What Are You Looking For?
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
The political process is heating up as America works to choose its next president. We are faced with so many choices during times like this. In fact, our entire lives are full of choices. Some are good, while there are others we wish we could take back. While so much of the focus of this present time is on our choices, it is important to also remember that we also were chosen -- not in an election with primaries and debates, but instead by God, a choice made before the foundation of the world. How does that impact our lives, knowing that with all our faults and imperfections, God still chose us? How would that knowledge impact our own choices? Steve McCutchan will write the main article, with Thom Shuman providing the response. Illustrations, a liturgy, and a children's sermon are also provided.
What Are You Looking For?
Steve McCutchan
THE WORLD
It is commonplace to hear people complain about this long political season. Not only do we have to put up with interminable, and frequently irritating, political ads, but they frequently tell us very little about the candidates' positions on various subjects. We hear about the millions of dollars that the candidates have raised to pay for their campaign and wonder whether that money could not be used for far better purposes. I have this fantasy about a candidate who would make the following announcement. "I have raised a hundred million dollars for my campaign and I plan to spend over half of it to improve education or to feed the homeless." It would be an electrifying announcement, but then the media would move on to the next story and how would he or she pay for the expensive ads to spread the story?
While it is tempting to wish that we had a restricted campaign season like they do in some countries, the size and diversity of our country requires something more. Every four years we agonize over whether there is a better way and usually find out that our reforms have problems as well. With Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan behind us and Super Tuesday, when more than twenty states will vote on February 5, coming up, we know several things: Picking a candidate is an incredibly complicated process. The media and all of our sophisticated polling procedures occasionally demonstrate, as they did in New Hampshire, the difficulty of discerning the mind of the American people. Picking a president for this very diverse country is a daunting process.
For Christians, it reminds us of the mysterious process of God electing some to be a part of the people of God. Ogden Nash once said, "How odd of God to choose the Jews." To which Robert MacAfee Brown responded, "Odder all the while that then God would include the gentile." Like our candidates for political office, our pastors and our congregations often leave plenty of room to criticize their behavior.
Each of our lectionary passages explores the theme of God's mysterious choice and how such election carries with it a responsibility. We often think that it is a great honor to be chosen but the next day, after the celebrations are over, the real work begins. As we move through this election season, it may be valuable for us to explore the mystery of God's election and how it sheds light on our own election process. As Jesus asked the two disciples of John who were following him, so, perhaps, God is also asking us in this political season, "What are you looking for?"
THE WORD
Consider how often we all make decisions as if we are the center of the universe. We shop for a church to meet our expectations. We call a pastor to meet our expectations. We elect a president to meet our needs. We choose people to be leaders and then immediately criticize them if they are not meeting our expectations. When you consider the scriptural story of election, people were chosen not to please their followers, which they often failed to do, but rather to serve a higher purpose designed by God. Given the response of the people, one wonders if Moses had stood for election whether he could have made it out of the primaries.
When Israel was defeated as a nation and large groups of the people were taken into exile, it looked as if God's choice of this people was a failure. Then, in Isaiah 49:1-7, we see that God's purposes in choosing Israel to be God's people had a greater purpose than they had been aware of. It is clear that the prophet was speaking about the corporate community of faith, even though he used the image of an individual. In verse 3 he said, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." For Christians, however, who see the life of Israel re-embodied in the person of Jesus; we hear the words of the prophet on at least three levels. The prophet's words speak to us about Israel as a community, Jesus as a person, and the church as a community.
In all three instances, they remind us that the call of God that determines our path has its origin in the eternity of God. "The Lord called me before I was born" (v. 1b). There is a meaning and purpose in our lives that transcends any immediate experience. Even our dark moments have a larger significance. "But I said, 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God'" (v. 4). As Israel has repeatedly had to remind itself, and as Jesus affirmed in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39), the church would do well to remind itself that it has a purpose that is greater than its individual success and survival.
We say that we are elected or chosen by God but like those we select for elected office in our society, the person chosen is always chosen for a higher purpose than pleasing us. As individuals, a church, a nation, and the world, we serve a higher purpose than just meeting our individual needs and pleasures. Imagine approaching an election from that perspective.
"It is too light a thing that you should be my servant... I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (v. 6). Like Israel, the church has frequently displayed a weakness for the temptation to disobedience and fractious fighting among ourselves. By our internal quarreling, we, also, have become "deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers..." (v. 7a), but God keeps advancing the divine purpose through us "because of the Lord, who is faithful, the holy One of Israel, who has chosen you" (v. 7b).
An error that we often make in choosing our candidates is that we are looking for the perfect candidate. The media often plays into this by trying to ferret out a quality or condition that will make a candidate ineligible. Before New Hampshire it was a moment when Hillary Clinton teared up. When you read 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, it should jar our ears to hear Paul speak of the church of Corinth appearing blameless. This was a church that existed in the port city of Corinth with its low morals and a higher than normal prosperity. The city was controlled by the few at the expense of the many. Does any of this sound familiar?
