A Slave To Mistaken Notions
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Sally is Johnny's older sister by two years. They are staying with their grandma for the summer. Since they live in the city, it is a special time, for they enjoy doing the kind of things one does in the country setting. Late one afternoon, Johnny is skimming rocks across the little pond behind Grandma's house while Sally piddles on the bank and watches. Now, Grandma has a duck. His name is Oscar. A while back Oscar laid some eggs, but that is another story. Just as Johnny lets go with one of his strongest throws, Oscar emerges from the back side of the pond. Horror of horrors, the rock hits Oscar and he or she is motionless. "Oh, no! What have I done?" cries Johnny. Knowing it was wrong, nevertheless, Johnny buries Oscar, hoping that no one has noticed, except Sally, that is.
That night when it comes time to do the dishes, Sally says, "Remember Oscar?" Johnny says, "Oh, I'll be glad to do the dishes, Grandma. Just let Sally go on." When it comes time for other duties, Sally says, "Remember Oscar?" Johnny then does everything that she is supposed to do. After several days, he has had enough and he goes to his grandmother and says, "Grandma, I have something I want to tell you. I am sorry that I hit Oscar and killed him." She says, "I knew that. I was at the window when it happened. I've already forgiven you. I was just waiting for you to ask for forgiveness. I kept wondering how long you were going to remain a slave to your sister." Oh, that every form of slavery were so easily conquered!
In our text, Paul speaks of a form of slavery: "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear" (v. 15). In his day everyone knew about slavery. Some have estimated that in 50 A.D. there were approximately 30,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire. In those days, slavery had little to do with one's race, socio-economic status, or educational attainment. It probably had more to do with geography than anything else. If one happened to live in one of the many lands conquered by Rome, one was likely to be enslaved. Often the slaves were more educated, intelligent, cultured, and refined than their masters, but they were slaves nonetheless. They were persons who had no rights or privileges and whose lives were ordered by a source beyond their control.
Under that definition more than a few of us fit the description of a slave today. We become enslaved or prisoners to the very things that control us. A few of us almost all of the time and almost all of us some of the time are slaves. We become slaves to our own appetites for food, sex, drugs, success, even computers or television. We can become the prisoners of "stinking thinking" and dependent upon the opinion of others, especially authority figures. We can listen too much to what society dictates as to what is appropriate or accepted. We can be ruled and ordered by the inner demons of fear, jealousy, and suspicion. We can bow at the altar of the rules, regulations, and rituals of religion. We can think too much of ourselves and display the facade of pride. Or, we can think too little of ourselves and reveal the vulnerability of inferiority. I personally feel that the latter, a sense of inferiority, is the real source of pride if not all of the other results of "stinking thinking."
Inferiority! A weak self-image! A lack of personal identity! We all are aware that each of us emerges from childhood with some sense of inferiority or "not-okay-ness!" Because we live for years as little people among giants, some degree of inferiority is almost "natural." However, if not addressed, a sense of inferiority can enslave us under its control. We can identify with the distress of Charlie Brown when he moans, "Ever since I stepped onto the stage of life, the heading has been 'not right for the part'!" We all can identify with the feeling that we are "not right for the part" or that life is too big for us or that we do not measure up to someone else's standards. This low self-esteem is only enhanced in some by the misfortune of being mistreated or abused. Thus, an imagined feeling of inferiority can overpower us and we can become a slave to this mistaken notion.
In his book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen states, "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our lives is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection...."1 I fully feel that our tendency toward self-rejection, low self-esteem, and feelings of inferiority is based upon our failure to realize how loved, blessed, cherished, and accepted we are as children of God. Make no mistake about it, each of us is a child of God. Paul says so! "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' " (vv. 14-15), through God's grace and our feeble faith in the Lord Jesus, we are a beloved, blessed, and valued child of God. The Holy Spirit says so! "It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (v. 16).
Now if that is true and I believe that it is, how is that so? How does the Holy Spirit bear witness that we are God's child? How does the Holy Spirit remind us of who we actually are at the core of our very existence?
