Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:23-29
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. I John 4:7-8
It is a privilege to be with you again. And to be with you in this time of transition from Louise, as your long-time beloved pastor, to whoever will be your new installed beloved pastor. I am full of gratitude.
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we?
Who am I? The words used to describe who I am in this temporary position, is I am your bridge pastor. I want you to know I am so excited about this!! So excited!!… But one thing you have to hear from me – and I mean this. You can’t walk over me! You cannot walk over me!! I am not the bridge! But this bridge is something we will build together, so you can get from here – saying goodbye to Louise, giving thanks for her many years of ministry, grieving her loss, taking a look at your tremendous gifts and the challenges you face, so you can get to there – to welcome and embrace a new pastor, and invite him or her to get themselves up to speed to work with you in vibrant ministry.
So I am not the bridge, but I will help you build one to your future. It takes all of us.
Who am I? I must admit, during last Sunday’s service, I was a little nervous that you all would think that Dee Cooper was asking you to see me as the nurse depicted in Isaiah, that you would be satisfied from my consoling breast, that you would drink deeply with delight from my glorious bosom, that you would nurse and be carried on my arm, and dandled on my knees. I just don’t think, I just don’t think, I just don’t think I am so equipped!
Who am I? I am your bridge pastor. And so, I have several Executive Orders that will go into immediate effect today! Two massages per week for me, on the church’s dime. Free tickets for me and a guest of my choice to all the concerts held at Central. If ten inches or more of CO powder falls on Saturday night, Chris Wineman will be your substitute preacher. Thank you, Chris, for volunteering, I’m going skiing.
Who are you? This is so simple really. You are passive recipients and obedient followers of whatever I say. And when you do that, and you will do exactly that, if things don’t turn out well, you obviously didn’t listen close enough to what I said, or you did it wrong. It’s your fault. Always. Together say it with me, “I am a passive recipient… and obedient follower… of whatever Tim says.” Doesn’t it feel good to be free of all that responsibility to think and act for yourself?? You no longer have to grapple with doubt, fear, or anxiety.
Who are you? Actually, you are deeply complex individuals, who are also the body of Christ, each one exercising your God given gifts, to love and serve the community, and extend the love and justice of the kindom of God. In fact, each one of you bring into worship and service your own history of upbringing, family, school, culture, and the unrepeatable and utterly unique experiences of your life! You bring all of that into this moment right now. Huh!
Every so often this happens, and it just hit me right now, that when I preach, I don’t preach one sermon, I preach a different sermon for every one of you, because each of you hear this sermon differently because of your own unique life experiences. So I take it back! You are not passive recipients and obedient followers of whatever I say…darn it. Like Jacob, you are invited to wrestle with the Divine Presence, as liturgy, songs, music, words, silence, prayers, wonderings, memories, actions, and insights are experienced in worship, in service, in relationships, in solitude. You might emerge with a limp, like Jacob, but that limp becomes the wings that will allow you to fly.
Hmm. That makes me think. A new executive order – I get paid not for one sermon a week, I get paid for however many of you are here in the sanctuary, watching online, and listening on the phone because that’s how many sermons I preach!!
Who are we?
Who are we? We are disciples. The earliest known name of what we now call the church, was “the Way.” It was a path we walked. There was a talk, and it was walked. The walk was the way, the talk often got in the way. We are disciples, not just believers. Jesus did not say, “Come and believe in me.” He said, “Come and follow me.” To follow, emulate, imitate, do as Jesus would do, is believing.
Who are we? We are children of God. We are the offspring of God. All of us. No matter what religion, nationality, ethnicity, or gender. This is what Paul is getting at in his letter to the Galatians. Here, Paul offers an odd metaphor – we are “clothed with Christ.” My brother, since he was a teenager, has been a clothes horse. He would iron his jeans, with the crease in front and behind. He only wore t-shirts that had their logo on the back, not the front.