The church itself clearly had experienced the strain of arrogance on the part of some toward others. Economic division, sexual problems, and marital difficulties, to name just a few, as well as some serious theological misunderstandings, plagued the church. In one form or another, we see in Corinth many of the problems that threaten the integrity of the church today. What can Paul mean when he said: "He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?" (v. 8).
As you read on in Corinthians, it is clear that Paul was not hesitant to criticize and challenge behavior in the church. Yet underneath his criticism was a core belief that "God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 9). Picture how the debates in our churches would be different if they were undergirded by this core belief. Picture how our national debates would be different if we approached our differences from that perspective.
Whether it be Israel, Paul, or Jesus' disciples, two things remain clear. First, they were not chosen because they were perfect. Second, they were chosen to lead the people in making sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves. Perhaps, instead of looking at our candidates to select the one that makes no mistakes and promises to govern in accord with our desires and prejudices, we should look for candidates that ask us to be willing to sacrifice for a greater purpose.
John 1:29-42 describes John as a leader who was selected by God to prepare the way for what God was doing in Jesus. There is a form of selflessness in the behavior of John that is being described. It was through John's ministry that two of his disciples were called to a higher purpose. True leaders have the humility to see that they are involved in something bigger than themselves and to call others to make sacrifices towards something larger than themselves as well.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
In most of our churches, when preachers rise to preach in a political season, they are caught in a conundrum. While they want to be relevant to what is happening in the world of their congregants, most of them are hesitant to appear to be endorsing a particular candidate. In the '60s the more liberal wing of the church flirted with ways of influencing the election of certain candidates and with the rise of groups like the Moral Majority, the evangelicals have tried to have a similar influence. In many cases, these none too subtle attempts to suggest that if one is faithful they will vote for a particular candidate have proved disastrous.
At the same time, if the preacher is to proclaim the gospel in a way that speaks to the issues that face his or her congregants, then one cannot simply ignore one of the major issues that they are struggling with. Nor should an effective interpretation of the gospel reinforce the prejudice that faith is a private affair that is not relevant to the larger world in which we live.
Scott Suskovic, one of our Immediate Word team, suggested an approach that might prove interesting. Using the hook of the political season, a preacher could identify the difficulty of choosing who you would like to vote for. Then s/he could proceed to use our lectionary texts as well as certain other selected verses to try to build a picture of the perfect candidate. Or, it might raise some interesting questions to use the qualities of the disciples as described in the gospels as criteria for being a candidate. Once can quickly point out that none of them had previous experience; some were hot tempered; they were not above having ambitions for power; one was a doubter; one was willing to "change his position" on the issue of knowing Jesus when it proved useful; and at least the tax collector had previously been involved in a profession of doubtful integrity. Yet these were the types of people that Jesus chose.
Scott suggested that once you had some fun building that picture, which would hook your congregation into wondering if you were really going to name a particular candidate, that you then flip the subject of your search around and remind the congregation that each of them has been elected by God. The question then becomes how well they are fulfilling the description of the candidate that has just been described and even more importantly, how open they are to be used by God for a purpose beyond themselves.
I believe that one important point that should not be overlooked is that whether it be a political office or some other area of election, we are not to choose someone on the basis of meeting our needs but rather someone who will call all of us to a higher purpose. John F. Kennedy challenged us, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Perhaps that is still a relevant question that our next president should be asking of us. A central message of the gospel calls us away from the self-centered nature of sin to a higher purpose shaped by God.
ANOTHER VIEW
Thom Shuman
What are we looking for when it comes to political candidates, in those who we need to provide leadership, in those we vote for?
I wonder what the reaction of people would be to a candidate whose political slogan was "Called to be a servant"? Doesn't sound very impressive, does it? Probably wouldn't get a lot of donors to pull out their checkbooks. And it would cause problems for all those pundits who like to come up with cute little phrases for the candidates, like Chuckabee or Billary.
And if truth be told, most of us would not respond well to such a slogan. How exactly does "called to be a servant" translate into true change; what does it mean when it comes to war, or economic recessions, or poverty-stricken cities, or crumbling public school systems? We are looking for solutions, for fixes, for magic beans and silver bullets that will rid us of all those things that haunt us during the day and keep us awake at night.
According to the scripture readings for this Sunday, God believes, God intends, God sends a servant as the One who can lead us out of the wilderness of our lives, who can pull our feet out of the mud of misery, who can offer us all we need in troubled times. Of course, we can all nod our heads in agreement when it comes to the servant who is sent to save us theologically, who calls us to faithful service, who asks us to share the good news in which we believe.
But wouldn't we be uncomfortable with one who, asked why she runs for office, responds, "I was shaped, formed and born to be a servant"? Wouldn't we find it troublesome if a candidate who publicly declared that he has been "called" to serve the nation? Wouldn't it smack, just a little bit, of theocracy if a party was to run its candidates on a platform of being a "light to the nations"?
