SUNDAY SERMON
GOD WILL GIVE US THE GRACE TO GET IT
Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
December 25, 2003
Gospel: Luke
4:14-21
I've been thinking lately about a recent week in my life. It began with a funeral
and ended with baptisms. In the midst of that week there was another rite of
passage, an ordination, and it was glorious. Two young clergy, Kate and Barclay,
were made priests at St. Mary's Cathedral, and about that, I believe, the Episcopal
Church rejoiced.
That week carried me back to another week in my life of ministry. It was the week I finally answered God's call to priesthood. For a long time, I really didn't understand what God wanted me to do. It took, first, many years of avoidance and then, three different people in one week, asking me the question, "have you ever thought about going to seminary?"
Yet another week came to mind: the week I moved back to Memphis. For a long time, I didn't really understand what God wanted me to do, after a series of serious setbacks. Then someone asked me, "have you thought about going home?"
Here's the bottom line of my reflections: I do not always understand what God is calling me to do. Have any of you had that experience?
If and when I do understand, it's usually because others ask me the right questions and help me come to some kind of understanding. I say some kind of understanding, because I don't think I'll ever really, truly, fully understand all of what God wants of me. As my friend Chilton said recently when we were planning her trip to Memphis, "the longer I minister, the clearer I am that I never really know what the next part of my life will be like!"
Why should this be so surprising? If I don't understand middle-Eastern politics or computer technology or human behavior, why should I think I can understand how God works in my life? In the movie Philadelphia, the actor Denzel Washington utters one of my all-time favorite lines: "explain this to me like I'm a three-year-old." Well, what about those times when someone does try to explain God or anything to me the way they would if I were three years old…and I still don't understand?
The collect, or prayer of the day, begins: "Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ…." If you remember nothing else about this sermon, remember this: answering God's call is about understanding. When we say "yes," in prayer and faith, we seek to understand - albeit imperfectly - what God is up to.
Some of us answer God's call after having what the Greek mathematician Archimedes named a "Eureka!" moment. St. Paul, having met Jesus in a painful and powerful way on the road to Damascus, was converted from persecutor to preacher. Others of us come to our "ahas," our conversions, our understandings about God's call more slowly and deliberately, even one syllable at a time, something like, "Eu…re…ka!"
Before we look at what today's lessons, I want to tell you what it's like for me to "understand." Or, in a more current idiom, here's what it's like for me to "get it." In order to understand, in order to "get it," I must do these things: (1) know and admit that I DON'T "get it"…(2) decide that I WANT to "get it"…and (3) then, I can begin to "get it," knowing that I will never really, truly, fully "get it." In other words, the Bad News is that "getting it" is NOT easy.
For example, there was the day the rector (of the church that sponsored me for seminary) came to me and said, "I have a new associate priest, and HER name is…." I had never seen an ordained woman. I knew they existed; I just didn't want one to exist near me. I was not a happy man.
Carol arrived, and slowly, she and others helped me "get it." Through her strong, loving way, I came to see how wrong I was. When she asked if I would like to be trained to bear a chalice, she affirmed my ministry as a lay person. Not only was this woman affirming my ministry, she was affirming me - me, who had not wanted her to be there; me, who had been convinced that women had no place in the clergy.
I am grateful for all those women over the years who have helped me "get it." Here's God's infinite sense of humor: now, I'm in love with an ordained woman! And, to be honest, she has a way of showing me how I will always need help to "get it."
No one - not a single one of us here - wants to go to our graves without, in some way, "getting it." As one church signboard on Poplar now puts it, "Hell is truth seen too late." A life that ends full of regret is an unfulfilled life.
The Good News is that God in Christ will help us "get it." That's
why we pray, "give us grace, O Lord…." We may know that we don't
"get it," but we lack the desire. We may want to follow Jesus, but
we can't do it alone. We may want to "get it," but we need God's gracious
help. Help is on the way; we just need to ask and keep on asking.
The word "understand" or some version of it appears four times in
our passage from Nehemiah. As God's priest and helper, Ezra began to lead the
people of God into understanding. Here were men, women and children, people
who had come home from exile, people who could not read or write.
But they were a people who could pray, a people who could ask for help from God. They were all ears, sitting in small groups, listening from early morning until noon. Ezra the priest, Nehemiah the stone mason and their helpers, the Levites - all of them read God's Word to the people "with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people (of God) understood the reading" (8:8)…so that they would begin to "get it."
