SERMON OF JANUARY 24, 2010
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
"Re-Membering our Mission”
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; I Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 4:14-21
There’s a footbridge that spans the Wellend River, just before it empties into the Niagara River and heads toward the Falls. At the footbridge the water is calm and navigable, but danger lurks ahead.
There’s a sign attached to the posts of the bridge for boaters. The sign asks two questions:
“Do you have an anchor?” And - “Do you know how to use it?”
Do you have an anchor in your life? And do you know how to use it?
Two very important questions for each of us in our own lives and in our life together as members of a Christian community.
Both Jews and Christians have been called people of the Book. Whenever and wherever they gather to worship there comes a time to listen to the Book – a time to listen to God’s Word as it’s spoken on the pages of Scripture – a time to remember that God’s Word is the anchor in our lives as people of faith – individually and in community with one another.
For Christians God’s Word isn’t just found on the pages of Scripture but in the person of Jesus – the Word, as John tells us, that “became flesh and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
While Christians, like Jews, are people of the Book they are also people of the person from Nazareth whose mission in the world is their mission in the world.
Our church leadership will be proposing to our congregation at our Annual Meeting two weeks from today that we make mission our focus for 2010.
Doing this means being clear about the mission of our congregation and clear about making our mission the driving force behind all that we do.
In other words, we need to know that we have an anchor and we need to know how to use it.
Anchoring our life together in God’s Word (as its found both in the pages of the Bible and in the person of Jesus) means re-membering God’s Word to us.
Our first reading today describes a time in the history of God’s people when they desperately needed to remember God’s Word to them.
It was the year 548 BCE. The people of Israel had been in exile in Babylon for 50 years. When the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians they were allowed to return home to Jerusalem. They found the city and the temple in ruins. Their first task was to rebuild the wall that surrounded the city. They did this under the leadership of their governor, Nehemiah.
Today’s text takes place a week after the wall was finished, on the first day of the seventh month – a day that would later become New Year’s Day or Rosh Hashanah.
The entire community gathered in one place to hear the first public reading from God’s Word in over 50 years. They brought what may well have been the only surviving book of the Law of Moses – the Torah – the first five books of our Bible.
Ezra, a scribe and priest, took the book, which would have been a scroll, and read to the people. Here’s how the story is told.
Liturgist reads Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10.
Something very powerful happened that day in Jerusalem over 2500 years ago. The people of Israel remembered God’s Word to them. They remembered that their life together was anchored in God’s Word as it was read to them in worship.
Despite their 50 years in exile, when they’d been separated from all that had given their lives meaning, purpose and hope, they now remembered God’s Word and in so doing they were re-membered as a community of faith. Do you see what I mean?
In hearing Ezra read from the Torah and having the Levites interpret what was read, they were re-membered as a community of faith. Their relationship with God and their relationships with one another were reaffirmed. And all they could do was weep.
Joy was the wellspring for their weeping. For they knew once again that “the joy of the Lord was their strength.” Joy at knowing God’s presence in their lives and God’s love for them. Joy at being in community with one another. Joy with remembering that God’s Word was the anchor for their life together. They marked their joy by sharing a festive meal together.
In eating together they were also told to send portions of their food and drink to “those for whom nothing is prepared” – the poor – the sojourners – the immigrants in their midst. They couldn’t fully find their strength in the joy of the Lord without sharing their joy with those in need.
I’d been away from the church for many years. Through high school, college, and beyond I was a Christmas and Easter Christian, without being connected to any community of faith. For reasons that only God fully understands I started going back to church. I slipped into a back pew of a church in the city where I was working at the time.
The first few Sundays not much of anything seemed to happen, other than it felt right to be there.
Then one Sunday the Scripture for the day included the verse that you see held up on signs in the end zone at football games. When the liturgist read the words that began, “For God so loved the world…” I knew, for the first time in my life, that God’s love for the world revealed in Jesus included me. Tears came to my eyes and somehow I knew that the “joy of the Lord was my strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)
That day I remembered God’s Word and I was re-membered into the mission of God in the world. I knew I had an anchor. I then needed to figure out how to use it.
I needed to find my place within the community called the church – within the community that Paul calls the body of Christ.
Let’s listen to how Paul describes this body in another passage from God’s Word.
Liturgist reads I Corinthians 12:12-31a.
We are called to be the Body of the Word that became flesh – the Body of Christ in the world – one Body with many members.
Re-membering our mission as the Body of Christ means remembering that God calls us – each of us - not just to be members of a church but ministers on a mission.
The Holy Spirit gives each of us something to do for God.
The Holy Spirit shows us how to use our anchor.
We can only do this in community with others because what God is trying to get done in the world is far bigger and far bolder than any of us can manage on our own.
Each member of the Body of Christ, like each member of the human body, has an essential and significant role to play – an essential and significant ministry within the broader mission of the church. There is no appendix in the Body of Christ. No one member of Christ’s body can be removed without diminishing the functioning and faithfulness of the body. As we learned last week, from a verse preceding today’s text: “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
An older man was standing outside a magnificent European cathedral that had just been built. He was admiring the cathedral when a young girl walked up and asked him, “Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” he replied.