A couple of years ago, I was wearing cowboy boots, and he threw an odd look at me. “You sure you want to say to the world that’s who you are?” I said, “What??” And he said, “Dude, when I was working on Nathan’s farm, you knew who somebody was by what they wore. If you had this kind of job, you wore a certain style of boot, style of hat, and style of shirt. It’s a way of letting people know you have a certain status, you have a station in life, and you can be expected to be treated a certain kind of way, and you can treat people in a certain kind of way. He was saying to me I was letting the world know I was a person of lower status.
When Paul says we are clothed in Christ he is amplifying that we are not only to treat people like they are Jesus, a Matthew 25 perspective, we are to treat people like they are one with the Cosmic Christ, that all of creation is the beloved offspring of God. Paul puts it another way when he wrote, “God is the one in whom we live, move, and have our being.” We are not only children of God, we are in God, we are of God.
Who are we? We are on a journey. A three-step-forward-two-step-back journey. Early humans – according to us moderns – were animist, a term that refers to indigenous people and cultures. They believed that all things and creatures have spirits; rocks, plants, clouds have souls; the deceased are still connected to us; the world is interconnected. Then around 500BC came Greek Dualism, which separated creation into material and spiritual realms.
The body, the physical, was seen as a temporary and corrupt vessel for the soul which was eternal. Evil and Good, matter and Spirit were seen as opposites, if not enemies. The spiritual and the physical worlds were separate and distinct; Earth was far removed from Heaven. The Bible reflects this dualism.
At times the dualism is extreme. God, mad at humanity, destroys the whole world with an epic flood, saving only a few who would repopulate. And sometimes the dualism almost disappears. Jacob, falls asleep on a stone for a pillow and has a dream of angels descending and ascending between heaven and earth, and he awakes and declares, “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.” In the Bible God is on a journey because humans are on a journey of how they understand God.
It’s three-steps-forward-two-steps-back. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, a common practice in that era, but this time God provides an animal to substitute for a child. Eventually animal sacrifice is seen as not what God is after, it’s the sacrifice of a pure heart. We even see this dualistic struggle in the story of Jesus’ birth. Jesus cannot be the savior unless he is conceived by the Holy Spirit by a woman who remains a virgin, according to the Catholic church. The tension between what is spirit and what is material is so pervasive!
And then comes along Isaac Newton in the late 1600’s, and Newtonian physics depicts the universe as tiny billiard balls bouncing off each other, and now the universe – God’s creation – is seen like a machine, or a clock. God is the one who made the clock, wound it up, and set it off ticking. God is separate in his heaven – his – and every once in a while intervenes, to punish those worthy of punishment, and reward those worthy of reward, although it seems a lot of innocents get mangled in the process. And Earth is just stuff for us to use as we wish, no matter the killing effect that it has on nature, on creatures, on ourselves.
Collateral damage. Dualism – even now – still reigns.
But we humans keep learning. This is the Bible’s story – we keep learning who we are, who creation is, and who God is. Einstein blows us away with his theory of relativity, opening the door to Quantum Physics, which says all of life is not so much material as it is energy. In its slower forms energy appears as physical/material, like my body. Yet this body of mine, and yours, are – are you ready for this?! – 99.9999999% empty space! So now, suddenly, the vast difference between physical and spiritual, in Greek Dualism, is reduced to almost nothing.
150 years ago Nietzsche declared God is dead. Now Greek Dualism is dead. But it has not filtered down into our day-to-day consciousness. It has not filtered down into our faith. Christianity, and other faith traditions have hinted at this notion that instead of dualism describing our reality, there is a oneness that deeply pervades everything. Spirit and matter are not opposites, they are the two poles within which the physical and the spiritual abide.
Jesus pointed to this all the time when he told parables about the Kingdom – the Kindom – of God. And Paul says it so well as he writes to the Galatians, There is no longer the opposites – Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus
We are on a journey of deepening our understanding of and practicing the deep oneness. We are of God, the whole creation is of God, and it runs best on the self-giving love we see in the actions and the teachings of Jesus. I John says it well. Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. Amen.
