Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
Passion on Purpose
March 23, 2008 Easter Sunday
I heard a rumor a good many years ago that I always took at face value. I’m the trusting sort, and I generally want to believe the best about people, so I had no reason to doubt it. In fact, I met so many sweet little old ladies and kindly old gentlemen along the way that it reinforced what I heard way back then. The rumor is this, and I’m guessing you’ve probably heard it, too: that the older we get, the more mellow we become. There’s a certain internal logic to the idea, based on an assumption that life’s lessons teach us to be more tolerant, more accepting of the things we can’t change, more understanding of the people who think differently from us, and more compassionate toward those less fortunate.
Sure, there have been some scoffers trying to put the lie to our folksy wisdom, coming out with outrageous movies like, “Grumpy Old Men,” or its insulting sequel, “Grumpier Old Men.” Still, my faith remained unshaken. What’s beginning to trouble me and make me doubt this long-held wisdom are these strange and intrusive episodes where it appears that I am becoming a Grumpy Old Man. I know, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? As a for instance, we lived for a number of years in Maryland and Florida, where heavy traffic and belligerent drivers are a way of life. In those days, I was the picture of patience. But now that we live up here where the pace of life is slower and traffic jams are a dim memory, I’m becoming an increasingly impatient and belligerent driver.
The problem is that I hate to wait any more. I hate sitting behind a slow driver, I hate it when I get in a line at the grocery store that moves slower than the other lines, I hate it when I have to wait in the queue to be able to talk with a friendly customer service agent whose language patterns suggest that English may be a second language for them. I hate sitting in a restaurant where they seem to be taking their sweet time before they serve my food, I hate waiting for spring in the North Country, and I hate it when someone puts me on hold so they can deal with the call answering feature clicking in our ears. In my calmer, more reasonable moments, which seem to be fewer and coming further and further apart, I can look at all of these things and recognize how inconsequential they really are. The perspective I gain from my faith tells me that these episodes are meant to teach me something about the spiritual life, but most of the time I’m feeling too impatient to reflect on something that frustrates me so much.
Somewhere along the line, the joyful expectancy that made it hard to wait as a child has evolved into something totally different. As children, it was hard to get to sleep the night before Easter, or Christmas Eve, or before a trip somewhere fun, because we were so excited we just couldn’t wait! As adults, however, the joyful expectancy has been replaced with fear or anxiety, because most of the stuff we’re waiting for isn’t anything we’re particularly looking forward to. We wait for the latest lab workup to come in; we wait in line at Motor Vehicle to have another horrible head shot pasted on our drivers’ licenses; we wait for the follow-up visit to the specialist we were referred to by our primary doctor; we wait for the government to do something about the price of gas or the mortgage meltdown or the national healthcare crisis. While we might have a hard time getting to sleep the night before we’re scheduled for a medical procedure, it’s not because we are so excited we just can’t wait.
Instead, our waiting is fraught with the helplessness we experience when life acts upon us in unexpected and unpleasant ways. I was sitting with someone this week who is going through something like that. He used to be able to get up and do things, he could manage his stress by taking care of the house or the yard, he could deal with his problems through strategic planning and creative problem-solving. This time around, though, things are different. He doesn’t have the strength to get up, and no amount of strategizing is going to change what is happening inside his body. Instead, he has been reduced to waiting by circumstances beyond his control.
Without realizing it, he has joined Jesus in the heart of passion. This week of passion in the life of Jesus began when he was handed over. Up until this point, Jesus’ life was filled to overflowing with action, with strategic plans, with extraordinarily creative problem solving. Jesus took all kinds of initiatives. He spoke, he preached, he healed, he traveled, he calmed the stormy seas. But immediately after Jesus was handed over, everything changed. He suddenly became the one to whom things were being done. He’s rounded up in the dark of night, he’s dragged before the high priest, he’s beaten and taken to Pilate, he’s flogged, he’s nailed to a cross.