As I think of that question, I reflect upon my own feelings and struggles with inferiority. Well, it was worse than that! I was ashamed of who I was! Now, I did feel inferior because I was a spoiled child, a finicky eater, and very skinny. I also had very prominent buck teeth, warts on my hands, and bad teeth, and I lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We lived near the steel mill where my father worked and the pollution was horrible. At the grammar school I attended, more vandalism occurred than in all the other city schools combined, a community of 65,000 people.
As bad as it was to feel inferior, it was worse still to be ashamed of who I was. I was ashamed of my name. I am now ashamed that I was then ashamed of my name, but ashamed I was. I grew up in a very racially-segregated and prejudiced city of the South in the 1950s. I now remember with disdain the water fountains and restrooms labeled "white" and "colored." I now remember with dismay people sitting in the back of the bus and being refused service at restaurants. But then I knew no better. In my own ignorant prejudice, I was ashamed because seemingly every African-American establishment in town was named after the great Tuskegee scientist, Dr. George Washington Carver. It was the Carver Theater, the Carver Cab Company and the high school, where only African-Americans attended, was Carver High. My "friends" often chided me with the nickname, "Carver High." It would be an honor now, but not then.
But, as I grew older, I read of others who overcame early feelings of inferiority or self-imposed shame. One such person was Dr. Wayne Oates. Dr. Oates was one of my professors at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and also was Adjunct Professor at the Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. Dr. Oates was a pioneer in the area of pastoral care; his The Christian Pastor, is a classic and one of over forty books he has written. He chronicled his emergence from inferiority in his autobiography, The Struggle to Be Free. Oates was born the youngest of four children in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1917 to sharecropper parents who had to move to the textile mills to find work. His father left his mother to fend for herself only weeks after Wayne was born. He saw his father only twice. Being "fatherless" was another source of pain for a young boy well aquainted with the scarcity and scantiness of food, clothing, and shelter. Oates states, "We were in bondage to poverty."2
But in 1930, a glimmer of hope appeared in the darkness of his plight as United States Senator Ellison D. Smith wanted a cotton-mill boy for his page. Wayne's principal, Mr. Castle, suggested him. Thus, he went to Washington with twenty of the most-privileged of South Carolina. After his arrival, his feelings of inferiority soared to an all-time high, as the other twenty made fun of his speech, shyness, and background. They lost no opportunity to torment, haze, and ridicule him only adding to his own self-rejection. He later stated, "Poverty leaves you with wounds to your self-esteem."3
It was there that Wayne met Leslie Biffle who did for him no less than Professor Higgins did for Eliza Doolittle. Biffle tutored and corrected his speech, vocabulary, and manners. He encouraged personal hygiene and repaired his neglected teeth. He became the father young Oates never had. Others aided. Mrs. McKenzie, secretary to Senator Heflin, quietly assisted with table manners. Zettie Waters, his Sunday school teacher, influenced his young faith. B. G. Henry helped him to gain admittance to Mars Hill College. His pastor, William L. Lynch, expanded his love for the Bible and theology. His real conversion occurred as Reverend Lynch introduced him to William James' Varieties of Religious Experience.
Oates states, "The word of God, the Logos, the person of Jesus Christ, was my redemption from the feelings of inferiority."4 The Holy Spirit aided Dr. Oates through others and through scripture to "call no man your father on earth, for you have one father, who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). Through others and especially through scripture, the Holy Spirit called Wayne Oates to be who he really was. And the world is a better place for it.
I learned of others. He was called Brenning and he felt called of God to preach. Few agreed! His own pastor discouraged him and suggested library work. His high school guidance counselor offered no encouragement. His own family expressed hesitancy. Some discouraged him because he was short and he did not have a strong voice when most preachers in his area of backwoods Tennessee were known for their big, booming voices and authoritative presence. He made things no better in his first pulpit efforts when he, out of character, sought to stir up a fuss like a little banty rooster. His first effort in speech class at the Johnson Bible College resulted in the insensitive teacher blurting out, "Do it again. I didn't hear a word you said!" Brenning was so infuriated at the calloused remark that he angrily kicked over the $85 tape recorder, for which he had to pay.
