Sunday, September 11, 2011

Ambassadors for Christ

sermon by Torin Eikler
Psalm 25:1-5, 11-22, 20-21 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Have you ever had to entreat someone? You know … have you had to try and convince someone to do something very important that they don’t want to do … with just your words?

Perhaps it was a child in the grocery store (as I do every week) who is picking up the candy as you wait to pay for your food. “No, no, no. Hands off. … Please, Alistair, put that back. Put it back.”

Or maybe it was an elderly parent. “You know that you need to take your medicine every day. We don’t want you to go back to the hospital. Please, just take the pills. It only takes a couple of minutes, and then you’re done.”

Or your spouse. “George, would you please take out the compost. You said you would do it yesterday, and there are fruit flies all over the kitchen.”

Or … “Ceclia you're breakin' my heart. You're shakin' my confidence daily. Oh Ceclia, I'm down on my knees. I'm beggin' you please to come home.”


I think we’ve all been there. And if you think about the way it felt to have to wheedle and coax and bully that certain someone – someone you cared about so much – to do whatever it was, you get an idea of how Paul must have been feeling when he wrote this letter. He was entreating – begging, imploring, and pleading with the Corinthians to live the way they know they should be living. He’s concerned because they are doing all kinds of things that they shouldn’t be doing – sexual immorality, playing favorites, and taking advantage of each other’s weaknesses. They have turned away from the teaching of Christ when they should be serving as ambassadors for Christ, and they need to be reconciled to God so that they can show the rest of the world what it means to be followers of the way.

Now, an ambassador in Paul’s day was pretty much the same thing that it is to us – except there was no internet to keep them connected and no airplanes to take them back and forth to the capital for updates and new instructions. Back then, an ambassador was a trusted elder statesman who was sent by a head of state to represent the nation state to another nation state. They were a bridge, representing the interests of their own kingdom to the leaders of the other, and while their feet were on foreign ground, their hearts were firmly planted back home.

Paul liked that image, though he didn’t use it all that often. He saw himself as an ambassador who carried the interests of the Kingdom of God into the world that did not yet know Christ. He lived and moved among the people of this world, and his task was to encourage everyone he met to be reconciled to God and become ambassadors of Christ in their own turn. His feet walked in this world, but his heart – his primary loyalty was to the Realm of God. And as an ambassador, he was entreating the Corinthians to return to the way he had shown them so that they could take up the role as ambassadors as well.


That’s an important message for us as well – especially in these years of increasing anxiety and division. To borrow a metaphor that Ervin Stutsman used at Mennonite Convention this summer, “our nation today is like a big bus careening down the road heading first for one ditch and then another ditch. We’ve got Mennonites and Brethren on both sides of the bus. There are people in this congregation on both sides of the bus.

The exciting thing about this bus is that if you get enough people on your side, you get to choose the driver. So depending on who’s driving, you’re on the left ditch and if somebody else comes along you’re in the right ditch and people get all excited about getting more people on their side of the bus. “Come on. Join our side of the bus. We’ll get out of this ditch were in.”

And some people are even trying to figure out which side Jesus would sit on. “Where would Jesus sit?” – that’s the question. So you pull up to the bus stop and Jesus is out there. So we quick ask him, “Jesus, which side of the bus would you sit on?”

And I think Jesus is saying, “Well, where you going?”

“We’re heading for the kingdom of God!”

And I think Jesus would say, “I believe you’re on the wrong bus.”


It doesn’t mean that we don’t have discussions about tough issues. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong opinions, or that we don’t engage in the decision making process. But what it does mean is that when differences on issues divide us from one another (or from other congregations … or even other denominations), when they keep us from talking to each other and respectfully agreeing and disagreeing in love, when they keep us from engaging things from the scriptures and they get our attention focused only on the issues, we sin just a little. Our hearts stray just a little from the Kingdom we are representing. We get just a little lost. And we need to be called back home so that we can get ourselves and our message back on track.


Ten years and three days ago, Carrie and I were married. Three days later, we were on the way to the airport to begin our honeymoon when we heard the news of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centers, and in the midst of all the confusion and the fear and the pain of those hours, we also had to change our plans. There was no way we were going to fly out of O’Hare that day – a small inconvenience in the face of everything that had happened.

In the end, we spent the week after September 11, 2001 driving around the Wisconsin and Michigan. It was a good week. We saw lots of fascinating places and met a few interesting people, and we spent a lot of down time in the car – hours that went by quickly as we listened to updates on the situation in New York and Washington, DC and Shenksville, Pennsylvania and followed the mood of the nation carried by the voices of talk show hosts and DJs.

