Gratitude and Terror

1 Corinthians 12:14-31

November 18, 2012

Last week we talked about the body of Christ, that is to say, the church, and, specifically, what the body is for, what its purpose is in the world, and what it means to be a member of the body. We lifted up the “marks of membership” that are named in the Book of Order, the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and talked about what resonated in that list, what questions the list raised for us, what surprises it held.

For your reference, the list is printed again this week in the bulletin. As we noted in conversation last Sunday, this list does not name what is required of every person at every moment of every day. We are, together, the body of Christ, and, as Paul noted in his letter to the church at Corinth, we have different gifts and different callings at different moments in our lives. As we also noted, these marks of membership do not name merely the things that we do together as the church, but also how we live out our lives every day in the wider world.

This morning, I want to talk together about what gets in the way, and about how we can organize our lives and the practices that mark the measure of our lives such that we overcome what gets in the way of living out faithfully our callings to be members of the body.

We’ve been doing this together long enough that y’all can no doubt anticipate what I’m going to say here: what most often for most of us stands in the way of faithful living is simply fear.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is not disbelief, it is not wrong belief. The opposite of faith is fear.

You can see this quite clearly when you look at the “marks of membership.”

Take the very first one on the list: What stands in the way of proclaiming the good news in word and in deed?

I cannot tell you how many times I have conveniently avoided “outing” myself as a pastor in a variety of secular settings because I was, at rock bottom, afraid of the response I’d get and of the demands that response would place on me. Oh, I have all kinds of ways of deceiving myself about the motivations for not bringing up that central biographical fact of my life, but when I am honest it’s pretty simple: fear.

Sometimes I’m afraid of the potential for conflict and old argument, especially when I’m in progressive political circles, and I tell myself that I’m just being polite and not derailing the larger agenda. Sometimes I’m afraid that I don’t have enough to share, especially when I encounter someone on the street with a hand out, and I tell myself that I have more urgent priorities. Sometimes I’m afraid of taking on someone else’s burdens and baggage, especially when a stranger shares a problem in non-church social settings – and, yes, I do experience those every once in a while! – and I tell myself that I’m just too tired.

And all of my excuses have the singular benefit of being true: sometimes I am trying to be polite because I know what’s about to happen; sometimes I do have more urgent priorities; sometimes I am just tired. But, when I can be honest with myself, I know that I am also often simply too fearful to push beyond my own concerns and comfort zone to get to that place where I can proclaim good news in word and in deed. Sometimes I am simply too timid to share the simple conviction that God loves each of us – that’s the gospel, the good news. But I am too fearful to say that I have experienced that love in my own life most powerfully in following the way of Jesus in the world through the body of Christ that is the church.

All that bundle of fearfulness, and I haven’t even gotten past the first “mark of membership” in my own life! It is “all this simple … and all this hard!”

So, how about you? As you look again at the list of these marks of membership, where does fear get in the way for you?

*****

I suspect we could go mark by mark, as it were, through this whole list and find pretty quickly places that fear gets in the way of our faithful living. We’d probably also discover new fears along the way!

I got a new take on an old fear this fall when the book group read Tim Beal’s Rise and Fall of the Bible. The fourth “mark” on the list calls us to study scripture, and Tim’s book underscored an interesting contradiction that resides within many of us. The vast majority of Americans own at least one, and often several Bibles. It remains the best-selling book in the world. Yet the vast majority of Bible owners are not Bible readers. In his book, Tim lifted up a fear at the heart of that contradiction: we come to the Bible – and perhaps to many aspects of church life – knowing what it is supposed to say to us, what it is supposed to be like, yet the actual experience is extraordinarily more complex and contradictory than the simple, supposedly Biblical truths that we have been taught to expect.

Tim repeats the old joke about a preacher in the “time with young people” portion of worship saying, “I’m thinking of something that is small and furry and eats nuts. What do you suppose it is?” To which one child answers, “well, I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel.”

We know, or think we know, what the Bible is going to tell us, but when we actually read the text we discover all kinds of things that we did not expect. We think we know what church is going to be like, but when we actually dive into we discover all kinds of things we did not expect.

When the text itself contradicts our expectations many of us are afraid that we are simply not getting it. We fear our own inadequacy as readers of this book that our tradition lifts up as central to the faith, and that is especially true when the book has been used as a weapon against us.

I suspect that we could find similar points of fearfulness with respect to other marks. Some of us fear that we will not have enough, so we are afraid to give. Others of us are afraid of change, so demonstrating a new quality of life is a fearful prospect. Some of us fear that we have too little time or not enough experience and so we are afraid to participate in the governing of the church.

So we huddle under our blankets too timid and afraid to face the terror of everyday faithful living.

We watched The Sound of Music again a few weekends back, and that’s probably why I’ve got Julie Andrews singing in my head about her “favorite things.” When I’m feeling afraid I remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel so bad.

That’s another way of saying “practice gratitude.” Remembering the things we have for which we are so grateful open our hearts when they had been clenched in fear.

I find that my gratitude only overcomes my fear when I put legs on it, that is to say, when I put it into action, and, all the more so, when I put it into action that has some risk. That’s not surprising given the life of the one we say we want to follow. Indeed, the church and the gospel it proclaims ought to entail risk. No. That’s not quite right. The church and the gospel we proclaim must entail risk.

In the words of late Archbishop Oscar Romero – who was assassinated as he presided over the table of our Lord – “a church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of society in which it is being proclaimed – what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in.”

We are the only More Light Presbyterian congregation in Virginia. If we do not light up the world that we live in then who will?

If we let our own insecurities get in the way of lifting one another up in prayer, mutual concern and active support, then who will light up the world we live in?

If we let our own anxieties get in the way of responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others, then who will light up the world we live in?

If we let our own fear stand in the way of working in the world for peace, justice, freedom and human fulfillment, then who will light up the world we live in?

Jesus said, “you are the light of the world!” No one lights a lamp and places it under a basket, but instead they place is high on a lampstand so that it gives light to the whole house. Let your light so shine that it gives light to all, and glory to the God who created and loves you and all upon whom your light shines. Amen.