For People

Mark 1:14-20                                               Ordination of Elders Day

Elizabeth M. Deibert                                                  25 January 2015

 After last week’s sermon Are you Listening?, one of you (who was really listening) asked this good question, “So how do you know if you’re hearing the voice of God or your own inner voice?   After thinking of it and talking to the elders yesterday, here’s what I think: By years of growing into oneness with Christ, such that your own voice is completely aligned with his.  Iraneaus said,“Jesus became who we are that we might become what He is.”  Our trouble is that we don’t take that seriously.   This is our calling.  This is our identity as Christians – to become like Christ.   But we are Christ-admirers more than Christ-followers.   We just want to check his Facebook page once a week or follow him on Twitter, instead of living our lives with him, for him, in him. 

 What if you are trying to hear God’s voice about your marriage, your work, your children, your potential surgery, how to utilize your time in retirement, or some other significant decision?   How do you know the will of God?   By struggling and praying.  I can remember sitting on the airplane (May will be ten years ago) and talking to Richard about whether I felt called to come here as pastor.   I wanted to quit one year later, but I didn’t.   Maybe that’s when I really accepted the call to be here.   Just two weeks ago, after mentioning conflict with my brother in a sermon, I felt directed by God to call my brother to try reconcile.   I get messages all the time about calling various ones of you and I could call them my own thoughts, but that would not be right because you know how forgetful I can be.   So I am actively praying, God, help me to remember the people I need to remember to call – at the right time.   So how do you know if it’s God’s voice?  By practice I guess.  If you are listening carefully to Holy Scripture, seeking the Spirit of God in worship and sacrament, striving to follow Christ while humbling listening to the perspective of your fellow Christians, then I expect you will discern the will of God.  It’s not an overnight thing.    It is a journey – that’s why it helps to think about the call of the fishermen to journey with Christ.  

 They physically dropped what they were doing and went with him.   Now the first days, weeks, maybe even months, do you think they knew what Christ was thinking, where He was going, how He wanted them to help Him?   No, there are plenty of Gospel stories that indicate they were rather clueless, bumbling fools.  

But presumably they got better at following Him the more they did it.   Same with us.   We get better at it with practice.   But just like the disciples, we have to go through trials and temptations, failures and misunderstandings along the journey with Christ.   As they went, it became clearer and clearer that it was all about service.   That’s why he said, you will be fishing for people, it was all about people.   Healing people, teaching people, feeding people, yes, the children, yes, the diseased lepers, yes, the prostitutes, yes, the lying tax collectors, yes, all the outsiders, bring them on.   The only people Jesus did not seem to want were the ones who thought too highly of themselves, the ones who thought they were better than others, more holy and pure and able to perfect themselves.   Jesus seeks those who know they have needs, those willing to turn and trust.  Jesus calls the disciples.

Mark 1:14-20

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.  16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Jesus’ special cousin John was arrested.   Presumably that would have concerned him, but Jesus did not let that threat diminish his call.   He went on.   He gathered up some fishermen and told them if they came with him, they’d be fishing for people.  When we read this story, we think of how different it is for us.   Few of had it happen so quickly.   One day you’re fishing with father.   The next day you’re on the road with Jesus, fishing for people.    For us, it is more of an every day question – am I on the road with Jesus or on my own path.   Will I follow today?   Where does Christ want me to go?   Do I have the courage?   Do I have the gifts?   Can I let go of other commitments to keep this one?   Some following decisions are big ones, others are smaller but they stack up to shape our life’s direction.  Some of you have made commitment to Christ by stepping up to be leaders in church.   Others of you have heard God’s voice to do whatever it is that you do in the world, in such a way that you are serving people.   

Following Jesus is not the same kind of nomadic existence that it was for those early disciples.   But it does still require the willingness to lay other things down.   It does still require a re-orientation of one’s priorities.  It does still require the willingness to put family second, God first.   Oh no, you say, you cannot put family second.   Well, Jesus said in another place, “unless you hate mother and father, spouse and siblings, you cannot follow me.”   I think what he means there is that you have to be primarily defined as Christ-follower in order to be a disciple.   If being Christ-ian is number one for you, then you will become your best self, your differentiated self, the person you are meant to be, which while it relegates family to second place, on the other hand, it should, if you are truly following, make you a better parent, spouse, sibling.

