The Limp is Mightier than the Strut

(A sermon based on Genesis 32:22-32)


Sometimes I wonder how interested the church and the people who make up the church, including me, really are in doing things God’s way. We could hardly be blamed for shying away from it, for, as our text reveals, really getting in touch with God and having God get in touch with you and being on journey with God and having God be on journey with you can be risky and painful business.

When I look around at the 21st century church, I get concerned. We seem to buy in too easily to the idea that successful ministry means being big and powerful and rich and comfortable and respectable. If we do buy into such an idea, then corporate weakness has to be denied. Personal woundedness has to be covered up.

We’re not very Christian in our approach to life and ministry if those are our attitudes.

The text tells about Jacob, one of our spiritual ancestors. I’m glad that the Bible is so honest with us about the lives of those ancestors. It is brutally honest about Jacob. When I look at his life, I am impressed by two things. One thing is the complicated character of Jacob. Jacob was an accomplished cheat and a master manipulator. From the beginning and throughout most of his life, one constant was that he had a long way to go. He always had a lot of unrealized potential but he usually used underhanded methods to try to realize it. Another constant was the persistent presence of God in his life.

That brings us to the other thing that I am impressed by when I look at the life of Jacob: the mysterious purposes of God. God chose to make Jacob a central character in God’s story of salvation, perhaps both in spite of and because of Jacob’s complicated character.

Those two things, the complicated character of Jacob and the mysterious purposes of God, came together in a moment to which all of Jacob’s life had been leading. There is no time like the present; in a sense, there is no time but the present. Whether you are talking about a church or an individual, this particular moment is the most critical moment. That is because this moment is the culmination of all the moments that have gone before; everything that has happened thus far comes together to make up this moment. Everything that is going to happen from now on begins with this moment.

For Jacob, it was as if all the streams of everything that had ever happened to him flowed together into the Jabbok River. For Jacob, what happened to him at the Jabbok River was going to have a tremendous influence on him for the rest of his life.

There beside the Jabbok, Jacob wrestled with God. There are other ways to interpret the text, but the fact remains that when it was all over, Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face” (v. 30).

No doubt to wrestle with God meant that Jacob was wrestling with his past. He had been gone from home for twenty years. He had left home with his brother Esau breathing death threats against him. He had left home with the birthright and the blessing but he had, with his mother’s help, lied and cheated to get them. He had been blessed during his sojourn in Haran with Laban and his family, but he had gone through a lot while he was being blessed. No doubt Jacob was wrestling with his past.

No doubt Jacob was also wrestling with his future. Tomorrow he was going to meet Esau. He knew that Esau was coming with 400 men to meet him. Jacob knew the hearts of men because he knew his own heart so well. He expected the worst. He planned to divide everything he had into two companies so that perhaps one could escape if Esau attacked. Tomorrow could bring disaster. Tomorrow could bring reconciliation. Tomorrow Jacob would have to face his past and tomorrow he would step into his future—if he had one.

It was with all of that going on, and with the promises of God to bless him and to protect him ringing in his ears, that Jacob entered into his wrestling match with God. All night long they struggled. It was a mighty struggle, and at times Jacob even seemed to get the upper hand. “The man,” the text says, “struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him” (v. 25).

When the sun came up and the match was over, Jacob left the scene limping. I suspect that Jacob limped for the rest of his life. The Israelites certainly chose to remember the limp in perpetuity. He left with a blessing, but he also left with a limp. He left with some resolution, but he also left with a limp. He left with a new name and a new identity, but he also left with a limp.

Jacob would have liked, as I am sure we would like, both as a church and as individual disciples, to strut through life proudly and triumphantly, to represent God as his perfect specimen. But Jacob instead walked through life with a limp. And that’s ok, because in God’s way of doing things, the limp is mightier than the strut.

When you truly struggle with God, you live with a limp. When you truly do things God’s way, you live with a limp. When you truly live a Christ-like life and carry out a Christ-like ministry, you live with a limp. And it is in the limp that you see God. That is because the limp causes you to remember those times when you have struggled with God and how in those struggles you have become more of what you are supposed to be. It is in the limp that you see God because the limp causes you to remember that God has always worked through people who are wounded. It is in the limp that you see God because the limp causes you to remember that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the very Son of God, bore the deepest wounds of all because he perfectly accomplished the will of God in the way of God.

