Daniel T. Hans
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: May 4, 2008

"Going Bald Together"

Last Sunday evening was my installation as Head of Staff here at Second.

It’s official now! Unlike a piece of furniture bought with excitement yet once brought home doesn’t match the existing décor, you can’t send me back for a refund. I’m a permanent fixture! Like a marriage, for better or worse we now belong to each other. This relationship is for keeps! Therefore, I’ve chosen as my text this morning, Paul’s famous words in 1 Corinthians 13.  (See Scripture Reading.)

The church in Corinth did not meet in a glass house where no one threw stones and it did not consist of people wearing political campaign smiles and class reunion outfits. The Christians in Corinth were real people with real problems. There were schisms and scars, conflicts and confusion, disagreements and divisions among the followers and the leaders. Yet, together, by God’s grace, they had a real and genuine relationship. Thus, Paul offered them words of brutal honesty & bountiful hope, words for changing circumstances and changing relationships, words that would easily be called: the bald truth. Listen again to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

An article titled "The Bald Truth" featured a study done at Denison University, my undergraduate alma mater where my daughter Amy graduates next Sunday. The study revealed the following: Both men and women, those with hair and those without hair, view bald men as "less physically attractive, less socially skilled, and less socially successful than their [hirsute] counterparts." (US News and World Report, 8/4/97) According to the study, that’s the bald truth! Given this general impression about bald men, I wonder why God called me into the ministry for I am "follicularly" challenged; I am cursed with a bare bean; I am plagued by a naked noggin!

Reference to my own "divested scalp" brings us to my secondary text. Having already heard Paul’s appeal for love within the church in Corinth in the mid first century, I now present another appeal for love that presents a challenge to any church in any time and any place. This secondary text comes from the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. You may know the story.

Once upon a time, a new Velveteen Rabbit was brought into a nursery where there also lived an old, worn-out, bald Skin Horse. At first, the little boy of the nursery played with the Velveteen Rabbit daily. But then, as usually happens, the boy soon tired of the rabbit and abandoned it to the closet floor as he pursued more sophisticated toys. One day the Velveteen Rabbit noticed the old Skin Horse sitting nearby on the closet floor and asked:

"What is REAL? … Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn’t how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn’t happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because by the time you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."

"I suppose YOU are Real?" asked the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The boy’s uncle made me Real." he said. "That was many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always."

What church and what pastor at the beginning of their ministry together do not have a deep-seated desire to be Real, to be the real people God has created and redeemed us to be in his grace! Being Real, however, is no easy task. The wisdom of the Skin Horse tells us that it doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept. The wisdom of the Skin Horse tells us that becoming Real takes time spent together and involves a shared love which usually leaves at least one of the parties bald! Here are a few suggestions on how a congregation like Second and a pastor like me can become Real with each other as we love off each other’s hair in service to Jesus Christ.

1. The wisdom of the Apostle Paul tells us: "Love is patient." Patience is the reality test for any pastor and congregation. If it took God 7 poetic days to create the world; if it took Israel 40 metaphoric years of wondering in the wilderness to become ready to enter the Promised Land; if it took Jesus 3 theological days to rise from the dead; and if it has taken the church 2 literal millennia to get only to where we are today in our witness to God’s grace, justice and peace, then what makes us think a pastor and congregation can fulfill our calling in a short time?

Time together is the key to faithful ministry within the church. Our calling is to stick together, work together, listen to each other, challenge each other, love each other, and do this day after day, year after year. During new beginnings, it’s easy to be impatient with each other. A congregation and pastor can become like the man and woman on a blind date. This particular blind date wasn’t going well. After being with his date for about two hours, the man was ready to escape. Earlier, he had secretly arranged to have a friend call him on his cell phone so he would have an excuse to leave if needed. After the phone call, he looked at his date, lowered his eyes, put on a grim expression and said, "I have some bad news. My grandfather just died and I have to leave." "Thank goodness," his date replied. "If yours hadn’t mine would have had to!"

During new beginnings, it’s easy to be impatient with each other. So we need to remember: Love is patient. But even with love, even with God’s love, sometimes patience runs out and changes have to be made for the well being of all involved.

2. The wisdom of Paul tells us: "Love doesn’t insist on its own way." Churches do not need authoritarian leaders who insist that things be done THEIR way. Rather, churches need leadership with authority, authority that arises from following Jesus who is THE way. A favorite reflection of mine is titled "The World Needs Leaders"

The world needs more men and women who do not have a price at which they can be bought; who do not borrow from integrity to pay for expediency; whose handshake is an ironclad contract; who are not afraid of risk; who are honest in small matters as they are in large ones; whose ambitions are big enough to include others; who know how to win with grace and lose with dignity; who do not believe that shrewdness, cunning, and ruthlessness are the three keys to success; who still have friends they made 20 years ago; who are not afraid to go against the grain of popular opinion and do not believe in "consensus"; who are occasionally wrong and always willing to admit it. In short, the world needs leaders. (Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success, p. 68-69)

Good leadership, like good love, does not insist on its own way but does insist on God’s way which is not always easy and popular.

"Love does not insist on its own way" means that pastors do not need congregations "that break easily or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept." Nor do pastors need congregations that cling with white knuckles to the old way of doing things. What every pastor needs, present company included, is a congregation with openness and flexibility. Pastors need a family of humble seekers and fellow strugglers, who are open to the leading of God’s Spirit, who welcome change when change advances the Kingdom of God, and who continually seek not their own way but the way of Jesus.

A Real congregation and a Real pastor seeking Christ’s way of love and moving ahead to what they can become together in God’s grace, that combination can do great things whoever and wherever they are.

3. The wisdom of Paul tells us: "Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth." To be Real with each other, we must be honest with each other. For a pastor and a congregation to be honest with each other means to risk letting down their hair with each other. Congregations should expect great things from their pastors but they must never forget that before their pastors became pastors they were and still are human beings, sinners like the rest of us, dependent on grace. Pastors should expect great things from their congregations, but they must never forget that before their congregations were baptized in faith, they were and still are sinners, like the rest of us, dependent on grace.

The bald truth is that each of us is but a hasty, selfish, stupid mistake away from destructive wrongdoing that can hurt all of us. So, truth requires accountability between pastors and congregations. We need to be as truthful with each other about each other as the Skin Horse was truthful with the Velveteen Rabbit and as Paul was truthful with the folks in Corinth. Truthful accountability goes across the board for every one of us in the life of the church. Love does not eliminate accountability; lover requires accountability in our results and in our relationships.

But truthful accountability must never be a witch hunt. People here at Second Presbyterian Church have clear convictions about faith and morality, about politics and economics. Some of these views clash in theory. Our challenge is to keep working to allow these disparate views to converse and converge in love. The song does not declare They will know we are Christians by our theology or our political affiliation or our economic theory or our moral stand, rather They will know we are Christians by our love.

Rather than a witch hunt, truthful accountability in a church needs to be like one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread. In our shared pursuit for truth, as congregation and pastor we need to do more than let down our hair with each other; we need to love the hair off each other. For God’s truth is approached only through God’s love. Love without truth may be empty; but truth without love can be evil!

One of the saints of my congregation in Gettysburg whom I had the privilege to know well in this life and to lead the public farewell as he went on to life eternal was a man named Walter Hess. A WW I veteran who died at age 103, Walter had outlived 3 wives. A couple of years after his third wife died and when Walter was about 98, I asked him if he would marry again for the 4^th time. He thought long and hard and then answered, "I don’t think so. I’ve had 3 good wives and I don’t want to press my luck."

Well, I have been blessed with 3 good congregations so far in my ministry, each of which has loved off some of my hair. Unlike Walter Hess, I am going to press my luck with you, my 4th congregation. Hopefully you will love off what little hair is left.

But, please, I beg you: love my hair off; don’t make him or me pull it out! My hope and prayer for you and for me is to go bald together - patiently, humbly, graciously, loving off each other’s hair.

Such Real love, according to the Skin Horse, "lasts for always."

Such Real love, according to the Apostle Paul, "never ends."