Yet, isn't that exactly who, and what, we are looking for? Someone who will help us be a better people, a more compassionate nation, a country that models democracy and decency, a civilization that exports hope and peace? Aren't we looking for that leader who will appeal to our better natures, rather than our basest selves? Aren't we looking for that one who can cut through all the soundbites, all the rhetoric, all the hyperbole, to simply remind us of who we are, the opportunities we have to improve ourselves, the challenges we have to bring others along with us into the future, the calling (if you will) to be a more welcoming and inclusive community?
I wonder what it would be like if, instead of the normal, cookie-cutter candidates we get from the political parties, if a Mother Theresa, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Thomas Merton, a Dalai Lama, a Dorothy Day, a servant (any servant!) was to be presented as a viable candidate in the next election?
After all, what are we looking for?
ILLUSTRATIONS
Our worship today is set between the "two bookends" of Peter and Paul. Two days ago, on Friday the 18th, the church around the world remembered the confession of Peter, when Peter said to Jesus, "You are the Messiah (the Christ), the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16).
Then this coming Friday, the 25th, the church will remember the conversion of Paul, when Paul, traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians, was struck to the ground, blind, and came face to face with Jesus.
Peter and Paul realized that the call of God was the most important thing in their lives. They realized that the Lord God of all creation was calling them to do his work with him.
Do you and I have the same call? We do. The Lord may not be calling you and me to set out on missionary journeys around the Mediterranean Sea as he did Paul, or to travel around our home country preaching as he did Peter, but God's call to you and to me is just as important.
What is the Lord calling us to do?
* * *
Paul tells us in our 1 Corinthians passage that we're "called to be saints" (v. 2). This can sound like more than we can possibly live up to, but he goes on to say that God has given us his grace (v. 4), and enriched us in speech and knowledge (v. 5), and strengthened us (v. 6) so that we're not lacking in any spiritual gift (v. 7).
You and I may think of ourselves as too imperfect, too broken, to be of any use to God. But neither Peter nor Paul was perfect, and God was able to use them mightily.
You and I, with the Lord's help, can be whole persons, useful in the Lord's kingdom. Parker J. Palmer reminds us:
Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness--mine, yours, ours--need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.
-- Parker J. Palmer, The Lutheran (December 2007), p. 14
* * *
Paul says another very interesting thing in our 1 Corinthians passage. He says that the Lord "will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 8).
We've all wondered what it will be like, after we finish our lives on this earth, to stand before the Lord on the great Judgment Day, but it's something we usually don't want to even think about, because none of us has been able to follow Jesus as closely as we'd hoped we could.
But here's the good news: The Lord has not only called us to be saints, but he's been strengthening us, all along our faith journey with him, day by day. And on that day, our loving heavenly Father, through his great grace and mercy toward us, will present us blameless before our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 8).
Blameless! Utterly blameless! Do I hear a great sigh of relief?
* * *
The question: Which president promised "a chicken in every pot"?
The answer: It wasn't just chicken. During the presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won, there would be "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."
Despite a landslide victory over Alfred Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president, the Republican Party's promise of prosperity was derailed seven months after Hoover took the oath of office. The stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into the Great Depression and people eventually lost confidence in Hoover.
We can't always deliver what we promise.
* * *
Are you better off now?
It's the question Ronald Reagan used to win the presidency in 1980: Are you better off now than you were four year ago?
The question, which Reagan asked 24 years ago in his debate with then incumbent Jimmy Carter, was the key moment in that campaign's closing days. At a time of high interest rates and high unemployment, many voters answered the question with a resounding no.
Some are asking the same question today. Are you safer now than four years ago? Are you better off than four years ago? Do you have more hope than four years ago? No matter how the question is framed, it is still focused on YOU.
But as Christians, we need to ask a second question. Is it all about ME?
* * *
I am very frightened whenever religious people absorb political power. Because the minute that they begin to operate from the position of power, they contradict the essence of Christ, which is powerlessness: love in action.
You know, the only people that have ever gotten anything done in this world are people that didn't hold political office, it seems. Gandhi lead a revolution, and he did it without using political power. He was never elected to office. When they asked him, "How are you going to get the British to leave India," he said, "As friends." Two weeks after the revolution was completed, he was welcomed in London, the capital of the enemy, as a hero. That's what love can do. That's what love lived out by powerless people can do.
Martin Luther King did not hold a political office. He changed history more than all the politicians put together, in this country. That great march from Selma to Montgomery, and the followers of King got to the bridge, and the Sheriff said to turn back. And the response was, "We've come too far to turn back now." And the people got down on their knees. And what is more vulnerable than people on their knees? At the count of ten, the deputies waded in with their clubs, released the vicious dogs, and on live television I saw it. I saw that mess on the bridge just outside of Selma. People being bitten and beaten and clobbered. And I was watching in the Student Union Building of the University of Pennsylvania. I remember standing up and saying, "We've won! We've won! The civil rights movement had won!"
You say, "Wait a minute. They're getting beaten, they're getting battered, they're getting bitten, they're getting destroyed!"
"You're right! They're getting killed! But we Christians, we have a nasty habit of rising again; for there is no power that can keep love down!" Love triumphs in the end.
