January 18, 2015 ~ “Thank God We Ain’t What We Was” from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.
A sermon preached at John Knox Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on January 18, 2015.
Psalm 139:1-12
and John 1:43-51
Editorial note: I’m working on correcting spacing issues. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.
(Click above link for the Scripture texts upon which this sermon is based)
I do a lot of reading and dreaming for sermons.
Some of it in scripture. Some of it in commentary. Some of it on television.
I enjoy it, usually, but sometimes it wears on me.
I came across some reflections this week about HOPE, you see
and often reflections about hope remind us about why we so badly need it.
For instance,
American author Walker Percy, who died in 1990,
was asked, in the last decade of his life, about HOPE.
Percy, a great writer as both a novelist and essayist,
had survived tuberculosis,
was a physician himself,
and came from a prominent Roman Catholic family
in Birmingham, which claimed a US Senator and a Civil War Hero
among its ranks.
But Percy lived his life seeped in hardship.
Walker Percy’s grandfather, then later his father, killed themselves with a shotgun.
While he was still a young man, not long after his father’s death,
Percy’s mother died in an auto accident that
he later grew suspicious about too.
So well into his sixties, when he was asked about hope, he said:
“For what do I hope?
Short term goal: that any of us can survive ourselves
long enough to explore the infinite potential
of ourselves and the world around us.
If I had another 50 years, I might make it.
My personal goal: to survive my own bad habits.”[i]
///
That’s a TALL order…since our “bad habits” are suffocating us:
…economic careening, credit downgrades, state and personal budget crises
growing desperation—and political systems
seemingly wishing they could sit it all out.
The poverty rate for a family of four in America is $23,850 per year.[ii]
There are some 46 million Americans UNDER that line.
Jesus talked about the poor on practically every page of the gospels,
yet NO political party—on any side—
–uses the word “poor” in any of their campaigns.
That’s a bad habit!
The world is ablaze,
everyone is feeling squeezed,
fear so palpable it’s almost as we can taste it some days…
We have developed the “habit” of assuming
that things are bad and getting worse.
Does life get better?
Does the world evidence any progress?
Do we change?
Can we grow?
Is there any real HOPE that we–or our world—
–can survive our own bad habits?
And every year, around this time of year,
we look at our calendars and look over our lives
and seek to make New Years Resolutions:
efforts at forcing change in our habits.
If only it were that simple.
In response, a journalist observed:
“Now for a not-so-uplifting prediction:
“Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long.
They’ll start out with the best of intentions
but the worst of strategies,
expecting that they’ll somehow find the willpower
to resist temptation after temptation.
“By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions,
and by July more than half will have lapsed.”[iii]
I hope your New Year’s resolutions will go better than that…
…but the odds are against us.
Alan Deutschman, who is author of “Change or Die” asserts
that even though most people have the ability to change,
we rarely do.
“It’s exceptionally hard to make life changes,” he says,
“and our efforts are usually doomed to failure
when we try to do it on our own.”[iv]
So what do you think?
In pondering all of this, its important to note how different
are the underlying assumptions suggested by our readings today.
Our Psalm that proclaims that
“God has searched us and knows us…through and through”
John’s account describes Jesus’ invitation to Philip to “follow me”
and Philip is known, and invited, and is sent, a changed man.
These texts, they’re are at odds with our world and with our personal resolutions
that assume BOTH that things aren’t getting better,
and that our resolve to change finally melts away.
Can life get better?
Can the world evidence any progress?
Can we change?
///
When I was a kid, I kid you not,
one of my heroes was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior.
I even offered a special report on him in the 6th grade,
hero night at my school where some people chose baseball players
or astronauts
or presidents,
I tried to embody the best of Martin Luther King.
Can you picture 6th grade me doing that? I even wore a suit.
A few years ago, old tapes were discovered of an early speech of his,
a few years before Selma, and Birmingham, and the March on Washington.
In 1959, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature
and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks
but to free the soul of America.
Dr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher
who had once been a slave:
’Lord, we ain’t what we want to be;
we ain’t what we ought to be;
we ain’t what we gonna be,
but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’[v]
It was an affirmation of the possibility,
somehow, someway, by some grace, to actually make a difference
to SHIFT what we are doing, what we have been doing,
and do something BETTER.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been aching for how to do that….