So discouraged by the harsh judgment of others and his own lack of success, Brenning quit! For two years, he quit. I asked him once how he started back. "I sort of eased back into it," he said, encouraged by the words of two pastors from whom he sought advice. One pastor was T. O. Slaughter, who talked to young Brenning about "doing what you feel in your heart." Slaughter, a man of prayer, counseled him to be himself and not to listen to the naysayers. He encouraged him to do what he felt God had called him to do.
The other positive voice was that of George Hortzwaller. During their conversation, the older pastor suggested that young Brenning accompany him that day to a funeral and lead in prayer at the grave site. Brenning agreed. When they arrived at the cemetery, however, the people were leaving. Hortzwaller had arrived at the wrong grave site! He just passed off his mistake with the attitude, "Oh, well, I'll do better tomorrow."
Brenning told me that these two men were the voices that encouraged him to try again. Slaughter's "to do what is in your heart" and Hortzwaller's, "not to take yourself too seriously" were words that the Holy Spirit used to call young Brenning back to who he was. Well, he didn't do too badly. He continued his schooling and acquired a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt. He served as a missionary to Appalachia, a pastor and a professor, and is just recently "retired." All he did was to author over two dozen books, one of which revolutionized preaching theory and easily is the most influential book written in Homiletics in the last fifty years, if not the last century. Brenning not only became the best teacher of preachers in the world, but the most beloved by many and the most often quoted by all homileticians of his generation -- several generations in fact. No man of God has influenced me more or taught me more about overcoming that which we cannot control or doing something about that which we can. In his humility, he states about himself that every strength is a detour around a perceived weakness. Only Brenning now chooses to use his first name, the name of Fred -- Fred B. Craddock.
What if Dr. Craddock had not come back? Would the world have lost the genius of Fred B. Craddock? The world would be poorer for it. What if Dr. Craddock had chosen not to listen to Slaughter and Hortzwaller, his balcony people, to use Carlyle Mauney's term for encouragers? I think, and Paul would agree, that it was no less than the Holy Spirit, himself, who gave Fred the ability and the freedom to choose to which voices to listen. "The spirit bears witness...." The Holy Spirit works through scripture, events, divine urgings, expressions, and people, often, I am sure, even when they are unaware of their influence. I wonder if Slaughter and Hortzwaller even realized the gift that they helped to bring to the Kingdom Community?
I am under no false illusion that I belong in the same category of Fred Craddock and Wayne Oates, but, I, too, have had the Holy Spirit use others in my life to help deal with my own demons, especially with my feelings about my name. I still remember a conversation I had with Samford University professor, Dr. Sigurd Bryan, when I asked his advice about which seminary to attend. He concluded our talk by saying, "Well, Gary, you certainly have the name to be a Southern Baptist pastor."
"I beg your pardon?" I said with evident surprise.
"Yes," he remarked, "no one is more respected in the area of missionology than Dr. W. O. Carver who taught at Southern Seminary."
Six months later I visited Southern to check out the school and housing facilities. Five months after that, I enrolled for my first classes. When I walked into the registrar's office, the secretary looked and said, "Hello, Mr. Carver." I was dumbfounded.
"This is amazing," I said. "You have seen me only once and that was five months ago. Thousands of students have walked through these doors since then. You must have a wonderful memory for names."
"I do have a good memory," she laughed. "But you have to remember that you are standing on the W. O. Carver Campus."
I have never been ashamed of my name since. The Holy Spirit works not only to reveal God's truth to us but also gives us the ability to recognize that truth when we see it.
In her poem "Statement of Faith," Ann Weems reminds us of the many ways in which the Holy Spirit works.
We believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and in you and in me.
We believe the Holy Spirit has freed us to worship as a community.
We believe the Holy Spirit works through
balloons and ministers
daisies and wiggly children
clanging cymbals and silence
drama and the unexpected
choirs and banners
touching and praying
spontaneity and planning
faith and doubt
tears and laughter
leading and supporting
hugging and kneeling
dancing and stillness
applauding and giving
creativity and plodding
words and listening
holding and letting go
thank you and help me
Scripture and alleluias
agonizing and celebrating
accepting and caring
through you and through me
through Love.
We believe God's Holy Spirit lives in this community of dancing, hand-holding people where lines of age and politics and lifestyles are crossed.
We believe in praising God for Life.
We believe in responding to God's grace and love and justice for all people.
We believe in the poetry within each of us.
We believe in dreams and visions.
We believe in old people running and children leading.
We believe in the Kingdom of God within us.
We believe in Love.5
Henri Nouwen reminds us that we must not only cease to listen to what the world says about us, but to listen more intently to what God says about us. "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs -- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" (vv. 16-17 NIV). When we listen to the Holy Spirit, we are assured of our identity as God's child and as a joint heir with Jesus Christ that everything Jesus has in heaven today will be ours as well. Think of that! Everything Jesus has -- his joy, his love, his life, his happiness, his intimacy, and his knowledge of the Father -- one day shall be ours! All of the very blessings of Jesus in heaven will be ours. On earth so shall his sufferings be.
It was Evelyn Underhill who wrote of once being deathly sick. Her mother gave her a medicine that made her even more ill, and she wondered why they would give that to her when she already felt so bad. The next morning she was surprised because she was much improved. She recovered completely because of the medicine. She said it was her first encounter in life with an "unpleasant good." That is what the sufferings of Jesus are. They are an unpleasant good! They are something through which we go and something that God uses to make us more conformed to the image of his Son. The Holy Spirit uses all of the experiences of life to call us to who and whose we are in an effort to conform us more and more to the image of Christ.
Recently Christopher Nolan was given the prestigious British Whitbread Award for his autobiographical "novel" Under the Eye of the Clock. There is nothing spectacular about this latest recognition for this author/poet until you remember that he was born with severe brain damage and from infancy could only communicate with his eyes. The only way he can type is by means of a pen-like stick attached to his forehead. Each page takes twelve hours of slow, concentrated hard work. But what accounts for the triumph? At three years of age he said he faced the only spark within himself. He knew he was alive, wanted, and loved.6
Christopher Nolan refused to be a slave to a mistaken notion about himself. Instead, he listened to the truth about himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and exercised his freedom to choose to be what God called him to be. So can you!
"How great is the love of the Father lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God. And that is what we are" (1 John 3:1 NIV).
____________
1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994), p. 2.
2. Wayne E. Oates, The Struggle To Be Free (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), p. 15.
3. Op. cit., p. 29.
4. Op cit., p. 43.
5. Ann Weems, Reaching for Rainbows (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980), p. 17.
6. James W. Cox, Best Sermons II (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989), p. 295.
That night when it comes time to do the dishes, Sally says, "Remember Oscar?" Johnny says, "Oh, I'll be glad to do the dishes, Grandma. Just let Sally go on." When it comes time for other duties, Sally says, "Remember Oscar?" Johnny then does everything that she is supposed to do. After several days, he has had enough and he goes to his grandmother and says, "Grandma, I have something I want to tell you. I am sorry that I hit Oscar and killed him." She says, "I knew that. I was at the window when it happened. I've already forgiven you. I was just waiting for you to ask for forgiveness. I kept wondering how long you were going to remain a slave to your sister." Oh, that every form of slavery were so easily conquered!
In our text, Paul speaks of a form of slavery: "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear" (v. 15). In his day everyone knew about slavery. Some have estimated that in 50 A.D. there were approximately 30,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire. In those days, slavery had little to do with one's race, socio-economic status, or educational attainment. It probably had more to do with geography than anything else. If one happened to live in one of the many lands conquered by Rome, one was likely to be enslaved. Often the slaves were more educated, intelligent, cultured, and refined than their masters, but they were slaves nonetheless. They were persons who had no rights or privileges and whose lives were ordered by a source beyond their control.
Under that definition more than a few of us fit the description of a slave today. We become enslaved or prisoners to the very things that control us. A few of us almost all of the time and almost all of us some of the time are slaves. We become slaves to our own appetites for food, sex, drugs, success, even computers or television. We can become the prisoners of "stinking thinking" and dependent upon the opinion of others, especially authority figures. We can listen too much to what society dictates as to what is appropriate or accepted. We can be ruled and ordered by the inner demons of fear, jealousy, and suspicion. We can bow at the altar of the rules, regulations, and rituals of religion. We can think too much of ourselves and display the facade of pride. Or, we can think too little of ourselves and reveal the vulnerability of inferiority. I personally feel that the latter, a sense of inferiority, is the real source of pride if not all of the other results of "stinking thinking."
