“That New Song: When I survey the wondrous cross”
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Psalm 96
“Hymns that Shape Us” series Part 2: Watts and Wesley
June 26, 2011
Last week as Torin introduced our series on hymns that shape us, he gave you a few alternate versions of Amazing Grace. If you weren’t here, try putting the beloved hymn to the tune of Gilligan’s Island, for example. So to briefly ride on the Amazing Grace coattails Torin fashioned, let me tell you my most recent Amazing Grace story.
A few weekends ago Torin and I and our close friend Amy went to our first ever Mountain Stage performance. Mountain Stage is a National Public Radio music program that is recorded in front of a live audience here in West Virginia. If you ever are listening to West Virginia Public Radio between 8and 10pm on Saturday night or 3-5pm on Sunday afternoon, you’ll hear the host, Larry Groce booming: “Mountain Stage, live performance radio. from the Mountain STATE of West. Virginia.” They are usually recorded in Charleston, but about four times a year they come up here to Morgantown. For $15 you can hear five different musical acts for about two and half hours. It’s a good deal.
The headliners this time were the Grammy Award winning gospel singers, The Blind Boys of Alabama. The Blind Boys started singing together in 1939, with eight members. There are three of the original eight left. On this particular Sunday night at the WVU Creative Arts Center, the Blind Boys bassist started in in with the tune of House of the Rising Sun (there is a house in New Orleans, it’s called the Rising Sun…). But instead of a toast to New Orleans, the boys started in: “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found…” and the Blind Boys of Alabama aren’t called this only because they’re from Alabama. All of the original members are blind. There was almost a palpable, collective, fluttering of hearts in the audience—at least among the three of us (are they going to say it? Are they going to say it?): “was blind, but now, I see.” (they said it)
We heard that song in a very new way that night.
They say that your strongest musical preference is the music you were listening to between the ages of 15 and 18. It’s true. Nothing new today can beat the power of The Cranberries, Pearl Jam, and REM (for me). The psalmist says “sing a new song.” Now many of us don’t like that. We like our old songs, the goodies, the old-timies. Yes, even I have my preferences, even in church music.
But I don’t think I need to state the obvious, but I will. Even old songs, were new once. But it’s not that they are old that makes them special to many of you. It’s what you remember about them. It’s the memories that surround some of you when you hear Amazing Grace, or I walk through the garden alone. For some of us it’s the great Brethren hymn, Move in our Midst, or the adopted Brethren hymn, Brethren we have met to worship. It’s the majestic four part harmony of the “Old Hundredth” better known to newcomers to the Mennonites, Praise God from whom, #119.
So if you can’t quite get into the new songs, perhaps you can hear the eager whisper of the psalmist: at least…at least sing the old songs anew. Make them a new song to you. Meet them again, encounter them 20, 50, 70 years later not as children, but as adults who have seen what it means to struggle in life, who have faced death, who have lived with glimpses of resurrection. Meet these songs a new.
One of the church’s most beloved hymns consists of only 5 notes. 5. When I survey the wondrous cross was written in 1707 by Isaac Watts, an English hymnwriter. Lowell Mason put the words to tune we are familiar with in 1824 using an ancient Gregorian chant from the 6th century to shape his tune. So before it sounded the way we are used to hearing it, it was the poetry of one man’s heart.
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most
I sacrifice them through his blood.
See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an off’ring far to small
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
(hold silence) How was that? Did you hear anything in it that you hadn’t before? A new image? A new stirring? A new connection between you and the writer, between you and Christ, between you…and God…something that gets lost when you sing what you’ve always sung, year in and year out? When you stop. Hearing. The. words.
Now, I invite you to take out your hymnals, turn to hymn 259 and see those words put to music.
So yes, poetry stirs us, but as we’ve been exploring, when you add the music, it takes us—maybe not to a deeper place, but a different place. And now, we’ve really heard the words…let us sing:
Sing 259 When I survey the wondrous cross
Like I said, even the old songs were once new, and what Watts and Wesley were writing were pretty radical for their time. They were frowned upon, questioned. Isaac Watts had written over 100 hymns by the time he was 23 years old. They were probably thinking “these young people and their music.” When Watts started writing his hymns, words such as “When I survey the wondrous cross…demands my soul, my life, my all”—such personal feelings—well, it was pretty controversial. Up to that time, much congregational singing was simply the repetitive chanting of the psalms.
In response to what he came to experience as droll repetition, Watts once commented that “The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship most closely related to heavem; but its performance among us is the worst on earth.” As Kenneth Osbeck reflects,“the unique thoughts presented by Watts in these lines certainly must have pointed the eighteenth century Christians to a view of the dying Savior in a vivid and memorable way that led them to a deeper worship experience.”
I appreciate the question that Osbeck’s reflection points us to: what leads us to “deeper worship experiences?” How do hymns disturb us into the depth of God’s love and challenge and awesomeness…and how do they simply comfort and console us. I wouldn’t say that one was necessarily better than the other, but what did the psalmist mean by sing a new song? For Watts and Wesley it was taking the chants that they felt were outside of human experience, the daily struggle, and writing hymns that put humanity alongside Christ, if only in our songs. It’s a good first step, isn’t it? To sing our way beside Jesus?
If you look in your hymnal to the second arrangement of When I survey the wondrous cross, #260, you’ll see the same words, to a different tune. The Hymnal Committee helps us sing this song anew…by placing the stirring words within an African tune.
The tune is a South African anti-apartheid protest song, originally written in Zulu, called Senzeni-Na. Senzeni-Na means “What have we done?” Meaning… “what have we done to deserve this? This apartheid. This oppression? Senzeni Na?” (click here for a youtube video of the song)
I wonder how Watts would feel about this. While he may have been radical for his time in writing about God in new, personal ways, he was a white, wealthy British man, part of an Empire mentality, shaped by an age of manifest destiny. So here, we are challenging Watt’s, if not directly, at least the age in which he lived, an age that shaped political and theological ideologies that supported slavery, expansionism, and the destruction of native cultures.
And we too, challenge ourselves when we sing When I survey the wondrous cross with the overtones of senzeni-na. We ask ourselves, what have we done to allow this sort of thing to happen in our world, as Americans in 2011. How have we crucified others alongside X.
We can start to accept the psalmists invitation. Sing a new song. As a confession. As a way of accepting God’s forgiveness.
[Choir-Senzeni-Na/when I survey]
[silence]
“O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.”
When we are comfortable in the songs we’ve always sung, and then we are disturbed by a new imagery and tunes…Christ is doing what Christ has always done…surprising us.
And When we are disturbed and surprised, not just in song, but when we are disturbed and surprised in our lives,
we will know what it means—
we have to sing a new song of the spirit.
