MUMC Sermon-06/18/06

Does it look as empty up here to you as it feels to me? It’s hard to really know where to begin this morning. It wouldn’t be right to let our time pass without talking about Javier and his time here with us. But it wouldn’t be healthy to let our time pass without talking about anything else. My hope is that if we allow ourselves to be guided by the scriptures, we’ll run across something of a balance.

When we lose someone or something, the tendency in their absence is often to focus on the empty space they have left behind. In fact, that’s just where I began this morning isn’t it? As I was writing I kept thinking about the fact that only half of the robes would be left in the closet this morning. And then I began to laugh, because I remembered that tiny, God-forsaken hole in the wall where the robes are kept. I’ve never been able to help calling it the closet, despite four years of Javier insisting that it be called the sacristy. He didn’t seem too consumed with the fact that the space is tiny, poorly lit, and a haven for mildew. More than its condition he saw what it contained: vestments, chalices, communion bread and wine, Wednesday’s ashes and oil for anointing. It was for him a sacred space, not because of its appearances, but because of its contents.

This same ability is what drove all of his work here with us. When he arrived four years ago he saw more than a wounded church in an old building with an iffy financial outlook. He was unfazed by such external indicators. Instead, he looked within and saw a group of people full of passion, potential, and the very Spirit of God. After arriving here a month into his tenure I had the high privilege of watching and learning as he insisted that this congregation was ready to go deeper in worship, and we were. He was convinced that we could be more generous with our resources, and we have been. He was certain that we could expand our vision of the world and to meet the needs we saw. And despite a laundry list of fears and concerns he has led a quarter of our entire congregation to Nicaragua and back…twice…and counting.

All of these examples are really reflections of one particular gift of Javier’s, which is his ability to see a sacristy where most people just see a closet. This is, I think, exactly what Paul is getting at in his second letter to the Corinthian Christians when he writes, “So we are always confident…for we walk by faith and not by sight.”

What Paul is advocating is way more than dime-store optimism; it’s leagues beyond “glass-half-full” mentality. Paul is not saying that Christians walk around all giddy and pretending like things are really better than they seem. To “walk by faith and not by sight” is to operate with faith in something. In this case, faith in the reality that God is truly present in the midst of life and in the midst of individual lives. And not only that God is present but that God is active. Re-creating.

“For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Paul begins his train of thought reflecting on the belief that Christ died for all. Which leads to the reality that all have died a sort of death. A death to self, which becomes a life lived for God. Which means that when we look at other people, we don’t make decisions about them based on a human viewpoint. Everyone is sacred, and a new creation of God’s very hands. And this is one of the things I love the most about this passage: it reflects one of the great, but often-overlooked truths about Christianity. To say “I believe Jesus died for all” isn’t an item to be marked off on the list, “Things Christians should believe.” It is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a transformed self- and worldview. It changes everything, as should anything we profess to believe about God.

This is why I believe what we do here, week in and week out really matters. I truly believe that our work here can transform the way we see the world, which in turn transforms the world. I believe this is the place where we develop the capacity to walk by faith and not by sight, to see individuals and families and people groups for what is on the inside and not the outside. This is where we learn to see sacristies where before we’ve only seen closets.

Which is exactly what Samuel did when God told him he was to anoint the next king over Israel. Our Old Testament lesson that Rob read for us this morning, tells the story of the prophet Samuel at the end of Saul’s kingship of the nation of Israel. The time had come to anoint a new king. Anyone who knows very much history knows that such times are not always effortlessly smooth. Samuel surely felt trepidation about this assignment, but he goes to Bethlehem where God directs Samuel to a man named Jesse and his sons. One by one the sons appear before Samuel, beginning with the eldest, whom Samuel is certain is the one. But God says to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." After the first one, comes another, and another and another until seven sons have come before Samuel. At which point Samuel says to Jesse, rather comically I think, “Are all your sons here?” “Well, all but one,” Jesse confesses, “the youngest one, who’s also a shepherd.” And it is with these descriptors--youngest and shepherd--the last two qualities one would look for in a king, that David begins his historic reign.

The point of this story is really just to say that God is not asking us to do anything that God has not already done. As Samuel put it, “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Paul takes this same truth and turns it into a call for Christians: “We walk by faith and not by sight.”

Friends, in this time of transition there is not a more important call we could receive, nor a more loving call God could give. To live by faith and not by sight right now insists that whatever loss or emptiness or anxiety about the future we may feel must not be allowed the final word. To live by faith and not by sight right now demands that we remember that we are bound together most truly, not by geography or similar tastes or particular leaders, but by the Spirit of God that lives in each one of us. To live by faith and not by sight right now means we must come to terms with our extraordinary potential and sacredness as a church, and do something with it. To live by faith and not by sight right now means being willing to remark how empty the pulpit looks this morning, but also to say how full the parking lot will be tonight at the “Kidz 4 Kidz” concert.

You've heard about the concert. We've been talking about it for weeks. And tonight, I believe our young people are in the role of young David. They are younger that the average age of most prophets, and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” is not exactly one of the “songs of Zion,” but these twenty young people, their gifts and their passion are no less heralds of God than David was. They are why we can proclaim boldly that, as it has always been with God, “everything has become new.” Again. Today. They remind us of the truth that we really do walk by faith and not by sight around here. And you know what? That’s just not going to change.