That's the great issue of history, isn't it? Whether we're going to trust in power, or we're going to trust in love.
-- Tony Campolo, from a speech given at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly breakfast, 6/11/01. Source: Presbyterian News Service.
* * *
Sometimes, with all the attention given to presidential campaign politics in the media, we can forget that there are other things in life.
A 101-year old woman had been admitted to a hospital rehab unit. A staff psychologist was examining her to see if she still had all her mental faculties. She asked the patient a standard question: "Who is President of the United States?"
The woman paused thoughtfully for a moment, then replied, "Honey, I'm a hundred and one years old and I don't care who's President."
The psychologist recorded in the patient's file that she was "oriented and appropriate."
* * *
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in "I Hate Gates" Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug... who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution" that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It's not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd's nerd and the world's richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle's eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish.
-- Steven Pinker, "The Moral Instinct," New York Times Magazine, January 13, 2008
* * *
In a stunning article written in 1987, J. Gordon Kingsley, then president of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, tried to answer the question of what a college president does. Naturally, he acknowledged all of the business of leading: the meetings, the phone calls, the handshakes, the presentations, the dinners, the budgets, the spreadsheets, the personnel issues -- the list goes on. But, having summarized the activities and tasks of a president, Kingsley made the claim that all of this is still not at the heart of what a college president does. In claiming the central purpose of the president's role, Kingsley turned to images of the bard, the poet, "the solitary singer galvanizing a people to noble, even heroic action by the power of Their Story."
-- Gil Rendle, from "Telling the Better Story" in Leadership in Congregations (Alban Institute, 2007). Rendle cites this article as his source: J. Gordon Kingsley, "The President as Bard," AGB Reports (July/August 1987), 18-21.
WORSHIP RESOURCE
Call to Worship
Leader: Gathered in winter's grayness, we wait:
People: looking for the One who is
the Light for all people.
Leader: Called to be saints, we wait:
People: to listen to the One who is not speechless
when it comes to good news.
Leader: Commissioned to be servants, we wait:
People: to be enriched with every spiritual gift,
so we can spend them on others.
Prayer of the Day
Like a teacher, Faithful God,
you bend down to listen
to our hearts;
like a friend,
you stretch out your hand
to pull us out of the holes
we have dug for ourselves;
like a mother,
you teach us new songs
to hum throughout the day.
You carry salvation
to every corner of creation,
Tender Lamb,
so light might fill
our shadowed souls;
so our ears
might be opened
to stories of faithful saints;
so your strength
might carry us
when we are too weak to follow.
You are not speechless,
Wisdom's Word,
when we need stories of faithfulness;
you are not voiceless
when our hearts need new songs;
you are not silent
when the world is broken,
but call us to serve with you.
God in Community, Holy in One,
hear us as we lift the prayer Jesus taught us,
Our Father...
Call to Reconciliation
In our impatience to have our own way, to have
our every want and wish fulfilled, we pay little
attention to God's will and dreams for us. But
God remains patient, leaning over to listen to
our prayers and to teach us the songs of salvation.
Let us confess to the One who waits for us to speak.
Unison Prayer of Confession
Called to be saints, Eternal Patience, we confess
the lives we truly lead. Gifted with open ears, we
listen to the sales pitches of the world, not to your
whispers of grace. We delight in the temptations
we are offered, while ignoring your hopes for us.
We walk the shadowed streets of sin, while the
light of the kingdom beckons to us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world, have mercy on us. Strengthen us so that
we may become your dependable disciples,
servants of the good news, tellers of the stories
of the love and hope you offer to a broken world
in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
(silence is kept)
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: The good news is not kept hidden from us,
but revealed in the gift of Jesus Christ. The
One who calls us is also the One who forgives us.
People: Grant us your peace, Loving God, and live
with us forever. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Our invitation
Object: an invitation to a party, a wedding, or a meeting, in its envelope
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you have ever received an invitation? (let them answer) An invitation is sometimes written out on a nice piece of paper and put in an envelope and mailed to you. (take your invitation out of the envelope and show it to them) The invitation tells you what you are invited to, it tells you the time and the day of the month, and something about what is going to happen at the event you are attending.
Let's take a look at our invitation. This invitation says that there is going to be a wedding. It tells me the name of the bride's parents, the name of the bride and the groom who are getting married, where the wedding is going to be held, and the time and the day of the wedding. This invitation tells you that you are requested to be there, as a guest of the two families. You are important to the people who sent the invitation and they want you to attend. There may be other information like directions to a reception where you may also be invited to eat a meal of celebration and have a piece of wedding cake. The invitation also asks that you send them a note back as soon as possible and tell them if you accept or cannot accept their invitation.
God has also sent an invitation to you and asked you to be a member of his church. This is more than just asking you to worship him with singing, reading, and praying. God wants us to be members and friends with Jesus and all of the other believers. The church is a people place. When God asks you to be a part of his church, he also wants you to share your life with other people. Some of the people are poor and need help. The people who are not poor can share with the people who need help. Some are sick and some are healthy. The church is God's fellowship. He has invited all of us to belong and care for one another in the best way we know how to care. Jesus calls us or asks us to follow him and be a part of his church. It is his invitation to each one of us.
