Help us, O Lord, to speak and live in ways that
draw people toward your love. Amen.
What is inside of you that God is summoning forth? That’s a question that came up recently in a conversation. Someone was asking me if I’ve ever considered writing a book. And I say, yes, I’ve considered it. But I just don’t have it in me. I’ve heard many authors say before that what allows them to write a book is that the book is inside them and they couldn’t hold it in if they tried. Sure, anyone can write a bad book. But to write something that really connects and resonates, that can’t come from within us, it has to be something that the Spirit gives to us and then, like an embryo, gestates within us until we can’t hold it in any longer and it bursts out into the world.
What
has God planted in you that you’ve been nurturing and growing, that might be
ready to share? For me, it is, most decidedly, not a book. But sermons, yes. A
lot of you know that the seed of my call to the priesthood was planted when I
was a 12-year-old acolyte. I often wonder which of our acolytes might, one day,
be ordained. Serving as an acolyte was something that I absolutely loved doing,
and still do. The part of the call that I was unsure of was the preaching part
of the priesthood. What enables me to stand in this pulpit Sunday after Sunday
is not that I’m particularly clever or creative. It’s not that I think that I,
Robert Black, have anything particularly worthy of a 15-minute monologue that
you should listen to. No, what drives me to the pulpit is that God has
something to say and, for reasons known only to God, the Spirit has decided to
use me as one of God’s messengers who are summoned and commissioned to preach.
I don’t preach because I chose to be a preacher, I preach because God gives me
sermons to share.
And
while that’s my story about what God has planted within me that has to burst
forth, each of you has a story as well. We all carry some gift, some message,
some treasure that the world needs. As the writer Frederick Buechner has put it,
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s
deep hunger meet.” God chooses to bring forth the fruits of love not by divine
fiat, no longer with manna that drops down from heaven each morning, but
through the creatures she has made. We all have something within us, a deep
gladness, a special gift, a unique awareness, and God intends to bless the
world with it.
It
is as the poet Mary Oliver asks in her poem called “The Summer Day” – “Tell me,
what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” In other
words, what has been given to you that is waiting to be shared with the world?
Or, as St. Paul puts it in this morning’s reading from First Corinthians, “I
proclaim the gospel so that I may share in its blessings.” We heard him write
about how he isn’t doing the work of evangelism because he necessarily chose to
do it or because he expects a reward. No, he says that he was “entrusted with a
commission.” Beloved, we all have been entrusted with a commission.
Again
turning to Mary Oliver who writes in “Wild Geese” – “You do not have to be
good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert
repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your
imagination, calls you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over
announcing your place in the family of things.” The way we talk about this
truth within the Church is that you are a part of the Body of Christ, that
there is a seat at the Table for you, that you are a part of God’s beloved
community. And as a part of the flock, a part of the Body, a friend around the
Table, the Spirit has given you something to bring.
You
might have a poem within you that will tell the world of God’s love. Maybe,
unlike me, you’ve got a book in you. It might be a recipe that will share the Good
News of God’s love to someone dealing with grief or loss that you’ve been
given. Through the gift of hospitality, you might invite someone to St. Luke’s,
telling them to “come and see” the sort of abundant grace that has made all the
difference in your life. Maybe you’ve been blessed with financial resources and
generosity is welling up inside you. It could be a song, a poem, or a painting
that you will share and remind us all of just how beautiful this world is.
Perhaps it’s a lesson plan that you’ll craft as a teacher, a new business tool
that you’ll innovate, a legal defense you’ll make in the name of justice, or a
treatment that you’ll administer with care that reminds someone that they are
the beloved of God.
I
opened this sermon with a prayer and said “Help us, O Lord, to speak and live
in ways that draw people towards your love.” The ways that each of us will
speak and live are those gifts that we have been given to share. That is the
Good News that has been planted within us to share for the benefit of our
community. And that, friends, is the meaning of the word “evangelism.” Evangelism
has absolutely nothing to do with your voting pattern or political leanings.
