The Collected Sermons of David Bartlett

David L. Bartlett

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780664235017
• eBook ISBN: 9781611649741
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This collection of fifty-two sermons shows beloved New Testament scholar David Bartlett at his best. Bartlett, who died in 2017, spent his career teaching and mentoring preachers at The University of Chicago Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, Union Presbyterian Seminary, and Columbia Theological Seminary, as well as serving as a pastor in American Baptist churches. Thus, he has generations of friends and former students who knew him for his quick wit, passion for justice, and deep knowledge of the Bible.

Those traits show through in these sermons. As Nora Tisdale says in the foreword: All of the sermons in this volume give witness to Davids passion for preaching that is solidly grounded in the biblical text. Most of them actually begin, as Karl Barth urged preachers to begin, with the biblical text. If they dont begin there, they always get there fairly quickly. And Davids interpretations of texts often surprise the reader with their freshness and clarity.

In addition to individual sermons, several multiweek sermon series, including a series on Who Is Jesus? and Great Words of the Faith, are included.

1

Having Nothing,
Possessing Everything

2 CORINTHIANS 6:1–11

This sermon was preached at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, in Rochester, New York, at its Commencement Ceremony on May 6, 1978. The University and Divinity School mentioned in this sermon is the University of Chicago and its Divinity School where David was teaching New Testament and serving as minister at the Hyde Park Union Church.

Second Corinthians shows Paul at his Pauline worst—angry, egotistical, defensive, desperately threatened. All the things we learned in classes on pastoral care we were never supposed to be. Here he is caught in that most exasperating bind. Opposition has arisen behind his back in a church he loves. Sly strangers question his credentials, his devotion. The church people, all too gullible, begin to waver. Whom can they believe? Out it comes—all the hurt and anger, all the weakness and the boasting, all the vulnerability of the beleaguered apostle—and all the grace, which time after time shines through his vulnerability.

We are treated as deceivers, yet we are true. We are treated as unknown, though we are known through and through. We are treated as though we have nothing, yet we possess everything. Having nothing; possessing everything.

(6:8–11, author trans.)

Paul admits it. As far as they go his opponents are right. He has nothing—no credentials, no wisdom, no power, no personal attractiveness. But his opponents are also wrong. He possesses everything, everything that matters—every gift of faith, hope and love, every amazing grace. Having nothing; possessing everything—that is the punch line in Paul’s defense of his ministry.

Here’s how he spells that out. Here’s how we spell that out for us. Having nothing; possessing everything. We are poor but we make many rich. Here is what this might mean for us.

We have no credentials but we possess the word of grace. That is so hard for us. We would so much rather find some way to commend ourselves. Like our desperate wish to be thought of as “professionals.” If that means we want to be more careful and more skilled in what we do, that is a fitting wish. But too often we want to be professionals because we want to claim that our credentials are every bit as good as those of the other professionals—physicians and lawyers. Enjoy this wish as long as you can. Call yourself a professional. Talk about the privileges of the profession. Then in ten years check with your peers who are doctors or lawyers. Compare their salaries to yours. See who society thinks are the real professionals. Having nothing, yet possessing everything. We have no credentials worth talking about, but we possess the one word always worth saying: we possess the word of grace.

There is a moving moment in Frederick Buechner’s novel The Final Beast. A woman named Rooney has been involved in a brief, unhappy adulterous relationship. Her minister, Roy Nicolet, has tried to help her with all the pastoral skills he has—all those theological insights and humane hints he picked up at seminary. And it just won’t do. So he goes for advice to an older woman in his congregation, and this is what she says:

“Give Rooney what she really wants, Nicolet.”

“Give her what, for Christ’s sake?”

“She doesn’t know God forgives her. That’s the only power you have, to tell her that. . . . Tell her he forgives her for being lonely and bored. For not being full of joy with a houseful of children. Because whether she knows it or not, that’s what she wants more than anything else, what all of us want. What on earth do you think you were ordained for?”¹

Having nothing, but possessing everything. Having no credentials, but entrusted with the word of grace. “She doesn’t know God forgives her and that’s the only power you have, to tell her that.”

Having nothing but possessing everything. Paul spells it out: “We are treated as deceivers but are true.” We apply that word, too.

We have little intellectual appeal, but we possess the foolishness of grace. We have little intellectual appeal. How I wish that weren’t true. I teach at an originally Baptist university. The first presidents of the University were teachers of biblical studies. The Divinity School, where I teach, sits at the center of the main quadrangle and we tell divinity students that we sit at the center of the University. But it isn’t necessarily so. The folks do not flock to our doors, or if they do it is because we have an inexpensive coffee shop in the basement. We keep teaching dialogical courses—theology and literature, theology and psychology, theology and the physical sciences. But I notice that the courses are full only of theological students—literati, psychologists and physicists alike almost never come. It feels as though we have nothing, so why do we keep at it?

