I Love to Tell the Story - Diocese of Vermont Convention
November 7, 2011
Download Bonnie's Sermon
In the last few years I have come to realize that I am a visual thinker. This may sound familiar to some of you. Some of you might do this too. For instance, when I read something, images and sounds pop into my head and they combine with the printed words to help me form my understanding of what I read. I have always known that I do
this, but I considered it a distraction instead of an enhancement.
Here’s what I mean: The background music for our Gospel reading today, is the theme tune of “Mission Impossible”.
The words being whispered in my ear are: “your mission, should you choose to accept it is to overcome the forces of evil with the power you have been given as a servant of Christ”. At that, my stomach tightens, beads of sweat appear on my forehead, a tether, suspended from a sky hook drops before me – I grab onto it and swing into the world, equipped with special secret weapons that are hidden in plain sight – love, intellect, creativity, community, faith, hope and a compassion de-coder ring named empathy.
And you know what, it’s all true. Except for the tether and the sky hook and the dramatic swing into the world – although with some poetic license granted to story tellers, the dramatic swing into the world might be seen as our birth as we come into the world on a tether to our mother, then set free with the blood of our ancestors flowing through us. If birth isn’t high drama, I don’t know what is.
Why should this description be any more audacious than the stories told of the life of Jesus, the audacious one we follow? Now THAT’s high drama! Jesus who calmed astorm at sea by rebuking the winds, who got a bunch of swine (who hate water and can’t swim) to jump in the ocean, and take two demoniacs with them, Jesus who forgave the sins of a paralyzed man who was being carried around Jesus’ home town on a bed, because of that act Jesus was consequently called blasphemous by some in his home town, so instead of just forgiving sins, Jesus told the paralytic to stand up and walk, but to take his bed with him, (showing not only that the previous paralytic could not only walk, he was strong to boot), Jesus ate dinner with tax collectors, he entertained and taught them with riddles about bridegrooms at weddings, he gave illustrations about sewing cloaks and what kind of wineskins are better for what kind of wine, he woke up the synagogue leader’s daughter who slept so deeply everyone thought she was dead, got his cloak tugged at by a faithful woman who could not stop bleeding, healed a paparazzi of blind men who could not keep a secret, met yet another demoniac – this one mute, not part of the ones in the swine, and healed him.
Jesus set the stories of our own lives in motion a long time ago when he commissioned apostles and disciples, and like them, we are commissioned to gather the harvest in and to pray that other laborers join us in the important work.
Our stories are written on our baptismal certificates and move over us as the Holy baptismal waters wash over our head; our stories are chapters in the stories of our ancestors as we play our parts in the most significant story of all time, told in the drama of the cosmos. The true, real story of God and each other and how God is as close to us as our own breath.
We are marked as Christ’s own forever at our baptism. And if we choose the life of labor and love we are as vulnerable as sheep walking among wolves. Along with the promise of eternal life and a seat at Jesus’ banquet table, our baptism brings us into a vulnerability that will cause us to carry the cross of Christ our whole lives.
My friend, Jeanie Wylie Kellerman, author and social activist, now deceased, struggled with the baptism of her child. These are Jeannie’s words:
Water, words, community. Offering our child back to God. We would stand with Abraham at the sacrifice. We would give her to a God who models the cross. We would invite her to listen for a voice calling in the night, to vigil, to put herself at risk, to leave family and friends, to speak clearly a truth for which one can be executed. We would thereby invite her into the risks we have already elected and, by God’s grace, still will elect to take with our own lives. In the act of baptism we would wash away the possibility that our concern for her might justify a diminishing of our own obedience to our Lord’s perverse ethic of vulnerability and gain through loss.
If we are to follow Jesus, then our stories are not written by the Hallmark card company. Our stories are not stories overflowing with cupcakes and kumbayah. Our stories are stories of mostly subtle transformations and deep vulnerabilities. Our stories are ones of ordinary people with exceptional charism, gifts of the spirit, given to us by God so we can labor on God’s behalf. Our stories are ones of ordinary, everyday Christians. But, as Barbara Brown Taylor says, there is sacrament and holiness in the ordinary.
The audaciousness of Jesus and the stories of God’s miracles sparks our spirit and gives us hope that we and even our loved ones can be healed, that even we might witness the acts of the mercy of Christ. That we, with the help of God, we may perform acts of mercy and grace in our everyday world as neighbors, nurses, parents, doctors, health professionals, ambulance crews, rescue workers, day care providers, advocates, teachers and friends who comfort other friends and strangers in times of need, in times of natural disaster. We everyday Christians bump up against the sacraments and holiness of the ordinary everyday. The Holy Spirit is near us, but she is subtle most of the time. Here’s an example from my life:
Each night when I give my 40 year old handicapped son a kiss good night I say, “I’ll see you in the morning” and you know what he says back to me? He says, “I can’t wait”. This comes from a person with unimaginable physical and cognitive challenges. Right then and right there I come face to face with God’s love and generosity, I am reminded that I am and we all are part of an astounding story of God’s miraculous love. It makes me want to fall all over myself and follow Jesus just like our ancestor Matthew did when Jesus beckoned to him.
We have to pay close attention to how God is acting in the world. And then we must be the body of Christ in the world. Out there. Now as lay people we need a home base, a community of Christians, we need to be in community with others committed to God’s work – other labourers. We need worship and prayer and feedback and affirmation and bible study and encouragement. We need to be in partnership with each other, we need the sacraments that the clergy and the bishops can give us. The congregation, our Christian community is where we get our juice.
We need some help here.
Our parish priest might know what our jobs are, but for the most part, they don’t really know what we do. Most clergy don’t know what we lay people do in the world. They don’t know our mission field. Really know it.
During our lifetime, God calls us in new and different ways to do God’s reconciling work in the world. Some of us will continue to be called into the ministry of the laity; according to the gifts we have been given. Some of us will be called to serve as priests and deacons; according to the gifts we have been given. Some of us will be called to serve as bishops — again, according to the gifts we have been given.
From Kathryn Palen writing for the Alban Institute:
Stories in their purest form help us create new worlds. Not worlds of escape or denial, but worlds in which the best and truest parts of our lives and the lives of others find a place to take root, grow strong, and blossom. In these new worlds, we can celebrate and draw strength from the positive energy of life. Stories also connect us with other people.Think about the stories your family has shared around the dining room table. It’s the connection they provide that makes them so important. What you do and what I do become what we do.
The stories stitch us together. For all of those reasons, telling our stories and hearing other people’s stories can help us live into a vision of the ministry of all. Those stories can help us imagine new possibilities for ourselves and others. They can infuse what we do with new meaning so that we are able to see it as ministry. They can connect our
individual efforts into a powerful ministry of all.
We are connected by our baptism. We are called into the vulnerable life of following Jesus. As Mary Oliver says, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
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