You have to leave home in order to find your true home, the home that was always there, but was disguised, not fully seen when you were finding security in family, spouse, children, siblings.   You have to leave home, in the sense of this world, in order to find your true home with God – here and beyond.

Jesus is calling you to fish, to help, to care, to make peace, to listen, to love, to be hospitable and kind and gracious, to do whatever it is that you do, for people.   Are you living in your neighborhood for you or for people?   Are you going to the gym for you or for people?   Are you coming to church for you or for people?   Are you living in your family for you or for other people?   Are you going to work and school for yourself or for other people?   Is your retirement all about you or about other people?   Is your car, your house, your time yours to do what you want or is it for people?  Do you read for you or for others – to understand them?  Is your savings account just for you or for others?   Are you being ordained and installed as elders, commissioned as ministry team leaders/managers for people? 

We had a session planning and bonding day yesterday at church with the elders.  As we worked through conflict dynamic strategies and transformational leadership issues, as we studied the vision work many of you did last spring to arrive at five priorities for the year, it became clear that every team, every goal is for people.   Because if it’s not for people, it is not worthy of our time.    As Pope Francis said in his address to the European Union, it is vital that we develop a culture of human rights that is harmoniously ordered to the greater good for all of us.  Otherwise, these rights will end up being considered limitless and consequently will become a source of conflicts and violence.

My favorite author for the month of January (Richard Rohr) says we spend the first half of our life figuring out who we are, building our identity, getting pieces of it broken and then amazingly mended by the grace of God.   And all of this is for the purpose of having a self/a vessel that God can truly use for the sake of others.  We are a tree that has grown stronger because of wind storms, a vessel stronger because it has been broken and then glued back together by grace.   This is just the right place for Christ to dwell, to be seen by others, shared with others – a grace-glued-together vessel.   Erik Erikson called this adult stage of life generativity vs. self-absorption and when this stage is lived well, older adults can experience hope instead of despair.

That’s what Christ is calling you to do – to live for others like he did, which when we do it completely, means we are bringing the life of God to this world, rather than letting this world as it is, in its brokenness, control us.   This world, in its sin and brokenness, tried to deal death to Christ, just as it still deals in accusation, and death with us, but Christ triumphed over death, making it possible for us to do the same.

But we cannot triumph over death without experiencing it, without suffering.   We have to fall and to fail, in order to discover the life that is beyond our failing.  When we fall or fail, we have the opportunity, if we are following Christ, to Fall Upward.   (title of Richard Rohr’s book).   We can fall upward to live, to grow, to become more by serving people in whatever we do.   Henri Nouwen would say that we are “Wounded Healers”   We cannot heal without being wounded.   Jesus healed us by suffering, so we heal others by suffering first and growing stronger. 

It’s no small wonder we are Jesus admirers instead of true followers.   He said, “Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of me.”   He said, “The last will be first and the first, last.”   Jesus issues a very challenging call.   He asks us to exercise courage and trust, to love the least and the lost and the left out.   Most of all, when we spend time with him, we realize it can never be about us, but for the other people.   It’s not that we lose our identity by becoming people pleasers, with no security in ourselves.   No, quite the opposite, we become so secure in our identity as the beloved disciples, sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ, that we have strength of character to care passionately for others in ways that makes them stronger.  Not more dependent on us but dependent on God.   And as we live for people, like Christ did, we find the joy, the blessing of discovering we are at truly home with God, forever, no matter where we are.     

Are You Listening?