Sing a new song, and let your life be the text, let your sorrows be the tunes, let your joys be the notes. Sing to the Lord a new song. Amen.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Costly Discipleship
sermon by Torin Eikler
"Hymns that Shape Us" series:
Early Church Heritage Hymns
Luke 14:25-33 Psalm 1
Today we are beginning a series on Hymns that Shape Us. That might seem like a fairly tame subject, but hymns are powerful things. Last week, when I visited Alice in Sundale, the words I said and the touch of my hand holding hers seemed to go unnoticed. She remained unresponsive, and her face showed the lines of discomfort. But when I began to sing some of her favorite hymns, she opened her eyes a fraction and her face relaxed. There were even times when I felt sure that she was trying to join in. Those hymns provided comfort for her and encouragement, and they reminded her that she belonged to something greater than herself – that she was not alone. Somehow, setting the words to music helped them reach her in a way that they didn’t or couldn’t alone.
That may seem surprising, but it’s not really a new concept. Advertisers, activists, and church leaders alike have understood for years what some of us haven’t really thought about: music has the power to carry messages deep down within us. And if you have ever found yourself humming a tune as you wend your way through the day, you know how they can stick with you. Often, just listening to a few seconds of a hymn can take us into memories of the times and places we have heard them before.
Take “Amazing Grace”…. Whenever I hear the opening strains of the hymn, I am reminded of my time with the Orangeburg AME church where they sang it as a call and response … “Amazing grace, (said amazing grace,) how sweet the sound, (how sweet the sound,) that saved a wretch, (that saved a wretch,) like me, (that saved a wretch like me.)” And a fondness for a whole different style of worship filled with “bother-ation” and random input from the congregation.
But if you hear: (sing in traditional manner) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will undoubtedly think of church services or funerals or both, and all the comfort of the Spirit’s healing presence will come to mind.
And if you hear: (sing to Gilligan’s Island) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will have an entirely different experience.
But hymns don’t just comfort and encourage us. They don’t just remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves or recall to us moments from our past. They also challenge and shape us, molding our beliefs and our worldview in powerful ways that we may not even recognize. That makes them a powerful tool, and hymn writers, church leaders, and theologians throughout the centuries have used them with more or less care to influence and undergird the faith of the Christian community.
Three hundred and three years ago, Alexander Mack and his small group of Anabaptist Brethren did just that. Inspired by the scriptural accounts of Jesus’ challenging words, they defied the authorities in Germany to be re-baptized, singing (as legend has it) the hymn that we have just sung – “Count well the cost.” Knowing what they were risking, the words rang with the strength of their decision to risk “self, wealth, and reputation,” and that moment in the church’s memory, recalled whenever this hymn makes an appearance, has come to shape generations of believers… though not always as they would have expected.
Take a moment now and remember about what you thought when you read the bulletin and discovered that “Count well the cost” was part of the service. Or think back just a few minutes to what you felt when we were actually singing.
Somewhere in the midst of all the memories that came back to me, I found a bit of guilt and relief that run through them all. Guilt that I don’t really pay much of a cost for my faith. Relief that I do not face the persecution of those early Anabaptists who often lost everything or were imprisoned or even burned at the stake. And so the hymn takes on a sense of admonition for me, a mild rebuke for the life I live when I should be selling everything or challenging the Powers-That-Be in a more diligent way.
That’s not surprising given the story that goes with the hymn and the scripture that has so been often read just before I sing it. There we hear Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees for their pride. Specifically, he is responding to one man who proclaimed, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” with all the assurance of one who is sure of receiving the blessing himself.
Be careful, he says, of assuming that you will be at that table because you must concern yourself with the things of God if you wish to be welcomed. You must be willing to give up all your possessions … and even the family, friends, and reputation that you hold so dear if you are to receive that blessing. There is a heavy price to pay. If you are not willing to lay the foundation without assurance that the tower will be built … if you are not willing to step into the fray knowing that you are outnumbered two to one, then you will not find the way into the Kingdom.
And that’s the way that I hear it because I have always been taught to identify with the Pharisees … because I am really more of a Pharisee than I like to admit. I worry about having enough money to feel secure. I shy away from starting projects that I can’t finish or that I am pretty sure won’t work out. And I set more store than I should on having the respect of others. More often than I realize, I’m sure, I compromise or rationalize my way off the path to the Kingdom table for the sake of securing that respect or in the name of respecting the call of my family’s security.
Sound familiar?
Then again … I’m not sure that was all that Jesus was about with this speech. Corey introduced the scripture by telling us that Jesus was speaking to the crowd that had gathered, uninvited, in the courtyard of the Pharisee’s home to listen to the conversation and watch the drama. That was not uncommon at the time, and many of those watching may have been waiting for the left-overs that were sometimes shared out after a banquet. What was uncommon was for a guest of honor to speak with the crowd, and while I’m sure Jesus meant his words as a warning to those gathered at the table, I wonder how they would have been received by the people he spoke to directly.
Those people could not have been so very worried about their status among the social elites or they would never have come into the courtyard. There was simply too much stigma that came with being associated with that crowd. They may or may not have had very much money, but probably not. Most of Jesus’ followers, it seems, came from the lower classes of society who had to work in order to make ends meet. They were used to taking risks without knowing what the future would bring because their daily lives involved exactly that kind of risk.
Honestly, I have no idea how the words that Jesus spoke would have sounded to them, but I think that they would not have found them to hold rebuke … or at least not much. Instead, I think they might well of sounded … well … encouraging. They didn’t have money or stature. They weren’t able to maintain the purity that society held to be the only way to righteousness under the law. And yet, they could become disciples if they were only willing to accept the risk. They could find their way to the banquet table of the Kingdom is they were willing to face … what? … failure, ridicule, perhaps death (though a king going to war rarely risked death – only defeat). That was no so much to ask of people without so much to lose. It would certainly have been easier for them than for the Pharisees.
I think it was much the same for the early Anabaptists. They were not the wealthy or the powerful of their time. Scriptures like this one were not just warnings offering judgment; they were a source of hope and promise. There was a new creation that they could be part of – a community of peace and love that was ready to welcome them into a warm embrace if they were willing to risk
So where does that leave us. Most of us are not at the lower levels of society with nothing to lose. We do not have to risk our lives for our faith, and I don’t think any of us would want to. But we are not wholly lost either. We have made the commitment to follow Christ. We struggle with the habits of pride and consumption and our tendencies to feel holier-than-thou. And we have accepted the costs that come with choosing a faith community that still pushes the boundaries of society’s expectations.
We reluctant martyrs … we regretful Pharisees … we are somewhere in the middle. And so the words of our hymns and the words of scripture are a two-fold blessing. Standing as we do between the table and the crowd, we hear the soft reminder that the path laid out by Jesus is not an easy one, and we experience the resounding declaration of the promise of peace and love and that comes to those who take it. We hear and affirm the proclamation that costly discipleship brings hope and life to all who follow Christ.
