00:00:10.270 - 00:00:27.790

let us pray gracious God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

00:00:30.430 - 00:01:03.710

Two weeks ago, On a snowy Thursday morning in New York, I was on the subway heading for the south end of Manhattan at a meeting at Trinity Episcopal Church. A group of clergy had been invited to gather there and discuss the ways in which our congregations were responding to the economic mess that we're in, or more accurately, to discuss how we were dealing with the human cost of it all, the anxiety, the unemployment, the upsurge in human need.

00:01:04.830 - 00:01:32.270

Lurching alongside me in the train was a fellow dressed in dapper Wall Street financier attire, camel hair, coat, silk tie. Sitting next to him was a guy wearing the uniform of the homeless, stained sweatpants and a torn Jets cap. It was a snapshot of a typical subway ride. That is, until the homeless guy, in nodding off to sleep, dropped his cup of coffee.

00:01:32.910 - 00:02:12.750

Brown water glugged from the overturned cup and pooled around the well-dressed fellow's shoes. It must have been the last straw, because immediately, neck veins bulging, the fellow in the suit started screaming at the homeless guy, You bum, you gotta wake up, you can't be spilling your stuff all over other people. It was a tense moment, as it always is when someone does anything in the subway other than stare at their feet in a kind of eerie, swaying silence. It was also pretty ironic, since most of us, including, I think, the homeless guy, have wanted to yell those exact same words at someone from Wall Street for about six months.

00:02:12.750 - 00:02:33.950

You bums, you gotta wake up, you can't go spilling your stuff all over us. We're in an awful mess. Truth be told, while Wall Street bankers are the current poster boys for corruption and greed, there's plenty of blame to go around. And there's a whole lot of hurt.

00:02:34.670 - 00:03:21.230

There are individuals out there so despairing of their circumstances that they are willing to end it all. There are nonprofits all over the place whose income is shrinking as their clientele is growing. that is of course how it is with churches everywhere more need less in the offering plate anxious faces at the door and in the pews it's a tricky time for preachers what should we do what should we say and if we figure out what we should preach will we even be heard above the den A few years ago, I heard a radio interview with the now deceased former anchor of ABC Evening News, Peter Jennings.

00:03:22.510 - 00:04:07.710

In this interview, Jennings was looking back over his entire career as both a network news anchor, but also as a foreign correspondent early in his career in ABC's Beirut office. Along the way, he described how in the 1960s it was his responsibility to cover stories for ABC in a vast geographical area that stretched from Greece in the north, to Israel in the south, and east to India and Pakistan. In other words, Jennings covered the bulk of the Middle East for ABC. If there was a breaking story anywhere in the area, he and his cameraman would hop on a plane, fly there, and once there, they'd try to provide pictures of and words about the events taking place.

00:04:08.750 - 00:04:51.310

When asked to compare those days to today's news coverage, Jennings remarked that news networks now involve hundreds more people, journalists embedded in communities that they know with much greater intimacy. He went on to say that this, coupled with advances in technology, means that there is more and better news available today than ever before. Of course, Jennings also observed that the constant growth of accessible information does present a dilemma for today's consumer. With so much news to choose from, how do you decide which stories to listen to and care about?

00:04:52.030 - 00:05:11.310

How do you know what is static and what is truth? That's a good question. Sources for information about the world have multiplied and multiplied again in the last two decades. Our choice is no longer between which local paper to read and which of the big three networks to watch.

00:05:11.550 - 00:05:29.950

Our attention and dedication flutter amongst scores of radio programs, hundreds of cable channels, countless internet sites, blogs, podcasts, e-mail lists. It all makes you wonder, is this myriad of choices good or bad? Is it a blessing or a curse?

00:05:31.710 - 00:05:56.270

In 1984, that dystopian novel that we all had to read in high school, George Orwell put us on warning about a future in which Big Brother would burn books, discourage inquiry, and in general, work to keep the truth away from the masses. It was a scary picture. But now, communication theorist Neil Postman argues that the flip side of the coin is equally frightening.

