Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 17, 2010
Text: John 2:1-11
As told by John, the wedding at Cana is a very funny story. The humor resides in the mother-son dynamics between Jesus and Mary. They are classic.
As the story begins, everybody was apparently having a swell time at the reception until the wine ran out. While most figured the lack of wine meant the reception was over (operating on the millenia-old assumption: no wine, no party), Mary had a solution to the problem—her son. She went to Jesus who was deeply immersed in a conversation with some friends and said “Jesus, we’re out of wine.” Mary didn’t come right out and say “Get them some more wine.” Mother-son communication is much more subtle, most of it implicitly not explicit. But Mary’s meaning was clear: “Son, get busy and solve the wine problem.”
Jesus responded petulantly. “Mom, why are you making this our problem? This is their wedding, not ours. They are responsible for the wine, not us.” With that, Jesus went back to talking with his friends. Mary conspicuously ignored her son’s objections and told the servants (loud enough so Jesus would hear her), “Do whatever my son tells you.” Translate that: “My son will get you the wine.”
What amuses me most is what comes next. Jesus the eloquent preacher, spectacular healer, revolutionary threat to Roman authority melted, absolutely dissolved in the face of his mother’s authority. It reminds me of the thousands of times my defiance evaporated in the face of my mother’s commands. Jesus quickly did exactly what Mary wanted. No more resistance. Pure capitulation. Leaving his friends, Jesus told the servants what they needed to do to make more wine. The party resumed and Jesus returned to his friends.
Jesus was not a philosopher king. Far from it, in many ways, his ministry was intensely pragmatic. When his mother asked him to do something, he did it. When people needed loaves of bread and lots of fish, he supplied them. When people needed to be loved, healed, taught, forgiven, or warned, he did it. Jesus was a pragmatic practitioner of his faith who skillfully identified and solved problems.
In that regard, Western’s ministry historically has very much mirrored Jesus’ ministry. Unpacking our 155-year history, I have found no signs of the pretense and hubris that sometimes fills the lives of Washingtonians and our institutions. Rather, there is one example after another of a pragmatic emphasis on being faithful in humble, real and concrete terms. Pragmatic application of divinely revealed ideals has marked our life together.
When we have built buildings, we have chosen simple, pragmatic architecture such as our current arts and crafts style. When we have called pastors, we haven’t sought famous or flashy clergy but worker-bees who want and know how to get a job done. We have not gone out of our way to lure Washington’s rich and famous into our midst. Instead, we have been and remain a congregation filled with the boiler room type people who make Washington’s infrastructure work.
Jesus wasn’t impressed with his ability to make wine. Mary definitely wasn’t impressed. He didn’t even want to do it. But he made the wine so the party could continue. It is an impressive model for ministry.
I regularly use the prism of a pragmatic, goal oriented approach to life to evaluate our ministry at Western. My bottom line: Are we getting the job done? Using that prism today, I would declare the state of our congregation to be quite healthy. Why? Because we figure a way to get things done.
Because of the deteriorating economy around us, this past year we faced a major fiscal challenge. It certainly wasn’t the worst fiscal crisis in this congregation’s history. When the Great Depression hit, we almost lost our building, barely avoiding bankruptcy. My predecessor, Dr. McKenzie, often didn’t get paid for weeks on end. During the early years of my ministry at Western, making payroll was a relentless challenge. So last year was not our worst financial problem. However, it was serious.
The congregation responded with a wonderfully common sense approach. We started with a noble value: a care for those who care for us—our staff. We didn’t want to cut staff or staff salaries because of the damaging impact such actions would have on individuals who serve us well.
But our historical pragmatism also played a major role in the decision-making. We realized that if we started de-constructing our ministry to save money, it would cost us more than we saved. We would lose members who came here for the ministries that were being deconstructed.
So, combining ideals and pragmatism, we avoided something that would have been bad both for individual staff members and the congregation’s future. By so doing, we reaffirmed Paul’s primary axiom for ministry that the fate of the parts and the whole are inseparable.
That decision made, our pragmatism pushed us in the right direction for solutions to our financial problems. We didn’t try to get cute and employ gimmicks. We didn’t look for some savior of an idea. We looked inward. We asked one another if each of us could give more than we were giving to the congregation. The answer was a resounding and heartening “Yes we can.”
In like manner, we have dealt in a very pragmatic manner with challenges we face in doing mission. For several years, our efforts to build a clinic in Ethiopia had been effectively thwarted by the local government of Dukem. Many congregations would have given up or looked to another nation as a location for their work. We did not. Being good Washingtonians, we hired a top drawer lobbyist (pro bono)!
Robb Watters is a skilled D.C. lobbyist, a former member here at Western and a dear personal friend. He is now an Episcopalian despite my best efforts to achieve another end. Hearing about our plight, Robb generously offered to help us pro bono. He said we needed a meeting with the Ethiopian Ambassador. I said I would try to arrange one.
After much effort and several cancellations, we finally got our appointment. Robb and I arrived at the Embassy a bit early. We waited and waited. Finally, after about 35 minutes, Robb said, “We’re leaving.” I was beside myself. “Robb, we can’t leave. I have worked really hard to get this appointment. Plus, the Ambassador may get mad if we leave.” “We leaving,” he said with the same certainty as when Mary told Jesus to make the wine. “The Ambassador will not respect us if we just sit here for the next hour waiting,” Robb explained.