"Hymns that Shape Us" series:
Early Church Heritage Hymns
Luke 14:25-33 Psalm 1
Today we are beginning a series on Hymns that Shape Us. That might seem like a fairly tame subject, but hymns are powerful things. Last week, when I visited Alice in Sundale, the words I said and the touch of my hand holding hers seemed to go unnoticed. She remained unresponsive, and her face showed the lines of discomfort. But when I began to sing some of her favorite hymns, she opened her eyes a fraction and her face relaxed. There were even times when I felt sure that she was trying to join in. Those hymns provided comfort for her and encouragement, and they reminded her that she belonged to something greater than herself – that she was not alone. Somehow, setting the words to music helped them reach her in a way that they didn’t or couldn’t alone.
That may seem surprising, but it’s not really a new concept. Advertisers, activists, and church leaders alike have understood for years what some of us haven’t really thought about: music has the power to carry messages deep down within us. And if you have ever found yourself humming a tune as you wend your way through the day, you know how they can stick with you. Often, just listening to a few seconds of a hymn can take us into memories of the times and places we have heard them before.
Take “Amazing Grace”…. Whenever I hear the opening strains of the hymn, I am reminded of my time with the Orangeburg AME church where they sang it as a call and response … “Amazing grace, (said amazing grace,) how sweet the sound, (how sweet the sound,) that saved a wretch, (that saved a wretch,) like me, (that saved a wretch like me.)” And a fondness for a whole different style of worship filled with “bother-ation” and random input from the congregation.
But if you hear: (sing in traditional manner) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will undoubtedly think of church services or funerals or both, and all the comfort of the Spirit’s healing presence will come to mind.
And if you hear: (sing to Gilligan’s Island) “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” you will have an entirely different experience.
But hymns don’t just comfort and encourage us. They don’t just remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves or recall to us moments from our past. They also challenge and shape us, molding our beliefs and our worldview in powerful ways that we may not even recognize. That makes them a powerful tool, and hymn writers, church leaders, and theologians throughout the centuries have used them with more or less care to influence and undergird the faith of the Christian community.
Three hundred and three years ago, Alexander Mack and his small group of Anabaptist Brethren did just that. Inspired by the scriptural accounts of Jesus’ challenging words, they defied the authorities in Germany to be re-baptized, singing (as legend has it) the hymn that we have just sung – “Count well the cost.” Knowing what they were risking, the words rang with the strength of their decision to risk “self, wealth, and reputation,” and that moment in the church’s memory, recalled whenever this hymn makes an appearance, has come to shape generations of believers… though not always as they would have expected.
Take a moment now and remember about what you thought when you read the bulletin and discovered that “Count well the cost” was part of the service. Or think back just a few minutes to what you felt when we were actually singing.
Somewhere in the midst of all the memories that came back to me, I found a bit of guilt and relief that run through them all. Guilt that I don’t really pay much of a cost for my faith. Relief that I do not face the persecution of those early Anabaptists who often lost everything or were imprisoned or even burned at the stake. And so the hymn takes on a sense of admonition for me, a mild rebuke for the life I live when I should be selling everything or challenging the Powers-That-Be in a more diligent way.
That’s not surprising given the story that goes with the hymn and the scripture that has so been often read just before I sing it. There we hear Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees for their pride. Specifically, he is responding to one man who proclaimed, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” with all the assurance of one who is sure of receiving the blessing himself.
Be careful, he says, of assuming that you will be at that table because you must concern yourself with the things of God if you wish to be welcomed. You must be willing to give up all your possessions … and even the family, friends, and reputation that you hold so dear if you are to receive that blessing. There is a heavy price to pay. If you are not willing to lay the foundation without assurance that the tower will be built … if you are not willing to step into the fray knowing that you are outnumbered two to one, then you will not find the way into the Kingdom.
And that’s the way that I hear it because I have always been taught to identify with the Pharisees … because I am really more of a Pharisee than I like to admit. I worry about having enough money to feel secure. I shy away from starting projects that I can’t finish or that I am pretty sure won’t work out. And I set more store than I should on having the respect of others. More often than I realize, I’m sure, I compromise or rationalize my way off the path to the Kingdom table for the sake of securing that respect or in the name of respecting the call of my family’s security.
Sound familiar?
Then again … I’m not sure that was all that Jesus was about with this speech. Corey introduced the scripture by telling us that Jesus was speaking to the crowd that had gathered, uninvited, in the courtyard of the Pharisee’s home to listen to the conversation and watch the drama. That was not uncommon at the time, and many of those watching may have been waiting for the left-overs that were sometimes shared out after a banquet. What was uncommon was for a guest of honor to speak with the crowd, and while I’m sure Jesus meant his words as a warning to those gathered at the table, I wonder how they would have been received by the people he spoke to directly.
Those people could not have been so very worried about their status among the social elites or they would never have come into the courtyard. There was simply too much stigma that came with being associated with that crowd. They may or may not have had very much money, but probably not. Most of Jesus’ followers, it seems, came from the lower classes of society who had to work in order to make ends meet. They were used to taking risks without knowing what the future would bring because their daily lives involved exactly that kind of risk.
Honestly, I have no idea how the words that Jesus spoke would have sounded to them, but I think that they would not have found them to hold rebuke … or at least not much. Instead, I think they might well of sounded … well … encouraging. They didn’t have money or stature. They weren’t able to maintain the purity that society held to be the only way to righteousness under the law. And yet, they could become disciples if they were only willing to accept the risk. They could find their way to the banquet table of the Kingdom is they were willing to face … what? … failure, ridicule, perhaps death (though a king going to war rarely risked death – only defeat). That was no so much to ask of people without so much to lose. It would certainly have been easier for them than for the Pharisees.
I think it was much the same for the early Anabaptists. They were not the wealthy or the powerful of their time. Scriptures like this one were not just warnings offering judgment; they were a source of hope and promise. There was a new creation that they could be part of – a community of peace and love that was ready to welcome them into a warm embrace if they were willing to risk
So where does that leave us. Most of us are not at the lower levels of society with nothing to lose. We do not have to risk our lives for our faith, and I don’t think any of us would want to. But we are not wholly lost either. We have made the commitment to follow Christ. We struggle with the habits of pride and consumption and our tendencies to feel holier-than-thou. And we have accepted the costs that come with choosing a faith community that still pushes the boundaries of society’s expectations.
