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July 9, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: 2 Samuel 5:1-15, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13
“Hijacked and Handicapped: And Grace Will Lead Us
Home!”
I ask a moment of special and silent prayer of compassion and solidarity for three
Tongans – including two members of the royal family – Prince Tu’ipelehake and Princess
Kaimana -- who came to ordination service at Annual Conference this year in joyful
recognition and support of several new Tongan pastors. They died in Menlo Park,
CA, Wednesday night, struck by a racing teenage driver. We pray that this
moment of deep grief and loss to the Tongan people and to the Tongan communities
here, including our own, may become as well a moment of new awareness and appreciation
– not only of Tonga and Tongans, but also of all nations, all peoples, all immigrants.
The Tongan consul general in San Francisco said of the young driver – “In the Tongan
way, and in the Tongan heart, we hope that God will mend her ways . . . but we don’t
have any malevolent feelings toward her.” Let us pray. Amen.
This ever-enigmatic Auden poem calling us to worship today occurred to me as I prepared
for a wedding Friday between two older Carnival workers from Ohio who fell in love
at a Christmas party! I imagined the poem read by a Carnival barker calling to us
to this wedding, and it worked! Try it with me –
He is the Way! Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness! You will
see rare beasts, and have unique adventures!
He is the Truth! Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety! You will come
to a great city that has expected your return for years!
He is the Life! Love Him in the World of the Flesh! And at your marriage
all its occasions shall dance for joy!!
Can’t believe I’m preaching “The Discipline” this summer! The Discipline
and I generally find so little in common. But Bob Olmstead (my E. F.
Hutton!) tells me, if we are trying to build a base for lay ministries in the
congregation, we can do a lot worse than to start with what The Discipline says
about being United Methodists – a lot more than we often allow ourselves to
think! Our passage from “The Ministry of All Christians” today reminds us
of the two (or more!) dimensions of the life and work of Holy Spirit – gift and
task, grace and service. Gift and grace have more to do with direct
personal relationship to the Spirit, acknowledged primarily in baptism, God’s
complete unconditional love for us at any time. Task and service have more to do
with interpersonal and communal relations, the shaping of individuals into
communities with the world, as acknowledged in communion itself, our sharing
God’s love with each other.
We call the Spirit is both “Sanctifier” and “Sustainer.” John Wesley speaks
of both “personal” and “social holiness.” Gordon Cosby of “inward” and “outward
journey.” We could add, “pastoral/prophetic,” “private/“public,” “personal/
political.” Whatever they’re called, they go together! Each one of us
is called to both – at least one gift/grace and one task/service at any given time
-- many gifts/ graces and many tasks/services over our lifetimes. There is
no avoiding the claim of the Spirit of Christ upon us: “Baptism is followed
by nurture,” says The Discipline, “and the consequent awareness by the baptized
of the claim to ministry in Christ placed upon their lives by the church!” And again,
“The impulse to minister always moves one beyond the congregation toward the whole
human community.” As we explore forms of a ”Christian Caregiving” within the
congregation, we look to offer them in communities all around us as well.
The key word with the Spirit is this “awareness” of the baptized, this
consciousness of the cost of discipleship and the claim of the church.
It’s like once we know who we are in relation to Christ, and what Christ is
about even now in the world, we can never turn back to ignorance and
indifference again. We dare not deny this “new creation” we have become. The
Spirit of Christ claims lives for ministry – “hijacks” us according to Paul –
from the well-beaten paths of everyday life and business as usual -- to ecstatic
experience of comfort and joy!
Each one of us probably has our “hijacking” story on Jesus. You know mine.
It was the death of Dr. King. I had never thought about going to church, much
less going to seminary, in my life. In those few days following April 4, 1968,
I decided. My dad knew the president of the Unitarian Universalist
seminary in Chicago. I was virtually on the next plane to visit the school
and take my entrance exams. The city was still occupied by the National
Guard. We got a chance to meet with Rev. John Fry, First Presbyterian in
Woodlawn -- under investigation for his pastoral friendship with the Black
P-Stone Nation of young men living in his community -- and I was hooked!
It excites me to this very day!
There weren’t enough Unitarian Universalist congregations for all our field placements
– seminary being so popular during the war! Through an “urban semester” program
I had encountered this jolly little band of United Methodists, convinced God was
using them daily to help save the whole world -- Parish of the Holy Covenant --
and its visionary activist pastor Jim Reed. Within another year I was down
on my knees in that sanctuary -- confirming Christ as my Lord and Savior and asking
that congregation to recommend me for the License to Preach in the United Methodist
Church. That’s how Christ “hijacked” me. I’ve been a lover of and believer
in congregations ever since How did Christ “hijack” you? How might Christ
be “hijacking” you right this moment – if you will let him?
Then, so we don’t get swelled heads or smug congregations, Paul adds, the same
Spirit of Christ “handicaps” us – so we won’t imagine ourselves any holier or
more justified than anyone else – and will stay in touch with our limitations!
Do you need help knowing your “handicap?” Your “thorn in the flesh” as
Paul puts it? Is it any secret to you? One of mine is rheumatoid
arthritis. As a systemic disease it makes me painfully aware that the
whole system of who I am has to keep working together. Each part relates
to every other. And the disease relates to all parts – an equal
opportunity affliction! My parts and I have to take this disease into the body,
into the family of who we are. We have to befriend it, respect it, make
room for it, give it its due. It keeps us humbled, grounded in present
reality, mindful of the gift of each day, and of the grace to be able to move at
all! Do you need help Identifying your limitations? You wonder if
you have an affliction, or need one? The late, great Rev. William
Sloan Coffin says, the Spirit comforts us in our affliction, to be sure – but
the Spirit also afflicts us in our comfort! We fully belong to Christ – in
gifts and tasks, grace and service, faith and works. Christ always calls
us beyond where we are!