The next time you receive an invitation to a party or to help build a house, I want you to remember that Jesus also invites us to belong to his church and be members full of love and sharing. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 20, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What Are You Looking For?
Steve McCutchan
THE WORLD
It is commonplace to hear people complain about this long political season. Not only do we have to put up with interminable, and frequently irritating, political ads, but they frequently tell us very little about the candidates' positions on various subjects. We hear about the millions of dollars that the candidates have raised to pay for their campaign and wonder whether that money could not be used for far better purposes. I have this fantasy about a candidate who would make the following announcement. "I have raised a hundred million dollars for my campaign and I plan to spend over half of it to improve education or to feed the homeless." It would be an electrifying announcement, but then the media would move on to the next story and how would he or she pay for the expensive ads to spread the story?
While it is tempting to wish that we had a restricted campaign season like they do in some countries, the size and diversity of our country requires something more. Every four years we agonize over whether there is a better way and usually find out that our reforms have problems as well. With Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan behind us and Super Tuesday, when more than twenty states will vote on February 5, coming up, we know several things: Picking a candidate is an incredibly complicated process. The media and all of our sophisticated polling procedures occasionally demonstrate, as they did in New Hampshire, the difficulty of discerning the mind of the American people. Picking a president for this very diverse country is a daunting process.
For Christians, it reminds us of the mysterious process of God electing some to be a part of the people of God. Ogden Nash once said, "How odd of God to choose the Jews." To which Robert MacAfee Brown responded, "Odder all the while that then God would include the gentile." Like our candidates for political office, our pastors and our congregations often leave plenty of room to criticize their behavior.
Each of our lectionary passages explores the theme of God's mysterious choice and how such election carries with it a responsibility. We often think that it is a great honor to be chosen but the next day, after the celebrations are over, the real work begins. As we move through this election season, it may be valuable for us to explore the mystery of God's election and how it sheds light on our own election process. As Jesus asked the two disciples of John who were following him, so, perhaps, God is also asking us in this political season, "What are you looking for?"
THE WORD
Consider how often we all make decisions as if we are the center of the universe. We shop for a church to meet our expectations. We call a pastor to meet our expectations. We elect a president to meet our needs. We choose people to be leaders and then immediately criticize them if they are not meeting our expectations. When you consider the scriptural story of election, people were chosen not to please their followers, which they often failed to do, but rather to serve a higher purpose designed by God. Given the response of the people, one wonders if Moses had stood for election whether he could have made it out of the primaries.
When Israel was defeated as a nation and large groups of the people were taken into exile, it looked as if God's choice of this people was a failure. Then, in Isaiah 49:1-7, we see that God's purposes in choosing Israel to be God's people had a greater purpose than they had been aware of. It is clear that the prophet was speaking about the corporate community of faith, even though he used the image of an individual. In verse 3 he said, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." For Christians, however, who see the life of Israel re-embodied in the person of Jesus; we hear the words of the prophet on at least three levels. The prophet's words speak to us about Israel as a community, Jesus as a person, and the church as a community.
In all three instances, they remind us that the call of God that determines our path has its origin in the eternity of God. "The Lord called me before I was born" (v. 1b). There is a meaning and purpose in our lives that transcends any immediate experience. Even our dark moments have a larger significance. "But I said, 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God'" (v. 4). As Israel has repeatedly had to remind itself, and as Jesus affirmed in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39), the church would do well to remind itself that it has a purpose that is greater than its individual success and survival.
We say that we are elected or chosen by God but like those we select for elected office in our society, the person chosen is always chosen for a higher purpose than pleasing us. As individuals, a church, a nation, and the world, we serve a higher purpose than just meeting our individual needs and pleasures. Imagine approaching an election from that perspective.
"It is too light a thing that you should be my servant... I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (v. 6). Like Israel, the church has frequently displayed a weakness for the temptation to disobedience and fractious fighting among ourselves. By our internal quarreling, we, also, have become "deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers..." (v. 7a), but God keeps advancing the divine purpose through us "because of the Lord, who is faithful, the holy One of Israel, who has chosen you" (v. 7b).
An error that we often make in choosing our candidates is that we are looking for the perfect candidate. The media often plays into this by trying to ferret out a quality or condition that will make a candidate ineligible. Before New Hampshire it was a moment when Hillary Clinton teared up. When you read 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, it should jar our ears to hear Paul speak of the church of Corinth appearing blameless. This was a church that existed in the port city of Corinth with its low morals and a higher than normal prosperity. The city was controlled by the few at the expense of the many. Does any of this sound familiar?
The church itself clearly had experienced the strain of arrogance on the part of some toward others. Economic division, sexual problems, and marital difficulties, to name just a few, as well as some serious theological misunderstandings, plagued the church. In one form or another, we see in Corinth many of the problems that threaten the integrity of the church today. What can Paul mean when he said: "He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?" (v. 8).
