PENTECOST 16 - B

Ego, Invisibility and the Little Child

(Parts adapted from the writing of The Rev. Stephen Lewis, National Director of the Calling Congregations initiative of the Fund for Theological Education, based in Atlanta, GA.)

I have an ego.

Maybe it is worse than that – perhaps I am narcissistic. I am sure some of my behaviours are.
Through whatever paths and interactions in my life that have brought me to this place, I have come to think that I deserve certain things; that I am owed certain things, that I am more important than a lot of people around me.

I am hoping you are not as bad off as I am. But consider this – I know this is wrong. I know all about empathy, compassion, values, faith, and all of those little things Jesus said about first being last, and eyes of needles.

Maybe I have some real problems, but I can’t help myself sometimes; I get irritated when things don’t work out my way, I get angry at people who do things that I think waste my time, and I genuinely am not a nice guy.

All of this is true, by the way, but I am also trying to make a point – and the point is this – when left to our own devices most of us become narcissistic. We become self centred. We become self important.

Many of us have the wherewithal to move beyond that, or to set our needs aside for others; but it is hard.

Ever wonder why every second passage in the Bible is about learning to get over yourself?

Because the one thing that is really in the way of authentic life is “me”

***

Our society suffers from a debilitating addiction to a "greatness" understanding of leadership. Families feed this addiction to their children. And an addiction to being the best or greatest in ministry, whether it is about leadership or building institutions, is a pandemic virus in the church. The earliest strand of this deadly addiction can be traced back to the church's origin. It is the very question the disciples are arguing about in this text.

Fortunately, Jesus has a response: he provides some answers about how we might break free from our addiction to unhealthy forms of greatness by re-imagining church leadership. This re-imagining is a necessary revolution, it is a rebellion against not only the way things are. But the way they have always been... and it is still the same old message, be more like God.

In our reading we find Jesus schooling the disciples on what greatness looks like in his ministry. He says to the disciples, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all." Notice, he does not say what we have to do, but what we have to “be”. We have to let go of all of that power grasping, all of that ego, and “be”

Jesus then tells his disciples, "Whoever wants to be first must be servant of all." Notice that he does not say servant to all, but servant of all, which suggests that the disciples are called to be servant leaders regardless of what other people seek to be. Servant leaders practice greatness by being givers who serve together through shared leadership, responsibility and accountability.

Jesus then models what leadership looks like for the disciples. He summons a young child to come to him. Children symbolize God's blessing. symbolize the continuance of their family's salvation and inheritance into the future. In the Gospels, children also symbolize the character a person must possess to enter the city of God (Mark 10:15). In spite of the symbolic status children hold, we find their voices silent for the most part throughout the Bible. I want to suggest that children symbolize the voiceless, those at the margin of the community.

Jesus welcomes the child to the center of the community and wraps his arm around her--the voiceless one--and suggests that if we want to be great, then we must practice welcoming the voiceless to the very center of the community. Expand the community's center to include those people at the margins. Make the margins the new center of the community because this is where the welcoming presence of God dwells. Otherwise, we alienate ourselves from the very presence of Jesus and the One who sent him. This is what greatness looks like in Jesus' ministry.

So what does this mean for us? We who love our churches and traditions, must re-imagine our ambitions and concepts of greatness. We must adopt new practices of insignificant greatness. We must cultivate the next generation of church leaders to exhibit these practices. Why? Because, ultimately, what is at stake is the church's future, its witness and its relevance in the world. A church that fails to be the welcoming presence of God ceases to be the church.

So this is an invitation to you to re-imagine what the practices of greatness look like in this church. It is an invitation to re-imagine the kind of church leadership that cares about the ongoing formation and practices of the next generation of church leaders. This is also an invitation to imagine practices that cultivate your capacity to develop a community of disciples who share authentic leadership.

To create a safe space for Christians to explore their vocation in the world.

To spend more time asking provocative questions rather than giving patent answers.

To model what greatness really looks like in Jesus' ministry.

To welcome the voices and the vocations of young people in the community.

To expand your community's center to include the voiceless.

And to make the margins of the community the new centers of congregational and denominational life.

This invitation is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those who are concerned with being popular. There might even be some economic reprisal if you join this movement. Some of you might face a social crucifixion. Some of you will undercut your upward mobility into the priestly class and denominational leadership. However, what is at stake is our alienation from the presence of God, a divided and unhealthy life and a community of gifted people who will continue to be underutilized in God's grand vision for the church in service to the world if we disregard this invitation and do nothing.

This is the invitation to re-imagine greatness; it is the call of the Gospel. So how in this world do we muster the courage to join this movement and become who we are intended to be?

Let us pray
Gracious God, we long to know your Presence, To feel the movement of your spirit. Lead us, O God, into practices from which our spirits shrink because the demand is so great. Give to us quiet confidence, just a simple trust. Let us be true to that which you have entrusted to our keeping, The integrity of our own soul. For us, God, this is enough.
Amen.

PENTECOST 15 - B

God Enters In
(This sermon, (at least in conclusion) is largely based on the Sermon Aaron Billard wrote for this Sunday. Due to personal reasons I could not finish my sermon and am grateful for his help.)

Way back in my students days I had a field placement site in was in Ottawa. I worked at Emmanuel United Church, with approximately 600 families. That was the church Wilbur Howard, Lois Wilson, and Anne Squires all left to become Moderators of our church. Anne Squires sat in the pew when I preached there. So did most of the top scientists of the National Research Council. It was a strange place – the average educational level for the congregation was a PhD. And most of those were in science. It was the proverbial ‘tough crowd’.

Every day I hear that faith is dumb; that the church is either hopelessly outmoded, or downright abusive; that God is a made up projection of people who are afraid; and that the values we talk about here are ‘quaint.’

