First Presbyterian Church of Watertown
1Kings 17 and Mark 1
"Not Quite Superman"
The Rev. Fred G. Garry
3/09/03
I never planned on being Presbyterian. In fact as a youth, had I been pressed, I most likely would have figured a Presbyterian to be either a word meant for the final round of spelling bees or a 19th English labor movement. Multiple guess questions are not always the most flattering. I grew up in the holiness tradition full of revival Sundays, alter calls, and even some hooting and hollering. I started in Sunday School in the third grade working hard to win that really cool glow in the dark cross and the dream of dreams: the Noah’s Ark set.
It was a small church on the outskirts of San Diego. Today it’s not the outskirts and it’s not small any more. I can remember the Sunday School class being held on a neighbor’s back porch while an adult class met in the dining room of the house adjacent to the church. As childhood memories can be mine are a bit romantic. I believe I memorized enough verses to get the glow in the dark cross, but alas, Noah’s Ark eluded my grasp.
It wasn’t until college that I learned Presbyterianism, although certainly hard to spell, had nothing to do with 19th century English labor movements. What prompted this discovery was my wife- only she wasn’t my wife yet. Kathy grew up Presbyterian and made it quite clear when we were dating that an hour long sermon and twelve choruses of "Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus" played softly while the minister implored us to come to the altar was not in the spectrum of her worshiping universe. I think she in fact was less verbose: I am not going there again.
So I went with her to First Presbyterian of San Diego. It was very exciting. I am a back row kind of attendee and much to my surprise and delight Kathy’s church not only had a back row it had a back balcony- doubly cool. Seated high above the floor Kathy explained a game the youth played during worship. When the service began to drag a bit they would follow the possible descent of the very large light fixtures that were in the shape of an ominous spear head. In essence they would see who would "get it" were one of these lights to drop.
Then the service got started. As it did a strange thing happened. I began to weep. Wafting over was a great feeling, a deep feeling I had never encountered before in worship. Now mind you I had led worship, preached, even led a song once (emphasis on once!) and yet for the very first time in my life I fit in worship. It made sense to me; it was me. The flow, the order, the sensibility. There were no moments of feeling disconnected or derided; I felt called to think as deeply as I believed. And as the service came to a close I realized I had come home to a home I never knew.
When you don’t know any different there is no way of really understanding the absence of fit. Had I continued in the tradition I grew up in I never would have understood. But thanks be to God and Kathy’s Presbyterian pastors that made a way, took a chance on me. For it was not long after I became a member that they sent me packing to Princeton, which is whole other story. Yet suffice it to say it wasn’t my plan and certainly not my expectation.
I don’t know about you but I have learned to qualify my expectations. I still have them don’t get me wrong. Yet like Paul who says, I want to go to such and such a place, but we will see what the Holy Spirit has in mind, I have learned to say, "while this is what I expect or anticipate, I am sure real life will go in its own direction."
Have you ever seen someone trying to fit a plan, a program, or a person into an expectation? It is sad at best, scary at worst. It happens though. We have an idea of how things should be, ought to be, need to be and we work like the dickens to get our expectations and other people to match up. I believe such was the origin of the song, "It’s my party I can cry if I want to."
We have to be careful with expectations and assumptions. Living without them is often a kind of indifference which is not good, while having too many is the true source of tyranny. There was, and perhaps is, no greater expectation for the Jewish community than the return of Elijah. Elijah the prophet: the man who didn’t die, the one who can fly, brings fire from the sky, keeps the rain at bay, and can raise the dead. Elijah! You have to say it with some gusto if you want to come close to who he was.
Now John the Baptist was understood as Elijah returned. And for us today with little-to-no understanding or image of Elijah this is rather meaningless. But imagine if you will Superman, the Lone Ranger, Martin Luther King Jr., and Billy Graham all rolled into one. With this you are close to the shadow of Elijah. So consider what kind of a mantle it was for John to wear when people believed him to be Elijah returned. In part that explains the crowds that went out to him. Yet it also describes his greatest challenge.