“I’m glad,” said the girl, “I helped build it.”
“You’re awfully small,” said the man, “and it’s a very large building. Tell me, what did you do?”
“My father is a bricklayer,” said the girl. “He worked on this church and every day I brought him his lunch.”
Some of us may not be sure about our ministry within the Body of Christ. We may not be sure if we’re an eye, an ear, a hand or a foot. We may not be sure if we’re a bricklayer, a lunch-bringer, a teacher, a healer or a leader in some other way.
Re-membering our mission as the Body of Christ here at Pilgrim-St. Luke’s – means remembering God’s Word of love to each of us (remembering that we have an anchor).
Secondly, re-membering our mission means making sure we each know our place in the Body of Christ – our role in what God is trying to get done in the world (remembering that we have an anchor and knowing how to use it).
Finally, re-membering our mission means remembering that our mission is God’s mission as it’s revealed in the mission of Jesus in the 4th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
This story takes place after the baptism of Jesus and after the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan. One of these temptations was to turn a stone into a loaf of bread. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and yet he refused this temptation to prove that he was the Son of God by saying, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)
Remembering God’s Word (remembering his anchor), and remembering his own mission (remembering how to use it) was as essential for Jesus as it is for us.
Listen now to how Jesus defines his mission at the beginning of his ministry.
Luke 4:14-21 – Tell the Story
“Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus’ ministry was Scripture-based and Spirit led. Whether the particular reading from the prophet Isaiah was one Jesus chose, one that was chosen for him, or one that just happened to be the reading for the day, we’ll never know.
What we do know is that this text from Isaiah is the closest we’ll ever get to having Jesus present his own personal mission statement – his own personal assessment of what God was trying to get done in the world through him.
If we are going to re-member our mission as the Body of Jesus at work in the world, we can’t do so without putting this passage at the heart of who God calls us to be and what God calls us to do as a community “that brings Good News to the poor, proclaims release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and sets free those who are oppressed.”
Several years ago Rick Warren wrote a hugely popular book called The Purpose Driven Life. In it he attempts to answer the question we all have – “What on earth are we here for?” He spells out 5 different purposes for each of our lives. The fifth and final purpose affirms that “we were made for a mission.” Throughout the book there are 787 citations from Scripture. And yet, not once is there a reference to Luke 4:14-21.
Not once is there a reference to the mission of Jesus as he himself defines it in these words from Isaiah.
This isn’t because Rick Warren doesn’t know his Bible. It’s because he, like most American Christians, would just as soon avoid challenging the structures of our society that create poverty, keep people poor and continue to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin – their race, their class, their sexual orientation, their mental health, their physical condition.
I heard a woman this week describe what happened to her not long ago returning to Chicago, from a vacation in Mexico. Rita Aguilar told about being pulled over by a State Trooper going through Indiana. Her husband was driving and was accused of weaving back and forth. With his gun drawn the trooper made her and her husband get out of their car and into his squad car. In matter of moments there were 10 other troopers on the scene. They were looking for drugs. It was well over an hour before Rita and her husband were allowed to go on their way.
Their only offense was “driving while Mexican.” It’s the same offense of many in our community who are pulled over for DWB “driving while Black.”
One of the things that 30 years of ministry in East Harlem and Buffalo has taught me beyond any reasonable doubt is that even in a nation that is built on the conviction that we offer “liberty and justice for all” the playing field is far from level.
Electing a Black President doesn’t mean there is equal opportunity for Black Americans or that we live in a post-racial nation.
As many people celebrate the apparent defeat of health care reform legislation I suggest that they talk to any of their 46 million neighbors who have no health insurance or any of the millions of families who will file for bankruptcy this year because they can’t pay their medical bills.
The Erie County Executive, saying that there is no longer money available, is working to raise the income level for Erie County families to be eligible for subsidized child care. This will mean 100’s of working people will have to leave their jobs because child care will become unaffordable. We can’t tell people they have to go from welfare to work and then turn around and punish them for do so.
There is no way that this proposed change can be construed as Good News for the poor.
As a congregation we could stay on the sidelines when it comes to acting in the public arena.
We could give out food without asking why growing numbers of people in our community are going hungry.
We could deny that “justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public” but if we do we won’t be sharing in Jesus’ mission in the world as he defines it. (I May Not Get There with You – The True MLK, Jr. Michael Eric Dyson, p. 132)
As William Sloane Coffin understood, “To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make that person (him) an object of compassion is be sentimental rather than loving.” (Credo by WS Coffin, p.23)
When Jesus told his hometown parishioners that he himself was the fulfillment of God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah that would be the beginning of his getting in all sorts of trouble.
We can’t be bring Good News to the poor and let the oppressed go free without getting in all sorts of trouble with those for whom the current structures of our society are working just fine.
The anchor for our mission as a community of faith is God’s Word of love spoken to each of us in Jesus Christ.
We use this anchor by naming and claiming our place in the Body of Christ – our role in what God is trying to get done in the world.
In doing this we re-member our mission – if we also commit ourselves to sharing in the mission of Jesus by ”doing justice” as well as “loving kindness” in our daily walk with God!
Amen!