Inferiority! A weak self-image! A lack of personal identity! We all are aware that each of us emerges from childhood with some sense of inferiority or "not-okay-ness!" Because we live for years as little people among giants, some degree of inferiority is almost "natural." However, if not addressed, a sense of inferiority can enslave us under its control. We can identify with the distress of Charlie Brown when he moans, "Ever since I stepped onto the stage of life, the heading has been 'not right for the part'!" We all can identify with the feeling that we are "not right for the part" or that life is too big for us or that we do not measure up to someone else's standards. This low self-esteem is only enhanced in some by the misfortune of being mistreated or abused. Thus, an imagined feeling of inferiority can overpower us and we can become a slave to this mistaken notion.
In his book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen states, "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our lives is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection...."1 I fully feel that our tendency toward self-rejection, low self-esteem, and feelings of inferiority is based upon our failure to realize how loved, blessed, cherished, and accepted we are as children of God. Make no mistake about it, each of us is a child of God. Paul says so! "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' " (vv. 14-15), through God's grace and our feeble faith in the Lord Jesus, we are a beloved, blessed, and valued child of God. The Holy Spirit says so! "It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (v. 16).
Now if that is true and I believe that it is, how is that so? How does the Holy Spirit bear witness that we are God's child? How does the Holy Spirit remind us of who we actually are at the core of our very existence?
As I think of that question, I reflect upon my own feelings and struggles with inferiority. Well, it was worse than that! I was ashamed of who I was! Now, I did feel inferior because I was a spoiled child, a finicky eater, and very skinny. I also had very prominent buck teeth, warts on my hands, and bad teeth, and I lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We lived near the steel mill where my father worked and the pollution was horrible. At the grammar school I attended, more vandalism occurred than in all the other city schools combined, a community of 65,000 people.
As bad as it was to feel inferior, it was worse still to be ashamed of who I was. I was ashamed of my name. I am now ashamed that I was then ashamed of my name, but ashamed I was. I grew up in a very racially-segregated and prejudiced city of the South in the 1950s. I now remember with disdain the water fountains and restrooms labeled "white" and "colored." I now remember with dismay people sitting in the back of the bus and being refused service at restaurants. But then I knew no better. In my own ignorant prejudice, I was ashamed because seemingly every African-American establishment in town was named after the great Tuskegee scientist, Dr. George Washington Carver. It was the Carver Theater, the Carver Cab Company and the high school, where only African-Americans attended, was Carver High. My "friends" often chided me with the nickname, "Carver High." It would be an honor now, but not then.
But, as I grew older, I read of others who overcame early feelings of inferiority or self-imposed shame. One such person was Dr. Wayne Oates. Dr. Oates was one of my professors at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and also was Adjunct Professor at the Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. Dr. Oates was a pioneer in the area of pastoral care; his The Christian Pastor, is a classic and one of over forty books he has written. He chronicled his emergence from inferiority in his autobiography, The Struggle to Be Free. Oates was born the youngest of four children in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1917 to sharecropper parents who had to move to the textile mills to find work. His father left his mother to fend for herself only weeks after Wayne was born. He saw his father only twice. Being "fatherless" was another source of pain for a young boy well aquainted with the scarcity and scantiness of food, clothing, and shelter. Oates states, "We were in bondage to poverty."2
But in 1930, a glimmer of hope appeared in the darkness of his plight as United States Senator Ellison D. Smith wanted a cotton-mill boy for his page. Wayne's principal, Mr. Castle, suggested him. Thus, he went to Washington with twenty of the most-privileged of South Carolina. After his arrival, his feelings of inferiority soared to an all-time high, as the other twenty made fun of his speech, shyness, and background. They lost no opportunity to torment, haze, and ridicule him only adding to his own self-rejection. He later stated, "Poverty leaves you with wounds to your self-esteem."3
It was there that Wayne met Leslie Biffle who did for him no less than Professor Higgins did for Eliza Doolittle. Biffle tutored and corrected his speech, vocabulary, and manners. He encouraged personal hygiene and repaired his neglected teeth. He became the father young Oates never had. Others aided. Mrs. McKenzie, secretary to Senator Heflin, quietly assisted with table manners. Zettie Waters, his Sunday school teacher, influenced his young faith. B. G. Henry helped him to gain admittance to Mars Hill College. His pastor, William L. Lynch, expanded his love for the Bible and theology. His real conversion occurred as Reverend Lynch introduced him to William James' Varieties of Religious Experience.
