"BY THE GRACE OF GOD, I AM WHAT I AM"
A sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 7, 2010

1 Corinthians 15: 1-22

I have a confession to make. I almost didn't read over the passage from 1 Corinthians today when I was trying to decide which text to use for my sermon. I progressed through the lectionary texts as I normally do. I always start with the Psalm – reading it as a prayer and a way to center myself for encountering the Holy. Then I moved on to the passages from Isaiah and Luke. After reading those two moving and magnificent stories, I almost didn't even read 1 Corinthians because, well….

I have another confession to make…..Paul's not always my favorite. But when I took the time to read 1 Corinthians, I knew immediately that this was the passage that was speaking to me this week. It wasn't all of the complex theology at the beginning of the passage that made me sit up and take notice. Instead, it was the last few verses….the part where Paul gets all personal, that made me remember why I love to hate and hate to love Paul.

And as I sat there stewing in my complicated feelings about the Apostle Paul, I knew that there was a sermon somewhere inside those feelings.

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Paul and I have never been the best of friends.

As a child, I probably read the letters in the Christian Scriptures more than the rest of the Bible. You see, the Epistles are mostly short, which means I could read one from beginning to end during the sermon on Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, Paul (and those who pretended to be Paul, writing under his name) has a highly rhetorical style – definitely not on a 4 th grade reading level. So I didn't understand much of what I read and, consequently, thought he was pretty boring.

But by the time I was in high school, I could understand 80% of what Paul had written and I didn't like all of it.

He always seemed so full of himself. So certain that everything he had to say was gospel truth. And, of course, I was angered by his rants about how women should stay silent in church and obey their husbands without question. (Some of which, by the way, Paul didn't actually write….turns out there were a lot of people who wanted to be like Paul and pretended to be him in order to get their stuff read. But that's a sermon for another day.)

It wasn't until I was in seminary that I finally began to pay attention to Paul again. And it was because I finally took the time to get to know Paul as Paul that I finally learned to listen.

That's why the last few verses of today's passage really grabbed me – they reminded me of the first time I actually sat down and thought about Paul as a human being. A human being filled with faults, sure, but also a human being who lived and breathed and walked on this earth and engaged daily in the struggle to follow God's call.

In short – a person like me.

So when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 10, “By the grace of God, I am what I am…” there is a part of me that wants to listen.

Because there is a part of me that knows I am what I am….both the good and the bad, the profound and the obnoxious, the kind-hearted forgiver and the judgmental know-it-all….I am what I am because of the grace of God.

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Paul's story, in a nutshell, is this: he was a faithful Jew. And we need to really emphasize the word FAITHFUL. He was madly in love with God and with his faith. He was proud of his heritage. He followed all the rules. If the synagogue doors were open, you can bet he was inside. He was so faithful, in fact, that he was willing to persecute the Jews that had begun to follow Christ.

But then, one day, while he was traveling to a city called Damascus, he encountered Christ.

Now Paul would have been about the last person in the world you would have expected to run into a vision of Jesus Christ. After all, in Paul's mind, this Jesus guy was a false prophet who had been killed and was dead in the ground. Paul's running into Jesus on the road is probably the equivalent of Pat Robertson encountering a vision of the Prophet Mohammed….and – get this – being radically changed by the experience.

Paul's encounter of Christ was so intimate, so powerful, so real that it convinced him he needed to not only stop persecuting those who followed Christ…but actually join them.

And, not only did he join them, but he expanded their vision of what it meant to follow Christ. Without Paul, Christianity might never have expanded beyond Judaism. More than anyone else, Paul was the one who insisted that Gentiles – those who weren't Jewish – could become followers of Christ, too.

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When I start to remember Paul was a real person, things about him that once seemed obnoxious become more palatable. His zeal, for example.

I'd always found his stern admonitions and know-it-all attitude horribly off-putting….but when I started to think about just how radical of a shift he made in his life to follow Christ, and just how much he gave up and risked in order to do so, his holier-than-thou attitude became understandable.

Sure, it still annoys me when he says stuff like, “On the contrary, I worked harder than everyone else.” But now I just sort of chalk it up to him having bad social skills because, you know what? He probably DID work harder than most other folks. Apparently his mama just never told him that nobody likes a braggart.

Does this mean that Paul and I are now BFFs? No, it doesn't.

