Mañana

Before we get started, this is my last Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas so "Time Loves a Hero" will be taking a short hiatus. Starting in about a month, I will be serving the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas. As soon as I get to Marshall, "Time Loves a Hero" will return with new postings.

This is a bittersweet day for me. May God bless us all.

So with no further ado, this sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 29, 2010, the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

May the words of my mouth and the mediations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The Society of Friends, Quakers, have a way of helping members seek discernment on how to proceed with keenly felt concerns and dilemmas, the clearness committee. The committee, which is chosen by the caller, is a group of close, wise, and honest friends who come together and spend time waiting in silence and asking questions. They do not give advice or criticize. They do not tell their own stories or judge the caller. The group asks honest, probing, caring, challenging, open, unloaded questions. The questions are not asked for the curiosity of the questioner, but for the sake of the one seeking clarity.

In “Let Your Life Speak,” Parker Palmer tells this story about asking for help discerning a vocational prospect with a clearness committee. He had just received an opportunity to become president of a small educational institution. As Palmer tells the story, he notes that he did not really convene the group for clarity; what he had done is call his friends together to brag about being offered a great job.

“For a while, the questions were easy, at least for a dreamer like me: What is your vision for this institution? What is its mission in the larger society? How would you change the curriculum? How would you handle decision making? What about dealing with conflict?

Halfway into the process, someone asked a question that sounded easier yet turned out to be very hard: ‘What would you like most about being president?’

The simplicity of that question loosed me from my head and lowered me into my heart.”

Palmer then goes on in fits and starts trying to answer the question. But he doesn’t answer the question. He tells them what he would not like about being president of the institution. He is gently guided back to the question by the committee several times. Returning to Palmer’s text…

“Once again the questioner called me back to the original question. But this time I felt compelled to give the only honest answer I possessed an answer that came from the very bottom of my barrel, an answer that appalled even me as I spoke it.

“‘Well,’ said I, in the smallest voice I possess, ‘I guess what I would like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it.’

“Finally [after a long, contemplative silence] my questioner broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up—and cracked me open: ‘Parker,’ he said, ‘can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?’”[1]

Being humbled, well, that’s a focus of our gospel reading today isn’t it? Palmer was laid bare by his clearness committee. They asked the right questions, and finally he came to the right answer, not a flattering one, but the right one all the same.

Parker tried to use the clearness committee to exalt himself; sharing with his friends the great job he had been offered. Instead he was humbled, in his own words he was cracked open by the questions the committee asked.

There is a very important thing about the language being used in our gospel reading today that I want to share; something our it shares with Palmer’s last sentence. These words in this portion of Palmer’s text, cracked open; and these words from verse eleven, exalt, be humbled, humble, and be exalted; are verbs. One more time, these are verbs.

Adjectives like humble and exalted do not carry the same literary weight as the verbal forms, even though they look exactly the same to us in English. Adjectives describe states of being. They describe conditions. The verbs, they perform the actions that cause the conditions. It may not seem like such a big difference, but it comes up in our gospel reading.

Now, the feelings evoked by the adjectives, words that add to the sentence, are important. They are important to help define, help sharpen what is going on in the sentence. They help evoke a passion. They help define the action and the one who is either doing the action or having the action done to them. I don’t want anyone to think that the emotions and the feelings are not important, but the point I’m making is that the emotions and the feelings are caused by the action. In an effective way, the verb always precedes the modifier.

So that’s the reason for the English lesson. In verse eleven, Jesus is not describing how the people who take banquet seats that do not suit them will feel. He describes what will happen to people who take banquet seats that do not suit them.

Jesus gives us some advice. The first is to always select a less honorable seat, that way you will not be humbled by a host that moves you down the table and you may be raised to a better place at the table if the master wishes.

That’s another important element of these particular verbs, to humble and to exalt; they deal with reversal of fortune. By both of these verbs your status will shift, the only question is if you will be lifted up or cast down.

Palmer offers these words on being humbled as a verb which I find useful:

I had read somewhere that humility is central to the spiritual life, which seemed like a good idea to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble! What I did not know is that for some of us the path to humility goes through humiliation—being brought low, unable to function, stripped of pretenses and defenses, feeling fraudulent, empty, useless—that allows us to regrow our lives from the humus of common ground.

The spiritual journey is full of paradoxes, and one of them is that the humiliation that brings us down -- down to ground on which it is safe to stand and to fall -- eventually takes us to a firmer and fuller sense of self. When people ask me how it felt to emerge from depression, I can give only one answer: I felt at home in my own skin and at home on the face of the earth, for the first time.[2]

Our prayer for illumination offered these words: “Teach us to walk the path he prepared for us so that we might take a place at the table with all who seek the joy of his kingdom.” Our reading from Hebrews offers us words about walking in God’s path:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can say with confidence:

“The Lord is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”

Through [Jesus], then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

These last two sentences, “let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise” and “do not neglect to do good and share” are particularly timely today.

