 Covenant Network of Presbyterians Conference Witnesses will help PCUSA shift to 'judicial season,' speaker says By Patrick Jean Staff Writer The Layman Online Friday, November 9, 2007 ATLANTA – Witness testimony will be needed to help the Presbyterian Church (USA) make the transition from a "legislative period" to a "judicial season," the opening worship speaker said at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians' 2007 conference.
Johnston preceded his sermon with Biblical readings that complemented his sermon title, "Can I Get a Witness?" These readings included:
Johnston opened his sermon with a recap of a recent bombshell in literature: J.K. Rowling revealing to a New York audience that Dumbledore, a character in her wildly popular Harry Potter series, is gay. "On hearing this news, the crowd gasped, and then a smattering of applause broke out," Johnston said. "Reactions over the last 10 days have followed a similar pattern: some are gasping, some are applauding." Johnston quoted an op-ed from Edward Rothstein, cultural critic for The New York Times, about the controversy: "There seems to be no compelling reason within the books for her after-the-fact assertion. Of course, it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books' accounts certainly don't make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should." "Well, maybe Rothstein is right – maybe there's no good reason for this," Johnston said. "Maybe we should probably laugh and dismiss this furor as seemingly another bizarre attempt to sexualize a fictional character. Remember Tinky Winky, or further back, the rumors about Bert and Ernie? How silly was all of that?" he said to laughter. "Of course, in those cases, it was clergy from the religious right who were worried that, somehow, public television was sneaking hidden agendas into the antics of asexual puppets – a sentence I never thought I would write," Johnston said to more laughter. "In this case, the situation seems different. For it's not a critic, but the author herself, who has 'outed' her creation. Now why would she do that?" Origins of 'Can I get a witness?' Johnston then focused on the origins of the saying, "Can I get a witness?" He told his audience that the late Marvin Gaye scored a No. 3 hit on Billboard's rhythm and blues chart in 1963 with a love-gone-bad song carrying that title. "More recently, the title phrase in Gaye's hit has become a catchy refrain in American hip-hop," he said. "If you are at all familiar with the roots of rock 'n' roll, it probably won't surprise you that Gaye's inspiration for the song came, as was so often the case, from a less-famous gospel number performed by the Swan Silvertones – and you can find their music on iTunes," Johnston said. "What you may not know, depending on the amount of time you have spent in African-American worship services, is that the Silvertones took as their inspiration a question that is often asked by black preachers in the midst of their Sunday sermons: 'Can I get a witness?'" The first written record of the phrase comes from Nannie Helen Burroughs in the late 19th century, Johnston said. She was a black educator whose father was a preacher, which contributed to her efforts to seek a stronger role for women in the National Baptist Church, he said. "In a speech that she gave to her denomination entitled, 'How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping,' Ms. Burroughs described the way 'Can I get a witness?' would arise in a sermon," Johnston said. "It comes, she said, right after the preacher has told a story. In posing this question, the preacher asks if anyone out there in the congregation can affirm what has just been said with an 'Amen,' or the clapping of hands, or stand up and give verbal testimony that what is being said in the pulpit is true. "I bet Ms. Burroughs got a lot of 'Amens' the day she gave her speech because, in the weeks after that, women were welcomed more fully into the mission work of the National Baptist Church," he said. Much theology is packed into "Can I get a witness?" because in asking it, "One faithful person says to the other, 'This is how I am experiencing God,' in order to ask, 'Are you getting this, too?' " said Johnston, who related a Biblical story to illustrate his point: "On the road to Emmaus, the resurrected Christ appears to the disciples, opens the Scriptures to them, and then in the breaking of bread is revealed. Before they finish chewing, Jesus vanishes, and these befuddled, wide-eyed souls resume their journey. As they do, they turn to each other for confirmation of what has just happened. 'Didn't our hearts burn within us as we walked along, as He opened the Scriptures? You just experienced what I just experienced, right? Can I get a witness?'" 'Stuff tumbling around inside us' Such experiences, although Biblical, can worry a "true-blue Presbyterian," Johnston said to laughter. "After all, one of the strengths of our Reformed tradition is the recognition that human experience can be a source of moral rot. We never want to imply, just because people can point to a 'common' experience, just because they can do that, does not mean that they've latched onto God's truth." The Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis and other hate groups from history use experiences involving minorities to further their own causes, he said. "Their awful 'witness' reminds us of the old Methodist adage: Taken alone, human experience is a one-legged stool that cannot stand as an authority." That raises the question of whether "Can I get a witness?" is theologically appropriate, Johnston said. "Does it elevate raw experience over other sources of God's truth?" he said. Johnston