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“If you
only had one sermon to preach…”
Well, we made it through the
first one, and you came back! So what’s the theme of the
second Sunday? The church, of course. This week and next, we
will explore two images of what it means, for me, to be the
church. This week, we look to one of the most important
books in the New Testament: Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
I discover that I have preached from this book more often
than any other book in the New Testament. It offers Paul’s
clear statement of the core of the faith, his vision for the
church at its best, and the powerful proclamation of
salvation by grace.
So if you asked me to choose my
favorite book in the New Testament, I’d probably have to say
Ephesians. If you asked me to choose a favorite image of the
church, perhaps it would be a circle. And if you asked me to
choose my favorite city in Europe, at the top of the list
would be Prague. Many of you have been there. For this
congregation, it is not only a city of beauty but a site for
mission. Even today it can be an imposing and confusing
city, but in the Communist days before “the change,” it was
dark and foreboding.
Bishop James Thomas, the first
African American to be elected a bishop in the United
Methodist Church, is one of the great souls and inspirations
of the church, even in his old age. He tells the story of
visiting Prague with a tour group in those days of
oppression. In the group was a woman named Dorothy. It seems
every tour group has a Dorothy—probably a retired school
teacher, probably second grade, with a benign face, warm
smile, gentle voice, and more curiosity than she could
handle.
Invariably, she would lose
interest in the major sights, the landmarks and the tourist
destinations, and amble off after a pack of school children
or follow her curiosity down one of those narrow side
streets and alleyways of the ancient city. Taking off by
yourself in those days was not permitted by the authorities,
and it was dangerous in a city as confusing as Prague.
Pretty soon the tour captain would call out, “Has anybody
seen Dorothy? We have to find Dorothy.” And Bishop
Thomas says, “That’s grace.”
I. GRACE MEANS GOD SEEKS
US.
In the “Gospel Lost and Found
Department” (Luke 15), Jesus says God is like a shepherd who
has 99 sheep but goes out after the one that is lost; like a
woman who has ten coins, but if she loses one she searches
the whole house until she finds it; like a father longing,
yearning for the return of the lost sons—one a prodigal
wandering in the far country and the other still at home but
just as lost. God is like a frustrated bus captain and a
bunch of tired tourists who comb the streets of an ancient
city to find Dorothy.
John Wesley called it
“prevenient grace.” It is the grace which goes before; the
grace which nudges us, draws us, woos us, invites us, seeks
us and finds us. To the Roman Christians, St. Paul will
write:
The proof of
God’s amazing love is this…that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
Before we thought of God, God
was thinking of us. Before we realized we needed a Savior,
Christ came for us. From the very beginning of our lives,
God makes covenant with us. That’s the meaning of infant
baptism, which we celebrate today. Before we are old enough
to know God, God knows us. From the very beginning, God goes
before us, preparing the way, making covenant on our behalf.
And that’s grace…the circle of God’s outreaching love and
compassion, searching us out, coming to meet us and bring us
home.
St. Paul
tells the Ephesians:
But God, who is rich in mercy,
out of the great love with which he has loved us, even when
we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in
Christ—by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4)
And St. Paul suggests this
is not only what God is like, but this is what the church is
meant to be like, too.
The church is called to be about
the business of seeking, drawing, reaching and finding those
who are lost. The mission statement of this congregation
makes it clear. Our calling is “To gather, nurture and
equip persons for mission and ministry in the name of
Christ.” And it all begins with gathering. The task
of the church is to send out the search team, seeking the
lost, hunting for the hurting, drawing, nudging, gathering
others into the circle of Christ’s love.
Well, Bishop Thomas says they
would start peeking around the corners and checking out the
shops, until finally someone would cry out, “We found her.
Here she is. We’ve found Dorothy,” and they would bring her
back into the security of the circle once again. In grace
God seeks us, and when he finds us…
II. GRACE MEANS GOD CLAIMS US.
God comes
to seek us as we are. And when God finds us, he claims us
and names us as his own.
“Remember,”
says St. Paul, “one time you were separated, alienated,
strangers to the covenant... BUT NOW in Christ, you have
been brought near by the blood of the cross. So you are no
longer strangers or sojourners...” (Ephesians 2:11)
Once you
were outsiders, but now you belong.
Once you were lost, but now you are found.
Once you were nobody, but now you are a somebody.
Once you were alone, alien, stranger, but now you are one
with the saints, part of the commonwealth, included in the
circle of grace…“no longer strangers.”
I love that phrase. I hope the
desire of this congregation is that all persons who enter
here will sense that they are “no longer strangers,” but
they are welcomed, accepted, received, claimed and named as
members of the fellowship, part of the family, one in
Christ.
I am
a firm believer in the power of “naming.”
You see, I
am a twin, and my twin brother and I are known as Jack and
Jim.
The story goes that during his
time in India in the Second World War, the great joke among
Dad and his friends was his intention to come home and start
his family with twins. And lo and behold, that’s just what
he did! He wanted us to be called Jim and Jack, so we have
no middle name, only middle initials—James A. and John
E.—but we were always Jim and Jack. There was only one
problem. Nobody could tell us apart. Even some of our
relatives just called us “the twins” and in high school it
was just “Harnish,” as if I didn’t even have a first name.
But in
church…
And in the church, I came to
know that I was known to God by name, a unique person, one
of a kind, loved by God. One of the primary tasks of the
church is to be a place where people know they are loved,
accepted, welcomed, received, claimed and named by God.
One of the powerful moments in
the sacrament of baptism comes when we ask, “What name has
been given this child?”, and here, in the presence of God
and the circle of God’s people, we name them as part of the
family:
-
Ethan,
Katherine, Peter, God loves you.