We reluctant martyrs … we regretful Pharisees … we are somewhere in the middle. And so the words of our hymns and the words of scripture are a two-fold blessing. Standing as we do between the table and the crowd, we hear the soft reminder that the path laid out by Jesus is not an easy one, and we experience the resounding declaration of the promise of peace and love and that comes to those who take it. We hear and affirm the proclamation that costly discipleship brings hope and life to all who follow Christ.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Enflamed Weakness
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Pentecost – June 12, 2011
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
A couple months ago I spoke about the concept of “don’t think about pink elephants” the joke being once someone tells you that, that’s exactly what you think of. Here’s another elephant allusion: the elephant in the room. This refers to a topic that is so big, so laden with anxiety, that no one wants to talk about it.
So I’m going to call out the elephant in the room when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12. The scripture about gifts. In service to God. In building up the community. You think I’m going to go on for 15 minutes about how you each have a gift and you just need to find that gift and then sign up for the appropriate ministry team, and by the way, would you like to be Leadership Team chair next year (Cindy’s smiling at that one)?
Whew! I named it. Now that’s out of the way, I’ve done my obligatory speech to the standard interpretation of the text. Now, elephant-be gone!
But even if I’m not going to guilt you into signing up for a ministry team ([whisper]which you should…you really should), this scripture has a common effect on most of its hearers. It gets us thinking about our gifts, and by gifts we mean talents, and by talents we mean what we’re good at.
Maybe this hit the Jesus people of Corinth in a powerful way, but really, our culture isn’t bereft of opportunities to explore and discover our talents. High School students often take tests to magically reveal to them their strongest attributes. Churches, like ours, do “gift inventories” to help us see what God has given us to work with. Even colleges and universities base their conversation in this light: major in what you’re good at so you can get the type of job you love (and will hopefully make you some money…at least to pay back your college debts).
We are a culture that loves to identify, compartmentalize, and capitalize on what we “can do.” Our talents-- our gifts--have just become one more commodity in an economy of trade. I’ll give you my gift, if you give me a paycheck. Wherever else I put these abilities to use are either “hobbies” or “diversions” or “extracurricular activities”, and usually they are the first things to go when stress goes up and time gets crunched.
I even think the church has been co-opted by such a consumer mentality of “gifts.” Too often I feel like when we talk about finding one’s vocation we are essentially asking “how will you use God’s gifts to help you make a living, and be a productive consumer in our economy?”
So no, as a culture, I don’t think we’re overly anxious about finding what we’re good at--which doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with our lives. Far from it.
(pause)
But this understanding of gifts isn’t what’s happening in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, by the way. It wasn’t even figuring out which one of those rowdy Corinthians should be on the “speaking in tongues commission” or the “wash the feet of the guests” ministry team.
And let me say before I go further, what I have learned about the church in Corinth…I have to say I’d really like to have met these people. Corinth was a city about 40 minutes south/south-west of Athens. And as cities sometimes do, they get a…reputation. You know, you associate a certain ethos with a city. Think: Las Vegas, Portland, New Orleans. Corinth also had a personality.
The reputation of Corinth was one of wealth without culture. Think: Nuevo-riche. Think: Beverly Hillbillies. They had the cash without the class. These seem to be things that should go together, like manicured hand in white glove. But not in Corinth.
Yet most of the people in the Corinth church were believed to be poor, with probably a few of these Beverly Hillbilly type folks thrown in—you can imagine the tension that could cause. They were banded together by Paul primarily based on his word and charisma. These were people who lived a generation before any of the gospels were written: no Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
Just imagine that for a moment, trying to fashion a church in the way of Jesus before they had the gospels that we feel are so indespinsable. These people, if they made any money, were simply doing what they could, or what the trade that was passed down to them. They didn’t need to hear about gifts so they could find job satisfaction.
They were hearing about gifts because they wanted to build the church. And certain people thought some gifts were better than others. And Paul says no. If you are building a church, it’s about God. All about God. All from God. All for the glory of God. This ain’t about you. What you do, you do for God.
Paul’s letter was to relieve anxiety. To tell those who didn’t speak in tongues that that’s OK. And to ask those who did speak in tongues, “why are you doing this?”
When it comes to gifts, we still have a lot of anxiety, and not, as I said, necessarily identifying what they are. What I experience and see around me is an anxiety born from unrealistic perfectionism of our gifts--preconceived notions that say what success means, what some who has true talents at X,Y, or Z should look like.
And if you think you’ve never felt this before, ask yourself:
Have you ever been jealous about the accomplishments of a colleague in the same field as you?
Have you ever thought a woman was a better mother than you, a man a better father?
Did you ever have a sports or school-nemesis (as Torin admitted to in a sermon recently) who’s focus for your rivalry was simply based on who could be better?
I’ll admit it. I have those. All three of those. And then some. And I would guess you have them to.
I think one part of struggling with gifts is facing the parts that don’t quite shine the brightest. Those parts that aren’t ablaze with the spirit. And it’s wrestling with those qualities we feel we need in order to be the best —whatever we are: parent, professor, musician, pastor, friend, spouse. It’s wrestling with the feeling that no matter how hard we try, we’ll just never be good enough.
[pause]
This year, Americans have been more exposed to British Royal life than we have been in a few decades. With the wedding of Prince William to Princess Kate we have gleefully immersed ourselves in the pageantry and the gossip, the splendor and decadency of a royal wedding.
This was a far cry from the humility and fear and anguish we were presented with earlier in the year. In the Academy Awared winning film, The King’s Speech, unaware generations (myself included) witnessed the vivid portrayal of King George the 6th in his unwilling rise to the British throne
Prince Albert, later to be crowned with the name King George the 6th, was Britain’s King during the turbulent years leading up to and during WWII. Albert’s brother, David, was the rightful heir, but because David wished to marry a divorced woman he stepped down from the throne, leaving it to his brother, Albert, or Bertie, as his family called him.
Bertie was a painfully shy man, with a dramatic stammer. He was deathly afraid of public speaking and on the occasion his father, King George V had him speak publicly, he was a dismal failure. The movie casts the coming of World War II as a confrontation involving public speaking: Hitler’s polished elocution is a dramatic contrast to the king’s quavering, high-pitched voice.
Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth, “slyly sets up a visit with Lionel Logue, the oddball, self-trained Australian speech therapist. With humor and wisdom [during the countless voice lessons in in Lionel’s dingy office--a place no respectable king would be caught dead in--Lionel] goads, cajoles, threatens and berates the king, gradually finding a way to intrude into [Bertie’s] personal life, enticing him to relive the pain of growing up with a blowhard father and a taunting brother. He put the king through a series of vocal calisthenics; he teaches him to curse and sing [even dance] in order to overcome his stammering.”
[pause]
One night, portrayed in the film, King George looks at his engagements for public speaking, something a King should be able to do, something that Kings have always been able to do—but on this night, King George breaks down crying in the arms of his wife under the mere stress, sobbing “I’m not a king. I’m not a king!”