then told about reading a book to his children in which a young boy who's planning to go trick-or-treating for Halloween discovers that his costume, a white "mad scientist" lab coat, has been dyed pink after it was washed with the clothes of other family members. "It occurs to me that our inner lives could be compared to that clothes washer," he said to laughter. "We have all sorts of stuff tumbling around inside us: secular stuff with sacred stuff; our family history being tossed around with the history of the people of God; our reasoning mind coloring our emotional hearts; a few memorized snippets of the creeds inking the same waters in which a depressing e-mail swims; the vivid recollection of a cold stare and a question about our commitment to Jesus in the same wash with a memory of a gentle Sunday school teacher pushing a cut-out paper figure across a flannel landscape." When we give testimony to the community, we are wearing those same pink lab coats, Johnston said. "When we dare to speak, to witness, to point to God in the world, we are sharing both the Gospel and ourselves in some strangely tinted, holy amalgam." He then returned to 1st Thessalonians, reading from chapter 2, verse 8: "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves." Scholars say Paul is describing that it takes being a witness to be a true apostle, Johnston said. "In this, Paul claims that sharing the good news of God requires more than a disciple being armed with a profound subject," he said. "It insists that apostles do more; that they share their lives, their selves, their energies, their stories with each other. Isn't this, after all, the message of the incarnation? God didn't send us a textbook on faithful living. God came, sharing God's own self with us, for us." 'Start sharing our stories' Johnston told how a friend had told him the "legislative period" of the PCUSA was drawing to a close and a "judicial season" was beginning. When Johnston asked him to elaborate, the friend said, "We have fought and fought and fought over the Book of Order. We have battled ourselves into a bloody stalemate and now, I think, with the passage of the PUP report, we're not going to have as much energy for the next charge into the legislative fray. Instead, we're going to move to a time when individual cases are being decided on the floors of presbyteries, and at session meetings, and in front of the permanent judicial commission. This means that our church's conflict will no longer be focused on a generic issue. It's going to be about specific candidates." Johnston said he agreed with his friend's analysis, but questioned whether the change would move the denomination any closer to the Kingdom of God. "If we are, in fact, entering a judicial season in sorting through the church's current turmoil; if we are entering a time when these issues will be considered in the context of ecclesial courts, then it is time, my friends, for witnesses," he said. Talk of court proceedings and witnesses makes Johnston think of John Grisham novels such as A Time to Kill and movies such as A Few Good Men, he said. "Still, as much as I like that kind of thing – probably because it gives me the visceral sense that justice is happening – it ain't the Church. At least not the way Paul sees it." Paul knew philosophers had gained an edge in Thessalonica by appealing to people's base emotions and ridiculing their opponents' morals and motives, Johnston said. "In today's text, Paul seems momentarily tempted by this image when he says, 'We might have made demands as apostles,' but then he pulls back, offering an alternative perspective that is so tender, it may well make us blush – well, at least half of us. 'We were gentle among you,' writes the apostle, 'like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.'" Johnston then tied this back in to Rothstein's argument that Dumbledore's homosexuality is irrelevant. Johnston agrees on one hand. "Having read the entire series, it's true that Dumbledore's sexuality doesn't seem to be a factor as the wizard administers a school for magical young people - honing their minds, developing their skills, challenging their ethics, and eventually leading them in a larger fight against the powers of darkness and death," he said. "On the other, Rowling's disclosure makes a clear point: While a person's sexual orientation is never irrelevant to that individual, is it ever a determining factor in predicting who will and who will not run the good race?" Johnston said. "So, far from being the distraction that Rothstein suggests, Rowling's comments come as a revelation, moving these popular books from the category of escapist fiction to that of gentle witness." Johnston then remarked that the cover of the bulletin for his service featured Fra Angelico's "Feast of All Saints" painting. "Do you wonder, in that great cloud of witnesses, how many were gay? How many were straight? Does it matter?" he said. "I used to argue that it didn't matter at all – that it was irrelevant to God, and therefore ought to be irrelevant to us." But Johnston is changing his mind, he said. "I think we all need to sit in small circles right now, tell our tales, and then boldly ask each other that old, old question, 'Can I get a witness?'" he said. "I think we need to stop writing position papers and start sharing our stories – honest stories, painful stories, goofy stories – until the Gospel stains us pink with gentle grace and we find ourselves standing with all those ordinary folks at the end of the race." Patrick Jean is a staff writer for The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at pjean@layman.org. |
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