2020.06.14 | DIVINE HUMOR
Divine Humor
Pastor Arlene
My favorite Chinese proverb goes like this: “If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan.”
I’m a big fan of planning, and I have the resume to prove it. I discovered the merits of planning at a young age, when planning proved to be helpful in keeping me on track as I was striving to overcome some personal hardships and better myself and my family's situation.
In high school, college, and especially in graduate school, I received formal instruction in planning, and experienced first-hand that sound planning was critical to success.
In the early days of my career, I was fortunate to staff planning committees in two different congregations and work with experts in the field of organizational design.
I have applied these habits and skills in the practice of ministry over the years, and have helped every organization that I’ve served to develop and implement strategic plans. In some cases, I have been an architect of more than one strategic plan.
Here at Eden Church, for example, we are well into the implementation of our fifth plan on my watch.
The Rev. John Wimberly, the eternal consultant who helped us develop our current plan, told church leaders early on in our development of it that if we did this strategic plan right, we would never have to write another one. We could just keep updating and rolling out this one. I think he was right, and we are well on our way.
Normally, the Church Council spends part of the spring quarter reviewing and refreshing our strategic plan. Results and adjustments are then shared with the membership at the Annual Meeting on the last Sunday of the month.
We had planned to do just that this spring, and, then, POW! COVID-19 hit the shores of our nation, and lots of plans, including our Lenten and Easter plans and some of our strategic plans, crashed and died like waves on the breakers of the Pacific shoreline.
The Chinese were right: If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan.
II
One expert who was featured in a webinar on church finance that I participated in, early in the pandemic, told participants that if anyone said they had a well developed plan for their organization’s survival of COVID-19 that person was either a fool or a liar. Because the situation was unprecedented and a lot of the fundamentals that one would ordinarily look to in formulating a plan were unknown and subject to fluctuation for the foreseeable future.
For example, how would the stock market and the Fed react to the pandemic? Would the market crash and have a long trough, or would it quickly recover?
Would the public adhere to the Shelter In Place Order? Bend the curve? And reduce the risk of disease? Or would we disregard the public health orders and trade in our personal interests at the expense of the common good?
How many people would be unemployed as a result of the SIP? Would the rise in unemployment last for a season or an indefinite period of time?
What if the disease mutates and multiple strains of the virus emerge? How long will it take to set up test sites? How long will it take to build disease investigation teams in every count? How long before we have a reliable vaccine? And, how long will it take to vaccinate 80% of the public?
III
Fast forward three months to today, and I still agree with the financial expert on that webinar, who said that anyone who has a detailed plan for how they’re going to get their organization through COVID-19 is either a fool or a liar.
That said, I am happy to report that Eden Church has gotten our “sea legs,” and that we are able to make meaningful plans at least 3 months out now, we are gaining momentum.
The Church Council, for example, has approved a budget to present to the Congregation on June 28 for the coming fiscal year, and we have developed benchmarks for determining the basis on which we can call back furloughed and partially furloughed employees.
Still, the fundamentals on which our budget is based are somewhat fluid, so the Church Council has asked the Budget Committee to serve year-round, meet quarterly, and draft amendments to the 2020-2021 budget if the fundamentals change, positively or negatively.
I trust that this strategy will work well for us as a business strategy. But this sort of “on your toes” approach, as basketball players call it, will serve us well spiritually, too.
Why? Well, because, as it turns out, we are not actually the “masters of our destinies.”
We can make grand plans. We can try to construct them like a general contractor who is following an architect’s plan. But, the materials that we have, the conditions in which we work, and the timeline we have to complete the job may cause our plans to crash like waves hitting the Pacific coast breakers.
Those who survive and even thrive, like our ancestors Sarah and Abraham, are not the people who stake their futures on man-made plans and follow step-by-step instructions. Instead, those who survive AND thrive, are those who are clear that God’s in charge, that God has a mission, and that our job is to agilely embrace God’s call and passionately pursue it.
IV
Consider Sarah, the matriarch of the Judeo-Christian faith tradition.
By all accounts, Sarah was well past childbearing age, and looking longingly at retirement. She had cashed in her IRA. She had booked her Viking cruise. She was picking out her travel clothes. And, she was thrilled with the prospect of turning over her domestic responsibilities to a successor.
But, then, BOOM--mic drop. God made a plan, and low and behold, Sarah laughed. And her laugh was not just a little titter. Sarah’s laugh was, as they say in IM speak, a “ROFLMAO” laugh. (She was rolling on the floor laughing her head off,) because nobody starts a family at her age. Except. Well, as it turned out, her and her husband, Abraham.
I know a lot of you are sitting at home listening to Genesis 18 and hearing this message and you're thinking, “This can’t be for real.” Women who are beyond childbearing age just don’t give birth to newborns, much less a whole nation of people, like Sarah did.
Before anyone thinks that they have to check their brain at the door to be a good Jew or a good Christian, I’ll point out that the book of Genesis isn’t a biology textbook. It’s an etiology. It’s a collection of stories about how things began and about the meaning that our ancesotrs associated with these things.
I don’t have any interest in arguing about human biology or what is or isn’t possible at a certain age.
Instead, I want us to ponder the truth that our ancestors passed on to us. Their truth is this: God has plans for us. Plans to give us a future and hope that no human being can contrive or destroy. God’s plan may elude us at times. They may confound us. They may even be contrary to our plans. But nevertheless, God has plans for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, as the prophet Jeremiah said in chapter 29:11. God has plans to give us a future and a hope.
So our task in this life is not to keep hammering away in order to build out some plans contrived by human beings, but rather to embrace God’s mission, fulfill God’s call, and pursue these endeavors with great passion and zeal, for the sake of the gospel. Let’s get on it. Amen.