Biography
The Rev. Dr. Philip Blackwell has been a campus minister at the University of Chicago and has served churches in rural Illinois, the industrial city of Rockford, the Chicago North Shore suburb of Wilmette, and in the heart of Chicago’s Loop. As senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple—the oldest church in the region—Phil leads a vibrant congregation of more than 1,000 members, one of the most racially, ethnically, and economically diverse congregations in America. In the past year he has appeared on ABC News World Tonight on the subject of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and on PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, where he spoke on the topic of marriage. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Joy in the Presence" 
Jesus tells this parable to the Pharisees, who are grumbling over the company that he is keeping:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

My wife, Sally, and I live in the steeple of the church. The First United Methodist Church is situated in the Chicago Temple, a 25-story office tower on the corner of Clark and Washington in the heart of “The Loop.” The sanctuary is on the ground floor, the Church occupies the next three floors for offices and classrooms, and then we have fifteen floors of lawyers mostly, since we are across the street from the court house. Then, there is a three-story parsonage in the steeple, and a “Chapel in the Sky” above that.

One of the advantages of living there is that periodically someone from the Temple's cleaning crew comes up to help clean our parsonage. But, recently while we were gone a substitute was sent up to do the cleaning who had never been to our place before, and she made the mistake of assuming that everything that was in any sort of basket on the floor must be garbage to be thrown out. So, when we returned home late that night all the catalogues that Sally had marked for Christmas purchases and saved in a basket beside the bed were gone.

All the magazines I had thrown into a huge basket next to the television, hoping that some day I’d what happened now months ago, but they were all gone. And the big basket next to the sofa in the family room where I had been collecting things for years—the 1957 World Series scorecard filled in with the Yankees beating the Braves, my old newspapers with world-changing headlines, our daughter's graduation booklet, my photos of the 1995 Rose Bowl—the basket was empty, all gone.

It was 11:00 at night, and I went to the basement of the Temple and went dumpster-diving. I found half-eaten doughnuts, Styrofoam cups, dead flowers, but no treasures. The next morning I shared my grief with the building crew, and they made one last search and found everything in a recycling corner I had not known about. Everything! The catalogues, the magazines, the scorecard, the graduation ceremony, the photos—of no value to anyone else but to Sally and me, but for us they were treasures. And we were overjoyed.

Jesus says, “That's nothing. Did you hear about the shepherd who has a hundred sheep, and one strays away, and he finds it? What about the woman who loses a precious coin and searches frantically all night and recovers it? The parent who waits anxiously, every day scanning the horizon for the wayward child, and then one day, here he comes? There is joy in the presence of the angels in heaven when what is lost is found.”

Well, some of us may not want to wait until we become angels in heaven to experience that joy. Some of us might have to wait for what seems like an eternity. No, Jesus says that now is the time to find that joy, here and now, to find the joy in the presence of the community of faith. The Church is to be that, a community of joy here and now.

I hate to say it, but I do not think that is most people's experience, and I judge that is because the Church so often takes on the character of the ninety-nine sheep who in their self-righteousness grumble, “So, little ‘lambs-eat-ivy’ wandered off again and got lost, caught in a thicket somewhere? And now, our good, old soft-hearted shepherd-friend goes off to find her. We'll never get back to the fold before nightfall. We won't be able to find the good grass in the dark. And then, we'll have to sleep next to her while she dries out, smelling like wet wool, with burrs in her hair!”

Luke introduces this parable by saying, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The ninety-nine sheep in the flock complain about the one lost lamb, and there is no joy in the presence of the community when it is found—that is how some people experience the Church.

The Church is not a club for the found but a haven for the lost. It does not exist to salve the saved but to save the sinner. It is not meant to serve its members but to bind up the broken down, to quench the thirst of the parched, to befriend the friendless, to free the oppressed. And the only joy we can find in such a community is ours when we see ourselves as the one lost sheep, not among the ninety-nine righteous ones.

Remember Jesus telling the parable about the two men praying in the temple. The one so self-satisfied with his own goodness prays, “God, thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector.” And the tax collector simply cries out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

The first man, a Pharisee (the Pharisees do not do well in the Gospel of Luke), must not have spent much time following Jesus around town, for with whom does Jesus associate? The thieves, he is crucified between two of them. The rogues, for surely his disciples must have seemed like that to more polite company. The adulterers, forgiving them and sending them off to sin no more. The tax collectors, “Zacchaeus, come down out of that tree and take me home with you for dinner.”

There goes the Church, there is the community of joy—thieves, rogues, adulterers, tax collectors, you, and me—all willing to welcome one more person crying out in desperation, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The joy of being in God's presence is ours if we see ourselves as the one, not among the ninety-nine.