1 Samuel 3:1-20                                                        Ordinary Time

Elizabeth M. Deibert                                               18 January 2015

 How quiet can you be?    Can you be still long enough to listen?   I mean really listen.   Not just to glean a couple of thoughts from a person so you can make a link to your next comment.   Sometimes I am shocked at how poorly we listen to one another.    One of you will come to me on a Sunday and ask me about my holiday or my children or my opinion on some church matter and I just launch forth without ever thinking to ask you about you.   Or you tell me something while I am distracted, thinking of something else, so I miss it.   Or one of you will share in class a deep thought or personal problem and another will jump right on top of it to tell their own story without allowing your thought or story any space to breathe, to be absorbed.   Some of you will talk endlessly and in great detail, forgetting that by sheer space you are occupying everything, leaving room for no one else.   Yes, I know some of you don’t even know what you are thinking until you hear yourself talk, but maybe you could have that conversation with yourself sometime or with one other person, rather than dominating the entire group.   Listening is hard work.   It requires more than the cessation of your own talking, but the active discipline of sustaining interest in another so you can ask good questions to keep listening.   If we cannot sustain interest in another person who is physically present and talking to us, how can we possibly sustain in the Holy One who is harder to see and hear and understand?

 One of the ways we stop listening is by dualistic thinking – instead of holding the complexities of truth in tension.   We’d like simplistic answers when life truly is far from simple and when God is Mystery.  Our ego wants the premature, immature security of an answer, a right answer, an easy answer.   We heard this week that the Supreme Court is going to rule on gay marriage.  A definitive fifty state answer will not solve all our problems, any more than the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made race relations perfect or Roe v Wade solved the problem of unwanted pregnancies.   No, these kinds of social shifts are difficult, not simple.   They take time and patience and lots of listening to one another and the Spirit of God. 

Legislation, while significant, does not change people’s minds and hearts and souls.  Being right about something is not as important as being rightly-related to others, even those who disagree with you.   Friends, we are in different places on this issue and probably many others, but we must stay in communion with each other.   When we discuss it, we will do so with utmost respect and love.  Our culture has forgotten the call to listen, so we polarize.   We stop listening and stop caring about anyone who is different from us, sees the world differently than we do.  

Father Richard Rohr says, "People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind."

 In our story today we read about Samuel learning from Eli to listen for the voice of God and then Eli, learning to accept difficult truths from God through the boy Samuel.

1 Samuel 3:1-20

1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4 Then theLord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” 5 and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. 6 The Lordcalled again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The Lordcalled Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.  

10 Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” 11 Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12 On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13 For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”15 Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” 17 Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

19 As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.   (NRSV)

 Imagine being a boy working for an older priest in the temple.  Being scared to tell him the message you had heard in the night.   Eli pressed him, “What did God say to you?    Don’t hide anything from me, boy, or God will do something bad to you.”   That’s a pretty scary place for Samuel.   He’s thinking, “Let’s see – do I want Eli mad at me or God mad at me?”   But Eli did not get mad.   He trusted God’s word coming from Samuel.  He had perceived the authenticity of the voice in the night.  He knew he himself was not calling Samuel’s name.   He had not heard anything in the night.  He was getting old.   Hard to see.  Hard to hear.   Must have been a message from God to the boy.   That’s why he told him to respond to God, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”  

 The message was not a huge surprise to Eli.   He knew his sons were a huge disappointment.   He knew in his heart of hearts he should have restrained them, but the message that this mess known as his family was not to be repaired was disappointing.   There was no sacrifice he could make to recover the damage his sons had done.   In one sense, Eli already understood Samuel to be the replacement son, in spiritual sense.   Samuel had a servant’s heart, an obedient and willing spirit.   Samuel had the sensitivity to hear God’s voice.

 What about us?   Are we listening for the voice of God like Samuel?   Can we hear God’s voice and have the courage to share what we’ve heard, even if it is a message that makes others uncomfortable?  

Can we hear God’s message, even if we, like Eli, are not the primary receiver of the word of truth?   Can we hear God’s message even if it is the difficult news of God’s disappointment with us or those whom we call family?    Can we hear God’s truth from someone who has less experience, less maturity, less power than we have?

 Eli empowered Samuel by acknowledging that God might be speaking to him, by encouraging him to listen, and by asking for and accepting his message from God with humble trust. 

 We should all be Elis in the church, nurturing the young ones in the faith, building strong relationships with them so we can encourage them to listen for the voice of God and then respecting them enough to listen to what they have heard from God, instead of thinking we know it all because we are older and wiser.

