C Epiphany
3 BFC 2019
1 Corinthains 12:12-31a
January 27, 2019
About
fifteen years ago, I went to hear the message of a Viet Nam War veteran, Brian
Willson. Willson related that he had been
one of those pilots who was directly involved with napalm drops over Viet Nam. He had left law school at twenty-seven to go
fight “communism.” During his time in
Viet Nam, an unusual event happened to transform him into a peace
activist.
Unusual
because during his time in Viet Nam he related that the military had a policy
which did not allow people who performed napalm drops to ever act as later
ground reconnaissance. The policy did
not want those performing napalm drops to connect their acts with suffering
experienced by civilians on the ground.
This one unusual time,
however, there was a snafu. For some
reason, after dropping his napalm on a village, he was also asked to be part of
the ground reconnaissance team to determine the success of their drop. While performing that reconnaissance, he came
upon a dead mother holding her three dead children. Willson believed the mother’s eyes were still
opened, but as he drew closer, he realized the napalm had melted off her
eyelids.
For some unknown reason,
tears welled up in Brian Willson’s eyes, and with his commanding officer
present, he fell to his knees and shouted in agony, “This is my mother. And this, these are my children.” Though his commanding officer laughed, he
remembers that as the transformative moment in his life. So transformative, in fact, that he had
become a peace activist.
As a peace activist back
in the States in 1987, he had lost both his legs sitting on a train track
outside of a military weapons facility, hoping to stop weapons bound for
Central America. While sitting on the track, he thought surely the train would
stop and that the armaments would not go through. Other activists had employed this form of
protest successfully. Certainly, Brian
Willson thought, the train would not go through.
What he could not know is that the train’s conductor had strict orders
to plow through regardless or that the conductor could not see the many people
on the track. Both stories are
told. What is known is that Willson was
the only one not able to get up from the track before the train came through.
There Wilson was, on the day I saw him, using two prosthetic
legs to get around in the world. It was
a risk he took when the connection to all of life had become vividly apparent
to him. He remembered knowing that truth
as a young child, but somehow that understanding had been drummed out of him by
the destructive powers of disconnection and death. Down deep we know this, he believed. We are connected.
I have seen that
transformative moment take place on any number of mission delegations when
those going to do the work to bring about salvation realize that they are the
ones being saved. We recognize that God
is doing work we would not have realized beyond Billings, or beyond Montana,
beyond our country. And all of a sudden,
we are overcome with a love we would have never known. It may be spoken in a different language, by
people of a different color, or just in a way we never contemplated
before. And the activity of God, which
looks nothing like we ever expected, loves us in such an amazing way.
In Paul’s letter to the
churches in Corinth we continue to read, Paul tries to reach out to communities
immersed in conflict. One group or
person is vaunting themselves up over another group or person because of their
spiritual gifts. They believe that God
can only be found within them, in the gift they have been given, or that their
understandings and gifts trump everyone else’s understandings and gifts. Paul turns to them to say, “Don’t you see how
much you need each other? How God in Christ is found in different
manifestations across your community? For you to claim that you are not
connected, that you do not need each other, is to deny the reality.”
We were created as the
Body of Christ, and when we deny others access to the goodness of God through
our unwillingness to see Christ in each other’s eyes, we lose so many gifts God
intends for each of us.
Paul asks, “How can one
part of the Body of Christ say it doesn’t belong or one part deny another part
of the Body?” In this masterpiece of
Christian prose, Paul seems to get the eternal conflict of religious life. We deny the way God has made the world for
our salvation. We deny our connectedness
to each other. We deny that we are the
Body of Christ—a Body, Paul writes, where those who appear to be weaker or the
most humble are the most indispensable.
Hear the good news: God wills us to be connected, one to another,
brought together in all of our diversity to form a community which will love
and cherish each other. It is almost as
if God has said, “You know, this is the way I have made the world—with all of
its connection. It will work in no other
way. If you choose to deny the
connections, then the world as a whole will suffer because of it. Choose to live in the interconnection and the
building up of community or inherit the destructive powers of disconnection and
death.”
It is not about God’s
judgment but about the consequences of our choices.
I believe it says
something about our images of God that we have suffered under the image of this
independent, self-sufficient, aloof, male God for so long. There He is, sitting in His royal throne,
looking out over all creation, and making these royal decrees from on
high. How can we possibly feel connected
to such a God? How can we possibly
believe that this God wills our connection to one another?