I frantically went over to the receptionist and explained that we needed to leave, gave her my card with my cell phone, and apologized profusely that we couldn’t wait any longer. “Please tell the Ambassador we are so, so sorry,” I said. As I turned to find Robb, he was already out the door. Gone.
He and I were in the car five minutes when my cell phone rang. It was the Ambassador wanting to talk. I said to Robb, “It’s the Ambassador. He wants to talk. Let’s go back.” Robb didn’t even blink, saying, “Nope. Can’t talk. Not today. Tomorrow. Lunch. My club. I will arrange it.” I told the Ambassador, he agreed and we had a great lunch the next day. Such are the ways of Washington.
Out of that shaky start came an excellent relationship with the Ambassador who is an outstanding person. The Ambassador and Robb worked every possible angle to get the local officials to let us continue with the clinic construction but to no avail. As it became clear that we had hit a dead-end, our group at Western made a critical, strategic decision. We wouldn’t build a clinic in Dukem or anywhere else. Instead, we decided to identify and expand an existing clinic.
This past October, we started delivering healthcare at a clinic in Addis where we are paying to add a part-time physician, nurse and social worker to their staff. The focus of the new staff is totally on low income women and children. The first month we treated about 50 patients; in November about 100; in December 168. The workload is growing fast. As we speak one of our members, Jim Wilson, is in Addis discerning how we can expand our ministry.
Time and again, our success in ministry is rooted in a pragmatic approach to ministry. Using the clinic as an example, our goal is to provide health care to poor women and children. There are many ways to get that done. We didn’t succeed with one model. We are succeeding with another. Getting it done is what counts.
Ministry, indeed, life is all about road blocks and failures that stand between us and the ideals we want to realize. The roadblocks and failures pop up all the time. The only issue that really matters is how we respond to them. Do we allow them to discourage us, imagining God is against us? Or do we look for another means to the same end, pragmatically assessing what is and is not possible? “Maybe there is another way” is the starting point for just about every major discovery and accomplishment in history.
Jesus definitely was pragmatic. When the disciples said he didn’t have to die, he understood the political realities and told the disciples his death was an unavoidable hard fact. In like manner, when out in the desert, Moses said what he needed to say, did what he needed to do to keep the people moving toward the Promised Land.
The ends do not justify the means. But I think too many of us get hung up on the means, wanting our means to be as pure as the ends we seek. Fact of the matter: means are human and anything human is less than perfect. So we should get used to flaws means leading to sublime end points.
Certainly the process for some type of national healthcare reform is a case in point. A lot of people across the political spectrum are upset about the process. But social change is always a messy, tight consuming, error-prone process. It rightly involves a lot of compromises as competing interests are allowed to have a say. However, we can’t let our fear of making a mistake stop us from trying to do the right thing.
I was talking to someone this week about Dr. King’s pragmatism. If you read any of the excellent biographies about him, you realize that Dr. King was goal-oriented, almost goal-obsessed. He felt no need to reach his dream of a fully integrated society by traveling a pristine, perfect path. He knew such a path didn’t exist. His path and that of the civil rights movement was filled with compromise after compromise, compromises made with some pretty tough, nasty foes.
Dr. King’s pragmatism, and that of a pragmatic president named Lyndon Baines Johnson, got landmark civil rights legislation passed. The legislation they generated wasn’t the end. It was a starting point, a framework. So it will be when this healthcare legislation passes. It is a starting point for reform, not the end of it.
Dr. King’s tenacious persistence was directly related to his goal: the society he described in his “I Have a Dream” speech. He was unrelenting in his pursuit of it. His pragmatism was related to the means to that goal. He was incredibly flexible, willing to consider many options that more rigid members of his movement considered unacceptable.
Everyone trying to help in this awful tragedy in Haiti needs to take a deep breath and become very pragmatic about what is possible and what is not. As we sit here, doctors and nurses are doing that in the earthquake zone, making very pragmatic decisions about who may live if they operate, who might benefit most from limited medicines. In the months ahead, relief organizations will have to do the same type of triage. We have to focus on what will work not what should or might be.
As we look at our personal lives, have we become fixated on the means, creating standards for them that are artificially and unnecessarily high? Are we willing to be as flexible about how we get to our personal promised lands as we are inflexible in our determination to get there?
Understanding what can and cannot happen is at the heart of successful ministry and happy living. I have friends who keep banging on the same door expecting it to open. When it doesn’t open, for the one thousandth time, they are still shocked and amazed it remains closed.
Why are they surprised? They know where they are going but haven’t figured out they need to change the way to get there. It is long past time for them to knock on some other door. For behind another door may well lie God’s future for them.
I have seen congregations do the same thing. They stick with a model of ministry and specific strategies in ministry that are proven failures. They have the right vision—to serve God and the world. But they are unwilling to change to the means needed to implement the vision, to inject pragmatic realism into their work.
This congregation has had the same mission for 155 years. We are in Foggy Bottom to serve God and our neighbors. We stand in a wonderful tradition in which people have done and continue to do whatever it takes to keep this congregation moving forward. If we remain focused on our goal, if we think pragmatically about what we need to do and how we need to do it, our ministry will be here 155 years from now.
The state of this congregation is excellent. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to a style of ministry that blends idealism with realism.
Let us pray: Gracious God, you call us into ministry. We give you thanks for models of ministry like Dr. King and the folks who have gone before us here at Western. May we learn from them so we can respond to the needs of people from Foggy Bottom to Haiti to Ethiopia and back again to D.C. All this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