In the Gospel of John, when Jesus is going along in Galilee,
and encounters Philip and issues the invitation to “Follow me”—
–it touched deep at the heart of
Philip’s deepest need and yearning.
Interestingly, soon, it was Philip who was the inviter, rather than the invitee.
“Come and see” he said to the next one he encountered.
“Come and see”—something is going on
that you just can’t miss.
And with the enticing words of Jesus,
“you will see greater things than these”—
–all those first disciples were promised
that even though “we ain’t what we WANT to be”—
things would get better,
things could CHANGE.
You see, life in its fullness, according to Jesus,
isn’t going to be just one long New Year’s resolution
that failed by January 15 every year.
The world was going to be filled with a promise and a hope
that is more than one long, unending
cycle of oppression and injustice.
Our hearts…have the capacity to be TOUCHED.
And the invitation is NOT to make a resolution,
but to have an EXPERIENCE: “Come and see…”
///
’Lord, we ain’t what we want to be;
we ain’t what we ought to be…
…In a Church I served in Chicago,
I grew close with a woman in that congregation.
An African-American woman approaching seventy,
she had seen, lived, and worked in the Civil Rights Movement
her whole life long.
She had more doors slammed in her face than there were doors, it seemed.
She had threats and hate and suspicion thrown at her in ways and times
that I cannot begin to imagine.
She and her husband once tried to buy a house
in a neighborhood of Chicago.
When the realtor and the couple pulled up to the house and went in,
it seemed like a nice, quiet block.
When they came back out onto the porch a few minutes later,
every front yard on that block were filled
with white people—staring.
She recounted that story with tears in her eyes.
I once asked her what was the greatest indignity that she suffered.
Through all her experiences—what was the WORST.
She said: “store clerks would never put change in my hands.”
“Those white clerks never wanted to risk
touching us…and they would throw the change
on the counter in front of me—
–NOTHING was more demeaning than that.”
This is NOT ancient history.
Oh, we have such a long way to go!
“We ain’t what we ought to be!”
And yet.
And yet…every now and then,
even though we are NOT what we ought to be—
every now and then the sun breaks through the clouds
and pierces the darkness.
And a man stands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
on a hot late-August day and is delivers the wild news
that there is a DREAM and it will not be denied—
and all will be free,
and all will be well.
And it’s NOT always obvious,
and it’s not one unbroken line ever upward but things…change.
South Africa continues to struggle,
but the fledgling democracy does so having left
the brutal reign of apartheid far behind.
Through concerted global effort,
there have no new cases of polio in India in the last year…
…something unthinkable even a decade ago.
It may not feel like it, but
Violent crime has been cut in half in some US cities
in just a few short years.
The murder rate in Kansas City was almost cut in half last year.
And it gets more personal, more local:
My Chicago friend bought a house, and helped integrate a neighborhood.
There are families I know that were splintered apart
who are now at least talking…re-approaching.
There are grudges – long-held – which are now
testing the waters of forgiveness.
Our Kirk has started taking meals and blankets and clothes
to Cherith Brook,
We’ve continued to address hunger at harvesters
We’ve dreamed about what is next, where God’s heart breaks
in our neighborhood and how we might help piece it back together.
SOMETIMES—even though we are not as people,
we are not as a country who we ought to be—
–sometimes injustice and pain and hardship DOES get sent packing.
///
“Lord, we ain’t what we want to be;
we ain’t what we ought to be;
…and we ain’t what we gonna be…”
You see, there is a turn in our life with God—
where despite all our doubts and fears
and all that holds us back;
despite all that we want to be, but can’t,
and all that we ought to be, but aren’t—
–God has a different arc in mind for our life and the life of the world.
That is the invitation of the gospel: “Come and See.”
Do you want to know what it would be like to follow Jesus?
Do you wonder what it mean to have your life turned upside down
by the Savior of the world?
Come and see….and you will discover that God has set your life
on a different trajectory
than ALL that has come before might indicate.
It’s what Dr. King knew—it kept him pressing forward in the face of
impossible odds in the cause of justice.