That was the nature and the meaning of Jesus’ passion: he was the recipient of other people’s initiatives. In that passion we come to see God as a waiting God. In our passion we come face to face with our weakness, with our impatience, with our inability sometimes to change the outcome of events unfolding around us and even within us. In my passion I recognize just how much I am in need of a Redeemer, just how much I need to be transformed, just how much I need a resurrection. The Easter story tells us that everyone who encountered the Risen Christ was transformed by that event: those who had been shaken to the core of their being became as steady as a rock; those who had doubted found reason for faith; those who were frightened and anxious were filled with an unearthly peace; and those who were ashamed found a new identity and purpose in life.
So every time I become impatient with the driver ahead of me, or the snarl at the checkout line, or the automaton of a customer service agent reading from a script, or having to wait for the recipient of my phone call to finish their call waiting conversation, I become a participant in this divine drama unfolding in my life. At a deeper level, the passion that enfolds us when we are waiting for a call back from the doctor’s office, or when we get a phone call confirming our fears, places us squarely into the mix of passion awaiting a resurrection. It is the passion which heightens our awareness of our need for divine presence, for the grace and mercy of God to become as real as the demands pressing in upon us. So even in the throes of passion, the seeds of resurrection are planted, and we wait, like we wait for the buried bulb to bloom into flower.
As hard as the waiting is, it offers us the opportunity to encounter the waiting God, the God who buried a child and waited for resurrection. It gives us the chance to become acquainted with the God who waits for humanity’s response to this remarkable life and even more remarkable resurrection. For even God is reduced to waiting, waiting to see how each of us will respond to this divine initiative of passion on purpose. In this mystery, God chooses to depend on us for how God is going to live out the divine presence among us. In this mystery, God allows us to decide how God is going to be God in this day, in our lives, in the lives of all those we encounter along the way. In this mystery, God became human so that we could act upon God and God could be the recipient of our responses.
This is, of course, one of the reasons I hate to wait. I don’t like what I see in my responses. I don’t think any of us does. When crisis unfolds around us, we don’t like is happening to those we love, and we become painfully aware of our doubts, our fears, our shame, and our anger over our lack of control. But it’s precisely in these moments of passion that we are closest to the power of resurrection. For God is revealed in Jesus as the one who waits for our response. In that waiting the intensity and depth of God’s love for us is revealed to us. The glory of God, the divinity of God, shines through most brightly in the life of Jesus precisely when he is most vulnerable, most victimized.
It is in the passion that the fullness of God’s love shines through. What makes it so powerful and compelling is that God does not force that love upon us, but rather waits for our response. It is a love that is willing to wait while being acted upon, a love that will wait as long as necessary for our response. It is a love that does not seek to coerce or control us, but simply waits to be noticed, waits to be embraced, waits for its opportunity to transform us and renew us. In this deeper, richer perspective on the passion that breaks unbidden into our days, everything that frustrates us most has the deepest, richest possibility for resurrection and transformation. Everything that leaves us feeling weak, or vulnerable, or helpless, or inept, or inadequate, has the greatest potential to unleash the power of heaven itself in our lives.
Because of Easter, we now have an answer for the unsettling and disturbing responses we see in ourselves, because our recognition of our need for transformation is evidence of Christ being resurrected to new life within us. Our vulnerability in times of crisis is our very human link to the humanity of Jesus who became vulnerable on purpose to demonstrate the depths of divine love. Our sense of inadequacy to face the trials and temptations of life is divine love waiting to be noticed, waiting to be embraced in the midst of hardship, waiting for its opportunity to transform our attitudes and renew a right spirit within us. So even in the throes of passion we can encounter the power of resurrection, as the loving presence of God enfolds us and upholds us, no matter how difficult or complicated the circumstances might become.
More than that, this divine passion on purpose gives us an example of how we can live more fully, more richly, more closely aligned with the purposes of God for our lives. Every single day, we encounter people who are caught up in the throes of their own passion, their own waiting, their own uncertainty, their own sense of weakness, their own vulnerability, their own very human limitations. It’s easy to recognize these folks when their faces register pain, or grief, or bewilderment. It’s child’s play to recognize the distress of someone who is weeping or overwhelmed by sadness, but it’s much more challenging when someone’s neediness is expressing itself in anger, or frustration, or hurtful behavior, or needling words, or cruelty.