On the eve of King George the 6th’s coronation, Lionel reflects with the anxious king about how he started helping people. Lionel recalls Australian soldiers coming home from WW1, shellshocked by what they had seen and experienced. They stammered. They couldn’t speak. Lionel reflected “My job was to give them faith in their own voice, and let them know that a friend was listening.”
[pause]
The two were a pair for the rest of King George’s life. Whenever the King made a public appearance or a radio broadcast Lionel was there. Lionel edited the King’s speeches in ways that would help a stammerer overcome the tripups, he would direct the King as if he was conducting an orchestra because a musical flow helped move him through the difficult parts. He knew what his friend needed in order to live into his weakness, so he could do the job before him. So he could live in the confidence in his other strengths.
The relationship between Logue and King George isn’t one of transcending difficulties in order to reach perfection. After years and years of training, no one would say King George was a magnificent orator.
No, I think this lesson by this master teacher, Paul included, is about boldly showing our non-gifts. This voice lesson is about opening our awareness up to what we do well, and, with a large measure of care and grace, to what we don’t do well. Because, as Paul points out, it’s all part of the work of God—not just the strengths, but all of who we are.
[pause]
The spirit will help you find your voice. Not by dramatic tongues of fire falling on you. But by guiding you, marking your scripts, moving you through the difficult dance steps—something we don’t rely on much when we’re working out of those places that come naturally, do we? Where we know we’re doing what we’re really good at. Spirit urges you to know that even in those things you are called to, joyfully or reluctantly, you won’t be perfect. Because it’s an economy like no other, a realm unlike any earthly kingdom.
But it requires the first step,
out of our high palaces of perfection
into the dingy room of a master teacher.
Pentecost – June 12, 2011
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
A couple months ago I spoke about the concept of “don’t think about pink elephants” the joke being once someone tells you that, that’s exactly what you think of. Here’s another elephant allusion: the elephant in the room. This refers to a topic that is so big, so laden with anxiety, that no one wants to talk about it.
So I’m going to call out the elephant in the room when it comes to 1 Corinthians 12. The scripture about gifts. In service to God. In building up the community. You think I’m going to go on for 15 minutes about how you each have a gift and you just need to find that gift and then sign up for the appropriate ministry team, and by the way, would you like to be Leadership Team chair next year (Cindy’s smiling at that one)?
Whew! I named it. Now that’s out of the way, I’ve done my obligatory speech to the standard interpretation of the text. Now, elephant-be gone!
But even if I’m not going to guilt you into signing up for a ministry team ([whisper]which you should…you really should), this scripture has a common effect on most of its hearers. It gets us thinking about our gifts, and by gifts we mean talents, and by talents we mean what we’re good at.
Maybe this hit the Jesus people of Corinth in a powerful way, but really, our culture isn’t bereft of opportunities to explore and discover our talents. High School students often take tests to magically reveal to them their strongest attributes. Churches, like ours, do “gift inventories” to help us see what God has given us to work with. Even colleges and universities base their conversation in this light: major in what you’re good at so you can get the type of job you love (and will hopefully make you some money…at least to pay back your college debts).
We are a culture that loves to identify, compartmentalize, and capitalize on what we “can do.” Our talents-- our gifts--have just become one more commodity in an economy of trade. I’ll give you my gift, if you give me a paycheck. Wherever else I put these abilities to use are either “hobbies” or “diversions” or “extracurricular activities”, and usually they are the first things to go when stress goes up and time gets crunched.
I even think the church has been co-opted by such a consumer mentality of “gifts.” Too often I feel like when we talk about finding one’s vocation we are essentially asking “how will you use God’s gifts to help you make a living, and be a productive consumer in our economy?”
So no, as a culture, I don’t think we’re overly anxious about finding what we’re good at--which doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with our lives. Far from it.
(pause)
But this understanding of gifts isn’t what’s happening in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, by the way. It wasn’t even figuring out which one of those rowdy Corinthians should be on the “speaking in tongues commission” or the “wash the feet of the guests” ministry team.
And let me say before I go further, what I have learned about the church in Corinth…I have to say I’d really like to have met these people. Corinth was a city about 40 minutes south/south-west of Athens. And as cities sometimes do, they get a…reputation. You know, you associate a certain ethos with a city. Think: Las Vegas, Portland, New Orleans. Corinth also had a personality.
The reputation of Corinth was one of wealth without culture. Think: Nuevo-riche. Think: Beverly Hillbillies. They had the cash without the class. These seem to be things that should go together, like manicured hand in white glove. But not in Corinth.
Yet most of the people in the Corinth church were believed to be poor, with probably a few of these Beverly Hillbilly type folks thrown in—you can imagine the tension that could cause. They were banded together by Paul primarily based on his word and charisma. These were people who lived a generation before any of the gospels were written: no Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
Just imagine that for a moment, trying to fashion a church in the way of Jesus before they had the gospels that we feel are so indespinsable. These people, if they made any money, were simply doing what they could, or what the trade that was passed down to them. They didn’t need to hear about gifts so they could find job satisfaction.
They were hearing about gifts because they wanted to build the church. And certain people thought some gifts were better than others. And Paul says no. If you are building a church, it’s about God. All about God. All from God. All for the glory of God. This ain’t about you. What you do, you do for God.
Paul’s letter was to relieve anxiety. To tell those who didn’t speak in tongues that that’s OK. And to ask those who did speak in tongues, “why are you doing this?”
When it comes to gifts, we still have a lot of anxiety, and not, as I said, necessarily identifying what they are. What I experience and see around me is an anxiety born from unrealistic perfectionism of our gifts--preconceived notions that say what success means, what some who has true talents at X,Y, or Z should look like.
And if you think you’ve never felt this before, ask yourself:
Have you ever been jealous about the accomplishments of a colleague in the same field as you?
Have you ever thought a woman was a better mother than you, a man a better father?
Did you ever have a sports or school-nemesis (as Torin admitted to in a sermon recently) who’s focus for your rivalry was simply based on who could be better?
I’ll admit it. I have those. All three of those. And then some. And I would guess you have them to.
I think one part of struggling with gifts is facing the parts that don’t quite shine the brightest. Those parts that aren’t ablaze with the spirit. And it’s wrestling with those qualities we feel we need in order to be the best —whatever we are: parent, professor, musician, pastor, friend, spouse. It’s wrestling with the feeling that no matter how hard we try, we’ll just never be good enough.
[pause]
This year, Americans have been more exposed to British Royal life than we have been in a few decades. With the wedding of Prince William to Princess Kate we have gleefully immersed ourselves in the pageantry and the gossip, the splendor and decadency of a royal wedding.
This was a far cry from the humility and fear and anguish we were presented with earlier in the year. In the Academy Awared winning film, The King’s Speech, unaware generations (myself included) witnessed the vivid portrayal of King George the 6th in his unwilling rise to the British throne
Prince Albert, later to be crowned with the name King George the 6th, was Britain’s King during the turbulent years leading up to and during WWII. Albert’s brother, David, was the rightful heir, but because David wished to marry a divorced woman he stepped down from the throne, leaving it to his brother, Albert, or Bertie, as his family called him.
