By The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven, Sabbatical PriestTake my lips and speak through them. Take our ears and hear through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Thee. May I speak in the name of the Living God. Amen.
Abraham got God’s attention not by being a saint but by being someone who allowed God to make him somebody when he was nobody special to begin with. That’s why he’s so remarkable. God said: I’m going to make you the father of many nations and Abraham who was 100 years old and whose beloved wife Sarah had been infertile for decades said: I believe you. He didn’t tiptoe around cautiously asking a lot of skeptical questions. He didn’t say: Look, Lord, by any account that ship has sailed. How could a couple “with one foot in the grave have another foot in the maternity ward” (in Buechner’s lovely phrase). What he said instead was: Count me in and he set out to claim not knowing where he was going for however long it took. Abraham and Sarah embraced what God was doing—not trying to do it themselves (as if!) but trusting-God-to-do-what God had promised. “Hoping against hope,” wrote St. Paul, Abraham “believed he’d become the father of many nations,” Sarah, that she would “give rise to nations.” That God could “give life to the dead and call into existence the things that are not” and on that faith, that turning point, the door to the future swung open.
When I was a student at The General Theological Seminary in NYC they took us to worship services in different traditions to expose us to different ways of approaching God. We went to an Orthodox Jewish service. I remember being shepherded with other women to a back staircase where we watched the proceedings below from the balcony. We went to a Syrian Orthodox service with its incense, bells and vestments. We met the Archbishop I remember kissing his ring. And we went to a store front Pentecostal church in Harlem where we sat in a low ceiling rectangular room, in rows of metal folding chairs. I remember the women in white who assisted those who were slain by the Spirit and I remember the preacher.
The service had already been going a while when we got there and it continued after we left. This young man wasn’t the regular minister but he’d been invited up by him. He stood up there in his new brown suit and started out saying all the right things but it all just lay flat. And I thought, well this sure isn’t what I was expecting. What a disappointment. He was flailing around up there. He knew it and we knew it. Suddenly he turned away and stopped, seemed somehow suspended in some kind of inner debate.
Then he turned back. “I haven’t allllways been a preacher.” The change was palpable. (There were a couple of “Amens”). “In fact, I’d never have been seen around people like you.” (“Yes,” people could relate to that.) “I did drugs.” Congregation paused to consider this a minute. “I have the needle marks in my arms.” (Mmmm mmm) “And I did all the nasty, ugly things you think of when you think of people doing drugs.” (There was silence as our collective minds considered what disgusting things these might be.) “I haven’t alllways been a preacher.” (Where was this going we wondered together? This is sin, not salvation. So many of us thinking it it was almost audible: Who did this guy think he was to be standing up there, in church, with a microphone in his hand?)
“I haven’t alllways been a preacher. What do I do when I see the people who used to know me? They see me in my suit. And I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking, ‘Who do you think you are being a preacher? We remember you when you were lower than the low.’ What do I do? Do I cross the street?!” (hmmm hmmm) “No, I don’t. I hold my head up and I walk on by because I am not ashamed of Christ!” (“Amen!”) “I am not ashaaamed of Christ!” he said, slapping his heel against the floor for emphasis. “I am not ashamed that Christ has set me free. I am not ashamed that he has washed me clean. I thank him. I thank him every day. I am not standing up here because I’M good. I am standing up here because HE’S good. I am not ashamed of Christ.”
The place went wild. Tears were streaming down our faces. We were in the presence of God. We were eye witnesses to the gospel, like all those people centuries before. And we were ashamed. Not of him but of ourselves. Ashamed of having judged this man for doing things we told ourselves we’d never do, for doing things we’d never admit if we had—for fear of encountering others as judgmental as ourselves. We had found him wanting but God had found him worthy. It still has the power to wound me when I think on it—to wound and to make whole. Like Abraham, he had gotten God’s attention not by being a saint but by being someone who allowed God to make him somebody when he was nobody. There is hope for us yet.
This is why Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him because he knows that until we do we can’t follow him. Not really. Not until we, like Abraham and Sarah and the Pentecostal preacher, deny that our salvation depends on us, deny that our sins and shortcomings are a deal breaker, deny ourselves center stage. Until we do that we don’t really follow because we’re too busy leading. “Get behind me, Satan.” Jesus says to Peter and to us when we have lost our place, setting our minds “not on divine things but human things” making us not rocks of faith on which to build but rocks in Jesus’ way. Even the disciples had problems with this. We are not alone.
If we want the new life Jesus died and rose to give us we must take up our cross—sacrifice our pride in going it alone, sacrifice our fear of being seen as vulnerable and foolish and in need of saving—as though Jesus were just the icing on the cake for us, an extra dose of self-help, as if Good Friday and Easter were optional extras. Each of us has some “deal breaker” defect, at least in our own minds. What’s yours, I wonder? What is the impossible thing that God just won’t be able to get past with you? What is the secret you’re afraid will be revealed? Of what are you ashamed?
Friends, we don’t need to be ashamed of Christ, ashamed of what he’s done for us, ashamed we needed him to do it. We’re frightened, broken, guilty and ashamed and God loves us. We love God but strangely we try to do without God. Odd, isn’t it? Not so much because of arrogance maybe as because we don’t even think of asking for help. We feel we should be able to do whatever it is on our own. Because most of the church’s writing on sin has come from these incredible power-house men like St. Paul and St. Augustine—for whom bullying pride and arrogance were the real temptations—we’re all on alert for these rearing their ugly heads with the sometimes odd result of people trying to repent of pride and arrogance who wouldn’t know self-assertion if it came up and hit them in the face.
Since it’s Women’s History Month I feel I should point out that girls and women are more apt to sin—an archery term which means “to miss the mark”—by erasing themselves rather than overly asserting themselves. I think of the cartoon where Donald Duck gets in a fight with the cartoonist who just erases Donald when he gets annoying. You see this big yellow pencil eraser going back and forth, back and forth. Until nothing’s left but the talking mouth which then, too, goes. We don’t need a cartoonist we’ll erase ourselves so our hurt, or anger or point of view won’t disturb the status quo and then we simmer with rage and resentment and try to work our will through manipulation. It’s not that men can’t sin the exact same way and that women can’t be prideful. It’s just that it’s worth it to spend some time checking our assumptions as to where the sin is.
Having said all that, maybe this erasure problem is an inverse sin of pride after all. Maybe I don’t want to see myself—or heaven forbid for others to see me—in need of God. I suspect I’m not alone in this. As the Bishop pointed out in his Lenten letter we’re all about independence in this culture. We want to gain salvation the old fashioned way (to a coin a phrase) we want to earn it. The pain of seeing ourselves complete—without excuses—is so great. But I am because you are. Because you see me I exist. To the extent that I will not let you see me, I do not exist. We bring one another into being. Nothing human is alien to us. Nothing human is alien to us. We want to see ourselves through rose colored glasses—maybe we hope others will see us that way—because maybe we’re afraid we’re not that beloved after all.
Everybody has a reason why they think God can’t use them. Abraham was too old and Sarah laughed out loud; Moses protested that he didn’t speak well; Isaiah that he was “a man of unclean lips;” Jeremiah that he was “only a youth;” Mary that she had “no husband.” Every one of them said: I cannot do it. I am not enough. And every one of them was right! They were not enough. But God is enough and God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that are not” can make ANY of us equal to ANY task to which God calls us. We are saved by grace through faith and we are transformed the same way: not by our own efforts but trusting and embracing the love of God at work in us. Abraham and Sarah were 100 years old when Sarah gave birth to a son, Isaac which means: he laughs. They are the parents of many nations: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Moses our insecure speaker is remembered for his words: Let my people go. The young Jeremiah faced down the principalities and powers of his day. The forgiven Isaiah saw the throne of God. The virgin, Mary, gave birth to God’s own Son.
What are you and I called to do that we’re OBVIOUSLY ill-equipped for? What are you and I called to do that everyone can see we’ll need God to accomplish? What cross will be your resurrection? What do you need to lay down so that God can raise you up? What impossible life is being born in you? Nothing we’ve done or can do will ever be able to separate us from the love of God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that are not” and on that faith, that turning point, the door to our future swings open.
© 2009 The Rev. Anne Bolles-Beaven
Posts