Evangelism is not about handing out pieces of paper or holding signs on a
street corner. Being an evangelist is not about knocking on people’s doors,
threatening or scaring people with hell, or getting into debates about
religious beliefs. No, evangelism is when you show those seeds of deep gladness
that God has planted in your life. Evangelism is about announcing to people
that they have a place in the family of things, in the beloved community of Jesus.
Evangelism is about taking our lives and gifts, and letting them be consecrated
to and used by our Lord of love.
And
maybe you think, sure, this is for people who have been to seminary or who are
extroverts, but not me. Yes, all of us. God doesn’t make mistakes and God did
not make a mistake when you were born, when you were chosen as one of God’s
beloved, when you were commissioned as an evangelist. No one is too young or
too old for the task of being an instrument of God’s peace. No doubt is too much
to overcome, no sin is too bad to be disqualifying, no clumsiness is too
awkward to not give way to grace. I can’t begin to imagine what gifts and
graces God has planted within you, but I’m thankful that they are there, growing
and waiting until it is time for them to sprout and bloom.
In
our particular community of Salisbury, we need these fruits of the Spirit. We
heard the prophet Isaiah ask, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it
not been told you from the beginning?... The Lord
is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” For many
reasons, more and more people are not a part of a church and do not know the
Good News of God’s love for them.
To be clear, the goal of
evangelism is not to grow the church, it is not to have more people in attendance,
it is not to have a larger pool of volunteers, and it is not to have more money
in the budget. No, what drives evangelism, what drives the sharing of our gifts
from God is that they help people to come and see the difference that Christ
makes. There is a better way than the ways of selfishness, of fear, of isolation,
of resentment, of division, of anxiety. The way of Jesus is the way of radical
forgiveness, of abundant grace, of an all-surpassing peace, of transformational
generosity, of beloved community, of boundless love. And that is what our
society is deeply hungry for.
Those
of us who can name the source of that love and show others how to drink from
this well of life, well, it’s as St. Paul names it – it is an obligation laid
on us. We know about the love that is making all things well and it is incumbent
upon us, both for our sake and the sake of the world, to show forth this love
however we can. And God has given each of us ways and gifts to do that.
If
you’re wondering how to nurture these things that God has put within you or how
to share this Good News, consider how Isaiah describes it: “God does not grow
faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. God gives power to the
faint and strengthens the powerless.” You can pay attention to those times in
which you encountered a strength that you did not know you had; those times you
found a word of forgiveness on your lips instead of an insult; the situations
that could only be described as hellish or chaotic, and yet you were at peace. Love
never runs dry and God never tires out. Even in the valleys of the shadow of
death, our Good Shepherd is with us. You can tell people about those times when
God made a way out of no way; the moments that you felt nurtured by a love that
defies all explanation; the instances of inspiration and wisdom that seemed to
come from beyond you. Evangelism happens when we show people the gift that God
has given to us, that thing that is within our soul that is yearning to be
known in the world.
And
the reason why we do this, why we take the risk of forgiving those who have
wronged us, of being generous with our time and money, of believing in things
that we cannot prove is that is how we participate in the blessings of the
gospel, the Good News that the love of God came to us in Jesus, was willing to
be betrayed and put on a Cross for us to see that there is no limit to this
love, and was raised three days later to show us that love never ends. Love is
what makes all things well. When we participate in that economy of love, when
we tell others to come and see, when we nurture and share what God has planted
within us, that deep gladness of God’s love meets the deep hunger of our brokenness.
The
amazing grace of faith is that God love us, has chosen us, and has entrusted to
each of us a gift that will draw others to come and see the difference Christ
makes. In that sense, God has commissioned us all as evangelists. Please know
that it would be my absolute delight and honor to meet with you, to pray with
you, and to help, as I’m able to, in listening for what God has planted within
you to nurture and share for the life of the world and for your own deep gladness.
I’ll finish where I started, “What is inside of you that God is summoning forth?”
