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Good
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 Sermon
01/24/2010
He Leadeth Me…For His Name’s
Sake ~ by Reverend Thomas Cary Kinder
January 24, 2010 Second Sunday after Epiphany, Annual
Meeting
First Congregational Church in Thetford,
Vermont, UCC
Psalm 23; I Corinthians 12:4-13, 27; John 2:1-11
The
Rev. William Sloane Coffin preached on the 23rd Psalm in
Strafford one Sunday years ago.
The thing I remember most vividly about his sermon was his awe
at how generous-hearted the 23rd Psalm is—how it is
all indicative and no imperative, meaning all givens with no demand
on us other than to open ourselves to be led by the shepherd and to
receive God’s gifts. It
says that our soul will be restored, that even though we “walk
through the valley of the shadow of death” we will not fear
evil, that even in the presence of our enemies we will have goodness
and mercy all the days of our life.
We
can say the 23rd Psalm at a funeral or in a time of
distress and feel ourselves comforted and calmed. But there is one catch. There is one little cloud that
Coffin seemed to overlook in that sermon, and that is the phrase
“for his name’s sake.” The line is, “He leadeth me
in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” It is not for our sake, it is for
the shepherd’s sake. If
you begin to think about this, the cloud grows. Why is it for the shepherd’s
sake that the sheep are led on the right paths? It is because the shepherd profits
by the sheep, and maybe even eats the sheep. It sounds as if we have a selfish
shepherd-God who is interested only in using us for his own
sake. That is not so
comforting.
Today’s
gospel passage has the same small cloud over it. The scene is a wedding feast in a
sunny hill town about five miles from Nazareth. The mother of Jesus was invited to
the wedding, and Jesus and his friends were included, maybe in a
spirit of “the more the merrier.” We see that it has indeed been a
merry party so far, as the story begins—so merry that they have
run out of wine. The guests
have become drunk.
Jesus’
mother comes up to him and with no preface says, “They have no
wine.” Jesus responds a
little more harshly than seems justified, sounding indignant and even
a little pugnacious: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to
me? My hour has not yet
come.” But she hears
what she wants to hear, and turns to the servants and says abruptly,
“Do whatever he tells you,” and she walks away. It sounds like a classic encounter
between a controlling mother and a rebelling child at a party. Jesus shakes his head at her back,
sighs, and then looks around at the bride and groom and their
families and friends, and something changes in him. Feelings of love and compassion
well up in him. He tells the
servants what to do.
The
banquet hall had jars carved out of stone to hold the water for
purification that the Jewish law required. They used the ritual water to wash
their hands and pots and pans.
Jesus told them to fill the stone jars to the brim, then draw
off some and take it to the chief steward to taste. The steward tasted it, not knowing
where it came from, and a look of amazement crossed his face at how
rich it was. He called over
the bridegroom and said, “Everyone serves the good wine first,
and then the not-so-good wine when the guests have become drunk and
can’t tell the difference.
But you have kept the good wine until now.”
If
we end the story there, we can imagine the mother of Jesus coming
over and giving him a big hug for saving the party, and maybe the
disciples slapping him some high-fives. But the gospel account adds a
summary sentence that says, “Jesus did this, the first of his
signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples
believed in him.”
Not
only does that sentence throw a bucket of cold gravitas over the
party, but once again, there is a cloud, or at least a whiff, of
self-interest. It seems as if
Jesus did not change the water to wine for the sake of the wedding
feast or for his mother’s sake—he did it for his
glory’s sake, to show his power and make his disciples believe in
him.
From
a certain human perspective, this does not sound like the kind of God
we want. We want a God for our
sake, not just for God’s sake.
We want comfort and joy for us, not just glory for Christ. “What’s in it for
us” is a legitimate question because we need the help of a
higher power. We are hurting here,
we have sickness and hardship, addiction and loss, we have fear and
frustration and discouragement that we are hoping Christ will
transform into peace and joy and love. We have a church that we are trying
to guide through a severe economic recession, and we are hoping
Christ will help us out here for our congregation’s sake. We have a world around us that is
violent and unjust, a world of poverty, abuse and war that we are
hoping Christ will help us transform into the nonviolent, just,
Beloved Community of God’s realm, for his sake, yes, but more
urgently for our sake.
Can
we resolve the conflict of interest, the rivalry of his sake versus
our sake that clouds these passages?
I think we can. And I
think that the resolving of it is the secret to the miracle of
turning water into wine. It is
the secret to a hope that our deepest longing for this world’s
future and our own may come true.
The
clue to this resolution comes in the passage from Paul. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth
in southern Greece. Corinth
was part Manhattan
and part Las Vegas,
or part crossroads of the Roman Empire,
a melting pot of cultures and ideas, and part Wild West frontier
town. Archaeologists have
found that its streets were lined with wine shops. Towering over the city was a temple
full of priestesses who served as sacred prostitutes.
Of
all the sins in Corinth,
the one that was troubling the church and troubling Paul was the sin
of pride. The church was full
of people who were each proud of their individual sophistication and
giftedness. The church was
tense with the friction between all those over-inflated egos. People were not sensitive to
others’ needs and did not value others’ gifts.
Paul’s
problem was how to shepherd the church toward compassionate unity. That was on his mind when he wrote,
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit….
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common
good.” Paul goes farther
and says that we are like hands and feet of the same body. We “are the body of Christ,
and individually members of it.”
Paul
says we become part of the body through our baptism. Baptism is where we attain unity in
our diversity. I quoted the
Trappist monk, Thomas Keating, at the beginning of the service,
saying that “God and our True Self are the same
thing.” He says it in
his book Open Mind, Open Heart:
The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel. He goes on a page later to talk
about what our baptism means.
He says, “In baptism, the false self is ritually put to
death, [and] the new self is born.” He says, it is “not our
uniqueness as persons, but our sense of separation from God and from
others [that] is destroyed in the death-dealing and life-giving
waters of baptism.”
(1992 edition p. 127 f)
The
problem of God’s sake versus our sake turns out to be a problem
of mistaken identity. The
problem is that we think we are separate from God. It is resolved when we see that in
our deepest core, our True Self is one with God. God’s sake is our sake. God’s glory is our glory. As the second century bishop and
saint, Irenaeus, said, “The glory of God is a human being fully
alive.”
This
is the best of good news, because it means that if we are on the
journey toward God, then we are on the way to fulfilling our deepest,
truest self, and if we are on the way to fulfilling our deepest,
truest self, then we will have all the power of the Holy Spirit
working with us to help us, not for our sake alone, but for
God’s sake, too, because those two sakes are one.
This
is the best of good news, because if we as a church are working to
change our polluted, violent, unjust world into God’s realm of
peace and justice and mercy on earth, then we have all the power of
the Holy Spirit working to help us not just for our sake, but for
God’s sake.
What
is more, because we are one with God, God can change us as easily as
we change our clothes. Our
innermost self is as accessible to God to open us up and transform
us, as our closet is accessible to us to open up and pull out a
different coat. To us,
transformation may seem an impossible dream. Our problems may seem
insurmountable and intractable.
But Christ’s higher power can change our water into
wine, Christ can transform us so that we can transform the world
around us, if—if we will take his mother’s advice to
“do whatever he tells you.”
You
do not have to believe that Jesus pulled off the magic trick of
turning a half dozen thirty-gallon jars of water into the best wine
at the party. You can think of
him simply as a wise and holy man if you want, a teacher who was so
full of the Spirit that when he touched people’s lives he
changed them and led them to an experience of God’s love. It doesn’t matter how you
think of him—as long as you do whatever he tells you.
Nor
does it matter who or what you think the shepherd is in the 23rd
Psalm who leadeth us in the paths of righteousness for his
name’s sake. What
matters is that you place your hope in that shepherd, that you allow
yourself to be led, that you trust that the shepherd’s sake and
your sake are one.
This
is the secret of transformation.
It is a secret known by every person who has ever seen an
addiction transformed through the 12 Steps. It is a secret known by every
contemplative who has ever felt a personal tragedy transformed into a
gift of new life through the practice of surrendering, welcoming
prayer. It is a secret known
by the followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. who saw the world
transformed around them when they entrusted themselves to the
spiritual power of Christ-like nonviolence.
If
we open ourselves to being led by God, we can walk through the valley
of the shadow of death and fear no evil. If we open ourselves to being led
by the Holy Spirit, we can live in the house of the Lord forever—because
that house is our body. The
house of the Lord is our human being fully alive.
We
are the water in the sacred jar.
All we have to do is accept that truth, and do whatever Christ
tells us to do, and people will draw gifts of Christ-like love from
us and taste and rejoice, and the world will be transformed around
us, for his name’s sake, which is our sake, and for his glory,
which is our glory. This is
the greatest hope for the world and for us each. It is a hope that depends on no
Supreme Court or Congress or army, but only on this small, most
powerful act of consent.
Let us pray together in the faith that
God is one with our deepest, truest self. Let us open to our transformation
into the fullness of our being as individuals and as a church so that
we may help transform the world.
Let us pray in a silence that says wordlessly,
“Yes,” for God’s sake and for ours…
His Mother Asked
He Show His Power
tune: TALLIS’ CANON (PH#91) L.M.
His mother asked he show his power.
Christ said it was not yet his hour.
But when his mercy hears us plead
His love pours forth to meet our need.
Compassion moves him at each feast
To give the best to serve the least.
If we call out, though at our worst,
His loving heart will quench our thirst.
As water changed at his command,
A feat we cannot understand,
So equally beyond our skill
He changes us who yield our will.
“Do as he says,” his mother said.
And though doubt filled each servant’s head,
They brimmed their empty jars of stone
And through them Christ’s rich glory shone.
If we hear Christ and do as told
All in us that is dull or old
Will be transformed because we are
Like water in a sacred jar.
Like water used to purify,
Our meaning changes, old forms die,
When we consent and let Christ make
Love’s gifts pour from us for his sake.
ã 2010 Thomas Cary
Kinder
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