There are still things he says that I find incomprehensible. And I don't like all of his theology. And there are days when I find his tendency to say things like “I am the least of the apostles” in the same breath as “I worked harder than any of them” just too wearisome to stomach.

But, on the whole, I've made peace with Paul because I see him as a real flesh-and-blood person. I respect his call from God and I respect his dedication to follow that call. I know that he is like me – by the grace of God, he is what he is – and, most days, that's enough for me.

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Last week, Jack talked with us about listening for God's call in our own lives. God has dreams and hopes for each of us. This is not something that is unique to ordained ministers – everyone has a call to answer.

So while we're already pondering what it means to be called, I'd like to suggest another aspect of call that stood out to me this week: God dreams of a world where we draw out each other's call stories….and learn greater love for each other by doing so.

This is where all of my ramblings about Paul come into play.

Paul was basically unpalatable to me until I made an effort to listen to him saying, “by the grace of God, I am what I am.” When I was able to see him as a real person – a person called by God – I was able to learn greater love for him and open myself to learning from him (or, at the very least, not slamming the book shut every time he started to annoy me).

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What would it look like to live in a world where we tried to see others through God's eyes? What if, when we left a meeting at work totally annoyed with our boss, we didn't just write her off as an obnoxious person trying to ruin our lives? What if we asked ourselves, instead, “Why is she that way?” What if we took it one step further and asked her, “What's your story?”

What would it look like if we tried to remember that person in the committee meeting at church who always has wild ideas is trying to follow the call of God? What if, instead of writing off his ideas, we asked him, “Hey, where did that idea come from?” or “Tell me something about how you are feeling led by the Spirit with this new project you're proposing.”

What would it look like if we took the time to remember that each person here can echo the words of Paul, “by the grace of God, I am who I am” – and then we took the time to ask the person sitting next to us, “Just who are you, anyway? And how did God's grace make you that way?”

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This week, I had a chance to hear from a few people in this congregation about the ways they experience the call of God in their lives. I didn't get to do it face-to face…which would have been much better. But I did get to hear some stories over e-mail. Most people who responded to my call for stories told me about the work they do at their nine-to-five jobs or the work they do in the community.

One person, though, told me about how they have experienced their marriage as heeding God's call. They expressed that, after years of friendship and feeling a “pull” there, they finally gave in and surrendered themselves to a deeper relationship because they felt God was leading them in that direction. And, since doing so, they have never looked back and never been happier. The call of God luring someone into a marriage….who would have thunk it? And what a blessing.

I heard a story from Marge Faber about the work she did as a school social worker. She experienced this work as more than a career, but as a calling from God. She felt led to work with children – equipped by God to hear their stories and lured by God to remain open to their unique struggles. Marge followed a call from God into this career path and was blessed with a lifelong career that was much more than “just a job.”

And I heard from Rachael Norton about how she experiences her volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity as a calling. Rachael said, “ As I started volunteering, I began to discover what Habitat was really about.  It is more than just providing a home - it provides education to homeowners - budgeting, home repairs; homeowners have to earn 250 hours of sweat equity - often in other Habitat homes, then working on their own.  I believe all of that helps to empower people - those who have often felt powerless in this culture.  That is what I see that Jesus did - empowered people.  That is what draws me to Habitat - that it lives out Jesus' call.”

I also heard from Sarah Burton, who told me that she was glad she had the opportunity to write down her story because she's been meaning to do so for some time. Any of you that have had the pleasure of working with Sarah in her capacity as President of our Church Council know that she followed a call from God in accepting the position. In her e-mail to me, she reflected on this call and also on how she sees that same call in Sam Troxal, who will soon become our new President.

And Dawna Petersen told me briefly about how she would love to share more about her call to begin spiritual director training. We didn't get to connect yet for me to hear the full story, but I am looking forward to it. Dawna had a great idea about how to do this, too. She suggested that it would be “sacred fun” to gather around the fire one evening at church and hear each other's stories of call.

I love that idea and I'm wondering if some of you might love it, too.

It could be a chance to sit down with one another and ask, “By the grace of God, who are you, exactly? Where had God taken you? And where is God leading you next?”

If this evening of a fireside chat sounds like something you'd be interested in, I invite you to grab a cup of coffee and stop briefly in Room 6 right after worship. Perhaps we can find a time we could get together to sit by the fire.

I can't say that I know where this act of holy listening might take us, but I know that it would be “sacred fun” and would help us draw out each other's call stories…and learn greater love for each other.