The Psalmist proclaims that we PRAISE God,
“for we are fearfully and wonderfully made”
and wonderful are God’s works!
No matter how bleak the present.
No matter how anxiety producing the future.
No matter the stain of oppression in our past.
No matter the smack of injustice lingering today.
–STILL: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”[vi]
God gets the last word.
Always—God gets the last word—and the last word…is HOPE.
God’s last word is always the invitation: “Come and see…”
That’s how we know that “we ain’t what we’re GONNA be…!”
We are invited to “come and see”
the wonderful human beings God has made
and the wonderful world God has redeemed.
“Come and see…”
We don’t shrink into experiencing God.
We don’t scheme into experiencing God’s grace.
We don’t guess our way into hope.
We follow.
We come and see.
And what we discover is that, as Paul wrote,
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts…”
’Lord, we ain’t what we want to be;
we ain’t what we ought to be;
we ain’t what we gonna be,
but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’
///
Things do get better.
Justice does move forward.
Comfort and peace do, ultimately, deepen and take hold.
Not by our own effort or achievement,
not by the sweat of our brow,
not by the brilliance of our calculation—
–but by us being active, vital partners…
…with the GRACE of God Almighty!
///
Rev. Cleo LaRue often tells stories of his growing up
in the African-American Baptist church of his youth.
He remembers one of his favorite hymns back then was the spiritual
that included the line:
“Lord, don’t move my mountain,
just give me the strength to climb.”
As a young pastor in Texas in his early 20’s,
he was called to the hospital one day
to face a family deep in adversity.
He met the distraught mother of the family,
desperately ill and in pain after a car accident.
The woman’s husband was unemployed,
one of their teenage daughters was pregnant.
Even in the hospital, bill collectors were circling,
trying to get them to pay…
…LaRue talked a while with the family
listening intently to their great hardship.
He was attentive to the woman in her hospital bed.
After a time, he said that it was time to pray.
The woman dutifully closed her eyes
and brought her hands together.
Trying to be helpful—trying to give them a way forward, LaRue said,
“Mozelle, I’m not going to ask God to move your mountain,
I’m just going to ask God to give you the strength to climb.”
Hearing that,
this very sick woman’s eyes flew open and her hands parted.
She stuck a finger, pointing straight toward LaRue as she said:
“Wait a minute, little preacher!
Don’t you tie God’s hands this morning!
If God wants to move my mountain—you let him!
I’m not trying to climb over a mountain,
I’m trying to get out from under one!”[vii]
///
It can so often seem like there is no progress.
No forward movement.
Stuck in our same world,
with its same struggles,
same old economy.
Same hates,
same prejudice
same injustice.
Stuck with undone resolutions.
We fall into the same traps,
get snagged with the same fears,
fall prey to the same addictions.
Stuck with the same doubts,
the same faltering resolve.
Same wondering about what God is up to
in this wild world of ours…
And then, God moves a mountain.
OR, God gives us strength to climb.
OR, God sends a prophet to the mountaintop to see the other side.
OR, God moves us forward in a rush,
and we get a glimpse of God’s promised land.
BETTER than that – we are invited to follow.
We get to come and see…
And we are made new.
At least for the moment—we are made new.
Justice and peace are IMPOSSIBLE without a glimpse—
–at least a glimpse—
–of what is to come.
Just a glimpse of what happens when things are BETTER,
and we are whole,
and we are God’s.
THEN, in awe and wonder, we are left to exclaim:
Lord, we ain’t what we want to be;
we ain’t what we ought to be;
we ain’t what we gonna be,
but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.
My friends, come and see what God has in store for us,
and if you feel it, tell your neighbor too….
Amen.
—-
[i] Quoted in blog “Bear witness to the love of God in this world” by Ken Carter, November 3, 2008
[ii] http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/14poverty.cfm
[iii] “Be It Resolved” by John Tierney, The New York Times, January 8, 2012
[iv] Quoted in Tierney’s article in the New York Times.
[v] Cited in a column by Nicolas Kristof, The New York Times, November 6, 2008
[vi] Martin Luther King, Jr, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
[vii] Cleo LaRue, Day1 Sermon, “The University of Adversity,” October 26, 2008
Image credited to Eli Reed, Magnum Photos
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