Epiphany 4
Sermon
Christmas Is A Quantum Leap
Sermons For Advent, Christmas And Epiphany
Sister Josephina was another witness to the faith. She served
the people of her community during a long and painful period of
change in that community. Sister Josephina's ministry changed
with the requirements of her people and she was widely known
among community organizers. When she spoke to the powers that be
they listened. When she spoke to her people they followed. She
was a magnificent figure whose very dress and appearance spoke of
her servanthood and her power.
Young pastors-to-be watched her ministry with great interest.
Most didn't know about liberation theology at the time, but they
did know that people who are poor or disenfranchised look to the
church for their hope. Sister Josephina knew it better than most.
One day on the way home from seminary, a friend of mine decided
to stop by at her well-known community center and have a look
around. I don't think he intended to look for her, much less meet
her. She would be busy, no doubt, and because she was something
of a celebrity she might get impatient with drop-in callers or
interviewers. My classmate soon found a place in the combination
parking lot and basketball court (there being no game at the
time). Sister had a way with strangers, he soon discovered,
because seconds after he walked in, while just looking around he
saw her before him with her warm hand outstretched and a smile
all the warmer to go with it.
It was obviously her. You couldn't mistake her. Her warmth and
hearty handshake told the whole story about her. Being a stranger
in need of some kind of welcome was all the credentials or
explanation she needed. She was clearly busy. But no attempt to
excuse yourself -- or offer the relative unimportance of such a
spur-of-the-moment curiosity -- allowed her to let anyone go
without some attention.
My friend explained that he knew about her work and hoped she
would sense his admiration. Sister Josephina was doing in that
place what no one else had been able to do. In 10 or 15 minutes
my friend was made to feel that he was in the presence of someone
who spoke the faith with authority. Seeing that she did need to
be about her work he asked for just one favor: a quick bit of
advice to an aspiring pastor. What, he asked, did she see as the
key to her ministry in that community; how did she do it? Her
answer was both a remarkable witness and memorable advice. I am
sure many hundreds of people heard the same explanation over the
years. "I just make promises to people," she said, "and then I
keep them."
Sister Josephina was no ordinary nun; no regular run-of-the-
mill social worker, Christian or otherwise. As important as it is
to put theology into place serving the needs of a particular
"place," she wasn't only a community organizer for Christ, as
important a service of ministry as that is. She was a person who
taught with authority, not as the others. It was the authority of
our Lord's own integrity of spirit and love. Not only did he
teach but he acted on what he taught. Not only is the health
Christ provides a dramatic restoring of wholeness. It is a
promise to exorcise -- take away the power -- of any evil that
wants to hold us down or keep us back.
It is something like the authority of many chemical dependency
counselors who are most effective. The reason so many of them are
recovering persons themselves is that to be in recovery from
anything means you not only know what recovery means but you are
practicing it. The woods and the world are full of people who
have the insight to put their lives back together but haven't the
will to practice what their
insight suggests. Twelve-step programs are full of people who
have discovered the principles and can recite them forward and
backward. But the truest test of all is the daily intent that
produces practice of the program.
Perhaps you, too, have known others who taught with Christ's
authority that way. Like the Bishop I know who mentored many a
young pastor in the faith. Advising many a young ordinand on
their pastoral responsibility, he was often heard to say, "Just
take care of people for us, just take care of them." He could
have waxed eloquent about the theology or pastoral experience of
his own career. He could have put it far differently and included
his enormous wisdom about leading large and complex churches --
he'd done a couple. But the depth of his authority came through
the simple integrity of Christ's own compassion for people, "Just
take care of them for us." There may be more to pastoral ministry
in the "how-to" books, but not much more in my book.
For Christ to have been found by the authorities teaching in
the synagogue might have been somewhat offensive to them. For him
to go a step further and act on what he taught may have been a
step too far. It happens all the time when people demonstrate
that they can walk the talk. There are always going to be those
who have difficulty with what we say. Some will have even more
difficulty if we do what we say we believe. But our Lord went
even further. Not only did he speak and act with authority. He
acted with a kind of authority that dared to defy their
conventions and traditions. That made it even worse. Even for
those who could have tolerated what he said, talking like God,
acting like the Almighty put them over the edge.
Christ's offense to the authorities was not so much that he
spoke about forgiveness, but that he dared to do it. It was his
power to put faith into action and words into deeds that most
aroused their anger. Many would still prefer that we continue to
talk about the issues of faith, perhaps debating them. It was his
divine penchant for doing what he said -- living the Word and not
just speaking it -- that accomplished
our salvation. It was his power to keep promises, not just make
them that still enables us to take him at his word. Anyone can
care about people; it's a worthy emotion but it may remain only a
worthy emotion. Christ's contribution was to put passion into
action. It is the kind of caring we know as the cross and that
makes the word, care, a deed. That is always what happens when
people take up their crosses.