Oates states, "The word of God, the Logos, the person of Jesus Christ, was my redemption from the feelings of inferiority."4 The Holy Spirit aided Dr. Oates through others and through scripture to "call no man your father on earth, for you have one father, who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). Through others and especially through scripture, the Holy Spirit called Wayne Oates to be who he really was. And the world is a better place for it.
I learned of others. He was called Brenning and he felt called of God to preach. Few agreed! His own pastor discouraged him and suggested library work. His high school guidance counselor offered no encouragement. His own family expressed hesitancy. Some discouraged him because he was short and he did not have a strong voice when most preachers in his area of backwoods Tennessee were known for their big, booming voices and authoritative presence. He made things no better in his first pulpit efforts when he, out of character, sought to stir up a fuss like a little banty rooster. His first effort in speech class at the Johnson Bible College resulted in the insensitive teacher blurting out, "Do it again. I didn't hear a word you said!" Brenning was so infuriated at the calloused remark that he angrily kicked over the $85 tape recorder, for which he had to pay.
So discouraged by the harsh judgment of others and his own lack of success, Brenning quit! For two years, he quit. I asked him once how he started back. "I sort of eased back into it," he said, encouraged by the words of two pastors from whom he sought advice. One pastor was T. O. Slaughter, who talked to young Brenning about "doing what you feel in your heart." Slaughter, a man of prayer, counseled him to be himself and not to listen to the naysayers. He encouraged him to do what he felt God had called him to do.
The other positive voice was that of George Hortzwaller. During their conversation, the older pastor suggested that young Brenning accompany him that day to a funeral and lead in prayer at the grave site. Brenning agreed. When they arrived at the cemetery, however, the people were leaving. Hortzwaller had arrived at the wrong grave site! He just passed off his mistake with the attitude, "Oh, well, I'll do better tomorrow."
Brenning told me that these two men were the voices that encouraged him to try again. Slaughter's "to do what is in your heart" and Hortzwaller's, "not to take yourself too seriously" were words that the Holy Spirit used to call young Brenning back to who he was. Well, he didn't do too badly. He continued his schooling and acquired a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt. He served as a missionary to Appalachia, a pastor and a professor, and is just recently "retired." All he did was to author over two dozen books, one of which revolutionized preaching theory and easily is the most influential book written in Homiletics in the last fifty years, if not the last century. Brenning not only became the best teacher of preachers in the world, but the most beloved by many and the most often quoted by all homileticians of his generation -- several generations in fact. No man of God has influenced me more or taught me more about overcoming that which we cannot control or doing something about that which we can. In his humility, he states about himself that every strength is a detour around a perceived weakness. Only Brenning now chooses to use his first name, the name of Fred -- Fred B. Craddock.
What if Dr. Craddock had not come back? Would the world have lost the genius of Fred B. Craddock? The world would be poorer for it. What if Dr. Craddock had chosen not to listen to Slaughter and Hortzwaller, his balcony people, to use Carlyle Mauney's term for encouragers? I think, and Paul would agree, that it was no less than the Holy Spirit, himself, who gave Fred the ability and the freedom to choose to which voices to listen. "The spirit bears witness...." The Holy Spirit works through scripture, events, divine urgings, expressions, and people, often, I am sure, even when they are unaware of their influence. I wonder if Slaughter and Hortzwaller even realized the gift that they helped to bring to the Kingdom Community?