As you read on in Corinthians, it is clear that Paul was not hesitant to criticize and challenge behavior in the church. Yet underneath his criticism was a core belief that "God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 9). Picture how the debates in our churches would be different if they were undergirded by this core belief. Picture how our national debates would be different if we approached our differences from that perspective.
Whether it be Israel, Paul, or Jesus' disciples, two things remain clear. First, they were not chosen because they were perfect. Second, they were chosen to lead the people in making sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves. Perhaps, instead of looking at our candidates to select the one that makes no mistakes and promises to govern in accord with our desires and prejudices, we should look for candidates that ask us to be willing to sacrifice for a greater purpose.
John 1:29-42 describes John as a leader who was selected by God to prepare the way for what God was doing in Jesus. There is a form of selflessness in the behavior of John that is being described. It was through John's ministry that two of his disciples were called to a higher purpose. True leaders have the humility to see that they are involved in something bigger than themselves and to call others to make sacrifices towards something larger than themselves as well.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
In most of our churches, when preachers rise to preach in a political season, they are caught in a conundrum. While they want to be relevant to what is happening in the world of their congregants, most of them are hesitant to appear to be endorsing a particular candidate. In the '60s the more liberal wing of the church flirted with ways of influencing the election of certain candidates and with the rise of groups like the Moral Majority, the evangelicals have tried to have a similar influence. In many cases, these none too subtle attempts to suggest that if one is faithful they will vote for a particular candidate have proved disastrous.
At the same time, if the preacher is to proclaim the gospel in a way that speaks to the issues that face his or her congregants, then one cannot simply ignore one of the major issues that they are struggling with. Nor should an effective interpretation of the gospel reinforce the prejudice that faith is a private affair that is not relevant to the larger world in which we live.
Scott Suskovic, one of our Immediate Word team, suggested an approach that might prove interesting. Using the hook of the political season, a preacher could identify the difficulty of choosing who you would like to vote for. Then s/he could proceed to use our lectionary texts as well as certain other selected verses to try to build a picture of the perfect candidate. Or, it might raise some interesting questions to use the qualities of the disciples as described in the gospels as criteria for being a candidate. Once can quickly point out that none of them had previous experience; some were hot tempered; they were not above having ambitions for power; one was a doubter; one was willing to "change his position" on the issue of knowing Jesus when it proved useful; and at least the tax collector had previously been involved in a profession of doubtful integrity. Yet these were the types of people that Jesus chose.
Scott suggested that once you had some fun building that picture, which would hook your congregation into wondering if you were really going to name a particular candidate, that you then flip the subject of your search around and remind the congregation that each of them has been elected by God. The question then becomes how well they are fulfilling the description of the candidate that has just been described and even more importantly, how open they are to be used by God for a purpose beyond themselves.
I believe that one important point that should not be overlooked is that whether it be a political office or some other area of election, we are not to choose someone on the basis of meeting our needs but rather someone who will call all of us to a higher purpose. John F. Kennedy challenged us, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Perhaps that is still a relevant question that our next president should be asking of us. A central message of the gospel calls us away from the self-centered nature of sin to a higher purpose shaped by God.
ANOTHER VIEW
Thom Shuman
What are we looking for when it comes to political candidates, in those who we need to provide leadership, in those we vote for?
I wonder what the reaction of people would be to a candidate whose political slogan was "Called to be a servant"? Doesn't sound very impressive, does it? Probably wouldn't get a lot of donors to pull out their checkbooks. And it would cause problems for all those pundits who like to come up with cute little phrases for the candidates, like Chuckabee or Billary.
And if truth be told, most of us would not respond well to such a slogan. How exactly does "called to be a servant" translate into true change; what does it mean when it comes to war, or economic recessions, or poverty-stricken cities, or crumbling public school systems? We are looking for solutions, for fixes, for magic beans and silver bullets that will rid us of all those things that haunt us during the day and keep us awake at night.
According to the scripture readings for this Sunday, God believes, God intends, God sends a servant as the One who can lead us out of the wilderness of our lives, who can pull our feet out of the mud of misery, who can offer us all we need in troubled times. Of course, we can all nod our heads in agreement when it comes to the servant who is sent to save us theologically, who calls us to faithful service, who asks us to share the good news in which we believe.
But wouldn't we be uncomfortable with one who, asked why she runs for office, responds, "I was shaped, formed and born to be a servant"? Wouldn't we find it troublesome if a candidate who publicly declared that he has been "called" to serve the nation? Wouldn't it smack, just a little bit, of theocracy if a party was to run its candidates on a platform of being a "light to the nations"?
Yet, isn't that exactly who, and what, we are looking for? Someone who will help us be a better people, a more compassionate nation, a country that models democracy and decency, a civilization that exports hope and peace? Aren't we looking for that leader who will appeal to our better natures, rather than our basest selves? Aren't we looking for that one who can cut through all the soundbites, all the rhetoric, all the hyperbole, to simply remind us of who we are, the opportunities we have to improve ourselves, the challenges we have to bring others along with us into the future, the calling (if you will) to be a more welcoming and inclusive community?