Why do we keep trying to think through the ways in which we can reason out the implications of our faith? We do it because we possess everything. We do it because we possess the foolishness of grace. We continue to teach and study in seminaries and universities since we believe that we seek God because God first sought us. We continue to speak, even when no one much listens, because we believe that behind the hypotheses and the probabilities that our colleagues tally there is merciful love moving the universe. We continue to write, though no one much reads what we write, because we believe that within the history our colleagues scan, personal love took shape in the man Jesus. We continue with the odd task of the intellectual love of God because we possess everything, or at least because we continue to hope for everything.

Augustine has said it for us: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”²

Having nothing, possessing everything. Paul spells it out. We are treated as unknown, though we are known through and through.

We apply it: We have no political power, but we possess the weakness of grace. Having nothing; having no political power. How we long for political power. When I was a student in seminary, we got hold of a little bit. We had enough political power to close a university for a few days; enough to shake a President of the United States, at least a bit. But not enough power to get tenure for our favorite professor. Some things cannot be shaken.

We loved power. That’s where our salvation would be. We’d use our power for good of course, but it was power all the same. Then there was trouble. We didn’t keep our power. It lasted for a little while and perhaps we accomplished a little bit. But by the end power turned sour in our mouths because we always had to use power against someone. And that someone so easily became the enemy. And before we knew it, we had learned the power of hate.

Having nothing, but possessing everything. Instead of striving for the corrupting satisfactions of power, we live out the weakness of grace.

It is hard to know what that will look like. There will be no less zeal for justice, I hope, but a deeper realization that all of us are victims. There will be no less concern for action, I hope, but the humble remembering that our best actions are only poor parables of the Kingdom that God is bringing and will bring.

Will Campbell is a white, Baptist, southern preacher. The moment of truth came for him early in the civil rights movement. A northerner who had come to help in the cause of civil rights had been murdered. Will Campbell hated the murderer, Thomas Coleman. Then in a bitter night Campbell discovered that the one thing he possessed was not his political savvy or his moral indignation. What he possessed was the weakness of grace.

“I was laughing at myself,” he writes, “at twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of white liberal sophistication, and an attempted negation of Jesus, a ministry of human engineering, of riding the coattails of Caesar, of playing in his ball park by his rules and with his ball. A theology of law and order. I had neglected to minister to my people, the Thomas Colemans, who are also loved by God. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled.”³

The weakness of grace does not get us off the hook of social concern. It increases the scope and the depth of that concern. “Loved, and if loved, forgiven; and if forgiven, reconciled.” The shape of that concern is radical indeed. Having nothing and possessing everything.

Having nothing, and possessing everything. Paul spells it out: “We are treated as dying, but look! We live.”

We spell it out. We don’t even have ourselves, but we possess the vulnerability of grace. Now that is the hardest of all. We can let everything else go—the credentials, the intellectual prestige, the political power. But ourselves? Surely that is what we bring. Surely that is what this seminary education is about. Who am I, theologically, personally? What does it mean to sort ourselves out, to know ourselves, to be ourselves? But here, most painfully of all, we discover that we have nothing. Any minister can tell you; any person can tell you.

It was Good Friday. I was sitting at dinner when the phone rang. It was the university down the road from our church. There had been an accident on a student trip to Jamaica. A young man in our church had drowned. His first trip away from home. An only son. My colleague and I went to tell his parents the news.

I searched through my seminary education and my experience and my soul and discovered that I had nothing to bring. I didn’t even have myself. All this work we do in seminary, getting hold of ourselves. We have sharing sessions and encounter groups; late night discussions; CPE. At the end of it there are fewer surprises about who we are. We are more together, more open, more honest.

Then the crises come, and we rush in more together, more open, more honest. We try to hand ourselves to the desperate needs of the other and not even ourselves will do. Listen, it’s not what we own, it’s who owns us. It’s not who we are, it’s whose we are. Nothing can save but grace, not credentials, not wisdom, not power, and God knows, not ourselves.

A student of mine in his first parish wrote, after one of those days when everything went systematically wrong: “To some God has given the gift of apostleship, to some preaching, to some teaching, to some prophecy. And to some God has given a terrible vulnerability.”

That’s it, I think. That’s as close as we can come. The vulnerability of grace. The vulnerability that knows that we have nothing to bring to the awesome pain and the awesome joy of those we serve. The vulnerability that knows God brings us into that awesome pain and that awesome joy. The vulnerability that knows that therefore we possess everything. We possess grace; we possess a word called the gospel; we possess—we are possessed by—Christ, in whom that grace came.

That is all we have. That is all we need. That is, God knows, more than we have ever deserved or dared to ask. We are treated as deceivers, yet we are true. We are treated as unknown, though we are known through and through. We are treated as dying, but look! We live. We are treated as though we are poor, but we make many rich. We are treated as though we have nothing. But we possess everything.

To God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be thanks and praise.

Amen.

