Joel D. Kline
June 20, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
The apostle Paul writes his letter to the Galatians, from which this morning’s lesson is taken, at a time when the early Christian movement is struggling to define its mission and identity. The letter therefore has continuing relevance, for in each generation the church must clarify who we are called to be and what we are called to do. For the first Christians, the struggle centered upon how it is that we experience right relationship with God. Paul is urging his readers to take seriously the gospel’s affirmation that we are made right with God not through our own accomplishments, not through our own actions or our own doings, but through God’s action—through the gracious gift of God’s love made visible in the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Is this not the power of grace—a gift of love we cannot earn and a gift we seldom deserve? It’s a gift we experience, simply because it is the very nature of God our Creator to love.
Perhaps you remember the story of The Man of La Mancha. There is a scene in which Don Quixote, in his affable delusion, encounters Aldonza, a barmaid and prostitute. Quixote sees this woman of questionable repute as an aristocrat and treats her accordingly, calling her “my lady,” and later, “Dulcinea, my sweet little one.” At first puzzled and angry, Aldonza cannot understand this madman. And yet there is a haunting quality about Don Quixote, and Aldonza finds her walls of defensiveness and fear shattering. “Dulcinea!” she cries. “My God, he knows my whole life story. I’m a slut. Yet he is calling me Dulcinea!” And this woman, so covered with shame, begins to find herself transformed in the face of gracious love and acceptance.
This is indeed the power of God’s grace—a stunning recognition that God does not see as we human beings see, that God is able to draw far more from us than we had ever dreamed possible. And this is the reason that the apostle Paul becomes so impassioned in his letter to the Galatians, so frustrated as he learns that some of his fellow believers are beginning to place limitations upon God’s grace, demanding that requirements be met in order to experience the gift of grace. Along the way, grace is being restricted only to those who in specific ways are able to “measure up.”
Specifically, there were some among the Galatian churches asserting that Gentile Christians must be circumcised according to Jewish law. In contrast, Paul is adamant that God’s grace in Jesus Christ is sufficient. Our identity, says Paul, comes through our union with Christ Jesus—nowhere else.
You will remember that we had a service of baptism two weeks ago. Prior to the act of baptism, after sharing a personal statement of faith, each person being baptized lit a candle from the central light of Christ. Someone mentioned to me that, from the perspective of where he was sitting in the congregation, he found himself looking through the Christ candle while each was baptized, so that there was an aura of light surrounding each newly baptized person. Is that not a visible symbol of the apostle Paul’s assertion, that our primary identity comes through our union with Christ?
It is so easy for us to lose sight of the crux of faith, which we are sometimes tempted to reduce to little more than a list of propositions about God or to a system of doctrine to which people must subscribe. But faith centers in relationship. Faith, in the words of Brennan Manning, is a matter of ruthless trust in God and in God’s gracious love. In the process of embracing faith we find ourselves, like Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, transformed into Dulcineas. We discover our true identity as a community of people transformed by the grace of Christ, a people empowered to live as salt and light in the world around us.
Throughout its history the church has found it so much easier to talk about God’s grace than to live it and to embody it. Yet, surely that is our calling. Brennan Manning reminds us in his book The Signature of Jesus, “it is hard to be a Christian, but it is too dull to be anything else.” We find meaning and purpose through relationship with Christ, and recognize that the risk and trust involved in the life of faith is well worth it. Faith as ruthless trust leads us well beyond the familiar and the comfortable.
This is the reason, no doubt, that Paul looks to the example of Abraham and Sarah, patriarch and matriarch of Judaism. That couple hears God’s promise that from them a new people will descend, and in response, Sarah and Abraham venture forth, not knowing where they are going, while nevertheless trusting that God will lead them—and their descendants—in the right direction. And we become Abraham and Sarah’s offspring, asserts the apostle Paul, when we take a similar risk of trusting God and being baptized into Christ.
The days of conditional blessing, experienced under the law, are replaced with life under the Spirit of God. And that leads to a fundamental affirmation of this text, and indeed of the entire letter—“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28).
All of us are one in Christ Jesus. This morning we are celebrating the ordination of Dana McNeil to set-apart ministry in the Church of the Brethren. Our tradition affirms the priesthood of all believers, the notion that each of us, upon our baptism, is called to ministry and service. Each of us has gifts to be used for building up the body of Christ and for serving the wider world. At the same time, the church sets apart certain leaders from its midst, not to perform all the works of ministry for the rest of us, but to assist others in living out their own calling.
James Fenhagen, former dean of General Theological Seminary in New York City and an Episcopal priest, makes a similar assertion in his book Ministry and Solitude. Writes Fenhagen, “The significance of ordination is not that it makes someone better or even fundamentally different, but that it offers to the church a living symbol of its own identity.” It is a high calling—this call to set-apart ministry, for we ask Dana and other ordained men and women to serve as living reminders of the faith each one of us professes.