 We should all be Samuels, listening carefully enough that we cultivate both the ability to hear God speaking, and the courage to speak the truth we have heard in love.   I wonder what might happen tomorrow, if you went through your day, saying every moment, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” 

 If you read scripture and prayed and meditated with some good consistency, and said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”   If you listened to others, saying to God, “Help me to hear your voice, Lord, speaking to me, as I try to carefully listen to this person.”

 What made Martin Luther King, Jr. such a powerful figure was his ability to hear messages from God, as a young man, and to communicate difficult messages with courage and love.  This ability was cultivated by his roots in the church, where he heard the message of Christ who proclaimed good news to the poor and release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.  

 MLK’s ability to hear and speak the truth was cultivated by hearing stories of faithful young prophetic voices like Samuel’s.  Hearing God’s voice was critical for the prophetic witness of Dr. King. In January 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott, he received a threatening phone call late at night. He couldn’t sleep. He went to his kitchen and took his “problem to God.” He was at a breaking point of exhaustion and about to give up. He spoke to God and says that in that moment he experienced the presence of the Divine and “could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.’” His fears and his uncertainty ceased then and there because God spoke and gave him “inner calm.”  God provided the interior resources for him to do the work God had called him to do – challenging work of righting wrongs.   He needed God to speak first. Then King could act. He listened prayerfully then proclaimed prophetically.   Prayer was crucial in propelling the Civil Rights Movement.  “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”   (Luke Powery, sermon)

 I think it is safe to say that all of us want to be wise, and to make a difference with our lives.   We cannot set out to change the world, but only to seek to be faithful in all we do, to listen for the call of God to us that we might speak and live well as followers of Jesus Christ.

 Wisdom comes from the hard work of keeping oneself completely open and vulnerable to the truth that comes from God by listening prayerfully to the Spirit speaking to us through Word and Sacrament in the communion of the Saints.   By that I mean you cannot just sit in your living room, reading your Bible alone.   You cannot just show up for worship.  To be a faithful Christian is to live a unified life of discipleship – disciplined listening to God by being in genuine communion with others who are listening to God.   We need each other.   We need deepening relationships of trust – like Samuel and Eli had, so that when one does not realize God is speaking, the other does.   And when one cannot bear to see the truth, the other is able to speak it assertively with respect.

 Life is full of unexpected turns, huge disappointments and losses, confusion and sadness, freedom, stress, angst, pleasures, and joy.   The measure of a good life is one of listening well, which is synonymous with caring well.   Listening well to God.   Listen well to others.    Listening well even to one’s own self.   Because when all of that listening is done well, we discover we are fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor even as we love ourselves.   Are you listening?

Secured by Love

Mark 1:4-11                                          Baptism of the Lord Sunday

Elizabeth M. Deibert                                                11 January 2015

Lose weight.   Get Organized.   Spend less and save more.   More quality time with family and friends.  Learn something new.  Quit Smoking or Drinking.   Help others more.   Five out of ten of us make New Year’s resolutions like these, and of those five who make them, usually only one of us is successful in actually making change.  Every year as one rolls into another, we renew our hope that this year we might have the sheer determination to make changes, despite our previous failures.   We have all heard that real change requires at least twenty-one days of consistent re-patterning our lives.   Real change is possible for most people if it is modest change – not major adjustments or multiple adjustments at the same time.   But I’d like to say that real and lasting change is only possible for those who move to a deeper level of understanding how much God loves them by attention to the immersion of Holy Spirit in their lives.  

Most of us live with overly critical messages in our minds most of the time.   We either think we are not good enough, filling our heads with lots of “should’ves”  and “if only”   I should have been a better this or better that.   I should have lost weight.  I should have been a better parent.   I should have done better on that test.   I should have handled that problem better.  Some of us have externalized the should’ves such that it is somebody else’s problem.   We are the victim.   If only you would do this for me, then I would be okay.   If only he, if only she, if only they, because I have no control over my own circumstances.  Whatever is wrong with me is somebody else’s fault.

