Radio

and a practicing neo-pagan priestess.

Margot spoke first and then Krister followed.

They were two sides of the same coin, and at lunch, the two of them were inseparable.

Because they were both in love with the spiritual side of who we are,

they both believed that there are many good paths to what is holy,

and they were both deeply authentic people of faith.

Krister Stendahl was a Lutheran universalist

who wanted us to be able to talk to God without pretense or fuss,

and to argue with God whenever we need to, because that’s what good friends do.

He loved the idea that divinity and humanity are intermingled.

And in the end, the verse he wanted to have in mind is a promise:

that “we all” will behold the glory of the Lord

and be changed into his likeness – for this “comes from God, who is the Spirit.”

Krister’s memorial service will in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard on Friday, May 16th at 3 p.m.

Amen.

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