it does not suffice
Prayer: Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts prompt a welcome to the one who comes in your name. ~Amen.
It had been a hot morning. We all had been in Central America for over ten days and we were worn out. A group of seminary students traveled to Honduras and Nicaragua to meet with leaders of the Lutheran Church in these countries.
On this hot morning, surrounded by people with little more than enough to eat for the day, I took the first shower I had had in over a week. I went out behind the house to a well. Holding onto a rope, I dropped the bucket down a hole and heard a wonderful splash. Pulling the bucket up I began preparing myself for the freezing water to take the breath from me when I poured it over myself.
Nothing could have prepared me for what happened though. Taking a deep breath I dumped half the bucket over my head.
The water temperature was perfect.
Standing behind the house without embarrassment, feeling the breeze cool me in the distance I saw hills, children chasing each other, and then the words “remember your baptism,” came to my mind.
Remember your baptism.
There, in that place of incredible poverty, poverty brought on by no fault of their own; in that place I learned more about my baptism than I had anywhere else. In that place, where the world saw poverty, I began to understand God’s abundant love.
Isn’t that the way it always goes, though?
Henri Nouwen goes to the L’arche community to care for a man with little, to no, cognitive functions, and there, the man Nouwen is supposed to care for; Adam, models the ability to accept G-d’s love this priest has written so eloquently about, yet also searched for, all his life.
Adam, a man with little use to the world, teaches a famous priest about love.
Abused women, ignored women, stand together, and with courage proclaim it is not their fault they have been abused, claim their humanity. Explain what is wrong with only describing God as father. With their experience, their knowledge, they look deeply and critically at much popular Christian theology.
These women, so often ignored by the world, or at least by pastors and priests who told them it was their Christian duty to accept this abuse, teach professional theologians about the violence they had accidentally been preaching.
A Jewish boy in a concentration camp, watching a boy younger than him hang, dares to say that if God is anywhere in the world God is with that boy strangling under an unjust noose.
A Jewish boy, Elie Wiesel, condemned by so many, including the German Church, teaches Christians about the Theology of the Cross.
And today, gays and lesbians in Seattle will gather to proclaim their human worth.
These humans who so many states use laws to treat as second class citizens, teach us about the remarkable love of God that will not make distinctions.
These stories we just heard, these unlikely, unexpected, vulnerable stories are our stories.
It is this kind of stories that we’re called to find ourselves in. It is these stories after all, that move the heart. It is these that can actually remind us of the kind of God we’re called to worship, if only we had the courage. It is these stories that matter.
Perhaps we’ve forgotten about these stories. Perhaps we’ve been too intimidated to claim them, because they all too often seem ignored. But, they are the stories we’re called to. They are the stories we’re called to claim and find ourselves in.
And how do we claim these stories, after all? How do we have the courage to find ourselves in these stories?
Put simply, through stewardship.
We claim these stories, through our calling to be stewards.
The calling to be a steward, to live with a unique disposition to the world and to that God on the cross we worship.
In fact, the calling of stewardship is the story of Jesus, and it is the story of the Jesus movement as well.
Just earlier, the words of Jesus we heard in the Gospel, they are the words Jesus gave to the disciples he sent into the world to proclaim God’s reign. Jesus sent them as prophets, the righteous, and most accurately of all, little children.
Children, the weak and vulnerable of the society Jesus lived in.
To be a child was to be one with little use, less respect, and no worth.
The community of Jesus’ followers in Matthew is that of Jews living in a city. Jews living as a minority. And, as so often happens to minorities in urban settings, the followers of Jesus in Matthew are also poor.
It is this exact group that Jesus chooses to begin his movement. This group, the disregarded of society, metaphorically children that Jesus chooses.
A poor group of outcasts.
Jesus chooses the poor, a minority community. Jesus chooses the vulnerable.
WHY?
Seriously, why?
If I were to start a movement, a movement I wanted to succeed, I would carefully choose who I thought would best represent my motives, I would consider their skill in rhetoric, their community standing, and on and on. Yet, Jesus doesn’t.
Jesus does nearly the opposite. Why?
Jesus chooses this group because he sees these people with the eyes of a steward, not the eyes of some anxious human.
Jesus has the eyes of a steward, and with these eyes he sends what looks to the world to be a group of losers to begin his movement; a movement we’re a part of today.
This story of who Jesus chooses to call is another remarkable story. It is a story like that of the story of Adam and Nouwen, a story like that of feminist and the Christian academy dominated by males, a story of Elie Wiesel and the Nazis. This movement Jesus begins is such a story, a story that can only be understood with the eyes of a steward.
It is a story of a group of poor Jews living in a city that is at best ambivalent of their citizenship, is the exact place, the exact people, God calls to begin the Jesus movement; a movement that has somehow withstood sexism, prejudice, the holocaust.
And now, here we stand, a part of that movement. Abused, misused at it has been. Can we look at this Jesus movement with the eyes of a steward?
After all, it is also a movement that feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, blankets the poor, nurtures the earth. And today, it is a movement that supports Open Door Ministries, which provides support to our gay, lesbian, transgendered brothers and sisters. A ministry which is participating in the Seattle Gay Pride Parade.
And another thing, it is a movement that is not over, either.
Here we are, in Seattle. Seattle, one of the cities known for being religion-less.
Here we are, in a small congregation. A congregation that has to look carefully and seriously when budgets are drafted.
Here we are, where the world sees a place with every reason to give up hope, God gives us a calling.
In this place, a community many may assume too small to make a difference, God calls us to stewardship. God gives us a calling that gives us the courage to look hard at budgets, to make faithful decisions, to trust God. God gives us a calling to welcome the homeless, welcome the visitor, welcome the addicted. God sends a word calling us to be stewards of this gift we have. God calls us to, in faith, share this calling with the world, again and again.
This is what we’re called to, we’re called to expect God’s unexpected work.
We’re not called to have the calloused lenses that see the Adams of the world as useless brain-dead meat, we’re called to see these people as ones God loves, ones who likely have a word for us.
We’re called to see those children shipped off for violence as those who understand God better than us.
We’re called to see those who receive our legalized prejudices as those who understand the worth God sees all humans with better than us.
We’re called to see those who are told to suffer abuse, as those who understand what God would NEVER inflict upon another human better than us.
And, we’re called to honor their story, heed their words. We’re called to proclaim that such violence, such prejudice, such abuse is wrong. We’re called, like Jesus, to stand with these people.
This is the lens we’re called to see the world through. As stewards we’re called to trust, to expect, to beg God to show up in those unlikely, unexpected and vulnerable places.
That is the story of the Jesus movement,
the story of St. John United,
the story of all our lives.
These are the stories that could move us to really worship the God of the cross. Claim it. Claim these stories, find yourself in them. Dare to find God working in your life in those places where only a calling from God can bring new life.
See these stories through the calling of stewardship. Claim your calling to be a steward. Stewardship is not a chore, rather it is the very lens that empowers us to see and hear and feel God’s work in our lives, this congregation, and the world.
Claim your story, your lens, in the table we’re about to come to.
Claim it at a table where this small group gathers around common bread and simple wine, and yet expect to receive a humble man, a man crucified because the powers of the world could not tolerate his voice of stewardship proclaiming the worth of every living thing.
Claim it at the table, which looks to the rest of the world as foolishness. Come to the table and join Jesus’ fellowship which invites the homeless, the outcast, the vulnerable, the abused victims; you. Come to the table and become what you will eat, God’s eyes, ears, heart, hands and feet in the world. Come to the table and find power of the powerless. Come to the table and find the eyes of a steward. Come and see. Come and see.
Comments
Post a Comment