Very early in my ministry I visited a woman in the hospital who was a sister of one of our members. She was Roman Catholic but no longer attending Mass, and she wanted a visit from a priest because she was dying from cancer. Her brother asked me to go; it was not good. I was not what she hoped for, a Protestant minister, and she did not talk to me, not a word.

I went back a second time, no response, and a third time, the same. I do not know why I went a fourth time, but that is when it began. She must have realized that I was well-intended, if not well-connected, and she began to talk, and talk, and unburden herself of all of the regrets, grudges, anxieties, doubts, misdeeds, and missed opportunities in her life. She turned that hospital room into a confessional and insisted that I sit quietly and listen.

It was an extraordinary moment for me, a holy moment, unlike any I had experienced before in those early years. And when she finally finished she turned her head on the pillow to look at me for the first time that night and asked, “Does God forgive me?”

I said, “Well, we know that the scripture assures us that God is merciful and gracious.”

She growled, “I don't want any of that Protestant namby-pamby stuff. Does God forgive me?”

“There is that passage where it says that as far as the east is from the west, God removes our sins from us.”

“Don't quote scripture to me. Answer me: Does God absolve me of my sins right now?”

There was an angry urgency that transformed me in that moment from Protestant to Catholic, at least in a universal sort of way. I realized the difference between the Words of Assurance and Absolution.

Words of Assurance are those comforting biblical passages that imply that God accepts us. There is no joy in implied acceptance. Absolution is the declaration that it is already accomplished. “Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.” And she smiled, she relaxed, and she was at peace. Her name, fittingly, was Joye. I was in the presence of Joye.

Interview with Philip Blackwell
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Phil, your compelling message on joy. You begin by reassuring us that joy in the presence of God is ours if we see ourselves as the one lost sheep. But as you wisely point out, the church these days is more likely to identify and be characterized by the ninety-nine self-righteous ones.

Phil Blackwell: Well, that is certainly my take on it, but I think that the church in general moves towards judgment and exclusion. Maybe human beings, in general, move in that direction. So the church has to be called back to accountability by its own scripture, by the Gospel.

Talbot: Is this really the difference between the “feel good” congregations these days and the prophetic, faithful minority?

Blackwell: I’d hate to invite people to come to a church where I’d say don’t expect to feel good! But I think the reason to get up and out of bed and go to church is because something is going to happen. It’s not going to happen inside me in my feelings and in my emotions, but rather by being part of a community that’s committed to receiving, welcoming the lost sheep of the community, and that the community is going to be changed, transformed and renewed. So I think the church is called to be a welcoming community to all people and to try as hard as possible not to put up the definitions, the barriers, the restrictions that keep people out.

Talbot: So the real cost of discipleship, as Bonhoeffer would convey, is standing in solidarity with the reviled, the oppressed, the poor. The eyes of the poor staring us in the face. What is that cost at 77 West Washington, at the Chicago Temple First United Methodist Church?

Blackwell: Part of the cost is that people see you as one of them. But that’s where Jesus is. Jesus is among them. He is one of the rogues, one of the thieves, one of the adulterers, one of the tax collectors. He was never apologetic for the company he kept because, again, he was that avenue by which the lost found God. The church then has to be that avenue and we have to be willing not be to so concerned about image and how reputable we are. In our setting, because we are right in the middle of the city, it’s exaggerated for what all churches need to be. Our church is open seven days a week. The sanctuary is open fourteen hours a day, from seven in the morning until nine at night. There are people coming and going all the time. There are people who are homeless who come in to warm up or cool off. People come in on their lunch hour from work who want a quiet place. There are people coming from or going to court depending on how things are going for them. So we provide a sanctuary in a way that is, I think, redemptive.

Talbot: And a sacred space. So the nature of Christian joy in that context. Phil, you are wearing a ring that belonged to your father. Can you say something about how that reveals a quiet kind of joy to you?

Blackwell: My dad’s ring. I don’t wear it very often but I sometimes put it on because I want to remember him. Dad died about ten years ago, the same year mom died. It is one of those reminders for me of a quiet centeredness that brings me a kind of peaceful joy. It’s not a matter of being elated, happy, up or buoyant, but it’s just that kind of consistency of life that says there is some symmetry to all this and it makes sense. I put it on today because I wanted to be reminded of that and feel that.

Talbot: In pastoring your parishioners in despair over suffering, what do you tell them about the possibility of joy?

Blackwell: That joy is available even in the midst of the suffering. It doesn’t take away the suffering but it is there as part of the suffering.

Talbot: Thank you, Phil Blackwell.