Year B - 4-30-06

Sermon 4/30/06

What We Shall Be - Luke 24:36b-48, 1 John 3:1-7

(view lectionary notes for this text)

During Holy Week each year I take part in the ecumenical Good Friday service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, where we focus on the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the sentences that Jesus uttered on the cross. I know that many of you are not always excited about the idea of hearing seven mini-sermons all in one service. But for me, I enjoy the opportunity to be on the ‘receiving’ end of a sermon sometimes instead of on the giving end. I like to hear a different perspective on the scriptures – a different way of looking at the texts than my own. One of my favorite preachers is always Betsye Mowry, from First UMC. I hate to confess that to you – I don’t want to encourage you to check out that other Methodist Church in town – I’d rather you stay right where you are. But I love listening to Betsye preach. At the Good Friday service this year, she had a great illustration that I’ve been thinking of ever since.

Betsye talked about her son as a young driver in high-school. She remembered that at the time they had three family vehicles – two good cars, and one less-nice car that was for her son. But when it came time for his junior prom, her son didn’t want to take the less-nice car. He wanted one of the nicer cars. He asked Betsye – don’t you trust me? Betsye was willing to trust him – but only to a point – only with the less-nice car. But trusting him with the best was a different story. Still, she gave in, and let him take the best car to the prom. I wish I could say the story had a better ending, but I’m afraid to say that her son immediately backed the nice car into a telephone poll. But Betsye’s point was this: How often are we like this? We are willing to trust God with the things in our less that are less-nice. We call on God when we’ve got our live screwed up enough that we’re willing to call in some help. But we’re hesitant to trust God with the best in our lives. We don’t want to give God the things we think we already have under control. We’d rather take care of those parts ourselves. We’re sure we can trust God with our messes – because God couldn’t do anything worse than we’ve done ourselves. But can we trust God with the rest? With our favorite things, the best things in our lives, the best parts of ourselves? Or are we afraid God won’t make things as nice as we have? Will we let God in?

As a pastor, I confront this struggle in many different ways. Where will we let God in? Where will I, as a pastor, be let in a representative of the church, of our spirituality, of our faith lives? This past week, one of my former members of Conference Youth asked to interview me for one of his college classes. He’s just starting to wonder if ordained ministry might be what God is calling him to do with his life. In his interview, he asked me what I most liked about being a pastor. I answered him saying that what I like best about being a pastor is that people let me into parts of their lives that they would never normally let people into. I get to be there at all the most special times of someone’s life. At birth and baptism. As part of their education as they grow up. At confirmation and faith formation. At weddings, poking and prodding in pre-marital counseling. And yes, at illnesses and tragedies and deaths. I get to be part of it, part of the times of life we are often loath to share with others. We live in a very individualistic society. We function in small units, self-contained. We’re private people. Today more than ever, we tend to live more on our own and not in communities. We’re very hesitant and suspicious of people who want to get involved in our business. And unfortunately, somewhere along the way, we’ve included issues of faith and spirituality into our list of things that we don’t like other people prying into. We consider them private matters, taboo and off-limits. Sometimes, I fear, we make our spiritual lives so personal and so private that even God is not welcome to pry in, to examine us, to search us over.

But God is always ready to counter our resistance, even, as in our gospel text today, appearing from nowhere to bring us a message of peace and hope, in the midst of fear and confusion, and the midst of joy and wonder. The model of life we see in the scriptures is so different from this go-it-alone attitude that we’ve adopted. In 1 John, we read about this model of living – our gift is that God our Creator is not just our Maker, not just one who creates us and leaves us alone, creates us and lets us loose, or creates us to passively watch how we’ll go through life. Instead, God our Creator is God our parent, and we are called children of God, for, as John says simply, “that is what we are.” “Beloved,” John continues, “we are God’s children now.” This God expects to be able to butt into our affairs, whether we like it or not. God so longs for us to make space in our lives for God. So God can work with us, and through us, or God can surprise us and startle us and catch us off guard. But whatever way God gets into our lives, be assured, God doesn’t respect our privacy. God doesn’t have a good sense of personal space. God will not be considerate of our comfort zones.

But God doesn’t act this way with us because God is a pushy parent who just can’t let go. On the contrary, John tells us God’s reasoning: God is the parent who is guiding us as we grow, urging us out of the safe and secluded nests we build. Hear what John says, “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when God is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see God as God is.” God has a vision of what can be made of us, a hope of what we will be – an image that we have a hard time glimpsing sometimes. But we know enough – our purpose is to grow to be more like God. When God invades our space, we find resurrection and new life where it seemed death had won.

From time to time when people contact me wanting to be baptized or to present their child for baptism, someone will ask about a private baptism – a baptism that would take place at a time other than during a regular service of worship. There are many reasons for such a request – for example, some people are petrified at the mere thought of having to stand up in front of so many people. But I explain to people that except in case of emergency, such as baptisms performed at hospitals, private baptisms are not part of our United Methodist understanding of what baptism means. We believe that baptism is by definition a public act. It’s a family affair where every last relative is invited in to be a part of it, where God’s children gather to be reminded of God’s unconditional, always-present love. Every time we celebrate a baptism, we don’t only ask for the vows and responses of the candidates or sponsors, but we ask for the congregation to be active participants as well. In the act of baptism, we make promises not as individuals, not as Pastor Beth and Meegan and Ronald and Steve and Dee and Susie . . . We make promises as a family. We make them as God’s children, a community of faith. When we look at Kaleigh, we know that what she will be has not yet been revealed to us – we imagine and hope and dream with God for what she will become. And we renew our hope and expectation that God is not done with us yet either. What we will be has not yet been completed in us. But as God’s children, we can grow to be much like the parent who called us into being in the name of love. Amen.