In other traditions this Sunday is sometimes called “Rally Sunday” which in the United Church we call, “I have to go back to church Sunday.”

It has truly got me thinking about why… why we have to, why we should, what we think we are accomplishing, and if all those naysayers and atheists out there are right.

Do you ever read obituaries? A lot of people seem to. It’s funny how they can go both ways … Often, they are cold and sterile, merely listing off the next of kin of the date of the funeral, if there even is one these days. Usually it will mention the person’s love of cards and that they belonged to some club. The other side of that is to endlessly list someone’s accomplishments. Yet once in a while, an obituary appears that is out of the ordinary. One that describes the passion of a person, the people they loved, what they believed in, and how they tried to live their lives. It’s like one last gasp of life to say that “I existed!” before we turn the page.

Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner, from his book The Yellow Leaves, talks about being in a cemetery and finding the grave of a ten year old boy. On the tombstone was written this:

“Damien Parlor: Child of Light, Bridge in the Universe, So Dearly Loved, Danced in Sunlight, Floated on Moonbeams, Dreamed on Clouds, Laughed Soaring Hawk Song, Cried Brilliant Rainbows, Reached for the Stars, a boy who could pet bees.” (August 1974 – September 1984)

Now that is an obituary I would like on my tombstone. I am nowhere near having earned anything like that. I hope by the time I need it I get a paragraph that speaks to a life lived rather than accomplishments achieved. A bit of writing that shares the core of who we are and what we were trying to do in life.

As I was reading the Gospel this week it occurred to me that it reads a bit like an obituary. It’s what Mark really wants us to remember about Jesus. “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Moreover, Mark wants us to remember that Jesus is the Messiah, which he has mentioned only once before at the beginning of the Gospel.

Just like many of you, one of my favourite haunts is Chapters. I often go there with no intention to buy anything; rather, just to be among the books. I like the idea of being surrounded by words and people quietly reading in a chair or leaning against a book shelf. Well, to be honest I am addicted to coffee too…

It never ceases to amaze me how many books there are about Jesus. So many authors, so many preachers, teachers, philosophers, theologians, poets, all claiming to have some knowledge of what something really means or some particular insight into Jesus. Yet in the Gospel of Mark, the first of the Gospels to be written down, it says from the beginning: Jesus is the Messiah.

Messiah. Such a word is almost too big in our language and in our tradition as Christians. I suspect if I went around the church this morning and asked what the word meant, we would either be silent or throw our best guesses. I even had to crack open a few tomes before I felt that I should even try to say anything.

Way back in Isaiah’s time there was a lot of talk of a Messiah – the one who would come, the one who would suffer, anointed by God. Throughout scriptures, the Messiah is the one who comes like a roaring lion and an angry wave; in other parts, the messiah is the one who heals, who teaches people to walk, and people sing for joy.

Yet for all we surmise and suspect, for all we guess and grow in our faith along the way, I might argue that we aren’t sure why we call Jesus the Messiah. We aren’t sure that we really even need a Messiah in our lives. So much of who we are and what we do is wrapped up in other things. We forget, sometimes, that we need something to save us from hopelessness; something to save us from fear; something to save us from being blind to injustice; something to save us from loneliness and isolation. And at the end of the day, something to save us from ourselves, and that will mean different things for different people.

What does “Messiah” mean for you?

“If you have doubt in your mind,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “then I will tell you the truth. Sometimes I would give anything for one fireball from heaven, for one blast of raw power from a tidal wave God who would sweep my and everyone else’s doubts away forever. But that is not what I have. What I have instead is a steady drip of mercy from the followers of a man named Jesus, who is still playing doctor to a lot of marginal people in the world.” (From the book, The Seeds of Heaven)

Aaron Billard shared a video with me this week on youtube of a shipwreck in the Cayman Islands. A passenger liner was being towed in a storm when it broke free and washed up on shore. The video was of the next 20 years, as the water slowly broke it apart, and ground it into the beach.

There is an amazing scene where you see how the waves have eroded a huge hole across the bottom, wearing everything away at an incredible rate.

Just little waves, Just little drops, but with incredible power.

Time and time again as a minister I am confronted with the doubt of people, or with a refusal to even begin to contemplate the notion of God as being anything more than a caricature in a movie starring Charleton Heston.

Well – this year I want to explore more deeply, and more fundamentally, what it is to have faith in this modern world.

It’s my belief that there is a need within the church for a massive re-orientation of our beliefs. In computer language, it’s time to hit the reset button. A lot of what people fight about an disbelieve, and hold as completely true, could be seen quite differently if it was just framed differently.

And Jesus asks one good question: Who do you say that I am? Not who did your grandfather say Jesus was, not who did your Aunt Helen say Jesus was, not who did your Sunday School teacher say Jesus was, who do YOU say that I am? He asks. It’s a question in the present tense. Who is Jesus for you today in light of the fact that there are no lightning bolts, no thunder, no heaven-sent floods, no big dramatic mass miracles where doubt is cast away.

Here is a quote I read: “Remember how a stone is shaped by water. See that round hole? Water did that. Drop by transparent, short-lived drop, water transforms rock as no tidal wave ever could. For reasons beyond our understanding, that is how the Messiah has decided to come for now – not all at once but steadily, drop by drop, for millennia. Every time someone lives as he lived by loving as he loved, another drop falls. For some people, it is not enough. For others, it is a way of life.” (BBT, The Seeds of Heaven)

Let us hope that it will be enough for us. Let us pray:

Loving God, crack open our hearts so that the drops of your love might find their way through the crevices into our souls. Open us to new experiences of the mystery of that love, and be with us in our lives as we live them in response to you.