We Are The Champions
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
The year I knew Jack, one of the cattle he had raised was awarded the title "State Champion Steer." The big brown-eyed animal, nonchalantly chewing straw, unaware of his celebrity status, was adorned with a blue ribbon, purchased by the highest bidder, slaughtered, sliced up into steaks and roasts, and ground up into burgers.
The year I knew Jack, he was a champion among farmers, but he was also a champion at his church. When an interim pastor began serving at Jack's church that year, he immediately recognized Jack's energy and willingness. He took Jack under his wing. He bestowed upon Jack the great praise he sensed Jack craved. The interim pastor whispered into Jack's ear all the world champion ideas he had developed over the span of his forty years of ministry. Superb ideas that they were, the congregation loved them and quickly came to love their interim pastor who had come up with them. And they loved Jack who carried them out.
Jack ran the youth program. Jack's daughter took over the janitor's position, and whenever she found something that needed fixing, Jack came to the rescue and fixed it and paid for the parts out of his own pocket.
A sudden onset of a severe illness forced the interim pastor to retire a month before Christmas. Jack was left in charge of the first annual tree trimming party. As president of the congregation, Jack was in charge of writing the new budget, assembling a committee to call a new pastor, and running the annual meeting. It seemed to many in the congregation like divine providence that Jack was in charge. Who else but Jack could handle it all? He was such a winsome fellow -- so reasonable, so calm -- a man who'd give you the shirt off his back, a man perfectly prepared to cope with all these challenges by his service on numerous professional boards and commissions, a man renowned among his professional peers, a man who had raised a state champion steer.
It was then that the Nitpickers began to attack Jack. At the annual meeting of the congregation, a few Nitpickers began sniping at Jack. In the absence of the interim pastor, whose presence might have persuaded them into behaving better, the Nitpickers let Jack have it: the ladies' toilet never seemed to work; the window sills were always dusty; the youth never swept the grass cuttings off the walk and always left the drain pipe turned up, causing the basement to flood.
Jack's hired man stood up for Jack, delivering a heartfelt, stirring speech about all the tremendous contributions Jack had made to the congregation and about what a good man Jack was and about how shameful it was that there were some people who dared attack Jack after all he had done.
That spring, Jack showed up with a van full of youth at the university sixty miles away for the synod youth event. On the wrong weekend.
The Nitpickers said, "We told you so."
"Jack's under a lot of stress," his hired man explained to anyone who would listen. "I should know," said Jack's hired man, "I've been working for him night and day."
That summer the youth continued to forget to sweep the grass off the walk, and so people tracked clods of grass into church on Sunday morning. The youth also kept leaving the drainpipe turned up after cutting the grass, and one stormy night the church basement flooded. The next Sunday, the church smelled like a moldy tent. The ranks of the Nitpickers began to swell.
A couple of weeks later, the ladies aide found Jack's daughter and her boyfriend together in the church. They were not cleaning. They were not worshiping. They were not clothed.
Finally, Jack's wife moved out under scandalously suspicious circumstances involving the state police and an unmarried woman Jack had hired to milk his goats.
The Nitpickers stormed the next council meeting, which Jack just happened to miss. The Nitpickers told the council they wanted nothing to do with Jack anymore, that he should be impeached or imprisoned or impaled. The argument went on deep into the night. No decision was reached. Jack's final official act saved the council the trouble of having to do anything. He resigned from council and did not show up for worship again for five years.
How could Jack have gone from gifted champion of the church to dead meat in the course of less than a year?
In the second lesson, the apostle Paul explains that all Christians have gifts: gifts of equal value, gifts equally necessary for the accomplishment of God's agenda, gifts given to everybody to present "as a living sacrifice," as "an act of spiritual worship" for the accomplishment of God's agenda.
But when the interim pastor arrived, he began relying almost entirely on Jack's gifts. He was thinking of accomplishing his own agenda: trotting out all his world champion ideas in the little country church he had always wanted to serve. He pushed Jack to champion all his projects without much concern for the fact that Jack already had his hands full at home. He ignored the trouble brewing in Jack's life. He was not thinking with sober judgment.
Eagerly devouring the interim pastor's praise, Jack launched full tilt into doing everything the pastor suggested -- no matter what the cost. The cost was tremendous.