Jacob limps no more. That’s because he’s in heaven. The day will come when you and I will limp no more. But we’ll be in heaven. The day will come when the church will limp no more. That will be the day when God makes all things as he intends for them to be. Notice how the hymn puts it.

‘Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
Till with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blest,
And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest. (Samuel J. Stone, The Church’s One Foundation)

We are not the church victorious until we are the church at rest. We are not the church at rest until we are the church victorious. We are not Christians victorious until we are Christians at rest. We are not Christians at rest until we are Christians victorious.

Till then, we limp. Till then, as Paul put it, God’s strength is made evident in our weakness.

We shouldn’t deny those places where God in his grace has wounded us, because it in those places that we can experience and see the grace of God. The music video based on Reba McIntryre’s song “Is There Life Out There?” (the song was written by Susan Longacre and Rick Giles) tells a story about a woman who had married young, had a few children, and then started wondering if she should be doing more. So, she went to college. As the story unfolds, the woman struggles with balancing everything that she is trying to do. She is having conflicts with her husband and her children. An important paper is on her kitchen table and one of her children spills something on it. It’s too late to do anything but turn the paper in. When the professor returns the paper to her, he has given her a good grade, but he tells her, “Next time, try to leave off the stains.” She replies, “I learned more from the stains than I did from the paper.” God teaches us a lot through the stains. He shows his strength through our weakness.

But the day will come when resurrection will be a reality and then we won’t have to be weak anymore. But for now we live with the weakness and it is in fact our weakness that makes us realize how necessary the resurrection is. The Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney visited a college campus. A student asked, “Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?” Marney answered, “I will not discuss that with people like you.” When the student wanted to know why, Marney said, “Look at you, in the prime of the life, potent—never have you known honest-to-God failure, heart-burn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls, mortality. So what can you know of a dark world which only makes sense if Christ is raised?” (Paul D. Duke, in “Transfigured Relations,” Christian Century, October 25, 1995, attributes the story to William Willimon)

The events that cause us to limp may be the events in which we most fully experience God. The events that cause us to limp may be the events that teach us the most about life and about God’s place in our lives. The events that cause us to limp may the events in which we come to understand most fully the hope and power of the resurrection.

Those churches and those Christians who strut around as if they have already arrived have it wrong, I think. Those who limp know and live the grace of God. Oh, we will strut one day, by the grace of God, when the resurrection comes.

But for now, by the grace of God, the limp is mightier than the strut.

Firewords

I make a lot of typographical errors myself and so I am not hard on others, particularly bloggers and Facebook note writers who don’t have the advantage (or disadvantage) of an editor, when they do—but occasionally one will catch my eye.

Such was the case today. A friend was writing about watching a July 4 fireworks show but his middle left finger acted when his middle right should have and he thus typed a “d” rather than a “k” with the result that he produced the (non)word “firewords.”

I decided that he had inadvertently coined a word that we should add to our vocabulary.

As a human being I am aware of the power of words; as a preacher I am keenly aware of the power of words. My friend’s new word set me to thinking about some of the “firewords” that we use, by which I mean words that are incendiary, that kindle fires in the people who hear them.

I have in mind not specific words but rather categories of words, some of which are harmful.

First, there are destructive words, by which I mean words that have the effect of tearing people down. The use of such words unfortunately characterizes many relationships, either on the part of one party or on the part of both parties. Now, sometimes a corrective statement must be made but when such a thing needs to be said it should be said in love and humility and with a view toward helping and not hurting.

Too often, though, people use words against other people—even people with whom they have the closest relationships—in order to tear them down. In my work as a pastor I have heard far too many accounts, for example, of spouses belittling spouses.

I imagine that such a use of words says more about the person who sends them out than it does about the person who has to receive them. He or she may be motivated, for example, by a desire to keep other persons down so they can be controlled or by a sense of inferiority that creates a need to try to put others in a position beneath him or her.

Regardless, such words are firewords because of the power they have to singe or even to scorch the lives of those against whom they are targeted.

Second, there are demagogic words, by which I mean words that are used in a manipulative way by people in positions of influence to play on a particular group’s fears or prejudices in order to incite greater fear or to arouse anger. Some politicians are guilty of using such words and some radio and television talking heads are notorious in their use of them. Perhaps most unfortunately, some preachers are prone to such verbal shenanigans as well.