What we witnessed that week was an amazing process of public discussion about what had happened and how we, as a country, should respond. Never before and never since have I heard so many voices from all different backgrounds offering their thoughts and opinions so openly – and there were so many ideas about how we should respond. Some thought we should just ignore the terrorists … that we should mourn the dead and honor the pain and the suffering of their family and friends but deny the perpetrators the attention they wanted as if they were children misbehaving. Others were for an all-out assault on every location we thought Osama bin Laden might be. Still others spoke of digging into the situation to try and understand what was behind the attack and address those issues in order to prevent future incidents. And there were more.

It was amazing … and sad because, in the end, the discussion collapsed under the weight of fear and anger. By the end of the week, there were only two voices left. One that clamored for our military to invade Afghanistan, root out the terrorists, and kill them all. Another that said invasion wouldn’t work … that it wouldn’t make us any safer or take away the pain … that it would only lead to more death and more fear. Two sides of a bus with all of us on one side or the other.


In many ways, we are still on that bus. Ten years, two wars, and thousands of dead later, we are still split down the middle: should we be fighting or not. And I suspect that if I were to ask you to raise your hands, there would be people from both sides of the argument sitting here in worship this morning. (pause) I won’t ask that question … not only because it would only make us all uncomfortable but because there is a more important question to ask. Is this the right bus?

We are Christ’s ambassadors … or we should be, and maybe it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with what that means. While I’m sure that part of it is advocating for peace, I think it goes deeper and farther than that as well. The Prince of Peace was also the Friend to the Friendless, the Voice calling for Justice, the Healer of the Broken, and the Reconciler of the Nations. As ambassadors of his Way, we are called to model a new way of living together, a new way of agreeing and disagreeing with one another … in love, a new way of compassion and forgiveness not just to those we know and love but to everyone … even those who mistreat us … even those who hate us … and even those who highjack planes and use them to kill.


It’s hard … standing here in this world as representatives of a different reality. It means seeking out those places where people are in conflict and helping them find harmony or at least respect for one another. It means letting go of our own prejudices and fears to reach out to those we have our own differences with and trying to find respect and appreciation and love for them. It means stepping out of our pride and our own self-centered perspective and really listening to the pain and frustration of others, stepping into their shoes as we seek to understand them, and making their needs and interests our own. It means inviting others – through no more than our words and our example – to join in the grand vision of a world where people live together with respect and love, joy and hope, and a profound sense of peace that comes from caring deeply for one another. (pause) And as ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of Christ’s way, we are asked to do that in our own individual interactions as well as in our communal lives – here and now as well as across time and space.


It would be easier, I sometimes think, to live wholly in this world … to settle down, make my peace with the way things are, and get on with my life … to live and let live. But we are new creations in Christ. Our hearts dwell in the Kingdom of God wherever our feet may roam. And we have been called … we are being called to spread the hope and the joy and the peace that come through the healing power of God’s reconciling grace.

An intimidating prospect to be sure … some would say impossible. But there is a bus waiting for us … a bus full of people eager to welcome us and share the work … a bus whose driver knows where we’re going and how to get there.

Let’s get on board.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Hard Lessons

sermon by Carrie Eikler
(For student/teacher recognition Sunday)
Matthew 19:13-15, 1 Timothy4:12
Romans 12:9-21
September 4, 2011

When Torin and I were taking pre-natal classes in preparation for Sebastian’s birth, we were probably the most anxious either of us had ever been before in our lives. Of course, all the pregnant moms were anxious about the unknowns of first labors and all the dads or other support people were anxious about helping their laboring loved ones.

We all had Hollywood version births in mind: screaming, swearing, lashing out all sorts of profanities with the belief that once it was all over we’d be laughing and crying and saying “I don’t know what came over me. I just wasn’t myself.”

The nurse teaching the class nipped that in the bud. She told us “In labor you think that you’ll act in ways that are totally not who you are. The reality is, you become more of who you really are than you’d like to admit.” And I discovered…it’s true.

All the demons, the insecurities, unloving, raging parts of you that lie under the surface-- they come out. As does the best strength, perseverance, and love that could find its home in you…it’s all put to work to bring forward this new life.

And those are hard lessons to learn. To be put to the test and find what’s really there. What you would rather not have other people know about you, what behaviors and actions you feel you are above.

Now, five years later give me a hot September night when I’m exhausted and trying to put two wiggly boys down to sleep and you can bet I see the worst in myself. And the boys are seeing it to.

I don’t like those lessons, what they reveal to me…about me. But I have to learn from them.

We like to believe that we grow in wisdom as we grow in years. That somehow, it coincides automatically. And to an extent, I believe it’s true. I do feel I am wiser now than I was ten years ago. And I certainly believe I am wiser now than people who are 10 years younger me, that’s for sure… (ha, ha.)

And we think when we are wise, or when we know we are smart, we think that we are the teachers. That we know. That others can learn from us. Sure, we know there is still more to learn, and we’ll get to that when time allows. And that’s the thing. We prefer to have control over how we learn and from whom we learn. We would like to choose the way in which wisdom comes to us.