00:05:57.150 - 00:06:25.950

Postman describes a world in which the truth is not hidden from us, but is drowned. in an ocean of trivial, self-congratulatory information. Of course we reject Big Brother, but are we in the church ready for the other end of the spectrum? As a church, are we prepared for the super diversified media that is now catering to everyone's taste so that no one will have to listen to anything that will challenge their beliefs?

00:06:28.430 - 00:06:53.950

By the 1960s, Anchorman Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. That's the way it is. Cronkite was the sort of classic newsman who attempted to keep his opinion out of the stories that he reported, until one day in 1968, when he was returning from a visit in Vietnam, and his producer encouraged him to say what he really thought about the conflict.

00:06:54.910 - 00:07:23.710

After weighing his responsibility to country, In his journalistic vocation, Cronkite decided that he would speak out. And he declared on the air that he thought that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. So sweeping was Cronkite's influence in this country that on seeing that broadcast, President Johnson turned to an aide and said, If we've lost Cronkite, we've lost America.

00:07:25.070 - 00:07:52.350

There's nobody. I would argue, who has that kind of sway in this country anymore. Is this because our contemporary journalists are less moral, less intelligent, less upstanding than their predecessors? Or is it simply the case that the multitude of voices that now compete for our attention prevent anyone from rising to that sort of stature in our society?

00:07:53.150 - 00:08:28.110

In fact, two years ago, Cronkite himself declared that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, and he was quickly dismissed as a voice that no longer had clout. Sound familiar? Mainline churches have nowhere near the authority or the authorities that we had at our peak. In the 1950s, Gallup polls surveyed graduating high school seniors in this country, asking them what were the most prestigious occupations that they might aspire to fill.

00:08:28.670 - 00:08:59.310

The top three responses, in varying orders depending on the community surveyed, were doctor, lawyer, minister. When the same question is asked today by Gallup polls, doctors and lawyers still make the top five. Clergy barely break the top 50. As clerical authority has diminished, so has the voice of Christian authorities in our culture.

00:09:00.110 - 00:09:34.990

How many of you have heard the question, where are the great theological voices who can lead us in this time? Where is the Reinhold Niebuhr of today? Niebuhr, reformed pastor and Christian intellectual, appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1948-- I've heard that 100 times-- as a figure beloved by politicians and clergy, law professors, and sociologists, vast numbers of religious people trusted him. Is it the case that there are no longer as smart, or as provocative, or as intellectually rigorous people as Niebuhr?

00:09:35.710 - 00:09:49.390

Of course there are. There are plenty of smart theologians out there, some of them in this very room. But no one stands on the lofty platform that Niebuhr occupied. Why?

00:09:50.910 - 00:10:18.750

Because that platform no longer exists. When President Obama was inaugurated, there was no one religious voice, no solitary Billy Graham at the lectern, but many different voices and perspectives blessing our nation's most important political ritual. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe what I'm articulating here is nostalgia for something that we ought to cheer into the sunset.

00:10:18.910 - 00:10:42.430

Maybe the best guard against totalitarianism and fundamentalism is a diversity of perspective. I want to believe that. But I also have to confess that today's church seems a whole lot more like Babel than it does Pentecost. We spend so much of our energy fighting

00:10:42.790 - 00:11:06.030

and then walking away. I think it's fabulous in Luke's account of Pentecost, the account that Scott read, that the residents of Jerusalem mistook the disciples' chatter in the language of Parthians and Medes and Elamites as a sign that someone had cranked up happy hour. Here it is, the birth of the church, and they think it's a fiesta. But let me ask you this.

00:11:06.430 - 00:11:28.270

When is the last time that you mistook a presbytery meeting for a party? Maybe that's our problem. Maybe the trouble in the church is not our incredible diversity, but our focus. Read our denominations, publications, and attend our cantankerous meetings.