When he commanded the unclean spirits to depart he was
demonstrating his own authority as a matter of wholeness and
health. To be near him was to know someone who was not limited to
simply understand the healthy lifestyle. Here was one whose
entire life was the essence of health and wholeness. He didn't
just drive off spirits of uncleanness. To be near him was to
experience what clean living and health is all about.
When he assured people their sins were forgiven he did that
with authority also. For most of us true forgiveness of others is
an ideal we rarely reach. We forgive but find it almost
impossible to forget. Our forgiving thereby falls short. We have
talked about a path we could not walk. A wrong you remember is a
wrong for which you will pay with your anxiety. Or you will
unconsciously, relationally, find a way to yet make the guilty
party pay. To be near Christ was to know that you had fallen
short of the glory of God. But to be near him was also to know
that your wrong would not be eternally held against you or over
you. In many cases forgiveness is more effectively shown than it
is said, just like God's action in forgiving us. But not where
the mercy of God is concerned. God spoke the words of divine
compassion. Then God did it. The cross was God's own willingness
to embody the faith.
Faith is not so much what you do as who you are. It is not a
matter of saying the right things or we would simply speak the
passwords to the kingdom. It is not a matter of what we do or we
would simply live by the rules and our good works would work.
Faith is living out the worthiness of God's gift to us in us. As
we live that out in our world we disperse the love of God in
Christ to the lives around us in our loving.
A favorite image of mine is the example of salt, light and
yeast. The salt gives itself up to the recipe and flavor takes
shape to season the whole. Light is spent in dispelling the
darkness. Yeast, dying to itself and merging -- blending -- into
the dough of the loaf causes the lifeless ingredients to rise.
The salt of faith embodies the very nature of what it means to be
salty when it spends itself to give flavor to our lives. The
intangible beauty of sunlight cannot be grasped. Allowed to enter
the darkness of our lives, light gives color and shape to the
world around us. And the powerful potential of yeast-like faith,
stirred and spread into the rest of our lives, brings a
nourishing and sustaining -- life-giving -- possibility to our
table.
the people of her community during a long and painful period of
change in that community. Sister Josephina's ministry changed
with the requirements of her people and she was widely known
among community organizers. When she spoke to the powers that be
they listened. When she spoke to her people they followed. She
was a magnificent figure whose very dress and appearance spoke of
her servanthood and her power.
Young pastors-to-be watched her ministry with great interest.
Most didn't know about liberation theology at the time, but they
did know that people who are poor or disenfranchised look to the
church for their hope. Sister Josephina knew it better than most.
One day on the way home from seminary, a friend of mine decided
to stop by at her well-known community center and have a look
around. I don't think he intended to look for her, much less meet
her. She would be busy, no doubt, and because she was something
of a celebrity she might get impatient with drop-in callers or
interviewers. My classmate soon found a place in the combination
parking lot and basketball court (there being no game at the
time). Sister had a way with strangers, he soon discovered,
because seconds after he walked in, while just looking around he
saw her before him with her warm hand outstretched and a smile
all the warmer to go with it.
It was obviously her. You couldn't mistake her. Her warmth and
hearty handshake told the whole story about her. Being a stranger
in need of some kind of welcome was all the credentials or
explanation she needed. She was clearly busy. But no attempt to
excuse yourself -- or offer the relative unimportance of such a
spur-of-the-moment curiosity -- allowed her to let anyone go
without some attention.
My friend explained that he knew about her work and hoped she
would sense his admiration. Sister Josephina was doing in that
place what no one else had been able to do. In 10 or 15 minutes
my friend was made to feel that he was in the presence of someone
who spoke the faith with authority. Seeing that she did need to
be about her work he asked for just one favor: a quick bit of
advice to an aspiring pastor. What, he asked, did she see as the
key to her ministry in that community; how did she do it? Her
answer was both a remarkable witness and memorable advice. I am
sure many hundreds of people heard the same explanation over the
years. "I just make promises to people," she said, "and then I
keep them."
