Challenging the
Conventional Order

John 5:1-18                                             Rev. Todd B. Freeman

Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                May 16, 2004

It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to recognize that there are many different kinds of people in the world. However, it did take trained psychologists to figure out that basically all human beings fit within one of 16 identified personality types.

What I’m referring to, and many of you may be familiar with this, is the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. What they’ve found (after you answer well over a hundred questions) is that people tend to fall along a continuum in four basic categories.

The first category is that of Extroverts and Introverts (E or I). These are defined, in part, by what gives you energy and what drains you of energy. For instance, does interaction with lots of people energize you or drain you? Or stated conversely, does spending time alone recharge your batteries or just make you wish you were around other people again?

The second category deals with how people obtain information. The two extremes are called Sensing and iNtuition (S or N). The Sensing person collects data through their 5 senses and are interested in what can be seen, heard, and touched. Intuitive persons collect information primarily from within, from what their gut tells them, and are interested in what can be imagined.

The third category deals with how people process that information in coming to a decision. The two ends of the spectrum are called Thinking and Feeling (T or F). Do you come to decisions based primarily on what your head is telling you or what your heart is telling you? What do you value more, a decision that is logical and rational, or one that feels right?

And the fourth category of extremes are called Perceiving and Judging (P or J). Perceiving people like grand ideas and prefer to keep their options open-ended, and therefore are a bit more adaptable. Judging people like facts and organization and schedules, and are more focused on details.

Everyone, of course, has interests in all the categories, but favors one from each pair. And it is possible to move alone the continuums through time.

Now, the usefulness of the Myers-Briggs survey is that when people have a better understanding of their own personality and the personality of others, relationships can be strengthened and stress relieved.

Upon further study, experts have found that certain combinations of letters within the 16 personality types can be boiled down to reveal just four overarching temperament types. Parents of more than one child are the first to recognize that one child can have a very different temperament from another – almost since birth. Everyone fits best into one of these four temperament types.

I find this tool very useful when I do pre-marital counseling, or pre-holy union counseling, or couple counseling in general. I have each person in the couple look over a list of characteristics in the four temperament types and ask them to guess which one their partner best fits into, and which one they would use to describe themselves. Nearly one hundred percent of the time each person in the couple correctly guesses the temperament type of the other. And more often than not, their temperament differ from one another.

Here’s another practical application. A couple of years ago, all the elders on the session took the Meyers-Briggs survey to determine their personality type and temperament type. It has come in handy in realizing why we each approach issues differently, react differently, and have different agendas and areas of focus.

If any of you are interested in taking the survey, I’ll make sure to get a copy to you, along with the information about your type.

A major institute in this country, the Alban Institute, has collected Myers-Briggs data from thousands and thousands of Christians in this country over the years and applied their findings along denominational lines.

They found that most Presbyterians, whether conservative or progressive, have the temperament type that has the combination of S and J (Sensing and Judging) in their personality type. Let me share some of these characteristics. (By the way, if you’re wondering, all this does indeed apply to today’s Gospel Lesson.)

SJs  have a strong sense of duty, responsibility and accountability. Being useful to others or to organizations is of paramount importance. They detest irresponsibility and free-loading.

SJs need to know the lines of authority and need to know the rules of the game – including the game of life. They expect others to follow the rules and regulations as well. SJs aren’t big into rebellion.

Plans and schedules are essential for them to be comfortable in all aspects of life. (They’re the ones who have to schedule time to be spontaneous.) They are punctual, and they value timeliness in others.

SJs take life seriously and tend to be more pessimistic than optimistic. Advice and criticism come easily, even if unspoken. They are often heard saying, “You should,” and “you ought to”.

Tradition is important and change is hard. Caring for others is an obligation for SJs, and they expect others to do likewise. Abandoning friends or family members in need is unforgiveable. SJs value their membership in organizations.

Well, if you haven’t figured this out already, this SJ temperament type describes not only a majority of Presbyterians, but your pastor as well. Interestingly, most pastors themselves are not SJs, let along introverted ones like myself.

