My First Sermon

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to give the message at my home church Albright UMC, down in Phoenix. The pastor was at annual conference and asked if I would like to fill in; I'm very thankful that she gave me this opportunity, it was a wonderful experience. So, yesterday morning at about 10:30 I gave my first sermon. For you LCMers, a lot of this may sound familiar...  Here's the text to what I said on Sunday, hope you enjoy. 

I haven’t been to seminary. I’m not a superstar theologian. I haven’t spent a year in the Peace Corps, and I haven’t endured some great hardship that led me to a grand understanding of the divine. They won’t be making a movie out of my story anytime soon-- though it’s young, so I suppose there’s still time. What I’m going to say today, are some questions I’ve asked, and the conclusions I’ve come to, from reading, talking with my friends and family and of course from prayer. In his book, The Orthodox Heretic, Peter Rollins says: “the more carefully one speaks of one’s own journey, the more universal the message becomes.”

So, here goes.

There’s a little blue building behind the School of Music on campus in Flagstaff that is home for several small churches, one of them is Lutheran Campus Ministries, the church I’ve been attending. Right after one of our services, I signed up for a mission trip to New Orleans for an “alternative Spring Break.” About 30 of us went on the trip and we stayed in a house that was maybe the size of the fellowship hall, had 2 bathrooms. Needless to say, we were cozy and got to know each other pretty well by the end of the trip. I learned how to sheet rock with a team of my peers; I also learned how to listen to a contractor tell us how we had learned to sheet rock incorrectly; Consequentially, I learned how to take down sheet rock; And of course, I learned how to put sheet rock back on correctly—or close enough. We played music for morning chapel and we participated in bible studies at night. It was in New Orleans, among sheet rocking and re-sheet rocking Ms. Barbara’s gutted house and among a community of my peers, that I felt closer to God than at any other point in my life. In this closeness, I found myself asking questions. A few of us stayed up until 2 in the morning with our pastor, having heavy theological discussion, it was great. New Orleans ignited my spiritual curiosity. And when I returned, I was still asking questions.

Where can I find God? What is God calling me to do in this life? Why is it easier to find God in some places and more difficult in others? Why did I feel God’s presence so much more in New Orleans than anywhere else? Where can I find God?

Do you know what I mean by “find God”? Many people find God in nature—the magnitude of the mountains, or the metamorphosis of a butterfly lead them to insist that there must be some great Divine Being behind it all. Perhaps in scripture—when its words offer clarity or solace in a specific time of tribulation. Perhaps in other people—when a friend drops a seemingly meaningless comment that somehow transcends the current conversation and speaks to your heart directly. Perhaps in the “still small voice”—the nudge in your conscience that assures you that talking with that homeless man is a good idea. [GRANDPA STORY-holy spirit and salsa]

The possibilities are numerous. There is a problem with the wording of this conundrum of “finding God”. Finding God, implies that He is lost. And we’ve gone looking to find Him, and see where we can tap Him into life today. This is a rather patronizing view of the Father don’t you think?

I had found God in New Orleans, or at least that’s when and where his presence was most prevalent to me. Why was this? In an effort to understand, I started to quantify and categorize my time with God. When did I feel close to God? When did I feel distant? I’m a very visual person, so my metaphoric image was that of a black and white timeline. Black would represent all my time dedicated to societal obligations—school, friends, family, etc. White would represent all my time dedicated to God (by dedicated to God I mean: reading the bible, going to church, journaling, praying, etc.). Well where I had hoped to have a barcode, I had a black box. Where I had hoped to have a Zebra, I had a black stallion. And where I had hoped to have a shiny baby grand…, I had a sooty piano (sorry Mom).

Well, I’m sure you’ve seen the problem with this already. There were never any truly black sections in my timeline; just because I had so little spiritual awareness in the “black” sections, didn’t mean that God wasn’t there. I wasn’t looking through the correct lens. God has always been there, weaving through our lives, creating a gray timeline. It wasn’t that God wasn’t revealing something to me, or that he wasn’t working in my life, it was that he wasn’t smacking me in the face with what he was doing. But if we use a different lens; instead of how we can get God into our heads and our lives, let’s reverse it: how can we get into God? Instead of trying to grasp Him in understanding, allow ourselves to be grasped.

