BE JESUS
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Matthew 9:35-10:8

About a month ago I was a participant in the clergy pulpit exchange program of the American Baptist Churches of our region which is centered out of Rochester , New York .  I preached that morning in Buffalo , New York .  The next Sunday I brought you greetings from the members of that local congregation, our sisters and brothers in faith and relationship.  That particular congregation is both American Baptist and United Church of Christ, just like us.  They are theologically and socially very much like us.  They are an Open, Welcoming and Affirming congregation.

How they are not like us, incidentally, is economically.  A full-three fourths of the congregation is unintentionally unemployed.  The congregation sits in a community that is between two old steel mills that have been closed from the better part of the last thirty years.  The factories are huge, multi-story rusting dinosaurs filling multiple acres from another age of our country's manufacturing history.  The jobs left town, the people did not.  The church is a beautiful but dilapidated building from the 1920's in a poor state of repairs.  The basement is used nightly as a soup kitchen.  The upstairs former library is filled with computers where local youth are taught computer skills and given assistance in job searches.  The folks are very poor, but their spirits are very rich.  The people asked me to tell you how greatly they value our joint relationship and shared ministries.  We are family who are seeking in multiple locations to be the active presence of God bringing hope and vision and compassion as Jesus would.

I bring you a new greeting this morning, very much like this last one.  I have just returned from a journey on the United Church of Christ side of our family.  I journeyed this past week along with five others from our congregation down into the far southeastern corner of Kentucky to a place called Harlan County .  If you don't know Harlan County , it is also known by that larger term of Appalachia .  We were three or four miles from Virginia and there was no road into Virginia .  I suspect that Virginia has historically been very glad to keep the folks from Harlan out.  The mountains are too steep to easily build roads and this county remains very isolated.

I bring, along with my other travelers and workers, greetings this morning specifically from two women, Leetha and Mona, in whose homes we participated in doing some rather massive renovations.  I will not do justice to their greetings to all of you.  This congregation has gifted to these two women, through our denominational family ties and through the hands-on work of our team, gifts that will not stop giving for all the remainder of their lives.

Harlan , Kentucky is isolated to be sure.  But it is in a deep and gorgeous valley that has not only striking beauty but equally striking poverty.  It is an old mining community that is still active in mining and an increasing trade in logging.  The industrial base of our country in the last century in places like Buffalo 's steel industry was greatly aided by the coal out of Harlan County .

Coal mining has changed.  So much of it has become increasingly mechanized.  But for Harlan County their memories are still deeply etched by the men and boys working twelve-hour days in coal veins where they worked bent over with little to no ventilation and with the reality of roof collapse a constant fear.  If they survived being inside the mines they died of black lung disease outside.  Harlan County was a hot seat of labor versus the company throughout the last century.  Listening to the mining stories, our group gained increased appreciation for that old song that goes, “I loaded sixteen tons and what did I get, another day older and deeper in debt.  Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go.  I owe my soul to the company store.”

As we approached the terminus of our trip down we heard repeated, “Oh, don't go into Harlan County after dark.”  Strangers stick out down there to be sure.  But, greater still than their fear and mistrust of strangers is their appreciation and trust in the good will and love and work of the United Church of Christ's presence in work teams like ours.

We would go to the local hardware stores and be offered discounts because of the work we were doing…, no questions asked, just the comment, “Oh, you're part of that work group helping people.”  We went into Leetha and Mona's homes and were treated as royalty in advance of their knowing us, because we are part of a family of churches, the United Church of Christ.  Our family of churches has earned their trust and respect and we were loved and appreciated far beyond anything we were doing.

I cannot tell you adequately how true this reality is.  Whether in Buffalo , New York or in Harlan , Kentucky , we all were present and all of us as a church family were greeted and valued as one.  Our group of six did hands-on work, but Mona and Leetha experienced each one of you in this congregation as part of family and connectedness.  Mona and Leetha knew we were being sustained by a faith family at home that cared about them enough to send and support us in our work.

Our denominational family takes a licking on the national scene, but we do just keep on ticking.  In just Harlan County alone, our denominational family of churches has been committed for the last six years to a sustained presence and our family is not planning on leaving anytime soon.

When we give on Sunday  mornings to the Neighbors in Need National offering; those gifts beat us down to Harlan and have been present there in solid meaning-filled ways for the last six years and our denomination is committed to continue the work for years to come. 

What did our group do?  It is nearly impossible to state, because when we are the presence of God we seep into the fullness of the palate of life, we impact aspects of our world in truly unknown ways.  In very functional ways that we know, we improved the structural integrity of two houses with a new center beam under one house, along with new drainage tile, and we added new floors to a bedroom and a bathroom in another. 

In addition we listened to two women's stories that included them having more children dead than alive.  All the children's deaths were violent, through a variety of just sad and tragic circumstances.   We heard stories of abusive husbands, out of work husbands and dead husbands.  We heard stories of drug abuse and salvation along with visions from God.

