December 7, 2004

Asbury Seminary Commencement

BROKEN TRANSFORMERS

President Greenway, trustees, members of the faculty, staff, students, guests, and esteemed graduates! Good morning and best greetings from Greenville College . I am pleased and sincerely honored for several reasons to be asked to speak to you today. For 46 of the past 55 years I have sat under the pastoral authority and nurture of 8 different Asbury graduates! I have been encouraged, and even mentored by former Asbury presidents. And of course most importantly, probably the most significant influence on my life, my father, was an Asbury graduate and professor here for 15 years. So while I am not myself an alumnus, I can hardly imagine having been shaped more deeply by this place.

Asbury represents to me a place where head and heart are both held firmly together in devotion to Jesus Christ. After I wrote that last sentence I thought I ought to check your web page. Imagine my surprise to see I had captured your tag line almost verbatim; “Where head and heart go hand in hand.” To me that suggests you are known for what you value most. What a wonderful legacy and continuing impact you all have on our world!

Your mission makes plain that you are in the business of shaping both the competence and the character of these graduates. That twin focus is one we share at Greenville College ! Like you, we believe that it is not enough to prepare students with skills that equip them to perform in their work; even the sacred work of ministry. We also believe students must be changed inwardly; both in mind and heart! In a world gone mad with “doing,” our institutions recognize that God is at least as interested in who we are becoming inside as He is with what we are doing on the outside. At Greenville this twin focus takes the form of our mission to “transform students for lives of Christ-centered character and service.” So like you, we see ourselves with God's help as life transformers .

The beauty of this calling is the way it matches our Wesleyan theological heritage. Our tradition invites us to a holistic spiritual journey that transforms lives on many levels. In a recent paper on our campus, Randy Maddox described this multi-dimensional ministry.

•  Especially for Wesleyans, the “Good News” is not just rational assent but affectional conviction; a tough mind and a heart that is strangely warmed.

•  Especially for Wesleyans, the Good News is not just forgiveness but holiness; a transformation that includes salvation and sanctification.

•  For Wesleyans, the Good News is not just for individuals but for society as well; a personal and a social Gospel.

•  The Good News is not just for souls but for bodies.

•  And as Wesley's interest in the “New Creation” and “General Deliverance” suggested, the Good News is not just for humans but for nature as well.

Our theological legacy then, is one of a thorough-going transformational process.

But these multiple dimensions suggest our calling, our ministry, is by its nature one which inevitably brings paradox and tension. We must balance head and heart, soul and body, salvation and sanctification. And that requires an openness to embrace the ambiguity this tension often entails. We must preach and teach to the head but also to the heart, to the soul but also to the body, for salvation and for sanctification, to the healing of personal inner sin but also to systemic cultural and political injustice. Though not inconsistent, these dimensions can pull us in different directions. From one side of the church spectrum it has been said of us that “Wesleyan theology is an oxymoron.” From the other side, we “Methodists” have been accused of being far too “methodical.” The multi-dimensional nature of our Wesleyan ministry requires us to be open to ambiguity.

Further reinforcing this disposition to embrace tension and even paradox is the fact that our theological roots lie in Scripture, reason, experience, and tradition. So usually, we Wesleyans are people who avoid “neat solutions.” We have learned that life in general and the life of the mind in particular is messy. We embrace this fact as endemic to the human condition and seek to move on in ministry.

This brings me to the heart of what I would like to leave with you today. I am deeply concerned that forces at work in our evangelical subculture are making it difficult for life-transformers in our tradition to minister effectively. Whether we are pastors, preachers, teachers, or presidents, we are faced with stresses in the fabric of our church and academic communities that threaten to divide us and undermine our capacity to transform lives by distracting us from what is really good about the Good News.

Of course reference to the “evangelical subculture” naturally raises questions of what that might mean. Ralph Winter is reported to have said that we “can't define ‘evangelical' any more than we can eat soup with a fork.” But recently, Don Dayton has suggested three historical variations that help me understand the challenge I feel today. Oversimplifying his account, Luther's 16 th century variety (“evangelische”) defined itself in opposition to the “enemy” of works righteousness. Wesley's 18 th century version counter-reacted, taking the “enemy” to be nominal Christians who focused exclusively on salvation to the neglect of sanctification and whole life transformation. Evangelicals in America today find their “enemy” in the “liberalism” of post-modern relativism. Despite its own origins over 50 years ago in reaction to the separatist fundamentalism of early 20 th century modernist controversies, I hear in this current variation of the evangelical subculture a centennial “echo” of that same separatism.