It’s in this immersion INTO God that we can “find” Him. Frankly, He’s there already, in overwhelming abundance, whether we’re aware of it or not. So how can we be more conscience of his presence and in so doing increase our “grayness”? Maybe we spend more time with God throughout the day; we can do a devotional at breakfast, take short prayer breaks at work and read the bible before we go to bed. In other words, we can drop God into little snippits of our day, when it’s convenient. That just makes the black and white lines thinner. How can we mesh our hectic lives into God, so that our timeline is truly gray?

In a recent interview, Billy Graham said that he wished he hadn’t used the term personal relationship with God. It put too much emphasis on the self, and not enough on the community, he said. We are a social species; it’s built into our very DNA, we need to interact with others. To be immersed in God means that our daily interactions need to be Godly. Now does this mean that we need to evangelize and try to save the planet before judgment day? I don’t think so. It means we need to show His love to others, all the time.

Love, has always been a rather fluffy and unrealistic term for me. We throw around that word a lot: I loved that movie! I love daisies. I loooove that color on you, it brings out the color in your eyes. I love it! I’m talking about the kind of love Jesus came to teach. I can’t be best friends with everyone, and I can’t love everyone I meet. I’m not a radical lover like Jesus; I don’t hang out with the tax collectors or lepers, the poor or the imprisoned. It’s so mushy and sappy and flowery to love everybody, all the time. How the heck can we love others?

Loving people doesn’t have to be sunshine and flowers. It can be more than donating 10% of your income to the church. It can be more than hugs and smiles; it can be more than buying the homeless man a lunch; and it can be more than sheet rocking. So what can we do in our everyday lives to love or better others? Loving is nitty gritty.

Loving can be tolerance for others. It can be refusing to talk about someone behind their back. It can be keeping the sarcastic joke to yourself. It can be saying hello with a smile to that annoying guy at work that just ticks you off. It can be a thoughtful apology. It can be buying the homeless man a lunch, and then eating WITH him. Loving others doesn’t need to be put on a high and mighty and unattainable pedestal; it can, however, be prioritized and infused into everyday life.

[Mat. 25: 35-40]
In the scripture from Matthew, Jesus talks about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. These are applicable in the literal; these are things we do for our homeless shelters right? But what if we go farther than the literal? Surely, the people that are hungry, can be in need of much more than a lunch. And might the people that are naked need more love than our old clothes?

I like the wording in the last two categories. “I was sick and you visited me.” Not I was sick and you came to heal me; or, I was sick and you came to tell me that getting sick is God’s way of trying to teach me a lesson. But you visited me.

“I was in prison and you came to Me.” Not I was in prison and you brought me some cookies and explained that the justice system is indeed just and I am doing the righteous thing by serving my time here. But you came to me.

These are somewhat passive words—visit me and came to me; the message in action is offering your presence to one in need. It heavily stresses personal interaction. Loving others can be sitting with someone who is sick and just listening to them; it can be sitting with the man in prison and listening to him. Don’t get me wrong, the homeless and the sick need material goods for their benefit, but what if we gave them the personal interaction they might need too—our love. God’s love.

If the hospitals and prisons give you the heebie-jeebies, surely this message can transcend the literal words of its text. There are people in our everyday lives that are “sick” or in “prison”. Sick with loneliness or imprisoned by addiction. We aren’t always called to heal them or break them free; we are called to love them; often, this means just being there.

[1 Cor. 13: 1-3]
The scripture from Corinthians can be paraphrased very succinctly: It doesn’t matter what you do, if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can give 12 million dollars to charity, but if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can make a gazillion cookies for the inmates, but if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. We can be the smartest person in the world! But if it’s without love, it doesn’t matter. By giving ourselves and our love to others, we strive to answer the work for which God is calling us, and in so doing, we increase our Grayness with God. Giving ourselves in love helps others with their problems and helps us become closer with God—increasing the gray in our timeline. If it’s without love, it doesn’t matter.

I’d like to close with a parable from Peter Rollins’ book, The Orthodox Heretic… [Chapter 1-No Conviction]

So, what would your sentence be?