On Sunday, January 14th, we heard call stories from 1 Samuel and the Gospel of John. We considered these stories as they related to the call to ministry of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and also in light of some highly inflammatory comments by the president.
Follow Me (1/14/18)
Sermon
Good morning. By Wednesday afternoon, I had a clear sense
of where I wanted this sermon to go. It’s not often that we ordain and install
new officers on consecutive Sundays, but this morning’s reading from the Gospel
of John is a perfect text for ordination. I wanted to continue to call out the
positive changes that I see in this congregation. I wanted focus on our sense
of call—how Christ calls us to be the Church—and how we live into that call
through our relationship with Christ and with one another. I wanted to do all
that. On. Wednesday.
And then I heard the president’s hateful remarks about
Haiti and El Salvador and the various nations of Africa. And I was furious. I
was spitting mad! If I were to repeat his words from this pulpit, many of you
would be furious at me and you might not hear another word I said after I repeated
a swear word from the pulpit. And your anger would be justified.
When I come into this pulpit, I’m supposed to speak to you
in love; I’m supposed to speak with the love of Christ. I am supposed to
address you all in Christian love. Always. That’s why it’s dangerous to write a
sermon when I’m spitting mad—I have to make sure I’m not spitting venom at you.
So, let me be clear about two things. First, this isn’t a
sermon against the use of profanity—many of us use bad words from time to time.
Sometimes polite words don’t fit the situation, and people get to have private
thoughts and private conversations. However, the president wasn’t speaking in
private; it was a very public meeting. Second, the president’s remarks are
truly offensive even without the swear word. As Christians, we are called to
welcome the stranger—literally, we are called to welcome the foreigner. We are
called to welcome those who are suffering, regardless of their poverty or the
color of their skin or their country of origin. Whenever we do this to another
human being, we do this to Jesus. There is no middle ground. We may not dismiss
any of God’s beloved children, no matter where they’re from!
Jesus MAFA, The First Two Disciples
We hear this same dismissive attitude in this morning’s
reading from the Gospel of John. This is a call story—it explains how two of
Jesus’ disciples followed their call to love and serve the Lord. Philip had no
trouble following Jesus’ call, and then Philip called Nathanael to follow Jesus,
too.
Nathanael wasn’t so sure. He responds by saying, “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” It’s almost like he asked, “Can anyone
good come out of Haiti?” Or, “Can anyone good come out of El Salvador?” Or, “Can
anyone good come out of Africa?” Nathanael wants to dismiss Jesus because he
comes from the wrong place.
The text tells us that Philip is from Bethsaida and it’s reasonable
to guess that Nathanael is, too. Bethsaida was located along the Galilee, which
is actually a freshwater lake, not a sea. Also, it’s not very big. The Galilee
is about 64 square miles, in surface area—that’s a little bit smaller than the
largest of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Bethsaida was probably located
along the northern shore of the Galilee. This wasn’t the center of Jewish
religious life, nor was it the seat of government. Still, it was a fishing
village, so it was probably a place where a man could earn a decent living if
he owned a fishing boat and some nets.
Nazareth, by contrast, was well off the beaten path. It’s
about 15 miles west of the Galilee and about 90 miles north of Jerusalem. Nazareth
is a very ordinary place; it was a tiny village of maybe 400 people. Of course,
Nathanael is suspicious of it—important people are supposed to come from
important places! The savior of Israel is supposed to come from Jerusalem, not
an ordinary place like Nazareth! Why on earth would Nathanael drop everything
and follow an ordinary person from an ordinary place?
But Jesus isn’t ordinary!
Jesus is Emanuel, God with us!
Jesus is the Word of God, made flesh!
Jesus is the Holy one of Israel; the savior, or in Spanish,
El Salvador.
But Nathanael doesn’t know any of that at the beginning of
this story. Nathanael doesn’t believe Philip. Nathanael doesn’t even believe
Jesus, at first. When he meets Jesus for the first time, Jesus says to
Nathanael: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
Nathanael doesn’t accept this; he challenges Jesus: “Where did you get to know
me?”