Herein lies the problem. If the “enemy” is nominal Christianity, as it has been in the Wesleyan tradition, the inclination is to “engage” the church and the world and stir them up. But if the “enemy” is liberalism, the focus can easily turn to separation from the world, drawing lines, and setting up walls of protection. The greatest burden I bear for the place of Wesleyan higher education as a president, is responding to this separatist approach among constituents. Taking this approach yourself may perhaps be the greatest temptation some of you will face as pastors, preachers, and teachers in our country. Increasingly co-opted by a reactionary definition of ‘evangelical,' we are pressured to adopt an attitude toward the culture around us that undercuts our ability to minister as transformers.

To use H. Richard Niebuhr's classic taxonomy, I believe the evangelical community is pulled toward a mindset of “Christ Against Culture.” Even our “community” is defined as a bounded set, not a centered set, with membership established by boundaries or “litmus tests” of behavior and doctrine that are progressively drawn and refined.

Let me try to illustrate. The culture around us is plainly filled with radically immoral and un-Christian values bombarding us constantly. It is certainly a “post-Christian” age. But too often, it seems to me, we are so troubled by this challenge that we respond by isolating ourselves, shutting our ears, hiding our heads, and so whitewashing our communities with a triumphalist sheen that we move to “pat answers” before our people have even fully understood the questions. To what extent do churches and colleges encourage our parishioners and our students to engage the toughest issues of our day? Do we really preach and teach Scripture, including the challenges of higher critical questions? Do we encourage or discourage open honest discussions of other religions; especially in a world where muslim influence part of why the rest of the world hates the Christian west. Do we dare to admit and address the prevalence of pornography and other forms of false intimacy amongst us? Are we afraid to confess the homosexuality within our church and college families? How do we respond to the genuine struggles of doubt among us. Do we hide these issues? Cover them up? Push them to the back? Or do we recognize that these are the authentic opportunities to bring Good News grace to bear?

Consider briefly three analogies. The human body protects itself against outside infection by maintaining its marvelous barrier of skin. But if we depended exclusively on this isolation, we would be forced to live in a bubble without any contact whatsoever. Instead, we also protect ourselves by an equally wonderful internal immune system. The Body of Christ is surely no different. My concern is that we have neglected the cultivation of our own spiritual immune systems, even discouraging or attacking the pastoral and educational “inoculations” required to make our parishioners and students strong.

Or consider the analogy of growing healthy plants. A hothouse environment is a wonderful way to get them started. With controlled water, nourishment, and even light, the plants appear to be healthy and strong. But remove those controls, even for a short time, and what appeared healthy can quickly wither, overcome by the heat, wind, parasites, cold, and lack of food that comes with changing seasons in the real world. My concern is that in reaction to the wastelands of culture we are leaning too heavily toward the creation of evangelical “hothouses” in our churches and colleges. In protecting ourselves from the culture, we thereby so isolate ourselves that we not only can never transform the world around us, but cannot even grow and remain healthy ourselves outside those shelters.

Or finally, consider the analogy of navigating the slippery slopes of life. The ambiguity of the fallen human condition has always made good judgment a necessary but difficult thing even before post-modernism removed the last “places to stand.” Some respond so cautiously they try to stay off the slopes altogether. In theory it is not an unreasonable approach given the ruined lives found at the bottom. But of course it is impossible. The ambiguity of the human condition, the reality of sin in all of us, means all of life is a slippery slope. Even at the top there is slope. My concern is that in reaction to the crashed lives all around us, we delude ourselves into thinking we can escape the slopes.

What I want most to highlight in these three analogies is the attitude they all reveal. It is fearful. We are afraid of infection, protective, wary of risk, and defensive, adopting a critical spirit that often turns us against one another. Rather than focusing on what we share in common and what Good News we have for a decaying world around, we challenge one another, questioning beliefs and behaviors, demanding proof of purity and orthodoxy. [1] In short we tear apart the fabric of our evangelical subculture and undermine our ability to focus on transforming the world with Good News. We can find ourselves quickly dissipated by these constant internal battles.

By now of course you are beginning to suspect I am indeed one of those liberals myself. Don't I see, you might ask, the terrible dangers of that culture around? The risk of infection is high! Are not the risks of sliding down that slippery slope of post-modern moral relativism obvious? Isn't the historical path of the church in America , and Christian higher education too, littered with the wreckage of institutions that have lost their faith?

The answers here are “Yes!”, “Yes!” and “Yes!” I believe the moral relativism and loss of moral knowledge in our culture is the single most destructive evidence of sin at work in our society. It is eternally disastrous. Consequently to embrace a Wesleyan calling to transform culture by engaging it, as an alternative to Christ against Culture, CAN easily slide into Niebuhr's view “Christ of Culture.” Accommodation always risks compromise. The slope IS slippery. That historical wreckage I mentioned is proof; not living proof but “dead” proof! Holiness calls us to be “set apart;” NOT of this world.

Yet we are called to be in the world. So instead of avoiding the slopes, let us learn to ski! I am not calling for an easy ecumenism or a simple-minded gloss of secular and Christian values. Skiing requires training and concentration. Those who stand against the culture, like those who try to stay off the slopes, may feel safe. But besides their obvious inability to transform the culture at a distance without engaging it, they are themselves peculiarly vulnerable when they find their isolation and separation ended, their “skin” or hothouse bubbles punctured, and their lives lived out like everyone else's in a sinful world, on those slippery slopes for which they are unprepared.

What then is required? In response I believe we must learn to hold together two other attitudes at once. We must hold an attitude of passionate trust in the Person of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior as expressed in the classic orthodox creeds. Yet we must simultaneously recognize the limitations of the human condition. We must recognize that “now we see through a glass darkly,” so that we exhibit an attitude and spirit of epistemological humility that is open to all those around us. We never compromise on the One who is Truth with a capital “T.” But we simultaneously exhibit an epistemological humility borne of our post-modern recognition that much of what we know is truth with a small letter “t.”

This path requires us to embrace both passionate conviction and open humility at the same time; attitudes often taken to be inconsistent or contradictory. Skiing this slippery slope requires thoughtful training…like the education you graduates have received here…and constant focused attention to hold an edge and remain balanced as we carve and even transform these slopes. It is not merely a simple place to stand or a simple fortress to occupy. It is a dynamic movement of mind and of heart that requires constant adjustment, recognition of ever-present risks, and occasional failure. It is a path of apparent paradox and constructive tension. But it is exciting and invigorating too!

If we as pastors, preachers, teachers, and presidents are called to be transformers of our culture, and equipped by our Wesleyan tradition to be especially open to the tensions and paradoxes of a holistic Gospel, then we ought to be especially well suited for this challenge.

“What then shall we do?” Or better yet, to reinforce that this is largely about attitude and return to our opening reflections on the nature of our Wesleyan heritage and institutions, “Who then shall we become?” We see in the opening verses of Romans 12 read this morning, verses which form the core of our mission at Greenville College , that our transformational role is always accompanied by a “renewal of our minds.” It is the attitudes of our minds, including perhaps especially this spirit of humility, that allow us to be transformed ourselves and to become instruments of Christ's transformation of those around us.

The passage I think takes us even one step further. Paul beseeches us to present ourselves as “living sacrifices,” which is our “reasonable service.” The image of sacrifice suggests that transformation involves an utter loss of self. In short, I believe transformation of our own selves, and of the world around us requires a brokenness of spirit in those who would transform and be transformed. Psalm 51:17 reminds us that a broken and contrite heart the Lord will not despise. And in Isaiah 57:15 we are reminded the Lord abides with him who is of a broken and contrite heart. Further on, in chapter 66:2, we read, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”

This is the path of Moses, a man of deep passion and conviction yet a broken man; the “meekest man on earth. It is also the path of David, a man of deep love for his Lord yet one who despite repeated failure, demonstrated a broken spirit that made him a “man after God's own heart.” In this Christmas season, we remember that this is also the path of our Lord himself, whose unequivocal obedience combined with broken heart and body provides us with the Way to eternal life. Our ministry is one of holistic transformation. We do it by becoming broken.

So this morning I exhort you all to become preachers, pastors, and teachers of broken and contrite hearts. In this way embrace the paradox of passionate conviction and open humble gracious attitudes to those in the culture at large and especially to those within the church. In this way you can become instruments in Christ's hands, broken transformers of the needy world around us.

Copyright ©2004 – Jim Mannoia

This is of course an oversimplification….some evangelicals (seekers sensitive?) are not separatist. And ironically, despite evangelical efforts to stand against the culture around us, we sometimes embrace the culture blindly in other areas including consumerism and patriotism.

Additional Mannoia Texts

Last updated: December 8, 2004