Despite the fact that Jack wore out his welcome at his church, despite the fact that his family life was torn apart with strife and divorce, Jack did not regret what he had tried to do. He was very proud to have been the interim pastor's right-hand man. Not only did Jack enjoy the interim pastor's attention, Jack enjoyed how the congregation had admired him for all the things he had been doing. Jack told me that this tragic story was a story about the good guys versus the bad guys. Jack believed he was the good guy, the hero, the champion, and he felt the members of the congregation were the bad guys. The way Jack explained it to me, he felt he had been crucified just like Jesus. He had just been doing God's work and got killed for it.
Jack wasn't thinking with sober judgment, either. He had excused all his own sins and failings by thinking too highly of himself. At the peak of his power, Jack wasn't anxious to share all the accolades and limelight with others. He didn't often ask for or welcome the gifts of the other members of the congregation. It wasn't so much that the Nitpickers crucified him, as it was that Jack had crucified himself.
Finally, the congregation was all too willing to sit back and watch it all happen. They weren't particularly eager to share their gifts. They said stuff like this to themselves: Hey, Jack is doing fine handling everything. If Jack's going to do everything, I don't have to anything. One less evening out for me! No one came up to Jack and said, "Hey Jack, I can supervise those youth when they cut the grass." No one volunteered to take the youth to the youth gathering. It was a lot easier to join the Nitpickers than it was to "present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice" to accomplish the ministry at hand. It was a lot easier to join the Nitpickers and tell Jack's story as if it were a story of a good congregation versus the bad guy Jack.
But this story really isn't a story about the good guys versus the bad guys.
The world loves to tell good guys versus bad guys stories. The good guys versus the bad guys story makes thrilling movies, marketable nightly news, and compelling foreign policy. The deceptive thing about these kinds of stories is that they obscure our responsibility for troubles that arise. The dangerous thing about these kinds of stories is that they encourage us to blame and attack others for troubles that arise. In Jack's congregation, the result was tragic enough. On the world stage, national leaders who develop foreign policy driven by this story may too hastily place blame for troubles that arise and rush to launch pre-emptive attacks that create more enemies than they eliminate.
Jack's story is not a simple good guys versus bad guys story. Jack wasn't Jesus and the congregation wasn't an evil mob of Nitpickers. Yet, neither was Jack the devil, and the congregation his innocent victims. Jack's story is paradoxical. This paradoxical understanding of reality is consonant with Martin Luther's belief that we are simul iustus et peccatur -- simultaneously justified and precious in God's sight and sinful, simultaneously saints and sinners, simultaneously good guys and bad guys.
If we are simultaneously good guys and bad guys, the apostle Paul offers us sound advice when he encouraged the members of the church in Rome not to think of themselves more highly than they ought. If we are simultaneously good guys and bad guys, the apostle Paul offers us sound advice when he encouraged the Romans not to be conformed to the world and its way of telling stories.
There is more than sound advice in the lesson. The apostle Paul offers us hope when we are caught up in good guys versus bad guys stories. In these kinds of stories, the characters are conformed to and locked in to pretty established roles; the plot is pretty predictable: The good guys are the heroes and champions and the bad guys lose. The Christian story is infinitely different. According to the apostle Paul elsewhere in his letter to the church in Rome: The Christian story reminds us that while we were weak, ungodly, sinners and enemies of God, while we were the bad guys, Christ died for us to reconcile us to God, to transform our status from bad guys to justified and precious children in God's sight. In the Christian story, the truly good guys are always discovering they have been thinking of themselves more highly than they ought. In the Christian story, we're always discovering ways in which we are really the bad guys. Yet, through the gracious forgiving love of God, the bad guys can always be "transformed by the renewing of [their] minds" and can again be regarded by God as good guys.
Finally, when we are so weak that we can no longer offer our gifts as a living sacrifice for the accomplishment of God's agenda, Christ doesn't label us "bad guys." Think of people with Alzheimer's. Think of people in comas. Think of people who are severely developmentally disabled. They are still members of Christ's body. Christ would not chop off one of these members any more than we would chop off our own finger. There is for even the weakest member one last transformation hidden in the reality of their baptism. The apostle Paul wrote elsewhere in his letter to Rome:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
-- Romans 6:3-4Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
-- Romans 6:3-4
This story is so unlike the world's way of telling stories. The Messiah was crucified as a bad guy. Christ was a Lamb who was slain, just like a State Champion Steer. But our Champion was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. So too shall the whole body of Christ and all his weakest members be raised.
And Jack? Yes, Jack is back. Walking in newness of life. He married the woman he hired to milk the goats. He's on the council again, and so far I've heard nothing but good things about him. Amen.
The year I knew Jack, he was a champion among farmers, but he was also a champion at his church. When an interim pastor began serving at Jack's church that year, he immediately recognized Jack's energy and willingness. He took Jack under his wing. He bestowed upon Jack the great praise he sensed Jack craved. The interim pastor whispered into Jack's ear all the world champion ideas he had developed over the span of his forty years of ministry. Superb ideas that they were, the congregation loved them and quickly came to love their interim pastor who had come up with them. And they loved Jack who carried them out.
Jack ran the youth program. Jack's daughter took over the janitor's position, and whenever she found something that needed fixing, Jack came to the rescue and fixed it and paid for the parts out of his own pocket.
A sudden onset of a severe illness forced the interim pastor to retire a month before Christmas. Jack was left in charge of the first annual tree trimming party. As president of the congregation, Jack was in charge of writing the new budget, assembling a committee to call a new pastor, and running the annual meeting. It seemed to many in the congregation like divine providence that Jack was in charge. Who else but Jack could handle it all? He was such a winsome fellow -- so reasonable, so calm -- a man who'd give you the shirt off his back, a man perfectly prepared to cope with all these challenges by his service on numerous professional boards and commissions, a man renowned among his professional peers, a man who had raised a state champion steer.
It was then that the Nitpickers began to attack Jack. At the annual meeting of the congregation, a few Nitpickers began sniping at Jack. In the absence of the interim pastor, whose presence might have persuaded them into behaving better, the Nitpickers let Jack have it: the ladies' toilet never seemed to work; the window sills were always dusty; the youth never swept the grass cuttings off the walk and always left the drain pipe turned up, causing the basement to flood.
Jack's hired man stood up for Jack, delivering a heartfelt, stirring speech about all the tremendous contributions Jack had made to the congregation and about what a good man Jack was and about how shameful it was that there were some people who dared attack Jack after all he had done.
That spring, Jack showed up with a van full of youth at the university sixty miles away for the synod youth event. On the wrong weekend.
The Nitpickers said, "We told you so."
"Jack's under a lot of stress," his hired man explained to anyone who would listen. "I should know," said Jack's hired man, "I've been working for him night and day."
That summer the youth continued to forget to sweep the grass off the walk, and so people tracked clods of grass into church on Sunday morning. The youth also kept leaving the drainpipe turned up after cutting the grass, and one stormy night the church basement flooded. The next Sunday, the church smelled like a moldy tent. The ranks of the Nitpickers began to swell.
A couple of weeks later, the ladies aide found Jack's daughter and her boyfriend together in the church. They were not cleaning. They were not worshiping. They were not clothed.
Finally, Jack's wife moved out under scandalously suspicious circumstances involving the state police and an unmarried woman Jack had hired to milk his goats.
The Nitpickers stormed the next council meeting, which Jack just happened to miss. The Nitpickers told the council they wanted nothing to do with Jack anymore, that he should be impeached or imprisoned or impaled. The argument went on deep into the night. No decision was reached. Jack's final official act saved the council the trouble of having to do anything. He resigned from council and did not show up for worship again for five years.
How could Jack have gone from gifted champion of the church to dead meat in the course of less than a year?
In the second lesson, the apostle Paul explains that all Christians have gifts: gifts of equal value, gifts equally necessary for the accomplishment of God's agenda, gifts given to everybody to present "as a living sacrifice," as "an act of spiritual worship" for the accomplishment of God's agenda.
But when the interim pastor arrived, he began relying almost entirely on Jack's gifts. He was thinking of accomplishing his own agenda: trotting out all his world champion ideas in the little country church he had always wanted to serve. He pushed Jack to champion all his projects without much concern for the fact that Jack already had his hands full at home. He ignored the trouble brewing in Jack's life. He was not thinking with sober judgment.
Eagerly devouring the interim pastor's praise, Jack launched full tilt into doing everything the pastor suggested -- no matter what the cost. The cost was tremendous.