Sister Josephina was no ordinary nun; no regular run-of-the-
mill social worker, Christian or otherwise. As important as it is
to put theology into place serving the needs of a particular
"place," she wasn't only a community organizer for Christ, as
important a service of ministry as that is. She was a person who
taught with authority, not as the others. It was the authority of
our Lord's own integrity of spirit and love. Not only did he
teach but he acted on what he taught. Not only is the health
Christ provides a dramatic restoring of wholeness. It is a
promise to exorcise -- take away the power -- of any evil that
wants to hold us down or keep us back.
It is something like the authority of many chemical dependency
counselors who are most effective. The reason so many of them are
recovering persons themselves is that to be in recovery from
anything means you not only know what recovery means but you are
practicing it. The woods and the world are full of people who
have the insight to put their lives back together but haven't the
will to practice what their
insight suggests. Twelve-step programs are full of people who
have discovered the principles and can recite them forward and
backward. But the truest test of all is the daily intent that
produces practice of the program.
Perhaps you, too, have known others who taught with Christ's
authority that way. Like the Bishop I know who mentored many a
young pastor in the faith. Advising many a young ordinand on
their pastoral responsibility, he was often heard to say, "Just
take care of people for us, just take care of them." He could
have waxed eloquent about the theology or pastoral experience of
his own career. He could have put it far differently and included
his enormous wisdom about leading large and complex churches --
he'd done a couple. But the depth of his authority came through
the simple integrity of Christ's own compassion for people, "Just
take care of them for us." There may be more to pastoral ministry
in the "how-to" books, but not much more in my book.
For Christ to have been found by the authorities teaching in
the synagogue might have been somewhat offensive to them. For him
to go a step further and act on what he taught may have been a
step too far. It happens all the time when people demonstrate
that they can walk the talk. There are always going to be those
who have difficulty with what we say. Some will have even more
difficulty if we do what we say we believe. But our Lord went
even further. Not only did he speak and act with authority. He
acted with a kind of authority that dared to defy their
conventions and traditions. That made it even worse. Even for
those who could have tolerated what he said, talking like God,
acting like the Almighty put them over the edge.
Christ's offense to the authorities was not so much that he
spoke about forgiveness, but that he dared to do it. It was his
power to put faith into action and words into deeds that most
aroused their anger. Many would still prefer that we continue to
talk about the issues of faith, perhaps debating them. It was his
divine penchant for doing what he said -- living the Word and not
just speaking it -- that accomplished
our salvation. It was his power to keep promises, not just make
them that still enables us to take him at his word. Anyone can
care about people; it's a worthy emotion but it may remain only a
worthy emotion. Christ's contribution was to put passion into
action. It is the kind of caring we know as the cross and that
makes the word, care, a deed. That is always what happens when
people take up their crosses.
When he commanded the unclean spirits to depart he was
demonstrating his own authority as a matter of wholeness and
health. To be near him was to know someone who was not limited to
simply understand the healthy lifestyle. Here was one whose
entire life was the essence of health and wholeness. He didn't
just drive off spirits of uncleanness. To be near him was to
experience what clean living and health is all about.
When he assured people their sins were forgiven he did that
with authority also. For most of us true forgiveness of others is
an ideal we rarely reach. We forgive but find it almost
impossible to forget. Our forgiving thereby falls short. We have
talked about a path we could not walk. A wrong you remember is a
wrong for which you will pay with your anxiety. Or you will
unconsciously, relationally, find a way to yet make the guilty
party pay. To be near Christ was to know that you had fallen
short of the glory of God. But to be near him was also to know
that your wrong would not be eternally held against you or over
you. In many cases forgiveness is more effectively shown than it
is said, just like God's action in forgiving us. But not where
the mercy of God is concerned. God spoke the words of divine
compassion. Then God did it. The cross was God's own willingness
to embody the faith.
Faith is not so much what you do as who you are. It is not a
matter of saying the right things or we would simply speak the
passwords to the kingdom. It is not a matter of what we do or we
would simply live by the rules and our good works would work.
Faith is living out the worthiness of God's gift to us in us. As
we live that out in our world we disperse the love of God in
Christ to the lives around us in our loving.
A favorite image of mine is the example of salt, light and
yeast. The salt gives itself up to the recipe and flavor takes
shape to season the whole. Light is spent in dispelling the
darkness. Yeast, dying to itself and merging -- blending -- into
the dough of the loaf causes the lifeless ingredients to rise.
The salt of faith embodies the very nature of what it means to be
salty when it spends itself to give flavor to our lives. The
intangible beauty of sunlight cannot be grasped. Allowed to enter
the darkness of our lives, light gives color and shape to the
world around us. And the powerful potential of yeast-like faith,
stirred and spread into the rest of our lives, brings a
nourishing and sustaining -- life-giving -- possibility to our
table.