Later on in his book Ministry and Solitude, in a chapter entitled “The Parish as a Setting for Ministry,” Fenhagen suggests that the church is in danger of losing two critical qualities, both of which help create a climate for the church in which persons are encouraged to use their gifts for ministry and service. The first he labels a spirit of carnival, and the second a spirit of prayer. Consider first the spirit of carnival—a spirit of celebration, the joy of belonging, the acknowledgement of the unexpected reminders of God’s presence in us and among us, the ability to laugh and enjoy life, giving thanks for our common life and our common faith.
This spirit of carnival involves a spirit of abandonment, the capacity to give of oneself for the sake of others, to trust oneself utterly in the providence of God. Another word for this abandonment of self to God is submission, a word little appreciated in our day, all too often conjuring up images of repression and even self-hatred. But the Scriptures speak of a freely chosen submission that leads to life—a submission to God and to our brothers and sisters in faith that includes a willingness to learn from God and others, to listen to the stories of others, to embrace the heart of a servant in our relationships with one another. Tom Ehrich reminds us,
Submission is out of fashion. No one wants to back down … The cardinal virtues of what Jesus did—inclusion, gentleness, courage, wisdom, compassion—are deemed worthless [in our day]. The public stage belongs now to the elitist, monochromatic, hard-edged, the weak bully, the foolish and small-minded. Religion is made a weapon.
And so I yearn to sing of submission—to a God who has seen these destructive parades before and hasn’t yet lost faith in humanity.
Carnival and submission—both of these speak of a life of obedience to God’s Spirit, obedience to the Christ who loves us and calls us to ministry. Henri Nouwen reminds us, “Obedience, as it is embodied in Jesus Christ, is a total listening, a giving attention with no hesitation or limitation, a being ‘all ears!’”
And so the spirit of prayer is much related to the spirit of carnival or celebration. For prayer, at its heart, has far less to do with the words we speak than with our willingness to be “all ears” as we listen to the voice of God. Are we in the business of creating space in which we ponder the question, “Is it well with our souls?” Are we listening for God’s promptings, God’s guidance, God’s blessing, God’s challenge?
Listening is no simple matter; indeed, listening is hard work. Listening requires a submission of ego. Listening draws the other close, sometimes closer than we want the other to be. Listening is allowing the spotlight to move away from ourselves, and focusing on the God who envisions a whole new creation.
Dana’s ordination provides all of us a time to consider our deepest identity, an identity that flows from being rooted in Christ Jesus and in the community of Christ’s people. As we renew a spirit of carnival and of prayer in the church, we affirm anew that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of [us] are one in Christ Jesus.” We find courage and wisdom to embrace our own calling, to serve as messengers of God’s gracious love.
Thanks be to God who calls each one of us into ministry and service! Amen.
Lord God, listen to us now, as we come listening for your still small voice, for the promptings and urgings of your Spirit that remind us of our deepest calling in life, to live and reflect the promise of your gracious love in Christ Jesus. We come before you, O God, trusting that you are present in our times of reflection and in our times of action, in our experiences of meditation and in our times of ‘hands-on” service. Lord, teach us the art of listening, the skill of discerning your Spirit in the midst of life’s challenges, even as we come praying that you would listen to us.
O God of relationship, God of mercy and compassion, God of justice and peace, speak to us anew the ways of Jesus, who became poor that we might be rich in grace, who took the form of a servant, who poured out life and love that we might know genuine life, abundant life of wholeness and peace.
Forgive us, gracious God, when we fail to listen, when the pathway of obedience seems too hard, when we choose our own way in life rather than heeding your call to do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you. Forgive our times of foolishness, and plant a new and right spirit within us.
God of peace, we are mindful these days of the horrible toll of warfare, the ways in which all end up being victimized by war. We pray for Iraqis who are suffering the loss of family and homes and security and peace, for soldiers who live continually in fear and suspicion, for persons of faith around the world yearning for peace, for each of us at those times when we are tempted to turn a deaf ear to the pain and suffering war creates.
God of wholeness, listen to us now as we give thanks for the gift of families. On this day when many celebrate Father’s Day, we express gratitude for fathers who seek to embody values of compassion, kindness, justice, and peace, and we remember those whose experience is quite different—those who live in fear of fathers, or with the rejection of fathers. We are grateful for the promise of loving family relationships, even as we pray for those who live with brokenness and hurt.
Hear us now, O God, as we hold before you those in special need of your healing touch. We pray for…
God of grace and goodness, send us your peace. Send us your love. Send us your power, as together we pray as Christ Jesus taught us to pray:
Our Creator God who is in heaven,
who loves us as a father and cares for us as a mother,
holy is your name!
May your realm extend all around us; and may your will be done, in our world, as it is in heaven.
Give us the food we need each day;
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone who has done wrong to us.
Give us strength to resist temptation, and save us from all that is evil.
For the whole realm of the universe is yours, with all power and glory, forever and ever.
Alleluia! Amen.