We’d like wisdom to come to us from the wise and sagely advice a friend gives us over a cup of tea…
Or the brilliant scholar in invigorating classroom discussions…
Or in the quiet of a thoughtful book that gently opens our mind…

But, when Jesus called the little children to him…when he invited tax collectors and prostitutes to be his friends…when he submitted to the cross rather than any other fate, he taught us some hard lessons. And not in the ways we think we would prefer to learn

Lessons like, look to the wisdom and sage teachings of children (even when they are annoying you)
Lessons like…struggle with what it is you are so judgmental about to see how it keeps you from loving your neighbor.
Lessons like… it is in our suffering that we can see the redeeming work of God with such raw clarity that we can’t help but be resurrected.

These lessons aren’t taught to us in ways we’d prefer.

But we certainly learn from them. And we’d probably learn those lessons most deeply if we didn’t try to control just how life’s teachers bring us the lesson.

Last week, we looked at the scripture in Romans just before today’s, about not conforming to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And I spoke about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work on mindfulness meditation and its effect on reducing stress. He and his wife, Myla, wrote a book called Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. And in it, they compare children to Little Zen Masters that we have invited into our lives.

Jon and Myla reflect on training in the Zen Buddhist tradition as, “arduous and demanding, intense and unpredictable, wild and crazy, and very loving and funny. It’s also very simple, and not so simple.” The teachers of Zen, the Zen masters (to which they are comparing children, remember), ‘don’t explain themselves. They just embody presence. They don’t get hung up in thinking, or lost in theoretical musings about this or that. They are not always consistent. [They give] us endless challenges that cannot be resolved through thinking [such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”].

Granted, we are not part of the Zen tradition, but we certainly can recognize the Zen-like masters in our lives. Those teachers of hard lessons. Children, unquestioningly are like that. That’s could be why Jesus used them in the way he did.

He’s may not only being using them as an example of how we should be, but he may just be revealing to the people what kind of messiah he was by honoring and blessing the children, and what they bring, how they see.

His whole approach was like a Zen master: not explaining, just embodying. By taking on and redeeming suffering (and we think “how could he do that? It doesn’t make sense”) By loving others in their brokenness, and welcoming them at the table (and we think, how could we do that? It seems impossible)

And this is the Jesus Paul believes in, too. Which is why it is probably easy for Paul to just fling out the list virtues that he does, our scripture lesson for today. It is basically restating what Jesus was about. The hard lessons that Jesus spent three years of his ministry embodying, Paul puts in a simple, but not so simple list. And Paul isn’t any better at explaining these to us either.

Now, if you are like me, you read this with somewhat of a blasé attitude. “Yes yes let love be genuine. Mmmhmm, love you enemies, that’s right. Yes, certainly…don’t be haughty. Of course, extend hospitality to strangers.”

When a big list like this is thrown at me, it is easy to disengage. Maybe I could commit it to memory and recite it like the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes, but what happens then? Well for me, it becomes just something to recite, nothing more. Good things to aim for but if I’m not willing to really work at them, then at least I can recite the list

Because really, while we can train ourselves to rattle off the list, we will struggle to really learn these hard lessons.

These things are their own little Zen masters. Not clear, or consistent. Some are obviously hard, like bless those who persecute you (we need to think, what does persecution look like? What does it mean to “bless” someone when I am hurt? How would I receive a blessing when I have hurt someone?)

And others seem easy but when you get right down to it, they do touch some of those little demons inside, like “rejoice with those who rejoice.” Even when you think they don’t deserve the good things they have received? Even if you start to feel jealous? Even when your own sadness seems to overcome…rejoice?

If we take them each, they are really hard lessons. Which is why in your hand, you are holding one, only one. Now I’m sure you’ve looked at it already, but look at it again. You are going to invite this one lesson into yourself.

Read it slowly…mutter the words out loud to yourself. How does it sound outside your head, when you put it “out there.” Read it over a few times.

Now close your eyes for a few moments and see the words in your mind.
Invite them into your soul…
Assume that this is not as easy or straight forward as you initially think.
Assume that this is not too hard or beyond your reach.
Assume that this will teach you something about yourself, about your God, and about your own transformation.

[pause]

You may open your eyes now if you like…
Now, believe that being mindful to this one thing will change you, just as the leaves outside are gradually changing.
Believe that the Holy Spirit strengthens you when you give serious intention to the transformation of your spirit. When you are willing to learn.

I hope you take this home. Tape it on your mirror. Put it on your fridge and make this one thing your discipleship invitation for the fall. Your Jesus-Paul-Zen master lesson.

We don’t choose the way we learn the hard lessons. But it is planted now within you. It will grow, and in time, you will be able to teach others, in wisdom and in truth.