I wonder what it would be like if, instead of the normal, cookie-cutter candidates we get from the political parties, if a Mother Theresa, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Thomas Merton, a Dalai Lama, a Dorothy Day, a servant (any servant!) was to be presented as a viable candidate in the next election?
After all, what are we looking for?
ILLUSTRATIONS
Our worship today is set between the "two bookends" of Peter and Paul. Two days ago, on Friday the 18th, the church around the world remembered the confession of Peter, when Peter said to Jesus, "You are the Messiah (the Christ), the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16).
Then this coming Friday, the 25th, the church will remember the conversion of Paul, when Paul, traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians, was struck to the ground, blind, and came face to face with Jesus.
Peter and Paul realized that the call of God was the most important thing in their lives. They realized that the Lord God of all creation was calling them to do his work with him.
Do you and I have the same call? We do. The Lord may not be calling you and me to set out on missionary journeys around the Mediterranean Sea as he did Paul, or to travel around our home country preaching as he did Peter, but God's call to you and to me is just as important.
What is the Lord calling us to do?
* * *
Paul tells us in our 1 Corinthians passage that we're "called to be saints" (v. 2). This can sound like more than we can possibly live up to, but he goes on to say that God has given us his grace (v. 4), and enriched us in speech and knowledge (v. 5), and strengthened us (v. 6) so that we're not lacking in any spiritual gift (v. 7).
You and I may think of ourselves as too imperfect, too broken, to be of any use to God. But neither Peter nor Paul was perfect, and God was able to use them mightily.
You and I, with the Lord's help, can be whole persons, useful in the Lord's kingdom. Parker J. Palmer reminds us:
Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness--mine, yours, ours--need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.
-- Parker J. Palmer, The Lutheran (December 2007), p. 14
* * *
Paul says another very interesting thing in our 1 Corinthians passage. He says that the Lord "will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 8).
We've all wondered what it will be like, after we finish our lives on this earth, to stand before the Lord on the great Judgment Day, but it's something we usually don't want to even think about, because none of us has been able to follow Jesus as closely as we'd hoped we could.
But here's the good news: The Lord has not only called us to be saints, but he's been strengthening us, all along our faith journey with him, day by day. And on that day, our loving heavenly Father, through his great grace and mercy toward us, will present us blameless before our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 8).
Blameless! Utterly blameless! Do I hear a great sigh of relief?
* * *
The question: Which president promised "a chicken in every pot"?
The answer: It wasn't just chicken. During the presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won, there would be "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."
Despite a landslide victory over Alfred Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president, the Republican Party's promise of prosperity was derailed seven months after Hoover took the oath of office. The stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into the Great Depression and people eventually lost confidence in Hoover.
We can't always deliver what we promise.
* * *
Are you better off now?
It's the question Ronald Reagan used to win the presidency in 1980: Are you better off now than you were four year ago?
The question, which Reagan asked 24 years ago in his debate with then incumbent Jimmy Carter, was the key moment in that campaign's closing days. At a time of high interest rates and high unemployment, many voters answered the question with a resounding no.
Some are asking the same question today. Are you safer now than four years ago? Are you better off than four years ago? Do you have more hope than four years ago? No matter how the question is framed, it is still focused on YOU.
But as Christians, we need to ask a second question. Is it all about ME?
* * *
I am very frightened whenever religious people absorb political power. Because the minute that they begin to operate from the position of power, they contradict the essence of Christ, which is powerlessness: love in action.
You know, the only people that have ever gotten anything done in this world are people that didn't hold political office, it seems. Gandhi lead a revolution, and he did it without using political power. He was never elected to office. When they asked him, "How are you going to get the British to leave India," he said, "As friends." Two weeks after the revolution was completed, he was welcomed in London, the capital of the enemy, as a hero. That's what love can do. That's what love lived out by powerless people can do.
Martin Luther King did not hold a political office. He changed history more than all the politicians put together, in this country. That great march from Selma to Montgomery, and the followers of King got to the bridge, and the Sheriff said to turn back. And the response was, "We've come too far to turn back now." And the people got down on their knees. And what is more vulnerable than people on their knees? At the count of ten, the deputies waded in with their clubs, released the vicious dogs, and on live television I saw it. I saw that mess on the bridge just outside of Selma. People being bitten and beaten and clobbered. And I was watching in the Student Union Building of the University of Pennsylvania. I remember standing up and saying, "We've won! We've won! The civil rights movement had won!"
You say, "Wait a minute. They're getting beaten, they're getting battered, they're getting bitten, they're getting destroyed!"
"You're right! They're getting killed! But we Christians, we have a nasty habit of rising again; for there is no power that can keep love down!" Love triumphs in the end.
That's the great issue of history, isn't it? Whether we're going to trust in power, or we're going to trust in love.
-- Tony Campolo, from a speech given at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly breakfast, 6/11/01. Source: Presbyterian News Service.
* * *
Sometimes, with all the attention given to presidential campaign politics in the media, we can forget that there are other things in life.
