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SERMONS

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 30, 2006

I am sure that you have had this experience in your life.

You have been busy looking for one thing, only to find something that you had forgotten that you should have been looking for.

“Oh, that is where I left the keys to the boat . . . that is where I hid that anniversary present a few years ago.”

Something forgotten is found.

There was such a moment for me standing in the head librarians office at The School of Theology in Sewanee, TN. I was working as a research assistant for some professors during seminary, and was there on other business. But as is so often with the case in the gifts we receive from God, I found that I was there for other reasons.

I glanced down at a sign on his desk. It did not read, “The buck stops here,” or anything like that; rather it said, “When we quit worrying about who gets the credit – there is no limit to what we can accomplish.”

I knew instantly that was why I had walked into that office, to see that sign, on that day; and to meet someone who lives by it.

A boil had swollen on the student body of the seminary, and especially with in my class. It was making our common life unbearable, painful, tiresome, and often depressing. Many of us, me included, were worrying a great deal about who was supposed to get the credit, who was going to receive the accolades for being the most spiritual, the most wise, and most ironically of all, the most humble. Who could dive for the lowest seat the fastest; it was all getting to be a bit sickening.

There is nothing more repulsive than competitiveness within a religious setting.

“But certainly, as seminarians, as would-be shepherds, you were above all that,” you might say.

But that would be as easy as saying that right here in our parish family we are certainly above all that sort of thing; that we have certainly matured beyond that.

You see, it should be obvious that the last place we should find jealousy, division, envy, anger, and competition would be among those who follow a man who never once spoke to the advantage of personal gain at the expense of others, especially within the community considered his flock.

I would like to share an old story with you.

“And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard . . . so Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell . . . and later Cain said to his brother, “Let us go out into the field . . . “ and you know the rest of the story.

We are the children of Cain: Seminarian, minister, baptized Christian, wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister, friend and colleague; only one brother returned from that field. Somewhere in the world every moment of the day Cain is out in the field killing Abel, because we are a people who are anxious about who is getting the credit.

The Scottish writer and minister George MacDonald, who was the inspiration for most of C.S. Lewis’ writing about faith, once said that “division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men and women than all of the infidelity and heresy that has ever been spoken.”

I remember visiting with an old family friend one evening during college, on my way into the ministry. He is something of a larger than life type person. He loves big business deals, big horses, big parties; he is someone I enjoy seeing very much.

“Boy, what you going to do?”

“I am thinking of going into the Church.”

He chuckled, took a long pull on his drink, and said something like, “I would rather be wrapped in barbed wire than set foot back in that place . . . the most political and hateful bunch I have ever seen.”

You see, we had lost him. Perhaps he had seen Cain going out into that field with Abel a time or two. Evidently Paul’s letter to the Ephesians had not taken root in his congregation.

Paul is not simply writing these letters because he is homesick.

Paul is remind the Ephesians that when we accept a call to follow Jesus, we become part of something that is infinitely larger than ourselves; a way of life where the competition that comes naturally to us, is transformed into a compassion that comes naturally to God. This humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love, all of it exists for the purpose of the Church existing as a group of people who do not simply tolerate one another, but who carry one another in their hearts; who suffer with and for one another.

If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we find much in ourselves for which we can hardly forgive ourselves . . . should we be surprised to find much in others that we find unforgivable?

“There is one Body, One Spirit; there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism. One God and Father of all.”

These words taken from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians are the doorway through which each baptized person enters this eternal mystery we call the Church. This doorway is the great equalizer among us, to remind us from whence and whither we are headed in this life. No one stands taller in this doorway than anyone else, regardless of their perceived intelligence, their beauty, their piety, or even perhaps their suffering.

To be a baptized Christian is to lose oneself in a mystery that extends both before and after the particularities of the most cherished notions about ourselves.

When we give ourselves to God and the Church, when we lose ourselves, God places in our hands a gift that is only ours to carry. The purpose of this gift is the building up of God’s Kingdom; to use it any other way is to risk our own frustration and potential self-destruction. CS Lewis once said that one of the greatest tragedies of life might be that we come to the end to find that we have neither done what we enjoyed, nor what we were created to do. And my friends, I have walked a mile in those shoes.

“The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry . . .”

Paul is telling us that some among us will have the gift for teaching the faith to our children, some the gift for intervening on behalf of the poor, some for speaking out for the Church in a world that will never understand the Gospel of Christ. Some will have the gift of friendship and hospitality, and sharing the journey with others. The point for us to see is that each will have a gift to give so that God might be praised and known among mankind.

The fact that Cain continues killing Abel everywhere we turn in life will not change; it is a reality in which we must live, both with ourselves and with others. The Church of Christ exists as a doorway to another kind of living . . . a living where unity of purpose and a living knowledge of God are real, and can be real for others, if and when we quit worrying about who gets the credit. Paul is telling us that we must be careful about how we live . . . because how we live as Christians, and how we live as a parish family, may be the only Bible that others ever read. The way we live with one another may be the only Gospel that others ever see.