00:11:28.510 - 00:11:59.070

Our arguments are always left, right, and center, referencing either one, our denomination's glory days or two, some other entity, some mega church or some other more liberal or more conservative denomination who's having success. We're forever trying to find the magic lever that will lift mainline churches back up to a platform of significance and power. Yet as appealing as that perch was, and it was appealing, are we sure?

00:11:59.710 - 00:12:40.590

that the spirit wants us to replicate our former success in recent months I've been reading the prophets Jeremiah Amos Ezekiel they're making a whole lot of sense to me right now take a guy like Ezekiel he's seen terrible devastation And then, in a holy vision, the hand of the Lord whisks the prophet not to a bustling megachurch in the burbs, but to a scene of death, a valley of dry bones. Now, where did these bones come from? Scholars speculate that this valley might be the site of a terrible ancient battle.

00:12:41.310 - 00:13:04.270

Or maybe it symbolizes the debris of a nation judged by God. We might wonder if it could stand for a religious community so consumed with bickering and blame that it eventually argues itself to dust. Who knows? Whatever went wrong went terribly wrong, and all that is left is bones, shards of death.

00:13:05.310 - 00:13:30.590

Mortal, the spirit asks Ezekiel, can these bones live? At this, the prophet responds with a typical, almost Presbyterian play-it-safe answer, O Lord God, you know. Quickly, as if annoyed at Ezekiel's complacency, the spirit barks a command, Prophesy to the bones. Now, what kind of advice is that?

00:13:31.470 - 00:14:02.750

Prophesy to the bones. I mean, why is it that whenever the spirit gets involved, it makes people seem like they've been tossing back too much bourbon? It's an outrageous suggestion. not not the bones part we get that we understand somebody's uncovered a valley full of skeletal remains not a surprise bones are everywhere in this world but prophesy to them for the past four months this

00:14:03.390 - 00:14:36.670

Our economy has unraveled. I've been shuttling in and out of various meetings at church, trying to strategize about how we'll keep the homeless shelter open, how we'll keep education classes happening, and worship going. Now, church budget committees, whether they be in New York City or in Burnett, Texas, tend to attract your finance types. And so it's probably not surprising that these conversations have reflected the stress and anxiety that these individuals feel in their workplaces.

00:14:37.470 - 00:14:57.310

Each month, as we've slipped deeper into this mess, I've heard people groan, push themselves back from the table and say, If only we knew if there were any more shoes about to drop. Amen. It's been raining shoes. First it was Fanny and Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers.

00:14:57.550 - 00:15:21.870

Now it's GM and Mr. Madoff. As our former president can attest, the deluge of footwear stretches all the way to Iraq. From where I sit, every loafer and black pump that has studded to the ground has been an indication of a person needing spiritual care and a potential financial loss for the church.

00:15:22.750 - 00:15:51.790

So I recently found myself praying, Please God, let there be no more shoes to drop. It was a prayer, I'll admit, framed in frustration and fear. I was, after all, the new pastor, charged with leadership, and I was angry. Doggonit, this financial mess was threatening any chance of success that I might have, any potential return for that church to the glory days of old, Please God, let there be no more shoes to drop.

00:15:53.230 - 00:16:17.230

And then one afternoon, a few weeks ago, Joe Vadella knocked on my office door. Joe is a former addict and a homeless guy who works in our homeless shelter. He's a fellow who's logged a good bit of time in the valley of dry bones. Come downstairs, said Joe, there's something that you need to see.

00:16:18.270 - 00:16:52.030

At the front door, two of New York's finest off-duty police officers were unloading 700 pairs of confiscated, counterfeit Timberland boots. Would we be willing, they asked, to distribute them to the homeless? We were downright giddy, alternatively blinking back tears and then just laughing as we hauled in bag after bag of shoes. Do you hear the rattling?

00:16:53.470 - 00:17:24.710

It's not all cultural static. It's not, Saint Peter says, ice cubes in the disciples' whiskey. It's the Spirit it's the breath of God and and maybe just maybe if we in the church can forego our focus on survival we might find that God's wind is blowing all around us calling us to valleys of dust and despair places where prophecy still matters and the almighty is bringing things to life amen