Bertie was a painfully shy man, with a dramatic stammer. He was deathly afraid of public speaking and on the occasion his father, King George V had him speak publicly, he was a dismal failure. The movie casts the coming of World War II as a confrontation involving public speaking: Hitler’s polished elocution is a dramatic contrast to the king’s quavering, high-pitched voice.
Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth, “slyly sets up a visit with Lionel Logue, the oddball, self-trained Australian speech therapist. With humor and wisdom [during the countless voice lessons in in Lionel’s dingy office--a place no respectable king would be caught dead in--Lionel] goads, cajoles, threatens and berates the king, gradually finding a way to intrude into [Bertie’s] personal life, enticing him to relive the pain of growing up with a blowhard father and a taunting brother. He put the king through a series of vocal calisthenics; he teaches him to curse and sing [even dance] in order to overcome his stammering.”
[pause]
One night, portrayed in the film, King George looks at his engagements for public speaking, something a King should be able to do, something that Kings have always been able to do—but on this night, King George breaks down crying in the arms of his wife under the mere stress, sobbing “I’m not a king. I’m not a king!”
On the eve of King George the 6th’s coronation, Lionel reflects with the anxious king about how he started helping people. Lionel recalls Australian soldiers coming home from WW1, shellshocked by what they had seen and experienced. They stammered. They couldn’t speak. Lionel reflected “My job was to give them faith in their own voice, and let them know that a friend was listening.”
[pause]
The two were a pair for the rest of King George’s life. Whenever the King made a public appearance or a radio broadcast Lionel was there. Lionel edited the King’s speeches in ways that would help a stammerer overcome the tripups, he would direct the King as if he was conducting an orchestra because a musical flow helped move him through the difficult parts. He knew what his friend needed in order to live into his weakness, so he could do the job before him. So he could live in the confidence in his other strengths.
The relationship between Logue and King George isn’t one of transcending difficulties in order to reach perfection. After years and years of training, no one would say King George was a magnificent orator.
No, I think this lesson by this master teacher, Paul included, is about boldly showing our non-gifts. This voice lesson is about opening our awareness up to what we do well, and, with a large measure of care and grace, to what we don’t do well. Because, as Paul points out, it’s all part of the work of God—not just the strengths, but all of who we are.
[pause]
The spirit will help you find your voice. Not by dramatic tongues of fire falling on you. But by guiding you, marking your scripts, moving you through the difficult dance steps—something we don’t rely on much when we’re working out of those places that come naturally, do we? Where we know we’re doing what we’re really good at. Spirit urges you to know that even in those things you are called to, joyfully or reluctantly, you won’t be perfect. Because it’s an economy like no other, a realm unlike any earthly kingdom.
But it requires the first step,
out of our high palaces of perfection
into the dingy room of a master teacher.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Mission Possible
sermon by Torin Eikler
John 17:1-11 Acts 1:1-14
Summer is almost here. Just two weeks, one day, 13 hours, and ___ minutes left before the season officially turns over into the three months of light and heat. But with school out and the thermometer in the 90s this past week, I have resigned myself to sunscreen and sweat a few weeks early. For all practical purposes, summer is already here. And while it is not my favorite season, there is one thing that I always look forward to, one guilty pleasure that comes around each year at this time … the Summer Blockbuster Movies.
Some of you will remember when people attended summer movies, if they could, not so much because of what was showing but simply to escape the heat for a time. Before air conditioning was so common, that movie theatre was one of the only refuges from the sun, and for a reasonably affordable amount, one could enter the cool darkness from time to time and sit. Just sit in a comfortable chair and enjoy the distraction of whatever story happened to be playing out on the big screen in front of you.
Those days are largely gone. Most of us have turned our homes into that place of refuge. We have air conditioning. We have televisions with movies on demand, or if we haven’t gone that far (or maybe have skipped over that) we have VCRs or DVD players that can link directly to the internet and stream movies directly into our living rooms. This is becoming so common, in fact, that Roger Ebert recently acknowledged with more than a little sadness that cinemas themselves may be on the path to extinction. For many of us, it is just too much money and too much hassle to get everyone into the theatre when we can watch the same thing at home.
But, in my experience there are some movies that you just can’t watch on the TV if you want to get the full effect. To truly appreciate these “blockbusters,” we need the huge screen, the large space, and the echoing surround sound to pull us fully into the action and effects, and it’s strange and scary what that kind of technology can do. There are many movies, I’ll admit, that had sucked me in when I watched them in the theatre whether or not they had redeeming value, or good acting, or a strong story line. In fact, the “bad” ones were sometimes the ones that I enjoyed the most – sitting there for the adrenaline rush without having to think or feel anything. That is what I secretly love about them, and this summer promises several excellent examples.
One that I am particularly looking forward to is Mission Impossible 4 where rogue agent Ethan Hawke promises to get stuck in some inescapable situation only to worm his way out with the help of a few friends, a bit of luck, and innumerable techno-gadgets that will, of course, require quite elaborate stunts and special effects if they are to work at all. It’s brain candy, I know, but there’s something about beating impossible odds to pull off incredible heists that I just love.
I suppose a big part of my fascination comes from wishing that I could do all those things … at least in a smaller, less death-defying way. The thing is, I often feel like my life is full of impossible missions. Chief among them and most immediate is the challenge of raising two intelligent, sensitive, well-behaved, respectful, loving, good-hearted boys. If there is anything that I don’t feel prepared for it navigating that responsibility without inadvertently doing irreparable damage to them along the way. If anyone has a map or a guaranteed methodology to help me out, please let me know.
Beyond that, though, there are myriad others tasks that I feel more or less responsible for. Two big ones given everything in the news are working to protect the environment and struggling against the militarism that seems to have gotten a dose of steroids lately. Then there’s taking care of those less fortunate than I: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, and housing the homeless…. You know, all the things we preach about because we really do think they’re important.
Some of those things are beyond me because I don’t have the tools or the power or the wisdom or courage I would need to get the job done. They may not be action-packed or life-threatening (though I suppose they might be if I really committed to them), but they are in the same realm as the adventures of Ethan Hawke. Put me his position and there is no way I would be able to do what needed to be done let alone survive long enough to try.
Others seem impossible simply because they are so big or take so long. If you chip away at them you make some headway, but it’s hard to keep at it without becoming discourage no matter how important the ultimate goal. There are people, I know, who are passionate about such work … who get excited by the prospect of taking the first step down one of those proverbial thousand-mile journeys and have the perseverance to move mountains one stone at a time. I’m just not one of them … and I’m not alone in that. If I were, there would be an army of people hard at work on solving the problems of the global community instead of a few pockets of resistance here and there.