A seminary colleague once
said to me, “You know, if we understood God as a pregnant, refugee woman, we
wouldn’t have any problem why God loves so much, why God desires, relationship,
intimacy, and connection. We would known
why God is full of so much grace. If we
could look at God as an outcast,” my friend shared with me, “we would
understand why God desires to share love with us so strongly.”
I would go on to add that
we might even be able to understand why we are indispensable in God’s eyes, why
the very least of us is considered most precious. Perhaps we might even wonder how our world
might be different if we thought of God as a Viet Namese mother, still
clutching her child. Then we would weep
in love. We would know why God wants us
to be connected.
After this service today, we
will hold our annual business meeting.
This congregation takes great risks in a day and time when I heard this
week that even more UCC churches will be closing in the Montana-Northern
Wyoming Conference. And the news for us,
financially, will not be good news. We
will have to figure out how we will move forward drawing over $200,000 every
year from an Endowment Fund that is still very wealthy.
But I want to level with
you. I have never pastored a church
where lives are being saved every day.
Every day. . . . A church that
acts like it is connected to its community, that sends out people like Laura
Keating and Cam Clevidence, that encourages prophets like Margie MacDonald and
Emma Kerr Carpenter, that treasures the ministry of Mia Duffy. You may have heard that Mia colored a turtle
and gave it to Jan Hawk last week, knowing that turtles are Jan’s favorite, a
ministry of one of our youngest congregants to Jan as she grieved her beloved
Bill.
Last week, one of the
great prophets in our nation, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, stood to preach his
sermon in Milford Chapel at Park Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, North
Carolina in memory and celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
His sermon said that real preaching happens in acts
of liberation. I would say acts of
liberation recognizing we are connected.
It is what I see in all of you and what is producing in this church. Rev. Dr. Barber went on to say,
To preach is to see the people who are crying out and the
systems that are crushing them. It is to say, “Somebody’s hurting my people and
it’s gone on far too long and we won’t be quiet and inactive anymore.” It is to
do something about it. It is to join with others who are doing something about
it.
When words are changed into deeds of liberation—that’s
preaching. And anything else is just talking.
When the fruit of the lips become actions dedicated to
justice—that’s preaching.
When our words call Jews and Muslims and Christians and
Sikhs and Buddhists and even people not of faith to come together to work the
work of love and work the work of liberation—that’s preaching.
When a call goes out that unites people across the lines
of race and class and creed and sexuality—now that’s preaching.
When the Poor People’s Campaign brings Natives and Asians
and Black and White and Brown people together, and march together and organize
together and go to to jail together for a moral revolution of values—that’s
preaching.
When preachers go to the border and serve communion to the
officers and communion to those who are holding back the immigrants and then
tell them while they’re eating the communion that they need correction and that
they’re wrong—that’s preaching.
When nuns lobby for healthcare and when preachers say,
“I’m not gonna preach another funeral over somebody who died from the lack of
healthcare and said ‘God called him home.'” Instead I’m going to say, “God may
welcome them home, but the government killed them.” That’s preaching.
When churches and synagogues and mosques open their doors
and offer sanctuary to families that are being ripped apart by ICE — that’s
preaching!
And when that kind of preaching is happening, it is
transformative. It changes the world. It might get you killed, but that same
preaching will get you back up again. And if it doesn’t get you back up,
preaching gets folks pregnant. So you might be dead, but those behind you will
come forth. Preaching always produces.[1]
God looks at you with
tears in Her eyes and proclaims, “Don’t you know how long I have waited for you
to affirm your connection with me, so that I could affirm you as so precious in
my sight—so precious.” We are a part of
the Body of Christ bringing God’s reign of Shalom to the earth, preparing the
way for God’s liberation, and the least, the very least and humble of us,
considered the most indispensable part of that Body. We are connected.
Share that good news you
have learned with those who are still living under the destructive lie of
disconnection and death. We are
connected.
Turn to the persons beside
you, preach, and say the words, “We are connected.” Turn to the person in front of you and behind
you and say the words, “We are connected.”
Now, Children of God, go out into the world and know yourselves to be
the Body of Christ. We are
connected. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Rev. Dr. William J. Barber
II, https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=lHqS0wXFy4c&feature=youtu.be.