A little more than five years ago, I came to this part of the body of Christ with a newly minted Masters of Divinity degree and little idea of what I was doing or would do next. Of course, I was not the first minister to feel this way, and that’s what I chose to share in my first sermon.[3] It began like this:

Gregory of Nazianzus was a priest and later a scholar in the early church. Initially he became a priest because of his father just happened to be the Bishop of Nazianzus. So Gregory was called to the ministry as well. Unfortunately for Gregory, he held the office of priest and the vows of ordination in such high esteem that immediately after he was ordained, he left. You see, Gregory felt that there was no way that he could hold to the vows of ordination, there was no way he could hold this office. He saw the priesthood as a sort of tyranny; a tyranny over himself and over his parish. He was so afraid of the ramifications of his ordination that he left the parish for five years. The monastic movement was beginning to gain steam at this time and young Gregory found the solitary lifestyle of the monk to be the best way to deal with his vocation.

To say the least, the people were steamed. I don’t blame them and I am sure that you don’t either. Nobody knows better than you what it’s like to have the Pastor Nominating Committee find someone for the church who then runs for the hills. But after five years, he was able to discern that he was called by God and the community to serve the body of Christ as their priest and he returned home. Imagine his homecoming, there is joy, but there must be some anger as well. It is only human. And Gregory preached, oh yes, he preached. And it was historically noted as one of the worst sermons ever heard in that church. Gregory preached a curt little sermon about why he avoided his responsibilities for five years. The congregation was not particularly sensitive toward his plight. Even if his reasons were valid, they did not fall on sympathetic ears.

I have always loved the story of Gregory the Great. He was a hero of the ancient church. His writings on baptism are still read today in church history and in seminaries. But this part of the story has always tickled me the most. This story always reminds me that one of the saints of the church started his illustrious vocation because it was the family business. Then as soon as he was ready, he was so awed and humbled by his vocation that he received the symbols of his ordination and promptly ran for the hills. Any ordained minister who can’t relate to this story should either reconsider their ordination or at least read the story again.

I ended my first sermon with these words:

Gregory of Nazianzus was right to take the prospect of ordination seriously. As in the times of Gregory, Matthew, and Paul, we are living in times which ministry is wrought with peril. But in light of all of this, we are called to tell the truth, sharing the good news of God; news which brings together the broken people who we are. We are called to be a light to a world which does not want to hear the message of the Gospel. And we now, as was done two thousand years ago, we now are called to take these steps together. We are called to rise every day and take these first steps again and again.

I am honored, and humbled, that you have called me and my family to join you in this journey as we take these, our first steps with you, together as the body of Christ. I promise that I will not leave you after the ordination service Saturday and join a monastery. We will take this journey together, and through the love of God we will proclaim the good news of our baptism into the life and death of Jesus Christ. And as the church we call all people to be reconciled to God and to one another.[4]

So on this, our final Sunday with this part of the body of Christ, let me say that it has been our privilege to be your pastor and pastor’s spouse, you have lifted us up. I am humbled that you selected me to join with you, to join with this part of the body of Christ as Minister of Word and Sacrament. I am honored that we took these steps together “to gather and welcome the broken people of the world and through God’s love make us one.”[5] I am overjoyed that you have graciously invited us into your homes and into your lives. It has been our honor and privilege to serve Christ in this time and place.

I pray that over the past five years we have told the truth, sharing the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ who brings together the broken people we too are. I pray that we have been a light to a world which does not want to hear the message of the Gospel. And as was done two thousand years ago, we have taken these steps together. We are called to rise every day and take these first steps again and again.

A friend once told me that while the traditional translation of the word mañana is “tomorrow,” another way to translate it is “not today.” If we massage it far enough, it could mean “another day.” This is the last time that I will lead worship on the Lord’s Day in this place. This is the last time I will preach from this pulpit. I will never again celebrate the Lord’s Supper from this table or baptize a new member from this font, but, in God’s glorious time, we will worship together again.

So let’s not say “good bye,” instead, let’s just say mañana; and until we meet again, amen.

[1] Palmer, Parker J., Let Your Life Speak, Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2000.
[2] Parker J. Palmer, “All the Way Down,” Weavings, September-October 1998, 40 retrieved from HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=843, retrieved August 28, 2010.
[3] The italicized portion is from my sermon “First Steps” at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas.
[4] Book of Confessions, 9.07
[5] This is the Mission Statement of the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas