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 Unexpected Prophets |
8 July 2007 It is a joy to be back with you in worship after the rich privilege of attending the United Church of Christ’s 50th anniversary celebration. It truly was a celebration, and I am looking forward to sharing pieces of that extraordinary event with you in the weeks to come. I do hope that you will go to the UCC website–ucc.org–if you haven’t done so already, and look up some of the webcasts that are available there of the keynote speakers, most of whom are UCC members. One of those speakers was the actress Lynn Redgrave. Lynn shared with us her very personal faith journey. Of growing up in a family that thought it would be a good thing to attend church. On Easter. And probably a good thing to return. On Christmas. So she heard at least portions of the stories that are foundational to our faith. But they didn’t touch her, didn’t relate to her in any particular way. And then, of course, she was busy. Busy with her family, busy with her career. On December 13, 2002, shortly after returning from three months as Peter Pan in Australia, fit and healthy, she was in New York City, and decided her bed needed a new mattress: the one she was using was lumpy. Only the lump wasn’t in the mattress; it was in her breast. Within less than a week, Lynn had gone from feeling fit and healthy to being diagnosed with breast cancer that extended into the lymph nodes, being admitted to Sloan Kettering, and undergoing a radical mastectomy. Then she began radiation and chemotherapy. She was new to her community in Kent, Connecticut, and described being terrified and feeling very lonely. She heard about the United Church of Christ through a friend of her son, heard about the woman minister, and thought that she would feel safer with a woman minister. So she went to church and felt like a visitor, a lonely, sad visitor. Then the pastor said, “This is the day that the Lord has made,” and the organist played Bach, and there was a request for prayer for those in Iraq, and her personal problem–as she said, all she was missing were some body parts–when so many others were going through crises too, she lost her innocence. Innocence that cancer could happen even in a family with no previous history of the disease. Innocence of the reality that bad things can and do happen to good people. There is much, much more to Lynn’s testimony, but one of the points she made was that her own need for community and support is coupled with her desire to be a part of a broadly inclusive community. It is one of the themes sounded in today’s reading from the gospel. In his introduction to the gospel according to Luke, champion of the outsider, Eugene Peterson observes that “most of us, most of the time, feel left out–misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be...so sure of themselves, ‘insiders’ who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded.”[1] We can–and do–form our own clubs. We join a club that will have us...and hedge our bets with the cynical comment about the club that would have us as a member. But whether the club is social, political, or skill-based, at its core is the principle of exclusion.[1] As Calvin noted in the background to our scripture, even though Luke is a vigorous champion of the outsider, he doesn’t always get it either. In that sense, Luke is a lot like us, wrestling with the openness that Jesus holds out in his instructions to Jewish disciples. To our Western ears, the instructions are deceptively simple–in the category of ‘remember to wash your hands before you eat.’ But Jesus is speaking to disciples used to being told how to observe religious dietary laws, and instructing them to take whatever is served, to eat what is set before them. “Eat and drink what’s provided” are radical instructions in the Jewish world with its strict dietary laws. “Jesus himself [i]s accused of eating with ‘sinners’–with non-observant J[ew]s....”[2] Jesus isn’t attempting to be the first century’s Emily Post. Nor are Jesus’ comments coming from the perspective of exclusion; just the opposite–he’s lifting up a means of inclusion for both host and guest. And just as good health underlies our admonitions to wash hands before eating, a dynamic relationship with God is at the heart of Jesus’ instructions to the disciples. Our news is filled with accounts of congregations leaving a particular communion because its members hold to an exclusive set of rules for who is allowed at the table. Day and night we hear of people who are threatened or killed because they don’t worship God according to a particular set of rules. Peterson writes, “The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life. Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules.”[1] Lynn Redgrave had received the message of club rules; she was on the outside, looking in. But thanks to her son’s friend, she found the doors wide open. She found a place in which she was found and welcomed by God in the ministry of a local church. She found a place where she could be welcomed and affirmed and nurtured in faith, a place where her life became better because she was in relationship with God through the faith community. She is learning to share the ways in which being a Christian makes a difference in her life. Her message is powerful personal testimony to her own faith journey, brought into sharp focus by the crisis of her cancer. We also have testimony to share–each one of us personally, individually. It’s testimony most of us are pretty good at sharing in our actions. And thank God for that! These past few days have borne witness to the centrality of faith for many of you, as you have called and prayed and provided meals and transportation and presence. But actions go hand in hand with words. Last Wednesday, on 4 July, John, Aaron, and I joined the throngs at Frederick’s Baker Park for the annual fireworks. Actually, we were guests of John’s cousin by marriage, who lives just across the street from the park, and has a ringside view of the whole show. John commented to Ben how quiet it was around their place–and Ben told him if he understood sign language, he would be overwhelmed by the noise. Fingers and facial gestures could not have been employed more fully; communication was definitely at full tilt. I am reminded that for the deaf, the word indeed is made flesh. And just as the deaf community learns to communicate in words even without the ability to hear, we also need to learn to give voice to our faith. That’s what Jesus commissions the seventy disciples to do. They are sent out to share their story: the story of how being a Christian makes a difference in their lives. It’s too important a story to cede to those who want to define who is–and is not–allowed at the table. Because among other things, it’s our story. Our story of the choices we make to go against the culture in which we live. A culture that defines the club rules so completely that sometimes we think that Christianity is as American as the Fourth of July. Which of course, it isn’t. It is the story of a God who seeks us out and who welcomes us home. It’s a story for which Lynn Redgrave has found words. And the invitation–and commission–to each one of us is to do the same. We are the unexpected prophets. *** [1] QuickVerse, Version 8.0.3, © 2003. |