As we go through the day, God can tune our hearts to recognize the signs and symptoms of people whose passion is making them weary, or worried. God can give us ears to hear the cries of help from people who are just barely holding on to the edges of their sanity, and whose belligerence may be a warning sign that their world is crumbling around them. God can give us eyes to notice the creased and furrowed brow, or the angry and irritable demeanor of someone who is carrying a heavy load. Each of these little nudges is the prompting of the Spirit to pursue passion on purpose, to take the time to offer a compassionate look, an understanding word, a prayerful thought, that God’s resurrection would unfold into the passion that this person is living with.
Each and every day is thus filled with the possibility of resurrection breaking into our lives and spilling over into the lives of those we encounter. Each and every day presents a new set of circumstances inviting us to pursue the love of God with a singular passion by looking for God’s waiting presence in our moments and hours. Each and every day brings us into contact with others who are waiting for some fresh evidence that God cares about them, and hasn’t forgotten them or abandoned them to the random chaos of this world’s painful passions. Each and every person we meet is someone who deserves to be told, in word and deed, that they matter, and that God’s eternal and infinite love is awaiting the opportunity to take on flesh and blood reality.
And if this grumpy old man could hold on to that kind of thinking more often, life’s lessons might just make me more tolerant, more accepting of the things I can’t change, more courageous to change the things I can, and wiser in knowing the difference. Happy Easter!
Order of Service back to sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
23 March 2008
Welcome, Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Candle for Peace NC #573 (vs.3)
Call to Worship
Leader: Rejoice with song, all people, for God’s singing fills the heavens and earth!
People: Let it be known in all the nations, that God is our strength and song and salvation.
Leader: Our Redeemer God gathers us together to renew us in love. Let us rejoice with God in song!
People: As earth will soon spring forth with beauty and the promise of fruit to come, so God supplies grace without measure.
Leader: God has swallowed up death forever and brushed the tears from our faces. This is the day of salvation.
People: We were once in darkness, but now we have seen a great light. Christ is risen!
Leader: Christ is risen indeed! Let us give God praise! Let us worship God, the giver of peace and our promise of a renewed life.
Hymn NC #233 Christ the Lord Is Risen Today
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Risen Savior, you have ascended into the realm of everlasting light. Yet you are not distant from us. True to your promise, you go with us.
People: We see your presence wherever the troubled are calmed and the wounded healed, wherever people are fed and clothed.
Leader: We praise you, O Christ, that having risen, you live in our midst, still healing, teaching, and summoning men and women to loving service.
People: The fullness of your Spirit enfolds us like the warmth of the rising sun, bathing us with light.
Leader: As you bade the sick rise from their knees in Galilee, you call us to ascend into the peace of your presence. As you sent out the disciples, you direct us to serve with love and joy.
People: God, as the women mourned and trembled with fear the very morning that Christ rose from the grave, there are many who live with brokenness, sadness, and tragedy, despite the presence of the Risen Christ.
Leader: We pray for all who mourn and are troubled, all whose lives are sundered by forces beyond their control. Open their eyes and hearts to your healing presence and send us, we pray, to heal, comfort, and work, for the world needs us.
Pastoral Prayer, Lords Prayer
Hymn NC #433 In the Bulb
Psalm 118:13-24, Acts 10:34-43, John 20:1-18
Sermon Passion on Purpose
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #240 Jesus Christ Is Risen Today
Benediction
Leader: This day God has brought forth life from death, and opened the gates of everlasting life.
People: The tomb is empty; Christ has risen from the grave. Let us enter God’s gates with thanksgiving.
Leader: Help us seek the things that are above, where Christ our risen Lord is seated with you.
People: Draw close, Risen Lord, and reveal yourself to us. Strengthen us to walk your paths.
Leader: May the God of Easter give you peace and the assurance that you belong to God.
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