And, I suspect that my feelings of inadequacy are nothing compared to the way the first group of disciples felt when Jesus left them there on that mountain. As they turned and walked back down to Jerusalem, I think they probably came down off a once-in-a-lifetime high with each step they took. They had been there, after all, when Jesus reappeared. They had seen the prophesies fulfilled. Unbelievable though it was, they had talked to, eaten with, and learned from their Messiah even after he had died, and after a month of living in that new reality, I expect they had come to take for granted that Jesus would be with them forever – always there to show them the way.
Instead, he had left them, rising into the heavens in a blaze of glorious light … left them with a vague promise of help to come … and the all too real, all too impossible mission of continuing his work, of making disciples of all the nations.
A few weeks ago, I made a passing reference to what that phrase, “continuing Jesus’ work” really means for us – to what it means to make disciples of the nations, and I think this might be the time to explore that in more depth. The Great Commission, as we call it, is often thought to mean saving people for Christ – that is, proclaiming the good news that Jesus was and is the Messiah and that all who believe and are baptized will be saved from eternal suffering and ushered into eternal life through the gift of grace. But, I’m not sure we’ve gotten that entirely right. That’s definitely part of it – that inviting people to share in the redeeming grace of Christ, but if it true, as Gail O’Day claims, that “When Jesus commissioned the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he meant that they were to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” And God as made known to us in Jesus was all about sharing the reality that the Kingdom was already present among humanity.
That means more than just baptizing people. It means proclaiming the new reality, describing it as clearly as possible, inviting people to step into the mystery of all that it might mean to be living in a world ruled by the one whose love led him to give his life for all of us. And it means more than that, too. It means modeling what a life lived in the midst of that reality looks like, being people of the Kingdom who act out of love and compassion so that everyone receives what she or he needs and no one is left alone. It means seeking healing – healing of bodies, healing of spirits, healing of the brokenness all around us.
That - all of that - is the task that Jesus left to the disciples. And I’m sure those men and women who were given that work were at a loss because if Jesus – if the Messiah himself with all his power and all his understanding was not able to do it, how on earth would they be able to? Even though they were a good sized community of people, I’m sure they felt lost and overwhelmed by the challenges that lay ahead.
I think we are in the same position. I feel like our congregation is on the brink of something, like potential and power and passion and energy are building toward some moment in the future – a moment when we will find ourselves in the midst of an explosion of new growth and a profound deepening of our spiritual life together as a community. But right now, in this moment, as I talk with you all and we look ahead at the challenges we face they often seems insurmountable.
Here we are with the very same mission received by those long-ago followers and handed down through the ages: continuing the work started by Jesus. Two thousand years later, the world’s need to hear and see and feel the presence of the Kingdom around them and the love of Christ within them still cries out to us. And we struggle with low attendance. We have trouble meeting our budget. Our ceiling leaks. And it is hard to get everything done because we all have such busy lives. Simply caring for our faith community is hard enough, picking up the mission left to by Christ ….
We are shy people – especially when it comes to sharing our faith. Our whole society is more than a little squeamish about it. We look at those who do share with distrust and distaste. That part of our lives, we have been taught, is personal, and the evangelists out there often wear the face of intolerance or carry the sword of judgment, and that doesn’t feel very Christ-like. We do not want to be like them. We don’t want to risk even the slightest chance that anyone might see us in that light, and so we go out of our way to avoid it.
I’m not singling any of you out here. I avoid it too … maybe even more than you do. It is hard to keep from being lumped in with “those people” when you are a pastor. We are all in the same boat here, and while we do a pretty good job of modeling and working for healing and reconciliation as a congregation, it seems like it might just take a miracle to get us out there describing the Kingdom, proclaiming the good news that it is here, or even sharing our own joy at having experience it here in this community of faith.
It took a miracle for the first Christians too. It took the coming of the Spirit to get them going, to remind them of Jesus’ promise that they were protected and unified by the power and the truth that he had shared with them. They had to wait for that miracle. Commissioned by Christ himself with their own mission impossible, they had to sit and hope that they would, somehow, be able to do what had been asked of them. They went and prayed that they would find a way to take even just the first step on that journey.
But, we don’t have to wait…. The miracle has happened. The promised presence of the Spirit has been fulfilled for us already, and the Sustainer lives within us offering us strength and encouragement … empowering us for the work that is ours to do as a community that has tasted the new reality of God’s Reign among us … giving us “shy people the strength and courage to do what needs to be done.”
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is no more and no less than continuing the work of making God in Jesus known to the world. It is to go out into the world and living out the love and compassion that marks the Children of God. It is working to heal pain and brokenness, relieve suffering, and offer hope in the midst of despair. It is proclaiming in a sure and confident voice the truth that, whatever it may look like out there, the Kingdom of God is here, and it offers new hope and new life to any who wish to enter.
It’s a big task, but it is possible.
John 17:1-11 Acts 1:1-14
Summer is almost here. Just two weeks, one day, 13 hours, and ___ minutes left before the season officially turns over into the three months of light and heat. But with school out and the thermometer in the 90s this past week, I have resigned myself to sunscreen and sweat a few weeks early. For all practical purposes, summer is already here. And while it is not my favorite season, there is one thing that I always look forward to, one guilty pleasure that comes around each year at this time … the Summer Blockbuster Movies.
Some of you will remember when people attended summer movies, if they could, not so much because of what was showing but simply to escape the heat for a time. Before air conditioning was so common, that movie theatre was one of the only refuges from the sun, and for a reasonably affordable amount, one could enter the cool darkness from time to time and sit. Just sit in a comfortable chair and enjoy the distraction of whatever story happened to be playing out on the big screen in front of you.
Those days are largely gone. Most of us have turned our homes into that place of refuge. We have air conditioning. We have televisions with movies on demand, or if we haven’t gone that far (or maybe have skipped over that) we have VCRs or DVD players that can link directly to the internet and stream movies directly into our living rooms. This is becoming so common, in fact, that Roger Ebert recently acknowledged with more than a little sadness that cinemas themselves may be on the path to extinction. For many of us, it is just too much money and too much hassle to get everyone into the theatre when we can watch the same thing at home.
But, in my experience there are some movies that you just can’t watch on the TV if you want to get the full effect. To truly appreciate these “blockbusters,” we need the huge screen, the large space, and the echoing surround sound to pull us fully into the action and effects, and it’s strange and scary what that kind of technology can do. There are many movies, I’ll admit, that had sucked me in when I watched them in the theatre whether or not they had redeeming value, or good acting, or a strong story line. In fact, the “bad” ones were sometimes the ones that I enjoyed the most – sitting there for the adrenaline rush without having to think or feel anything. That is what I secretly love about them, and this summer promises several excellent examples.