“God’s gifts are richly diverse for a variety of services;” The Discipline
concludes, “yet all have dignity and worth.” What’s yours? What are ours?
What are our gifts and graces, our tasks and services – as a whole congregation?
Made up of all of our parts? Handicaps and all? Following Jesus, of
course, going out on commission with Christ, is bound to get us in trouble.
What kind of worldly winner is he? Who ends up betrayed and beaten, denied
and abandoned, dead on a cross? It is in this gospel story as if the people
of his hometown can see it all coming – Who is he to be preaching to us? Where
does he get his wisdom to teach? His power to heal? We know him all
too well! We know his mother, his brothers, his sisters – We know all there
is to know about him! Who needs him?!
Do we know that feeling of Jesus? That no one has a clue as to who we are,
or what we believe, or why we act as we do upon what we believe? Do we find
ourselves prophets without honor in our hometowns? Among those who think they
know us the best? So we are not able to show them signs of the powers in us?
We are not able to be who we are with them? To do what we do with them?
So we are amazed at their unbelief, as Jesus is? At their inability and/or
unwillingness to acknowledge the claims of faith upon their own lives? Therefore
to dismiss the claims of faith on the life of another? I mean, if even Jesus
Christ himself has to be surrounded with some openness, some receptivity, some sympathy
and some support, in order to exercise his great powers, who are we to need
anything less – if not to need a whole lot more?
The still great Bill Moyers is doing a new series, “Faith and Reason,” on PBS, Channel
5, Fridays at 9 PM. He is talking with writers because he knows the witness
and service of faith and works to justice and peace in our time depends upon imagination!
Upon winning the minds and hearts of our people away from the deadliness of our
corrupt and commercialized culture – including political culture. We have
to become organized, just like Jesus does here –sending each other out, perhaps
literally two by two, door to door – eye to eye, ear to ear -- vision to vision,
voice to voice, vote to vote – like lambs among wolves, Jesus says elsewhere --
with nothing to offer another but our own truest selves – no games, no gimmicks,
no prizes, no programs – nothing but faith, hope and love. How are we going
to do that? Just put ourselves out there -- limited as we are?
Listen to Bill Moyers’ guest of last week, novelist Mary Gordon – “I have to endure
the irony of the fact that most of the people whom I admire slightly suspect me
of sucking my thumb at night. Because I am a person of faith! So I’m
very used to it. And rather like it. I wouldn’t be in a world where
everyone was a believer and we all sort of fell back into this comfort zone of agreeing
with each other all the time. I think there are many more good reasons for
not believing than believing!” Wow! Thanks a lot! Yet who are
we, who know our own claims and limitations – our hijacks and handicaps -- not to
begin by confessing the mess that churches and the religions have conspired to make
to make in and of this world and earth? Are we more trouble than we’re worth?
What if our strange brother Paul is onto something here? That after begging
God three times to remove his handicap – Only three times? What kind of masochist
is Paul?! – Paul hears, My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength
comes into its own in your weakness! What a good Methodist word – about
grace! If there’s any one living faith concept we have to contribute, it’s
grace! Not just “Amazing Grace.” Look through all The Hymnal’s contents
some time. After a section of 150 hymns under “The Grace of Jesus Christ”
comes a section called “The Power of the Holy Spirit” – with 200 hymns on “Prevenient
Grace,” “Justifying Grace,” and “Sanctifying and Perfecting Grace!” We are
such a people of grace! Grace is what we are about. Who are we to think for
a moment we can, much less that we have to, accomplish or redeem all this on our
own?
Our weakness creates God’s opening into us. Our emptiness serves to
invites God to fill us again! We do not revel in our limitations, but we
sure will not let our limits immobilize us! As founder of Ecumenical
Institute Joe Matthews loved to say, We are not called to hide or to fix our
neuroses, but to push them out into the world for the glory of God! Just
look at the life and work of King David alone! See how God lives and
works with the limits of David, of Paul, of so many others! Let us, with
Paul, quit focusing on our handicaps – on all the good reasons why we cannot
risk or spend any more for our faith, for the church, for the world – and
instead start appreciating all our gifts, our graces, our tasks, and our
services!
How are we, each one of us and together, like Paul, “cases of Christ’s strength
moving in our weaknesses?” I remember old John McKnight at Northwestern University’s
School of Urban Studies and his radically new and different approach to community
organizing – ABCD – “Asset-Based Community Development!” For so long all
the theory and practice of community analysis and response dwelt on pathologies
and liabilities! We were always telling folks, somehow “unlike” or
“beneath” us, what was wrong with them and what they needed.
It never occurred to us, as we say, that “God don’t make no junk!”
Everyone has something to offer! Some gift, some grace, some task, some
service for the good of the whole! We will not be defined by deficiencies
– or judged by the worst of decisions and actions of life! And we hope
that this morning for the young woman who raced her car into the Tongans.
For our God is a God of grace! A God of justice and mercy! Of
confession and forgiveness!
Our God just needs a hand to grab onto, a leg to stand on with us. The first
step is always the hardest! But that’s how the longest journey begins!
Just a step! So, Let go! Let God! Turn loose of ourselves!
Let Christ take over! Through many dangers, toils, and snares, / I have
already come; / ‘tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, / and grace will lead
me home! Amen!!
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