Despite the fact that Jack wore out his welcome at his church, despite the fact that his family life was torn apart with strife and divorce, Jack did not regret what he had tried to do. He was very proud to have been the interim pastor's right-hand man. Not only did Jack enjoy the interim pastor's attention, Jack enjoyed how the congregation had admired him for all the things he had been doing. Jack told me that this tragic story was a story about the good guys versus the bad guys. Jack believed he was the good guy, the hero, the champion, and he felt the members of the congregation were the bad guys. The way Jack explained it to me, he felt he had been crucified just like Jesus. He had just been doing God's work and got killed for it.
Jack wasn't thinking with sober judgment, either. He had excused all his own sins and failings by thinking too highly of himself. At the peak of his power, Jack wasn't anxious to share all the accolades and limelight with others. He didn't often ask for or welcome the gifts of the other members of the congregation. It wasn't so much that the Nitpickers crucified him, as it was that Jack had crucified himself.
Finally, the congregation was all too willing to sit back and watch it all happen. They weren't particularly eager to share their gifts. They said stuff like this to themselves: Hey, Jack is doing fine handling everything. If Jack's going to do everything, I don't have to anything. One less evening out for me! No one came up to Jack and said, "Hey Jack, I can supervise those youth when they cut the grass." No one volunteered to take the youth to the youth gathering. It was a lot easier to join the Nitpickers than it was to "present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice" to accomplish the ministry at hand. It was a lot easier to join the Nitpickers and tell Jack's story as if it were a story of a good congregation versus the bad guy Jack.
But this story really isn't a story about the good guys versus the bad guys.
The world loves to tell good guys versus bad guys stories. The good guys versus the bad guys story makes thrilling movies, marketable nightly news, and compelling foreign policy. The deceptive thing about these kinds of stories is that they obscure our responsibility for troubles that arise. The dangerous thing about these kinds of stories is that they encourage us to blame and attack others for troubles that arise. In Jack's congregation, the result was tragic enough. On the world stage, national leaders who develop foreign policy driven by this story may too hastily place blame for troubles that arise and rush to launch pre-emptive attacks that create more enemies than they eliminate.
Jack's story is not a simple good guys versus bad guys story. Jack wasn't Jesus and the congregation wasn't an evil mob of Nitpickers. Yet, neither was Jack the devil, and the congregation his innocent victims. Jack's story is paradoxical. This paradoxical understanding of reality is consonant with Martin Luther's belief that we are simul iustus et peccatur -- simultaneously justified and precious in God's sight and sinful, simultaneously saints and sinners, simultaneously good guys and bad guys.
If we are simultaneously good guys and bad guys, the apostle Paul offers us sound advice when he encouraged the members of the church in Rome not to think of themselves more highly than they ought. If we are simultaneously good guys and bad guys, the apostle Paul offers us sound advice when he encouraged the Romans not to be conformed to the world and its way of telling stories.
There is more than sound advice in the lesson. The apostle Paul offers us hope when we are caught up in good guys versus bad guys stories. In these kinds of stories, the characters are conformed to and locked in to pretty established roles; the plot is pretty predictable: The good guys are the heroes and champions and the bad guys lose. The Christian story is infinitely different. According to the apostle Paul elsewhere in his letter to the church in Rome: The Christian story reminds us that while we were weak, ungodly, sinners and enemies of God, while we were the bad guys, Christ died for us to reconcile us to God, to transform our status from bad guys to justified and precious children in God's sight. In the Christian story, the truly good guys are always discovering they have been thinking of themselves more highly than they ought. In the Christian story, we're always discovering ways in which we are really the bad guys. Yet, through the gracious forgiving love of God, the bad guys can always be "transformed by the renewing of [their] minds" and can again be regarded by God as good guys.
Finally, when we are so weak that we can no longer offer our gifts as a living sacrifice for the accomplishment of God's agenda, Christ doesn't label us "bad guys." Think of people with Alzheimer's. Think of people in comas. Think of people who are severely developmentally disabled. They are still members of Christ's body. Christ would not chop off one of these members any more than we would chop off our own finger. There is for even the weakest member one last transformation hidden in the reality of their baptism. The apostle Paul wrote elsewhere in his letter to Rome:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
-- Romans 6:3-4Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
-- Romans 6:3-4
This story is so unlike the world's way of telling stories. The Messiah was crucified as a bad guy. Christ was a Lamb who was slain, just like a State Champion Steer. But our Champion was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. So too shall the whole body of Christ and all his weakest members be raised.
And Jack? Yes, Jack is back. Walking in newness of life. He married the woman he hired to milk the goats. He's on the council again, and so far I've heard nothing but good things about him. Amen.