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Ryan,
Dylan, Tyler, Leonie, you are a part of this family.
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Dorothy, you are my
child, my own.
Grace
means God seeks us, and when God finds us, God claims us…
III.
AND IN THE CIRCLE OF GRACE,
GOD SUSTAINS US.
So, Bishop Thomas says, a small
group of them got together and decided to form an unofficial
“Circle for Dorothy” to keep an eye on her. They would walk
along, scattered along the outside of the group, acting as
if there was no circle, but all the time keeping Dorothy
well within their vision and their care.
That’s grace. That’s church.
That’s what it means to be the body of Christ, the community
of mercy, a circle of love which sustains us and surrounds
us, never letting us go…a circle for Dorothy.
Now, my guess is when you saw
the sermon title, you thought this sermon was going to be
about Dorothy and Toto of Kansas and the yellow brick road,
so I might as well bring them in. On her journey in search
of “home,” Dorothy is surrounded by a circle of friends—a
Cowardly Lion, a Witless Scarecrow and a Frozen Tin-man. All
imperfect and incomplete in themselves, together they form a
sustaining, guiding, protecting circle for Dorothy. And in
the circle they, too, discover their true identities, their
gifts and redeeming grace where they could become all they
were meant to be. That’s church…a circle for Dorothy—but not
only for Dorothy, for the Lion and Scarecrow and Tin-man, as
well.
Don’t
make the circle too tight.
I need room to be myself, to
stretch and to grow. There are those in the church who would
like to make it a tight little circle to make sure we all
think and act and vote the same. No, make it wide enough for
me to explore and to try my wings, to discover the beauty of
my one individual life in all its mystery. I need to make my
own mistakes, to find my own way, to be my own person.
But make it tight enough so I never get lost
again.
Because I can get lost, you
know. I can wander off into who knows what without the
guiding, restraining influence of the circle. I need the
sustaining circle of God’s people to surround me in grace
and hold me in love and keep me on the right track. Hymn
writer Robinson knew what he was talking about when he
said:
O to grace how great a
debtor daily I’m constrained to be;
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to
thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.
(UM Hymnal, 400)
John Wesley
called it “sanctifying or sustaining grace”…the grace which
nurtures us, forms us, molds us, keeps us in the life of
faith.
For all the Dorothys we’ve ever
known; for those in need of the sustaining, restraining,
guiding and nurturing ministry of grace; for all of us who
tend to get lost on our own; for each of us in times of
sorrow and suffering, loss and grief, confusion and
consternation, there is grace sufficient for all our needs.
A circle of grace for Dorothy, for you and for me.
One of my favorite theologians
is Garrison Keillor, with his Prairie Home Companion
and his tales from Lake Wobegon. Keillor tells the story of
the Krugers. It seems in seventh grade, all the kids from
the Sunny Side School out in the country were bussed into
the junior high school in Lake Wobegon. On the first day of
school, the bus driver gave each child a slip of paper which
read: “Your storm home is....” and then a name. You
see, in winter, those Minnesota blizzards could blow up in a
matter of a few hours and make it impossible for the busses
to take the kids back home at night. So each child was
assigned a “storm home” with a family in town where they
could spend the night. Keillor says his storm home was the
Krugers’.
He walked by their house, just
to see where it was. It was a little cottage down by the
lake, with petunias and day lilies on the bank down to the
lake, rocks painted white with two metal chairs and a cast
iron deer grazing in the front yard.
He says the Krugers became very
big in his imagination that year. He figured the homes were
randomly assigned, but he always liked to think the Krugers
came down to school, looked over all the children, and
finally pointed to him and said, “That one, the skinny
one...he’s the one that if there’s a storm, we want him to
come to our house.”
He says he would walk past the
house every day. He imagined going up to the door and
knocking, and when Mrs. Kruger came to the door he would
say, “I’m your storm child. I’m the one that if there’s a
storm will come and stay.”
He imagined Mrs. Kruger would
come to the door and say, “Ah, George, look who’s here! It’s
our storm child! We’ve been waiting for you. Come on in.
Have some ginger snaps and milk. Bad storm...they say it
will get worse before it gets better.”
Keillor says he never actually
went to the Krugers’ home. It seems all the storms that year
were manageable ones. But he said he guessed they were more
manageable because he knew he could go there if he needed
to—to his storm home. (Garrison Keillor, “Lake Wobegon
Days,” page 148)
Through many dangers, toils and
snares I have already come.
’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
Church...this church...Christ’s church…is our “storm home.”
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An
ever-expanding circle of grace…God seeking us.
-
An
inclusive circle of grace…God claiming and naming us.
-
A
sustaining circle of grace…God keeping us.
But God, who is rich in mercy,
out of the great love with which he has loved us, has made
us alive together in Christ.
For you are no longer strangers,
aliens, but you are citizens with all the saints and members
of the household of God.
Will
you help make a circle for Dorothy?
She’s out there, you know, just
waiting for someone to see her and find her and reach her.
She’s out there just wandering around, perhaps not even
realizing she is lost, but waiting for someone to bring her
home. Will you help make a circle for Dorothy? And while you
are at it, make one for me.
Notes:
The basis for this sermon comes
from a sermon by Bishop James Thomas which I heard years
ago. I can’t remember the exact time and place, but I give
Bishop Thomas all the credit. Personally, he has blessed my
life and I am deeply indebted to him for the “circle of
grace” he extends to all around him.
If you check out the Garrison
Keillor reference, you will find that in his book Lake
Wobegon Days, he refers to the storm home family as the
Krolecks, but on tape he calls them the Krugers; it’s the
freedom of fiction and the storyteller.
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