One that I am particularly looking forward to is Mission Impossible 4 where rogue agent Ethan Hawke promises to get stuck in some inescapable situation only to worm his way out with the help of a few friends, a bit of luck, and innumerable techno-gadgets that will, of course, require quite elaborate stunts and special effects if they are to work at all. It’s brain candy, I know, but there’s something about beating impossible odds to pull off incredible heists that I just love.
I suppose a big part of my fascination comes from wishing that I could do all those things … at least in a smaller, less death-defying way. The thing is, I often feel like my life is full of impossible missions. Chief among them and most immediate is the challenge of raising two intelligent, sensitive, well-behaved, respectful, loving, good-hearted boys. If there is anything that I don’t feel prepared for it navigating that responsibility without inadvertently doing irreparable damage to them along the way. If anyone has a map or a guaranteed methodology to help me out, please let me know.
Beyond that, though, there are myriad others tasks that I feel more or less responsible for. Two big ones given everything in the news are working to protect the environment and struggling against the militarism that seems to have gotten a dose of steroids lately. Then there’s taking care of those less fortunate than I: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, and housing the homeless…. You know, all the things we preach about because we really do think they’re important.
Some of those things are beyond me because I don’t have the tools or the power or the wisdom or courage I would need to get the job done. They may not be action-packed or life-threatening (though I suppose they might be if I really committed to them), but they are in the same realm as the adventures of Ethan Hawke. Put me his position and there is no way I would be able to do what needed to be done let alone survive long enough to try.
Others seem impossible simply because they are so big or take so long. If you chip away at them you make some headway, but it’s hard to keep at it without becoming discourage no matter how important the ultimate goal. There are people, I know, who are passionate about such work … who get excited by the prospect of taking the first step down one of those proverbial thousand-mile journeys and have the perseverance to move mountains one stone at a time. I’m just not one of them … and I’m not alone in that. If I were, there would be an army of people hard at work on solving the problems of the global community instead of a few pockets of resistance here and there.
And, I suspect that my feelings of inadequacy are nothing compared to the way the first group of disciples felt when Jesus left them there on that mountain. As they turned and walked back down to Jerusalem, I think they probably came down off a once-in-a-lifetime high with each step they took. They had been there, after all, when Jesus reappeared. They had seen the prophesies fulfilled. Unbelievable though it was, they had talked to, eaten with, and learned from their Messiah even after he had died, and after a month of living in that new reality, I expect they had come to take for granted that Jesus would be with them forever – always there to show them the way.
Instead, he had left them, rising into the heavens in a blaze of glorious light … left them with a vague promise of help to come … and the all too real, all too impossible mission of continuing his work, of making disciples of all the nations.
A few weeks ago, I made a passing reference to what that phrase, “continuing Jesus’ work” really means for us – to what it means to make disciples of the nations, and I think this might be the time to explore that in more depth. The Great Commission, as we call it, is often thought to mean saving people for Christ – that is, proclaiming the good news that Jesus was and is the Messiah and that all who believe and are baptized will be saved from eternal suffering and ushered into eternal life through the gift of grace. But, I’m not sure we’ve gotten that entirely right. That’s definitely part of it – that inviting people to share in the redeeming grace of Christ, but if it true, as Gail O’Day claims, that “When Jesus commissioned the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he meant that they were to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” And God as made known to us in Jesus was all about sharing the reality that the Kingdom was already present among humanity.
That means more than just baptizing people. It means proclaiming the new reality, describing it as clearly as possible, inviting people to step into the mystery of all that it might mean to be living in a world ruled by the one whose love led him to give his life for all of us. And it means more than that, too. It means modeling what a life lived in the midst of that reality looks like, being people of the Kingdom who act out of love and compassion so that everyone receives what she or he needs and no one is left alone. It means seeking healing – healing of bodies, healing of spirits, healing of the brokenness all around us.
That - all of that - is the task that Jesus left to the disciples. And I’m sure those men and women who were given that work were at a loss because if Jesus – if the Messiah himself with all his power and all his understanding was not able to do it, how on earth would they be able to? Even though they were a good sized community of people, I’m sure they felt lost and overwhelmed by the challenges that lay ahead.
I think we are in the same position. I feel like our congregation is on the brink of something, like potential and power and passion and energy are building toward some moment in the future – a moment when we will find ourselves in the midst of an explosion of new growth and a profound deepening of our spiritual life together as a community. But right now, in this moment, as I talk with you all and we look ahead at the challenges we face they often seems insurmountable.
Here we are with the very same mission received by those long-ago followers and handed down through the ages: continuing the work started by Jesus. Two thousand years later, the world’s need to hear and see and feel the presence of the Kingdom around them and the love of Christ within them still cries out to us. And we struggle with low attendance. We have trouble meeting our budget. Our ceiling leaks. And it is hard to get everything done because we all have such busy lives. Simply caring for our faith community is hard enough, picking up the mission left to by Christ ….
We are shy people – especially when it comes to sharing our faith. Our whole society is more than a little squeamish about it. We look at those who do share with distrust and distaste. That part of our lives, we have been taught, is personal, and the evangelists out there often wear the face of intolerance or carry the sword of judgment, and that doesn’t feel very Christ-like. We do not want to be like them. We don’t want to risk even the slightest chance that anyone might see us in that light, and so we go out of our way to avoid it.
I’m not singling any of you out here. I avoid it too … maybe even more than you do. It is hard to keep from being lumped in with “those people” when you are a pastor. We are all in the same boat here, and while we do a pretty good job of modeling and working for healing and reconciliation as a congregation, it seems like it might just take a miracle to get us out there describing the Kingdom, proclaiming the good news that it is here, or even sharing our own joy at having experience it here in this community of faith.
It took a miracle for the first Christians too. It took the coming of the Spirit to get them going, to remind them of Jesus’ promise that they were protected and unified by the power and the truth that he had shared with them. They had to wait for that miracle. Commissioned by Christ himself with their own mission impossible, they had to sit and hope that they would, somehow, be able to do what had been asked of them. They went and prayed that they would find a way to take even just the first step on that journey.
But, we don’t have to wait…. The miracle has happened. The promised presence of the Spirit has been fulfilled for us already, and the Sustainer lives within us offering us strength and encouragement … empowering us for the work that is ours to do as a community that has tasted the new reality of God’s Reign among us … giving us “shy people the strength and courage to do what needs to be done.”
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is no more and no less than continuing the work of making God in Jesus known to the world. It is to go out into the world and living out the love and compassion that marks the Children of God. It is working to heal pain and brokenness, relieve suffering, and offer hope in the midst of despair. It is proclaiming in a sure and confident voice the truth that, whatever it may look like out there, the Kingdom of God is here, and it offers new hope and new life to any who wish to enter.
It’s a big task, but it is possible.
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