Some of us live with overly proud, self-assured messages in our heads.   We reassure ourselves by remembering when people were proud of us.   We are hooked on being the best or doing the best or achieving the most, and our identity is wrapped up in that.   We are scared to be anything other than diligent, hard-working, and practically perfect in every way as Mary Poppins put it, because if we are not, our whole world comes crashing in.   That’s a heavy burden to bear.  As we read the Baptism of Jesus story, notice that God says, “You are my beloved.   With you I am well pleased” before Jesus has engaged his ministry.  What has he done?   God is pleased with who he is, more than what he has done.

But once Jesus internalizes the message of Baptism, in every way, he operates from that identity.   He heals, he loves, he teaches, he handles temptation and conflict without losing himself.   He gives and gives and gives until he has blessed every one of us.    John baptized with water, but Jesus with Holy Spirit.

Mark 1:4-11

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." 9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Do you fully understand that because of Jesus Christ, you also are God’s son, God’s daughter?   That’s what we celebrate in baptism – that you are united with Christ and thereby, God is well pleased with you.   It’s not because of anything you have done.   No, God is well pleased with you, because God first imagined you, before you were in your mother’s womb, God thought of you and made you.  You are the precious handiwork of God.   When I was setting up the bread machines for Justin’s service yesterday morning, the Peaceful Potters were in the kitchen molding clay and smiling at their work.    God smiled in forming you – just like you are.   Psalm 139 says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that there is no where we can go to distance ourselves from God’s love.   If we make our bed in Sheol or the farthest place on the earth, God is there.

Our problems arise when we get hooked by our own or other’s criticism of us.   When we get hooked, they can pull us around sometimes so fast we cannot even breathe.   I have watched some of you get unhooked.   You’ve liberated yourself.  

You have a mother or a brother or an ex-husband or child who hooked you with guilt and shame.   Or you hooked yourself by telling yourself you are not good enough, don’t work hard enough, do not measure up.   Somebody wounded you and if that wound is still pulling you around, I want you to let go of it today.  

Take the hook out and get free.   That person cannot tell you who you are.   Only your Maker can say who you are, and God says, “Beloved child of mine, I love you.”   God is not like all those people who have unrealistic expectations of you.   God is not giving you love with conditions.    God is not just proud of you when you accomplish something.   God delights in who you are!   God thinks that your innermost being is wonderful!   And when you start seeing yourself as God sees you, then you will become the wonderful person God made you to be.

When you understand deeply that your worthiness does not come from working hard to please other people, does not come from accomplishing great things, does not come from anything other than God who made you and God makes no junk.   God loves you, and your human condition (a sinsick soul) is healed by a total immersion in the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.  Because of his life, death, and resurrection, we are not distanced from God but one with God.

This is the good news we celebrate in Baptism.  This is the reason we baptize infants, children, teens, adults – any time some person or some parent of a child is ready to give their life or their child over to the Spirit, we are ready for baptism because it marks what is already true – that God’s everlasting blessing of love is upon you.  We joke about earning stars for our crown, but really, there is nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than God already does.  That’s the nature of God’s unconditional love – it is perfect and complete.

The challenge is to live fully into that truth.   So that’s why we say, “Come to worship.   Get involved in the church.   Pray and study scripture.   Learn and grow and serve.”   Because it’s not about earning God’s favor but basking in it, soaking it up.   Discovering it anew in deeper and deeper ways – that’s the purpose of the church’s nurture.   “Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.”   (Richard Rohr)

My brother did something very hurtful over Christmas, but I am trying not to be hooked by it.   I am dwelling in the security of God’s love.  This hurtful behavior on his part does not need to shape or inform who I am.   And it takes some effort on my part, some intentionality about how I will think to stay connected to the Holy Spirit.   While it is difficult, I am working with my heart, soul, and mind to forgive him, because deep down, I know that he has done this because sadly he does not see clearly the amazing grace of God.  His painful actions are done in the name of God.   But when we truly see who God is, we cannot hurt people – not intentionally.  