Jesus responds: “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip
called you.” And in that instant, Nathanael knows that he is not dealing with an ordinary person,
from an ordinary place. In that instant, Nathanael realizes that he is face to
face with the Son of God, the King of Israel. Jesus offers Nathanael a
relationship with God-in-the-flesh. Jesus tells Nathanael something only God
could know. Think of the words of Psalm 139: “O, Lord, you have searched me and
known me.” Nathanael recognizes that he’s in the presence of the Lord because
he is known. And the only response is to follow Jesus.
Sometimes I wonder what keeps us from following Jesus in
the same way. Perhaps we’re waiting for that direct encounter with God like
Nathanael, or like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Or maybe we think
we’re too ordinary to jump into something so big as sharing the
Good News with all the world. And sometimes, we think that our faith is a
private, personal matter, and that it’s not our job to go out and change the
world; maybe we’re too ordinary to change the world.
Tomorrow we observe a federal holiday to remember the life
and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King provides one of the greatest examples of
a life of Christian service, lived on a public stage, working to build the
Kingdom of God. Yet there was a time when Martin Luther King was just an
ordinary young man, trying to figure out his calling. Here’s a little of what
Dr. King said about his call to ministry:
My call to the ministry
was neither dramatic nor spectacular. It came neither by some miraculous vision
nor by some blinding light experience on the road of life. Moreover, it did not
come as a sudden realization. Rather, it was a response to an inner urge that
gradually came upon me. This urge expressed itself in a desire to serve God and
humanity, and the feeling that my talent and my commitment could best be
expressed through the ministry.[1]
That’s it! No blinding
lights or burning bushes for Martin Luther King, Jr. His sense of call was
entirely ordinary. His only desires: to serve God and humanity.
To serve God and humanity; as Christians, this is what we
are all called to do. We are called to love God with all our heart, with all
our mind, and with all our soul. We are also commanded to love our neighbor as
we love ourselves. This is the theology behind Dr. King’s sense of call. King
believed in something that is called agape
love; it is at the center of his theology. Here’s how he explained it:
Agape means nothing
sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming good will
for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love
of God working in the lives of men. When we love on the agape level we love men
not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us,
but because God loves them.[2]
Agape love is at the heart of the Confession of 1967,
which states, in part:
God has
created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In his reconciling
love, he overcomes the barriers between brothers and breaks down every form of
discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference, real or imaginary.[3]
This confessional
statement is included in the Book of Confessions; this is at the heart of what
we believe as Presbyterians.
Sometimes it’s very difficult to practice agape love. Sometimes the first thing we
see is the color of a person’s skin or the country where that person was born.
Maybe we see a person’s poverty before we see that person’s humanity. We get
angry very quickly at people we don’t like; we get angry at liberals or at
conservatives. We get angry at prisoners and foreigners, even though Jesus
calls us to minister to prisoners and foreigners.
When we fail to practice agape love, we fail to see God’s grace in action. Beloved, I’ve
been to some of those places that the president called holes. I’ve been to
Latin America. I’ve been to Africa. Many of my brothers and sisters in ministry
have also been to Africa. And what I can tell you, and what they will tell you
is that the Church is alive and well in Africa. For example, the nation of
Malawi, in East Africa, has a population of 18 million. Of those, perhaps 2.5
million are Presbyterians. That’s about as many Presbyterians as there are in
the United States. There are no half-empty churches in Malawi.
We all fall short of Christ’s call to agape love.
We all fail.
We all sin.
We can be forgiven for the sin of failing to practice agape love, but only after we repent
from our sin. That means we have to recognize the sin of failing to love all of our neighbors, whether they live
across the street from us or across an ocean from us. We must turn away from
the sin and follow Jesus, as Nathanael does. We do this by practicing agape love for everyone we meet. 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 today. We are
called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation.
This is how we live into our baptismal vows. 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] Martin
Luther King, Jr. Retrieved from: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol6/7Aug1959MyCalltotheMinistry.pdf
[2] Martin
Luther King, Jr. A Testament of Hope,
pp. 8-9.
[3]
Confession of 1967, 9.44.
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