Spirit with Sevenfold Gifts, stained glass, St. Mary's Iffley, Oxford, UK
On Sunday, August 27th, we considered the spiritual gifts of prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, generosity, leadership, and compassion, and some of the things that keep us from sharing these gifts with others. The title for my sermon is taken from a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; a link to that talk is included in the post. I encourage you to watch it.
Sermon
Good morning. Over the last several weeks, I’ve been
talking about the Lewis & Clark expedition and how the members of that
expedition were completely unequipped for the most difficult part of their
journey, crossing the Rocky Mountains. But if they were to continue their
journey and find a route to the Pacific Ocean, they had to adapt. And that’s
sort of where we are as the Church, in this post-Christendom world. We’re stuck
and we don’t quite know how to move forward.
Last Sunday I said that we, as the Church, need to move out
and meet people along the margins of society. I think this is true for every
congregation and I think Scripture is both clear and consistent in this
calling, but we’re not used to taking on this burden. While I don’t think
there’s any simple way to move forward, it’s my strong conviction that reaching
out to those people who are on the margins is something that we have to do to
get back on track. But it’s not easy.
The title of my sermon this morning comes from a TED talk
that I heard recently. How many of you are familiar with TED talks? These are
short lectures, usually about 15-20 minutes in length and they have really
interesting speakers. And the best part is, you can watch all of them on the
Internet, for free!
"The Danger of a Single Story," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; please take the time to watch this!
The TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” was given by
a woman from Nigeria named Chimamanda Adichie. She’s a writer and a teacher. At
the age of 19, she came to the United States to go to college. Her roommate was
surprised by Adichie’s command of the English language, she asked her, “Where
did you learn to speak English so well?” Adichie said calmly, “Nigeria.” You
see, English is one of the official languages of Nigeria. The roommate then
asked Adichie if she had any recordings of her tribal music, or whatever she listened
to back in Nigeria. Adichie pulled out a tape of Mariah Carey.[1]
While she was an undergraduate, Adichie worked on writing
her first novel. She showed it to her creative writing professor. He said it
needed work—it wasn’t African enough. The professor said the characters were
too middle class and there wasn’t enough disease or poverty for it to be an
authentically African story.
Mind you, Adichie grew up in a very middle-class existence.
Her father was a university professor. Her mother was an administrator at the
university. Yes, she knew plenty of poor people, but she also knew plenty of
middle class, educated people like herself. She knew that Nigeria, to say
nothing of the entire continent of Africa, was more than a single story.
Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk was more than a bunch of
funny stories about how white people didn’t understand Africa or Africans. In
the talk, she looked at her own experiences and how she had also let a single
story stand for entire groups of people that she knew. That cut her off from
other groups of people; she could not fully engage with other people and she
was poorer for it.
All of that was running through the back of my mind as I
studied this morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. The Apostle
Paul instructs the congregation at Rome: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers
and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” This
is the opposite of what the Greco-Roman world of the first century demanded.
For pagans in Rome, proper worship included the sacrifice of an animal on an
altar dedicated to some Roman god. Paul states that Christians are called to do
the exact opposite: they are to present their entire lives as a living sacrifice, a living offering to
God.[2]
Paul is telling the Romans to get out of the church and
embody their spiritual gifts: prophecy, ministry, exhortation, teaching,
generosity, leadership, and compassion. These gifts are not confined to the
service of worship. Rather, these gifts are given to them so that the
congregation of the Romans may work to build the kingdom in their community.
In the Gospel of Mark (and also in Matthew and Luke), Jesus
says that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with
all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the second is to love your
neighbor as you love yourself (Mark 12:28-31, my paraphrase). Paul’s teaching
is rooted in Jesus’ statements:
Paul never forgets that
we are embodied creatures. Everything we think, say, or do, we do in a body.
Presenting our bodies means staying aware each day that our body is the primary
location in which we actually express our heart, soul, strength, and mind. If
we want to know our inmost motives and values, we can look at what we do each
day in our bodies. Every day in all the places we go, all the things we do, and
all the decisions and recommendations we make, we are presenting our bodies.
Over time, our actions, choices, and recommendations cumulatively create a body
of work, so to speak. Essentially, that body of work is the body Paul is
talking about.[3]
In doing this, Paul
admonishes the Roman congregation, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the
will of God….” The Greco-Roman world viewed Jews and Christians with suspicion,
at best. At worst, Jews and Christians were met with outright hostility. The
world told them to abandon their religious convictions and worship the emperor
as a living god, and also any local gods they wished.
Beloved, Paul’s words to the congregation in Rome speak
directly to us and our situation, too. We are also called to embody our faith
outside of the walls of this church. And we are also faced with a world that
wants to conform us to its values. More than anything, those values are greed
and consumerism. Our world wants us to be buy more stuff. It glorifies material
wealth and it tells us that true satisfaction can be achieved if we spend
enough money. The culture tells us to build more idols and bow before them.[4] The culture tells us that
we don’t have to change—only other people need to change.
Let me be clear: we do not
face the hostility that the early Christians faced. We face a world that’s
indifferent to our message. Some people have heard it and left the fold, while
others really don’t understand what our message is. People who were raised
outside of the Church have a very limited picture of what Christianity is and
what Christians believe. They have only a single story of Christianity, and
it’s not necessarily the story that we would tell about ourselves.
We have to get outside of the church if we are to tell our
own stories. We have to engage with the people who aren’t in the pews; this is
how we follow the Apostle Paul’s guidance; this is how we embody our faith. We
go forth and share our gifts for prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation,
generosity, leadership, and compassion. At the same time, we must listen to the
stories of those with whom we would share our gifts.
This is how we make the living sacrifice—the living
offering—that the Apostle Paul instructs us to make. This is an outward sign of
the grace we have received from God and this is how we share that grace with
others.[5] Chimamanda Adichie
concludes her TED Talk by saying:
Stories matter. Many
stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories
can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can be used to break the
dignity of a people, but stories can also be used to repair that broken dignity….
[When] we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single
story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
Beloved, this is the
work of reconciliation to which we are called as Christians.
We participate in this work when we listen to the stories from
people on the margins of society. Many of these stories are uncomfortable, but
we must listen to them first, if we are to share our many gifts and truly live
an embodied faith. When the Church puts itself in a position to hear these
stories from the margins, and then embodies its faith, lives and communities
will be transformed. We will recognize our common humanity and the Church will
be transformed. And people who are outside of the Church—whether they’re at the
margins of society or at its center—people will see what’s happening and they’ll
want to know our stories, too. May we all come together, so that we may put
ourselves in the places to tell those stories and transform our world. Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. We are called to reject the idea of a single story and go out and listen
to the many stories of people who aren’t here with us. This is how we may go
forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and reconciliation. Do not
return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God, and
that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and be
the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ,
our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” TED Global, 2009,
retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
[2]
Frank L. Crouch, “Commentary on Romans 12:1-8,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3375
[3]
Crouch.
[4] I
would also argue that our politics mirror our consumerism. We want and we vote
for candidates who mirror the beliefs we already have. We won’t accept
candidates who share only some of our values. We refuse to vote for candidates
who will do the difficult work of compromise, or candidates who tell us that we
all need to change. In our world of political consumerism, everyone else needs
to change, not me!
[5]
Crouch.
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