1. Frederick Buechner, The Final Beast (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1965), 115.

2. Saint Augustine, Confessions of Saint Augustine (New York: Penguin, 1961), 1.

3. Will D. Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition (New York: Continuum, 2000), 222.

2

Going Before

MARK 16:1–8

The surprising ending of Mark’s Gospel always fascinated David, and he took advantage of Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary to revisit the text. This is for the congregation of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church in Oakland, California, where David was pastor from 1981–1987, and it was preached on Easter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Leonora Tubbs Tisdale
• 1.   Having Nothing, Possessing Everything (2 Corinthians 6:1–11)
• 2.   Going Before (Mark 16:1–8)
• 3.   Enough Faith (Habbakuk 1:1–4, 2:1–4; Luke 17:1–10)
• 4.   A Sermon for Good Friday (John 19)
• 5.   Requirement and Reassurance: Ordination Sermon for Jonah Bartlett (Micah 6:1–8; Romans 8:31–39)
• 6.   The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37)
• 7.   Welcome One Another (Romans 15:1–8)
• 8.   Love Is from God (1 John 4:7–21; Song of Solomon 8:6–7)
• 9.   What Child Is This? (Isaiah 11:1–9; Matthew 3:1–12)
• 10.   Bringing Our Lives to Light (Isaiah 12:2–6; Matthew 2:16–18; Luke 3:7–18)
• 11.   “Really?” (Isaiah 65:17–25; Luke 21:5–28)
• 12.   Rich toward God (Luke 12:13–21)
• 13.   On Being Christian: Why Jesus? (John 6:60–71; Isaiah 53:4–6)
• 14.   On Being Christian: Why Scripture? (Isaiah 55; 2 Timothy 3)
• 15.   The Things That Make for Peace (Luke 19:28–44)
• 16.   Fear Nothing: Meditation in Four Parts (Mark 16:1–8)
• 17.   Whether We Live or Whether We Die (Romans 14:5–12)
• 18.   God Is at Work (Philippians 2:12–18)
• 19.   How to Read the Bible (John 1:1–18)
• 20.   Enemies (Luke 6:27–36)
• 21.   Hoping Not to Hinder the Spirit (John 13:31–35; Acts 11:1–18)
• 22.   Wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22–32; Romans 9:1–5)
• 23.   Watching with Hope (Mark 13:24–27; Isaiah 64:1–9)
• 24.   Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth? (John 1)
• 25.   The Acceptable Time (Job 38; 2 Corinthians 6:1–11)
• 26.   Two Returns (Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32)
• 27.   “The Word Became Flesh” (John 1:1–18)
• 28.   More than Conquerors (Romans 8)
• 29.   This We Believe: Who Is God? Maker of Heaven and Earth (Genesis 1:1–7, 26–28; Psalm 8)
• 30.   This We Believe: Who Is God? Liberator, Governor, Judge (Exodus 20:1–21)
• 31.   This We Believe: Who Is Jesus? The Word Made Flesh (John 1:1–18)
• 32.   This We Believe: Who Is Jesus? Teacher and Healer (Mark 2:1–12)
• 33.   This We Believe: Who Is Jesus? The Crucified Messiah (Mark 15:25–39; Romans 8:31–39)
• 34.   This We Believe: Who Is Jesus? The Risen One (1 Corinthians 15:1–11)
• 35.   This We Believe: What Do We Hope For? New Heaven and New Earth (2 Corinthians 5:1–11; Revelation 21:1–5)
• 36.   This We Believe: “Who Is the Holy Spirit?” (John 14:18–31; Galatians 4:1–7)
• 37.   This We Believe: Who Are We, the Church? (Acts 2:1–17; 1 Corinthians 12:12–31)
• 38.   This We Believe: What Shall We Do? (Matthew 5:1–13; Romans 12:1–2, 14–21)
• 39.   Great Words of the Faith: Love (1 John 4:7–11; 1 Corinthians 13)
• 40.   Great Words of the Faith: Grace (Romans 3:21–28; 2 Corinthians 12:1–10)
• 41.   Great Words of the Faith: Incarnation (John 1:1–18)
• 42.   Great Words of the Faith: Heaven and Hell (Revelation 21:1–8)
• 43.   Great Words of the Faith: Justification (Romans 5:1–11; Luke 15:11–32)
• 44.   Great Words of the Faith: Atonement (2 Corinthians 5:1–11)
• 45.   Great Words of the Faith: Forgiveness (Luke 15:11–32; Genesis 50:7–21)
• 46.   Great Words of the Faith: Creation/Providence (Genesis 1:20–31; Romans 8:18–25)
• 47.   Great Words of the Faith: Salvation (John 3:11–21; Romans 5:6–11)
• 48.   The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23)
• 49.   Doing the Word (James 1:17–27)
• 50.   The Good Samaritan Yet Again (Luke 10:25–37)
• 51.   Being Saved (Luke 17:11–19)
• 52.   Welcome to the Choir (1 Corinthians 14:6–19)
• Permissions
• Scripture Index