I am under no false illusion that I belong in the same category of Fred Craddock and Wayne Oates, but, I, too, have had the Holy Spirit use others in my life to help deal with my own demons, especially with my feelings about my name. I still remember a conversation I had with Samford University professor, Dr. Sigurd Bryan, when I asked his advice about which seminary to attend. He concluded our talk by saying, "Well, Gary, you certainly have the name to be a Southern Baptist pastor."
"I beg your pardon?" I said with evident surprise.
"Yes," he remarked, "no one is more respected in the area of missionology than Dr. W. O. Carver who taught at Southern Seminary."
Six months later I visited Southern to check out the school and housing facilities. Five months after that, I enrolled for my first classes. When I walked into the registrar's office, the secretary looked and said, "Hello, Mr. Carver." I was dumbfounded.
"This is amazing," I said. "You have seen me only once and that was five months ago. Thousands of students have walked through these doors since then. You must have a wonderful memory for names."
"I do have a good memory," she laughed. "But you have to remember that you are standing on the W. O. Carver Campus."
I have never been ashamed of my name since. The Holy Spirit works not only to reveal God's truth to us but also gives us the ability to recognize that truth when we see it.
In her poem "Statement of Faith," Ann Weems reminds us of the many ways in which the Holy Spirit works.
We believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and in you and in me.
We believe the Holy Spirit has freed us to worship as a community.
We believe the Holy Spirit works through
balloons and ministers
daisies and wiggly children
clanging cymbals and silence
drama and the unexpected
choirs and banners
touching and praying
spontaneity and planning
faith and doubt
tears and laughter
leading and supporting
hugging and kneeling
dancing and stillness
applauding and giving
creativity and plodding
words and listening
holding and letting go
thank you and help me
Scripture and alleluias
agonizing and celebrating
accepting and caring
through you and through me
through Love.
We believe God's Holy Spirit lives in this community of dancing, hand-holding people where lines of age and politics and lifestyles are crossed.
We believe in praising God for Life.
We believe in responding to God's grace and love and justice for all people.
We believe in the poetry within each of us.
We believe in dreams and visions.
We believe in old people running and children leading.
We believe in the Kingdom of God within us.
We believe in Love.5
Henri Nouwen reminds us that we must not only cease to listen to what the world says about us, but to listen more intently to what God says about us. "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs -- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" (vv. 16-17 NIV). When we listen to the Holy Spirit, we are assured of our identity as God's child and as a joint heir with Jesus Christ that everything Jesus has in heaven today will be ours as well. Think of that! Everything Jesus has -- his joy, his love, his life, his happiness, his intimacy, and his knowledge of the Father -- one day shall be ours! All of the very blessings of Jesus in heaven will be ours. On earth so shall his sufferings be.
It was Evelyn Underhill who wrote of once being deathly sick. Her mother gave her a medicine that made her even more ill, and she wondered why they would give that to her when she already felt so bad. The next morning she was surprised because she was much improved. She recovered completely because of the medicine. She said it was her first encounter in life with an "unpleasant good." That is what the sufferings of Jesus are. They are an unpleasant good! They are something through which we go and something that God uses to make us more conformed to the image of his Son. The Holy Spirit uses all of the experiences of life to call us to who and whose we are in an effort to conform us more and more to the image of Christ.
Recently Christopher Nolan was given the prestigious British Whitbread Award for his autobiographical "novel" Under the Eye of the Clock. There is nothing spectacular about this latest recognition for this author/poet until you remember that he was born with severe brain damage and from infancy could only communicate with his eyes. The only way he can type is by means of a pen-like stick attached to his forehead. Each page takes twelve hours of slow, concentrated hard work. But what accounts for the triumph? At three years of age he said he faced the only spark within himself. He knew he was alive, wanted, and loved.6
Christopher Nolan refused to be a slave to a mistaken notion about himself. Instead, he listened to the truth about himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and exercised his freedom to choose to be what God called him to be. So can you!
"How great is the love of the Father lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God. And that is what we are" (1 John 3:1 NIV).
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1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994), p. 2.
2. Wayne E. Oates, The Struggle To Be Free (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), p. 15.
3. Op. cit., p. 29.
4. Op cit., p. 43.
5. Ann Weems, Reaching for Rainbows (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980), p. 17.
6. James W. Cox, Best Sermons II (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989), p. 295.