As for Jesus, he always gets it, and today's story is no exception. In this, his first action of public ministry in Luke's gospel account, he returns, full of God's Spirit, to Nazareth, his hometown. Like Ezra, he stands up and reads the scriptures, his passage being some familiar words from the prophet Isaiah.
But there was something UNfamiliar about all this. Jesus claims something no one had ever claimed before. "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," he dares say. That is to say, he proclaims that "the Spirit of the Lord is upon…" HIM. Now, we know what's going on here, because we've read ahead to the end of the story. But do his people understand?
Well, you'll have to come back NEXT Sunday and hear the second half of this story to find out. Maybe you've already read ahead. The short answer is: no, they really don't get it. First, they praise him, probably saying things like "isn't he smart? Isn't he just precious?" Then, when he speaks some more and they realize he's no longer "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," the people get angry, because they still don't get it - and they don't want any help getting it, either.
The assembly of Hebrew people, in hearing the Word of God, did not get angry. They wept. As they were weeping, Nehemiah, Ezra and their helpers encouraged them to move past their grief. Although they felt bitter and sad about being exiled, they were home now. It was time to celebrate, because "the joy of the Lord is your strength" (8:10).
As people of faith begin to understand, as we slowly "get it," we may find ourselves awash in feelings. We might be angry or sad. Maybe it is difficult to let go of old understandings in order to embrace new ones. Sometimes it's hard to say goodbye to our regrets, our fears, our misunderstandings. Yet God keeps calling us into that new place of understanding, always giving us the grace to answer that call.
When I was in seminary I read a little book that helped me "get it". It was written by Justo and Catherine Gonzalez, a husband and wife who were seminary professors. Their book is called Liberation Preaching: The Pulpit and the Oppressed.
The authors conducted a survey of their seminarians, in which men and women were asked to name Bible "passages that had meant the most for them. A large number of them chose Luke 4:18-19 ('the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…'). What was most interesting," the authors said, was the following:
"…white males who chose this passage invariably interpreted it as referring to their call to ministry. The Spirit of the Lord (was upon THEM), had anointed THEM to preach good news to the poor, etc. But those among the women and the minority men who chose the same text interpreted it quite differently. What was important to them was that Jesus has been anointed to bring good news to THEM, to proclaim release to THEM, etc. In short, those who were used to being in positions of privilege identified at one place, while those whose experience was the opposite identified at another" (pp. 77-78).
There are still times when I continue NOT to get it about the ministry I share with others who are different from or less privileged than me. Those are the times when I REALLY need the grace of God mediated through the Christ I encounter: in my loved ones; my fellow staff members; the people I meet delivering meals on wheels and all those other people I need in my life to help me get it. There are times when ALL of us need ALL of God's people to remind us how God's call to us is also about understanding where we fit in with THEM.
It took a priest, a stone mason and thirteen other layfolk to proclaim the Word of God and help the children, women and men at the Water Gate to begin to understand. It took men and women who were willing to "get it" and proclaim the Good News of God in Christ after Jesus went to heaven. And it still takes men, women and children - ALL of us - to carry on the ministry we share.
St. Paul reminds us that we really don't "get it" when we say to another member of the body of Christ, "I have no need of you." We all have need of each other - children, women and men of all sorts and conditions, all kinds of ministers. We all need to proclaim the Good News and to claim the Good News, to serve and to be served, to give and to receive the love of God in Christ Jesus.
My sisters and brothers, the Spirit of the Lord is indeed upon us here at Church of the Holy Communion, and God in Christ is calling us to something new. Dozens upon dozens of people are getting more and more serious about their journeys of faith. In small groups, in large classes, in worship, in homes, lots of folks are sitting with scripture, seeking to understand, trying to follow Jesus. How great it was to have so many people in these buildings doing that very thing last weekend!
Jesus is indeed bringing us Good News. With God's help, for which we pray, the scriptures are beginning to be fulfilled in our hearing. Maybe something's actually happening. Maybe, with God's grace, we're really starting to get it.
I want to reflect a bit with you on God's call and on our understanding, using the collect and the scriptures we've been given for today. These scriptures, appointed for the Third Sunday after the feast of the Epiphany, are, remarkably, the same in all lectionaries. This means that, on this day, in mainline churches around the world, people are hearing some or all of the lessons we have just heard. Something important is going on here!
And Episcopal Church lessons for all three lectionary years on the third Sunday after the Epiphany are about answering the call. Each year on this particular Sunday we hear how God in Jesus calls us to step out in faith and follow him. One way to look at this year's set of lessons about that call is to reflect on what it means to understand.