A 101-year old woman had been admitted to a hospital rehab unit. A staff psychologist was examining her to see if she still had all her mental faculties. She asked the patient a standard question: "Who is President of the United States?"
The woman paused thoughtfully for a moment, then replied, "Honey, I'm a hundred and one years old and I don't care who's President."
The psychologist recorded in the patient's file that she was "oriented and appropriate."
* * *
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in "I Hate Gates" Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug... who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution" that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It's not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd's nerd and the world's richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle's eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish.
-- Steven Pinker, "The Moral Instinct," New York Times Magazine, January 13, 2008
* * *
In a stunning article written in 1987, J. Gordon Kingsley, then president of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, tried to answer the question of what a college president does. Naturally, he acknowledged all of the business of leading: the meetings, the phone calls, the handshakes, the presentations, the dinners, the budgets, the spreadsheets, the personnel issues -- the list goes on. But, having summarized the activities and tasks of a president, Kingsley made the claim that all of this is still not at the heart of what a college president does. In claiming the central purpose of the president's role, Kingsley turned to images of the bard, the poet, "the solitary singer galvanizing a people to noble, even heroic action by the power of Their Story."
-- Gil Rendle, from "Telling the Better Story" in Leadership in Congregations (Alban Institute, 2007). Rendle cites this article as his source: J. Gordon Kingsley, "The President as Bard," AGB Reports (July/August 1987), 18-21.
WORSHIP RESOURCE
Call to Worship
Leader: Gathered in winter's grayness, we wait:
People: looking for the One who is
the Light for all people.
Leader: Called to be saints, we wait:
People: to listen to the One who is not speechless
when it comes to good news.
Leader: Commissioned to be servants, we wait:
People: to be enriched with every spiritual gift,
so we can spend them on others.
Prayer of the Day
Like a teacher, Faithful God,
you bend down to listen
to our hearts;
like a friend,
you stretch out your hand
to pull us out of the holes
we have dug for ourselves;
like a mother,
you teach us new songs
to hum throughout the day.
You carry salvation
to every corner of creation,
Tender Lamb,
so light might fill
our shadowed souls;
so our ears
might be opened
to stories of faithful saints;
so your strength
might carry us
when we are too weak to follow.
You are not speechless,
Wisdom's Word,
when we need stories of faithfulness;
you are not voiceless
when our hearts need new songs;
you are not silent
when the world is broken,
but call us to serve with you.
God in Community, Holy in One,
hear us as we lift the prayer Jesus taught us,
Our Father...
Call to Reconciliation
In our impatience to have our own way, to have
our every want and wish fulfilled, we pay little
attention to God's will and dreams for us. But
God remains patient, leaning over to listen to
our prayers and to teach us the songs of salvation.
Let us confess to the One who waits for us to speak.
Unison Prayer of Confession
Called to be saints, Eternal Patience, we confess
the lives we truly lead. Gifted with open ears, we
listen to the sales pitches of the world, not to your
whispers of grace. We delight in the temptations
we are offered, while ignoring your hopes for us.
We walk the shadowed streets of sin, while the
light of the kingdom beckons to us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world, have mercy on us. Strengthen us so that
we may become your dependable disciples,
servants of the good news, tellers of the stories
of the love and hope you offer to a broken world
in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
(silence is kept)
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: The good news is not kept hidden from us,
but revealed in the gift of Jesus Christ. The
One who calls us is also the One who forgives us.
People: Grant us your peace, Loving God, and live
with us forever. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Our invitation
Object: an invitation to a party, a wedding, or a meeting, in its envelope
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you have ever received an invitation? (let them answer) An invitation is sometimes written out on a nice piece of paper and put in an envelope and mailed to you. (take your invitation out of the envelope and show it to them) The invitation tells you what you are invited to, it tells you the time and the day of the month, and something about what is going to happen at the event you are attending.
Let's take a look at our invitation. This invitation says that there is going to be a wedding. It tells me the name of the bride's parents, the name of the bride and the groom who are getting married, where the wedding is going to be held, and the time and the day of the wedding. This invitation tells you that you are requested to be there, as a guest of the two families. You are important to the people who sent the invitation and they want you to attend. There may be other information like directions to a reception where you may also be invited to eat a meal of celebration and have a piece of wedding cake. The invitation also asks that you send them a note back as soon as possible and tell them if you accept or cannot accept their invitation.
God has also sent an invitation to you and asked you to be a member of his church. This is more than just asking you to worship him with singing, reading, and praying. God wants us to be members and friends with Jesus and all of the other believers. The church is a people place. When God asks you to be a part of his church, he also wants you to share your life with other people. Some of the people are poor and need help. The people who are not poor can share with the people who need help. Some are sick and some are healthy. The church is God's fellowship. He has invited all of us to belong and care for one another in the best way we know how to care. Jesus calls us or asks us to follow him and be a part of his church. It is his invitation to each one of us.
The next time you receive an invitation to a party or to help build a house, I want you to remember that Jesus also invites us to belong to his church and be members full of love and sharing. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 20, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