So, then, what’s all this have to do with a miracle healing story in the gospel of John? Well, not much. But it has everything to do with the response of the religious leaders to that miracle. For you see, the problem wasn’t the miracle healing itself, but the fact that it was done on the Sabbath. Jesus broke the long-established cultural and religious rules.

As SJs, a majority of Presbyterians, if living in the time of Jesus, would have sided with the Pharisees. For in their understanding, Jesus was a rebel when he snubbed his nose at their rules, which they equated as the rules of God. Jesus acted irresponsibly.

The institutional change that would have occurred if others were to follow Jesus’ lead was a serious enough threat that putting Jesus to death wasn’t even out of the question.

First century Judaism defined community identity around three practices: circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath observance. In Jesus’ time, a challenge to the Sabbath meant a challenge to the definition of covenant membership. Jesus became the enemy because he threatened their power and authority. The defense of the Sabbath law is the defense of an entire system of ordering life and religious practice. It is the defense of a particular understanding of God and how God belongs in human experience, and of membership in a religious community. The religious leaders have too much to lose (and, therefore, too much to defend) if Jesus is allowed to redefine God’s presence in the world, so they choose to eliminate Jesus as a threat.

Religious leaders in Jesus’ day closed ranks rather than admitting the possibility of a new way. The rejection of Jesus in this story, then, is a rejection of the possibility of new and unprecedented ways of knowing God and ordering the life of faith. The religious leaders focus on the challenge to the conventional order, whereas the healed man and Jesus focus on the new possibilities, the man’s new life.

The contemporary analogies aren’t hard for us to recognize in this congregation. Presbyterians also have ways of defining community identity. Ways of knowing and understanding God is what our Presbyterian Book of Confessions is all about. Ordering the life of faith is what our Presbyterian Book of Order is all about.

As contemporary readers of today’s biblical text, we are invited to examine when, and by whom, in contemporary church life the knowledge of God brought by Jesus is rejected because it is too challenging to existing religious systems and structures.

We are all well aware that in the contemporary church issues such as how the Lord’s Supper should be understood, who should be baptized, who should be ordained, and who can have their relationship blessed and recognized by the church often function as Sabbath laws functioned for the religious leaders in biblical times.

In other words, we are still fighting about what are the principal defining issues for membership and leadership in religious community and one’s relationship to God.

Let us not forget that Jesus was soundly rejected in his day when he bucked the system. The question for us is whether to confront this same rejection head-on and recognize where this dynamic plays itself out among the Jesus’ “own” today – that is, within the church itself.

As a “More Light” congregation for the past 25 years, fighting for inclusivity and a much less dogmatic understanding of traditional theological doctrines, we often find ourselves in the role of the ones bucking the system and challenging tradition. History reveals that this can be a dangerous position to be in. Let us not be fooled, there are those in this denomination who wish we were either eliminated or at least silenced. For the system likes neither change nor challenge to what it perceives as threats to its power and authority.

So yes, for many of us, being an active member of a religious community is much more than good fellowship and a feel-good message once a week on Sunday morning – as important as those things may be. It’s also about facing and confronting rejection head-on. It’s about working to help those who feel threatened to see new possibilities of defining our religious communities and redefining God’s presence in the world.

It’s ironic, at least in my case as one who has a proclivity to follow tradition and rules, to be on the side of those bucking the system. Working against basic personality and temperament type is  particularly demanding and exhausting business. Yet, in the same regard, that work is seen as our responsibility, obligation, and even duty.

And we don’t need to be reminded that religious leaders who claim to have a monopoly on the truth use tradition as a club to try to eliminate or silence any perceived threat.

This is the road many of us find ourselves traveling. It is not an easy one. Yet it is the path that we feel God is calling us to follow. So may God strengthen and empower not only our efforts, but perhaps even more importantly our spirits as well.   Amen.

Resources:

John, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX

The New Interpreter’s Study Bible