John wasn’t afraid of anyone. How he spoke to the Pharisees and how he challenged Herod proved that. He was a prophet, a man with no guile, an artless voice of passion and verity. And we have to imagine for a moment how powerful this was for the people. John spoke like Jesus did; he said what people dared not, he pushed people no one dreamed could be pushed, and he offered hope and freedom from sin not for a price, but with grace and mercy.
To this picture, though, we have to add the enormous weight of expectation that would have come upon John. For with each success, with each time he called a spade a spade his tower grew, his Elijah image came clearer and with it greater and greater expectations. To truly get the image of John we have imagine throngs of people expecting him at any moment to bring fire from the sky, control the forces of nature, fly, raise the dead, and certainly never die himself.
To stave off such a weight I can only imagine one lever, one pulley, one counter measure: to remember who he was. He was called to be Elijah for Jesus, but in truth he was ever and only John, sometimes called the baptizer. For indeed, he never flew, he never raised the dead, he never brought fire from the sky. He did wear peculiar clothes and eat bugs. But that’s not quite Elijah. He was John, the voice crying in the wilderness. He could have forgotten this; he could have bought into the hype. Yet, truly, he never did and for this Jesus said, he was greatest of prophets.
Remembering who you are and not getting caught up in expectations is a great challenge, irony of ironies. You would think we could never forget something like that. But we do. Barbara Ehrenreich did. Ehrenreich is a contemporary writer who decided to investigate the theory behind the dissolution of the welfare system. Remember the welfare system? We did away with it believing that single women, mothers, and so on would be better off in low paying jobs than on the public dole. Ehrenreich decided to put this theory to the test.
What she did was rather intriguing. She went to three different places in the country with a little more resources than most people starting out from scratch and for a month she took what work was available to people as she described herself, "a housewife in need of a first time job." She worked as a waitress, a merry-maid, and then at a large retail chain. Her first main discovery is important to note. Ehrenreich found that to live as the theory purported was to live on the very cusp of disaster: one illness, one injury, one car accident and life would truly be over. It was walking a tight rope without a net.
Her other discover though was unexpected. Her unexpected "aaahah" was that in a short span of time, literally a matter of days with each place, she would forget who she was. She was a woman with a PhD. She was a wife and a mother. She was the author of books and articles and so on. In the short span of a couple of days, Ehrenreich wrote, Barbara became Barb. And Barb was not a very good person, not a very happy person, not someone she could be proud of, not the person she knew herself to be. She forgot who she was and it was devastating.
*****
There are two great challenges before the church at all times. There are two great challenges that we face day after day, week after week, and neither one of them has anything do with money- surprise, surprise. The first is that we would be open to the unexpected. This doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, but it is the greatest. Churches are a sanctuary of continuity in a world filled with chaotic change. Such stability struggles to meet the unexpected with enthusiasm. Yet, I have come to believe that the Holy Spirit has a penchant for going in ways I would never have planned or dreamed. Hence I have learned to qualify all visions and plans. When the choice comes between my idea and the leading of Holy Spirit I want to be smart enough to choose door number two, but that means learning to trust the unexpected and that is a challenge.
The second perennial hurdle churches face is to remember who they are. Again, it doesn’t seem like anything big, but it is. We forget we are the body of Christ; we get caught up into all sorts of foolishness; we forget we are born of the words, if you would save your life you must lose it. We forget in dying we live. We forget our Lord’s Prayer: forgive us as we forgive others. It just takes one misspoken word, one turf poorly trod, one unmet expectation, and we forget we are the beloved called to share the good news that in Jesus Christ all can come unto him- especially the people who bother us.
The Holy Spirit will take First Presbyterian unto amazing and exciting times if we follow. The grace of God is that we are never forced or even shoved by the Holy Spirit, we are called to follow if we choose. Let us choose to together follow where the Spirit goes even if that means the unexpected. And as we do let us never forget who we are. We are a light set on a hill, we are broken souls being redeemed, being remade unto God’s image, we are those who have heard the words you are my beloved and have been made alive in Jesus Christ. If we are led remembering who we are what great days we have ahead. Amen.