 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
"Betting My Life on That" | 1 Kings 17.7-16 | November 9, 2003 |
The community of faith is a community governed by different parameters than what logic or social standards or the uninformed majority would dictate. We have no certainties, of course, and no holy guarantees. But something inside prompts us to take risks, to go where customs and logic are unwilling to go, for the sake of people who need someone to risk life with them.
Thirty years ago this week I was ordained in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was a risk for me, but it was an even bigger risk for that little church on the brink of closing its doors to hire and ordain a young, inexperienced whippersnapper who was the age of their grandchildren.
Along this crazy, wonderful journey in ministry, I have had a sense that church business as usual wasn’t always meaningful and that the traditional religious agenda needed to be challenged. And those of you who know me these years in Aurora know that I have pushed the envelope toward a more inclusive, liberal community of faith. Along the way, I have bet my life on a liberal God, a Divine Being who loves without condition, who embraces everyone in the arms of an inclusive grace, and who creates life for us to enjoy.
I have bet my life on a Holy Force that does not discriminate against any of the creation, whether people of differing religions, universes beyond the scope of our knowing, the rocks of the field, the stars in the sky, or the cat that sits on my lap at night. I believe with all that I am that the Divine is liberal in love and generous in caring, including those who are willing to be part of the hope of this world, and in some strange and unknown way including also those who act in direct opposition to what we perceive to be God’s way. I don’t believe that God sees issues; I believe God sees people. I don’t believe God sees religions; I believe God sees commitment to serving people. I don’t believe God has a position of right and wrong; I believe God is the essence of All that is and All that is to come, the very dust of the stars and the very breath we take. As such, God IS IN everything and therefore cannot take opposition to God’s own self.
The current flap in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of a gay bishop is a case in point. Structures that set rules and regulations, whether religious or secular, are human structures and as such are subject to flaws and in continual need of revision. A church system that becomes so rigid it cannot accept someone in leadership who confesses God’s call to serve, needs to be challenged. When The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, whom I quote often and who deserves to be quoted often, was asked what her position was on homosexuality as she was standing in line at the bakery, she commented “I don’t have a position... What I have, instead, is a life. I have a history in which many people have played vital parts. When I am presented with the issue of homosexuality, I experience temporary blindness. Something like scales fall over my eyes, because I cannot visualize an issue. Instead, I visualize the homeroom teacher who seemed actually to care whether I showed up at school or not. I see the priest who taught me everything I know about priesthood, and the professor who roasted whole chickens for me when my food money ran out before the end of the month...To reduce them to a position seems irreverent.” (“Where the Bible leads me” The Christian Century, October 18, 2003)
Life stories are powerful, she comments. Yet they are often given little credence as being “true.” Some have a rigid belief that only the bible is scripture so that the debate about issues hangs on what various biblical writers did or did not mean by one of a few passages written 2000 years ago.
As a professor of biblical studies, Taylor has given her life to teaching the truths contained therein. “When I do this, however, she comments, a peculiar thing happens. As I practice what I learn in the Bible, the Bible turns its back on me. Like some parent intent on my getting my own place, the Bible won’t let me set up house in its pages. It gives me a kiss and boots me into the world, promising me that I have everything I need to find God not only on the page but also in the flesh...The written word keeps evicting me, to go embody the word by living in peace and justice with my neighbors on this earth, whatever amount of confrontation, struggle, recognition and surrender that may involve.”
Early in my ministry, I risked believing that incarnation of things holy was at the center of faith; that Jesus’s example to be an advocate for people in all walks of life was as important as any written word on a page. I risked believing that when the bible said Jesus was the ‘only begotten son of God’ it meant that Jesus was the quintessential son of God, not the only one quantitatively. I risked preaching that we are all daughters and sons of God, that we all are incarnations of God in the flesh, and called to be co-creators and co-redeemers with God in bringing peace and justice to the world. And when the ancient written word comes up against the experience of humanity, I have risked believing that each person’s life story is the more crucial understanding of the word made flesh, dwelling among us.
God is not static; God is not revealed exclusively in the words of an ancient text that can be used to clobber people over the head like a bat when convenient. God is dynamic, alive, embodied in each person on the earth. In each life story is the Word of God. Following the Word of God may mean deviating from what is in the bible in order to risk bringing the Word to life in the flesh, and then facing whatever consequences there are of loving the people the written word says you’re not supposed to love. I have bet my life on a God who is more alive in the daily lives of the people around me than on a precarious reading between the lines of the intent of the written word.
The Tao Te Ching (45) expresses the paradox nicely.
True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present.
True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way and lets the Tao [The Way] speak for itself.
(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Much of what I have risked believing today came in reaction to what I experienced in the little church where I grew up. That church judged everyone and everything by a subjective, rigid interpretation of the written word, the bible. In that church was an older gentleman whose life had been transformed in a profound way by experiencing the presence of God. He wanted to be baptized, and in that church, because the bible said so, one had to be immersed. This man was deathly afraid of water, to the point of panic attacks when his hair was washed (luckily he didn’t have much hair so it didn’t require washing that often). The church would not baptize him because he could not go under the water. He spent the rest of his life reading the bible to find a passage that would allow him to be sprinkled, but any passage that he might present was quickly dismissed by the church as a misinterpretation. And though he attended church every Sunday, that man died as an outcast in that church, without ever being fully accepted into the fold because a text written two millennia before took precedence over a living human being who had been transformed by a dynamic God and needed to be included in a family of faith.
The woman in the bible story risked her last bite of food, and thus her life, to feed someone who was hungry. Who can say if it was right or wrong; she responded to a man in need, and for that she was rewarded. I do not always know what is right and what is wrong. I believe, however, that love is more powerful than any rule or any interpretation or any human declaration of right and wrong. Love transforms. And if it turns out I’ve made the wrong choice, I figure God will know what to do with me. I’m betting my life on that.
–Gary L. McCann
(With appreciation to Barbara Brown Taylor whose article
“Where The Bible Leads Me” informed this sermon)
1 Kings 17.7-16
At that time, the brook had dried up because there had been no rain in the land. The Word of God came to Elijah: Go at once to Zaraphath. I will provide you with food there. So Elijah went to Zaraphath, and just as he came into town he saw a widow gathering sticks.
He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water ina jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread, too.”
As surely as God lives, she said, “I don’t have any bread–only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it—and die.
Elijah said to her: Don’t be afraid. God home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me. And then make something for yourself and your son. For God says: The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day God sends rain upon the land.
She went home and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her son.
| Copyright © 2003 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |