October 11, 2009 Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and
CROPWalk
and Open to All/Access Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 90; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
Imagine if someone could tell you exactly how to enter God’s realm right
now, how to find peace, joy and love, even in the midst of suffering. Imagine if
someone could lead you to that source of unconditional and all forgiving and all
healing love, that life that death cannot conquer, that light that shines in the
darkness that the darkness cannot overcome, that realm of justice, mercy and
shalom.
What if I told you that the person who could tell you the secret to entering
God’s realm was visiting just on the other side of the green and was about to
leave town? Can you imagine yourself leaping up and running as fast as you
could and throwing yourself on your knees and asking, “What must I do?” as the
teacher walked toward the car?
Well, here is part of the answer to “What must I do?” In order to enter the
realm of God it helps to long for it that much. A Chinese pastor who suffered in
communist prisons for decades has said that until people have suffered they
really do not fully understand what being a follower of Christ means, because in
our suffering, when we no longer have any other resource to rely on, our longing
finally experiences the full power of grace Christ offers us. This is the first of
many clues today’s gospel passage offers to those who experience suffering and
long for healing and peace.
The second clue to entering the realm of God is to ask the question, “What
must I do?” Alcoholics can feel a longing to quit drinking, and yet may not ask
that question of anyone who can tell them the answer. Instead they may just
renew their own resolve, and think up their own measures of reform. Every once
in a while a person can succeed that way, but hundreds of thousands have not
been able to stay sober until the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous helped them.
They came to believe that a higher power could restore them, and became willing
to humble themselves and turn their life over to the care of that higher power,
asking, “What must I do?”
Like alcoholics, many people are addicted to a painful pattern of living
and thinking. They know from gospel stories like today’s that if they ask Christ
what to do, they will have to change in ways that may be hard to accept. Some
will keep resisting, trying to work out life on their own terms. Others will have
the courage to surrender and turn their life and their will over to Christ’s higher
power and follow.
Another clue in today’s passage may seem like a throwaway line, but it is
crucial to the teaching. The man calls Jesus “Good Teacher,” and Jesus says,
“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Hidden in this
seemingly irrelevant remark is profound wisdom that goes against conventional
belief. Jesus is saying that entering God’s realm is not about being good. We do
not have to be good to enter it, and we will not suddenly be good after we have
entered. We are corruptible now and we always will be corruptible. People who
become sober through Alcoholics Anonymous are still alcoholics, and always
will be, which is why they call themselves recovering alcoholics even when they
have been sober for seventeen years. Personal transformation is not about our
being good, it is about God being good. It is about seeking the grace of God’s
power to establish goodness where it is not.
Entering the realm of God is not about being good, but being good is a
good beginning. Freely choosing to be good teaches us to love goodness. It
helps us acquire a taste for the realm of God. So when the man asks Jesus what
to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus begins with the commandments to be
nonviolent, to be truthful, to be loving. Practicing doing good things can put us
in the right place at the right time to learn what we need in order to progress on
the journey toward God’s realm, which seems always to involve helping others
get there as well.
I will never forget the first time I saw a person in a wheelchair crossing the
parking lot toward our new elevator here, five years ago. It brought tears to my
eyes, thinking of all the work so many had put into the Open to All campaign, and
how Pat Pinder and Gladys Boyd and Lilla Willey and others had held onto the
vision for twenty years before it came to pass. It gave many of us a taste of the
joy of God’s realm to see that first person wheeling in; it encouraged us to keep
opening up access to goodness for people who are shut out in a variety of ways,
to keep increasing that joy.
Today most of this congregation will be involved somehow in the
CROPWalk, donating or walking or working. The CROPWalk is another way to
help people gain access to what they need. A while back I read an article about a
place that the CROPWalk would be likely to help. It was a refugee camp in
Africa where people were escaping from an enemy that wanted to commit
genocide against them. The problem was that the camp did not always have the
supplies needed to survive. When the generosity of the outside world ran dry,
the refugees would have to leave the safety of the camp and go out into the fields
and brush to gather food and small sticks to cook the food.
The enemy was waiting out there for them, hidden in the brush. If a man
went out from the camp, the enemy would kill him. If a woman went out, the
enemy would rape her. But if nobody went out, they would starve, so the women
went, knowing they would get raped, in order to keep their men from being killed.