We can tell them we are hurt or disturbed by their actions.   We can say where we disagree with them but we do this in love, as Christ would do, not in anger or in cold-hearted judgment.   God gives us freedom to choose to obey or to go our own way.   When we go our own way, God does not always rescue us from the negative consequences of our destructive behavior, but God saves us in the end.   We simply have to stop resisting God’s love.   When we see it, we will know it to be the most beautiful, glorious things we’ve ever known.   We get glimpses of that even now.  The glory of God’s love could be seen yesterday in the way this church surrounded Jim and Martha, and embraced their tears and shed some tears on their behalf.   I looked out yesterday on your faces and saw love.  We said good-bye to a Justin, a twenty-nine year old man, whose circumstances and choices led to a shortened life.  We know that God embraces us, even while we sin, even while we are straying like lost sheep, even while we are making rash deadly decisions, God is seeing us as the wounded, beloved children that we are.  Richard Rohr says, in his book Falling Upward, “Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.”  

For we belong to God, and God sees us as we really are.   God doesn’t pay any attention to the facades we wear for other people and sometimes for ourselves.   We put on our fake selves, pretending to be strong, acting like know-it-alls, thinking we are invincible.  Resisting feeling hurt,we simply get angry, repeating in some adult version the old “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”  But the fact is, words do hurt, and sometimes the words that  hurt most are the ones we say to ourselves with that voice in our head.

Here’s an example, one that I’m willing to share:  I have a challenge with being forgetful.  I work very hard not to forget dates and details.   I try to write them down every time I get an email.  It is a little difficult when you tell me things five minutes before or after worship but I try to remember to write them down later and the Congregational Care Team helps me when they can.  But truth is, I am quite distractable. 

I can be thinking about hundred different things and walk out of my house or my office, forgetting my cell phone or my purse or my computer.   But I decided this year, at almost 52, it was time to stop berating myself about this.  This year I have written a song to help me remember, and I try to pat myself on the back every time I do remember.   Because you know, as kind as my mother is, she used to get very frustrated with me.   You see, she started teaching school, when I went to school.   So she needed me to remember my stuff, and I didn’t.   So she would get very frustrated, when I’d leave my coat or my books or my lunch money.   And I developed an identity as the forgetful one.   Instead of getting mad when I have forgotten something, I now thank God when I remember something – like when I remembered in January that I had missed a meeting in mid-December, I said “Thank you God for letting me know, so I can apologize.”

I don’t know what kind of negative identity you developed as a child, a teen or an adult, but it is time to lay aside that negative identity.   Put it down.   Down be defined by it.  Stop all the negative – why did I eat that!  Why am I so lazy?  Why can I not manage my money better?  Why am I so stupid, so impatient, so ____!   You fill in the blank.  Stop all that negative feedback.   Get on with seeing yourself in the light of your baptism into Christ, your immersion with the Holy Spirit.

When you get in the shower, and the water runs over your face and your body, remember your baptism and call yourself who you are.   Say in the shower, “I am your beloved child.   Thank you God for loving me.   Thank you for being well-pleased with me.”   As you wrap yourself in the towel, tell yourself, “I am God’s holy and beloved.  I am clothed with Christ.  

I am wearing compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.   I can be tolerant.  I can forgive.  I am ruled by peace.   I am blessed and grateful.”  

As you do this with regularity, recognizing your belovedness in Christ, you will find that your anger diminishes, your patience increases, and your love for others grows. You cannot hate others if you remember they too are God’s beloved.   And they cannot hook you and drag you around emotionally or spiritually, because you know you belong to God who loves you.   So just take the hook out, and remember that in God’s love you are secure.   You do not need others to secure you.   You do not need success to secure.   You do not need creature comforts to secure you, for the love of God gives you security.

If you seek security in the love of another human being, you will be disappointed, but not with God.   With God is perfect love.   So why do we not spend more time thinking about that, developing our understanding of God’s love?   Recognizing it, appreciating it, giving thanks for it, and operating our lives from the massive reservoir of that love.

You are completely enveloped by the Holy Spirit.  Imagine yourself completely wrapped up in a warm comforter, not too tightly.  You are still free.   God’s love is not controlling; it is liberating.   We are free, free to love back, free to become all we were meant to be.  In her book, Return to Love, Marianne Williamson says,

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world….We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Children of God, be fearless, confident followers of the One who is your Light, Jesus Christ.  Thanks to Christ’s Spirit at work in us, we know ourselves to be God’s beloved, precious, perfectly delightful children.