We saw tears of joy as projects came to completion that would insure their homes being very livable and enjoyable for years to come because of the love of strangers.  Each of us had tee shirts that were thank you gifts from the community organizing group that helps our denomination identify the work projects.  I wore mine home the other evening and my daughter nearly choked when she saw mine. It says on the front, “I'm an angel.”  I told her I thought it was a stretch, but that even guys like me have my better moments.  (PK's, Preacher's kids, ministers' children have a most unique view on the professional ministry.  They see us in our robed Sunday morning selves and at our worst moments of faithlessness as well as at all points in between.) 

Abraham and Sarah in this morning's Hebrew Scripture lesson invited three strangers into their home and were completely unaware that they were angels.  I suspect this is a story that mirrors all our lives.  We are called to offer hospitality to strangers.  And oftentimes, we are angels unaware.  It is the beauty of doing and living life generously and valuing living forth compassion and justice as a lifestyle.  We may very well not be aware that the gentleness of our spirits, the compassion offered is experienced as an act of God, an angelic visitation by the person that we did cut off in our cars that we did not flip off; yet could have.  God will work through us if we remain disciplined to risk being people who do good things.

In the Christian Scripture reading this morning we have a foundational text that is probably more significant than a precursory reading suggests to us.  Jesus is out every morning and afternoon and night being and doing Jesus stuff.  You know, being the Christ, being the Son of God, healing, serving, blessing, restoring, providing hope, provoking the religious leaders into meaningful action, that sort of stuff.  The moment happens when Jesus looks around and says, the harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few.

Let's put it into other language.  Jesus becomes aware that he is working his can off and the others are standing around saying, “Wow, Jesus is really good at this stuff.  Let's study him.  Let's adore him.  Let's make him special.  Let's build an altar to him.” 

Jesus then appointed his disciples to do what he was doing.   Everything that he was doing he gave them authority to do.  Everything.

In many church traditions we have taken Jesus and elevated him to positions that I think would make him quite angry.  There are those traditions that take this morning's Scripture and say those in Jesus' leadership group, the disciples, the so-called super apostles and those who follow in their leadership positions are to be elevated to positions of cherished honor.  Mainly these are always men of course.

The text quite simply does not suggest that Jesus called his disciples to positions of honor, but rather empowered them to positions of service to bring good news to those whose lives in so many places are filled with bad news.  I suspect to be a servant of Jesus is a most honorable position, but I don't suspect that Jesus expected either himself or those who came after him to be honored for the sake of position, but loved hopefully because we, you and I, are being loving in systemic and structural and personally serendipitous ways.  Jesus more than just merely suggested that he came, that we come as his followers, not to be served, but to serve.  It is the way of God.

We won't have to go to Kentucky to serve in some very major ways in the upcoming months.  We are sitting in the midst of an absolutely huge natural disaster from flood damage.  Isn't it crazy-making how sane most of our lives are yet surrounded by people whose very foundations have been saturated and carried away by the flood waters? 

I officiated at a wedding yesterday for a couple from Martinsville whose home basement is completely filled with water that is bubbling up through their furnace vents.  They have no electricity, no air conditioning and it is the same with most of their family.  I started their wedding ceremony by quoting from the Song of Songs or some of you know it as the Song of Solomon, one of the few books in the Bible that never mentions God.  Chapter 8, verse 7 reads, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.  If a person offered for love all the wealth of their home, it would be utterly scorned.”

The United Church of Christ has already earmarked $200,000 dollars to come to meet the extended needs of central Indiana cleanup and re-construction.  Our Neighbors in Need monies are going to circulate right back to our fellow Hoosiers.  I suspect that we will hear soon how the American Baptist response will be similar.

Already, as in last week, $15,000 dollars of our One Great Hour of Sharing money has been released to meet local emergency needs in our surrounding communities.  I know that $2,000 has gone to St. Mark's UCC church in Terre Haute for immediate flood response and $1,000 went to St. John's UCC church in Cumberland up on the south side of Indy to help with the havoc brought on by the tornado that struck there.

The emergency needs are vast.  The Neighbors in Need program will be around long after the Red Cross has to move on to the next disaster.  Both the UCC and the ABC will be providing long-term recovery efforts.  We will be asked to help provide labor and leadership to help those whose homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. 

We have been asked here at First United to be a meeting place of UCC churches in central and southern Indiana as we seek to organize response and response teams.  That meeting is being scheduled during the first week of July and we will let folks know about that once we are told.

Giving of dollars in advance to this disaster relief is crucial.  I purposefully held off the money part until late in the service.  The needs are great and would ask that all of us would ponder our giving very seriously.  A special fund has been established for work that will be directed through our efforts and our sister churches.  We can receive here at church and our church will send them to the Indiana-Kentucky Conference office earmarked for “IKC Spring Tornado and Flood Fund.”

There is an immediate need for Clean Up Kits.  Church World Service has a kit assembly website that I will send to you tomorrow.  Any material or kits not used in Indiana will be stored by Church World Service for use in future flood response.

We have been asked to pray for our neighbors in need and to ready ourselves to respond with onsite help teams once disaster relief needs are more fully understood. 

We are to go out as Jesus did.  We are to go out because of what we believe to be most true, that we have good news and good stuff,  to share with our neighbors in need. 

May the spirit of God prepare us all to respond to our neighbors both far and near that we might be the angels of mercy and compassion of which they are praying to encounter.  Let's risk surprising ourselves at what we can do. 

Amen.