The article I read said that just a small amount of money each week could
provide enough supplies so that the women would not have to go out. Knowing
the evil in the world and knowing there is a way to prevent it stirs in us a longing
to help. It gives us the courage to ask, “What must I do?” and then to do the good
that is required.
Today’s passage in Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and active,
sharper than any two-edged sword…it is able to judge the thoughts and
intentions of the heart.” But Christ’s piercing knowledge of us comes with love
and compassion, so he provides mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.
Jesus looks at the man who has asked him “What must I do?” He sees all
the yearning for goodness in him, all the courage, and Jesus loves the man. So he
gives him the mercy and grace he needs. He tells him what more he must do to
enter the realm of God. He says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and
give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come,
follow me.”
The man is shocked at this and goes away grieving, for he has many
possessions, and he is attached to them and does not want to give them up. He
goes away grieving, but he has been given a great gift. He has been shown the
way to go. It may take him days or years, it may take many small steps in that
direction, but there is the hope that sometime in his life he will be able to do what
Jesus has told him to do. He will be able to let everything go, give his entire life
to serving and following the way of Christ.
Is this a universal teaching? Do we have to give everything away to the
poor, too?
It may be that Jesus will offer voluntary poverty to you as the way to enter
the realm of God. But it may be something else. You will not know until you
ask, “What must I do?” The Holy Spirit can see into our soul and tell what is
holding us back from giving our lives completely to following Christ’s way.
Whatever it is that we each must do, it will probably be something we do not
want to do and are afraid of doing, something that will make us feel vulnerable or
foolish, something that we will not be able to do without depending on God’s
higher power to help. If it were something that came easily to us, we would
already have done it. As the famous alcoholic and comedian W. C. Fields said
about drinking, “It’s easy to quit. I’ve done it a thousand times.”
C.S. Lewis gives a beautiful image for this in the Narnia book The Voyage
of the Dawn Treader. A selfish, arrogant boy who never wanted to do good for
anyone fell asleep on a dragon’s hoard of treasure, dreaming of being rich. When
he woke up, he had become a dragon himself. His lonely suffering led him to
learn grace and humility and the joy of doing good for others, but the pain was
excruciating, and he longed to get the dragon skin off. Finally he met up with the
Christ-like lion, Aslan, who offered to help him.
Aslan showed him a pool he could bathe in to be healed, but first the boy
had to remove the skin. So he dug his dragon claws in and tore it off. He went to
step in the pool and saw it was just the first layer that he had torn off. So he did it
again. But there was another layer of dragon skin beneath that. He had to do it
again and again, and still there was always another layer.
Finally Aslan told him, you need my claws to get this off: are you willing?
The boy longed so much for relief that he said yes. It hurt terribly, but then it
was off, and he was able to bathe in the pool. He came out changed into a new
person. Not a perfect one—he still would lose track of following Aslan in future
books, but he knew the way into God’s realm now. He knew how much he had to
give up and let go, and he knew that he needed God’s help to do it.
What must I do? What must you do? The purpose of the spiritual life that
our tradition teaches is to help you first to ask that question and then to have the
courage and wisdom to accept the answer and follow where it leads. Whatever
the answer is for you, it will involve a letting go, a stripping of layer after layer of
your old self, a learning to be completely dependent on the Holy Spirit to lead
you as you try to follow Christ. It will involve making the hymn “Be Thou My
Vision” a description of how you try to live every day. Whatever it is you must
do, the church is here to help you, and these people are here to walk with you and
care for you and support you as they make the same spiritual journey.
This is a community of struggle because the way can be hard, but it is also
a community where we can find the qualities of the realm of God, the peace and
joy and love we long to experience. As Jesus tells his disciples, we have to lose
life to gain life, but the economy of God’s realm has an exchange rate of 1 to
100—whatever it is Christ asks that you give up in your old life, you will gain
something one hundred times more valuable in your new life. People who have
entered the new life of recovery from addiction will tell you that Christ
understates that exchange rate. The man in the story goes away with grief, but it
is the grief that makes for joy.
Let us pray in silence now, asking the question, if we dare: what must I do
to have the life I long for in God’s realm here and now? Let us pray…
Sermon 10/11/2009