Dems the Rules

He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath? so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other.

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

His name was Dudley Field III. He was a Presbyterian pastor who served most of his career in Ohio. I found Dudley Field in the anecdotes and memories of my first church. I came a decade after he left, but it was still clear how much the church loved and remembered him.

Dudley wrote a small book, a pastoral memoir. I read the book— helpful. One anecdote in the memoir was priceless. He spoke of the chancel of the church where I followed him.

If you look at the chancel from the congregation, from the nave, it looks good. Very symmetrical, deep red oak with a hint of neo-gothic arches in the panels. There were four steps that led up to the fancy chairs, communion table, pulpit, and lectern. Pleasant to look at, tough to navigate. The choir sat on either side and were split. There are more steps all over the place which was tricky. Perhaps the worst was the four steps up to the chance from the nave. There was no handrail and thus elders go up or down provided much dread and gasps.

Dudley described this chancel. “It was my idea,” he confessed. He had a vision; he drew up plans; made a model; ultimately, he convinced the elders of the church to tear out the old chancel and make his vision a reality.

It has been many years since I read this book, so I am paraphrasing Rev. Field here: this was a huge mistake. I was out of my mind. I didn’t have any architectural skills. Preaching from that chancel for four years, I concur. This was not a good thing. Not the worst, but certainly an awkward, dangerous, and divided chancel now 40 years old.

One redemption though was that Dudley Field saved me going forward. Each time I have helped a church redesign a chancel, each time an elder has said, “we really need to update this,” I have said the same thing. “Sounds great. You’re right. Let’s hire an architect.” The saving grace is that the inspired elder always balks and say, “no. We don’t need an architect. They cost too much and for what?” “Well,” I say, “let me tell you about Dudley Field.”

A curious thing happens in congregations. Not all the time, but sometimes we underestimate challenge. It’s as if the rules and best practices, the policies born of hard lessons are put aside. We say things like, “this is a church. We don’t need to do that.” Heresy really doesn’t bother me much, the skeptic, the critic, even the cynic, not a problem for me. But the delusion of “this is church” so the rules don’t apply, oh that fills me with fear.

I made this mistake during my first session meeting as a pastor. Someone gave me a copy of Robert’s Rules as a present upon my arrival. I distinctly remember looking at the thick book and thumbing the pages and chapters: motions, meetings, quorums, minutes, voice and vote. I remember putting the book down and saying, “that’s a bit much. Not necessary, this is small country church with a group of folks who are going talk about stuff and we will be fine.”

An hour into my first session meeting as the elders continued to debate the first topic raised, the purchase of a new vacuum for the sexton, as this hot topic was cast back and forth with no clear sign of a resolution, I remembered that thick book in my office the one of which I said “not necessary” so wrong.

Well, I read the book, the rules Robert crafted for parliamentary procedure. I read it again and again until I saw the beauty of the book. Robert’s Rules felt stuffy, like a huge imposition of unnecessary concern until I saw it for what it is. I could see this when I remembered street football.

Just about any childhood sport gives the same lesson. But what I remembered was street football. Before you play you agree to the rules, before you throw the football or rush the passer, you all agree: the blue car is an endzone; the fire hydrant is the first down marker; Sandy’s driveway is the other endzone. Once you have this, you can play. Any kid knows that. Any kid would laugh if said, not necessary. You can’t. You can play catch, but you can’t play a game. You need to agree to rules before you play.

Reading Robert’s Rules I could saw the stuffiness become freedom. Each section had a broad truth, like you must start with a motion, speak for or against it, and then vote. If you don’t start with a motion, bad things happen, poor decisions are common. From this basic rule comes a refining, and more refining so just about every contingency, every pitfall is pointed out.

Robert’s Rules doesn’t tell you what to vote, just how. Had I read the book before the first session meeting the vacuum conversation . . . five minutes. The lack of a committee motion would direct the decision back to where it belongs so says Robert.

We need order to live—basic need of the soul. We satisfy this need with rules and laws, traditions and definitions, codes and protocols. The sabbath was and is for the Jewish faith an ordering of life. The first rule of the order is: Six days work, one day rest. It’s an order of things. If ever you want to read the most beautiful explanation of this, read Abraham Heschel’s book, The Sabbath. Amazing, life changing book. It is because he reveals the beauty of the order, the way the Sabbath is a gift, time itself, a living part of creation. It’s not a day off; it is the moment of being one with God.

Order is a basic need of the soul. We need this to live, to play, to be at peace, and to endure the crisis. Order though can take on a life of its own. Like anything good, when we lose proportion, make it too much, then we lose the goodness. As Epicurious taught, everything in proportion. Order is a big portion of our life. It’s everywhere, but it’s not everything.

What Jesus is saying to the Pharisees about the Sabbath, he could easily come to us today and speak of the Bible. Protestants have made the bible into something to worship, to revere beyond its purpose. The bible says so is used to end conversations rather than begin them. The bible is not meant to justify hatred and violence and bigotry, but when the bible is becomes an order unto itself, a rule without boundary, when this happens, the book meant for salvation becomes damnation, what was to free becomes a prison.

Not many people here have sheep, let alone sheep who fall into wells. So Jesus’ analogy might not resonate. But we do have traditions that destroy us, ruin our ability to see the good. If you value the sabbath more than the one who suffers, then the sabbath is destroying you. Again, what tempts us might not be withered hands or what we do or don’t do on Sunday, but it would not take us long to find traditions that ruin us, codes of conduct we value more than people, ideas and definitions that cannot be questioned.

I served on a hospital board for a dozen years and learned tons. Learned a lot about managing a labor force. With 2000 employees there were a few issues that needed to be dealt with from time to time. I realized early on that even on a board level I was dealing with personnel conflicts at the hospital in a month more than I would ever face in a parish as a pastor during my career.

Yet what I didn’t realize going in was that serving on a hospital board is really a long crash course in risk management. Hospitals are very, very risky places and to manage this risk, there needs to be policy upon policy, protocol upon protocol. You must keep the order and mitigate chaos.

There were two big lessons that kept me on the path and shaped my life. They are guiding principles in the need for order. The first principle is you must follow policy and
procedure. Follow it when things are normal and follow it in emergencies, especially in an emergency. There was a time where I laughed at the idea of a disaster plan. I used to joke, “isn’t a disaster when the plan didn’t work?” Ha, ha, ha; no. A disaster plan is the hard work of culling the lessons learned the hard way, the potential of things getting worse. Follow the policies.

The second principle is “love the mistake”. The identified mistake is gold, highly valuable. For in the mistake, in the problem, in the moment where what should have gone left went right, oh, that’s where lives are saved, where people are kept whole. This is tough principle to live though. We want to sweep things under the rug, to blame or shame, to punish with a vengeance and thus use fear to reorder things.

The most important part of our reading is the last comment, the description of what the Pharisees did with a mistake. They believed what Jesus did was a mistake, and for this they sought to “destroy him.” The first part of the reading, the way the order of things can take on a life of its own, how traditions can become shackles, this is important too. We need order and we need to keep order, but we must not lose sight of what is important. The rules are there to let us play, not the other way around.

The need for order, like the first principle of risk management, follow the policy, is something to be mastered. Yet, the need to love the mistake so to learn from it, this is a real game changer. It’s hard to do, at least at first. Because there is a sense that if I love the mistake does that then remove consequence; does it create a kind of anarchy? Thanks to Richard Nixon no one wants to be soft on crime. But what I have found is that loving the mistake cuts to the heart of the gospel.

Please don’t half understand me. This is not "hate the sin love the sinner." No. You love people, especially when they fail, because that’s when they need it the most. No. Loving the mistake is when you find the courage to dig deep into our failures and folly to find what drives us, what guides us. What did we have to believe in order to convince ourselves up is down? What was the confidence or fear that led us to self-destruction? What was the moment where we said, sure, even though this is obviously the wrong thing to do, it’s okay here, it’s okay for me?

If you don’t love the mistake, then you will never dig in, dig down and find these moments and without these we are all too likely to repeat them. This didn’t hit home for me until I watched the testimony of a mother who lost a child. She spoke to a hospital board in the Midwest. The hospital was without doubt negligent in her son’s death. She told the board, “I don’t want damages, I don’t want you to pay money for what you did.” She said, “I want you to be honest and I want us to consider what happened, so there is a possibility of learning from this.”

Each day we need order. We need to follow the rules. And when the sky falls, and the wheels come off, we need to find the courage to love the mistake to find a better way of living. Amen.