We live in a society in which freedom of speech is not only a cherished value but a constitutionally guaranteed one. Moreover, I do not doubt that many people who use what I would regard as inflammatory language in fact hold strong convictions and their passion comes out in their language.

Nonetheless, too often a politician panders to her or his base through the use of such statements and too often the talking heads rile people up for the sake of ego and ratings rather than for the sake of making a meaningful contribution to the discussion and too often preachers confuse their cultural assumptions and their own fears with the biblical message and crave the affirmation that comes from having the congregation respond enthusiastically to having their biases confirmed from the pulpit.

Such demagogic words are firewords because of the power they have to singe or even to scorch the lives of those against whom they are targeted, both in the sense of those who are being attacked and those who are being affirmed.

Not all firewords are harmful though because not all fires are harmful; a fire properly used offers heat and light rather than destruction. What are some categories of helpful firewords?

First, there are constructive words, by which I mean words that are used to build another person up. Positive words spoken consistently make a positive difference. In a recent sermon on the family, I said, “None of you probably has the world’s greatest spouse (because I do!) but, based on the things that you say to your spouses, they should think that they are.” It is hard to overstate how important it is that parents build up their children in the ways they talk to them just as it hard to overstate how vital it is that we encourage each other in the church or in the neighborhood or in the workplace.

Constructive words spoken sincerely and consistently can kindle life-affirming and even life-giving fire in others.

Second, there are prophetic words, by which I mean words that challenge the status quo in ways that properly align with the Word of God as it is revealed in the Bible and as it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate. Prophetic words as they are presented in the Bible might be negative or they might be positive but they are always intended accurately to bring the Word of God to bear in a particular historical circumstance for the sake of affecting that circumstance.

Not all challenging words, though, not even those spoken from Christian pulpits, are prophetic, because they can be based in the preacher’s biases or fears or assumptions rather than in the Word of God.

Prophetic preaching is hard work—work that requires careful reading of the Bible, careful reading of the situation, and careful listening to the Spirit in prayer. Sometimes, after such hard work, the preacher’s conclusion is that the hard and challenging word must be spoken. Such a word, when it is presented with the motivation of helping God’s people and out of a heart brimming with the love and grace of Jesus Christ, is a positive thing.

Prophetic words spoken carefully and humbly can kindle church and community-changing fires.

Third, there are gospel words, by which I mean words that proclaim the good news of the life, teachings, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Such words may be prophetic or they may be pastoral but the main things about them are that they accurately reflect who Jesus is and what he did and that they come out of a life that is doing its best, by the grace and Spirit of God, to walk humbly with Jesus.

Such words, whether they are challenging or comforting, will be covered up with grace, love, and mercy, just as Jesus Christ was. Such words will be motivated by and will inspire a servant and sacrificial spirit, just as Jesus Christ was.

Our imaginations can hardly contain the possibilities of what kinds of fires might be kindled if we preachers—if all Christians—could and would live and speak the firewords of the good news of Jesus Christ.

A Mission Trip

There are people who express some misgivings about church mission trips. They say, for example, that such mission trips can actually be church group vacations dressed up to look like mission trips.

We took our church group vacation this year to exotic Perry County, Alabama.

Don’t get me wrong—Perry County is a lovely place. The county seat of Marion is a nice small town that houses two fine colleges: Judson College and Marion Military Institute. Marion also holds a special place in the histories of both Baptist life and the American Civil Rights Movement. The other town in the county, Uniontown, is also a pleasant community.

But, like many small, rural communities, Perry County has many challenges, economic and educational ones being among the most serious.

Several years ago an organization called Sowing Seeds of Hope (SSH) was established in Perry County as an effort to address in an ongoing way some of the needs in the area with the love of Jesus Christ; among the ministry partners with SSH is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Alabama. Each year several churches will bring groups to Perry County to work in conjunction with SSH on various projects.

As the Mission Ventures Team of the First Baptist Church (FBC) of Fitzgerald, Georgia cast about in 2009 for a mission project for the summer of 2010, we felt led to Perry County. Thanks to the budget gifts and special gifts and to the encouragement and prayers of the FBC family and thanks to the sense of call that a dozen of our church members felt to give a week of their lives to helping people they didn’t know in a place that they had seldom if ever seen, we went to Perry County.

Here at the end of our week there, I am glad to say that I can speak for all the members of our team in saying we are glad that we came.

We took on two main projects this week, both in Uniontown.

First, some of us spent the mornings conducting a literacy camp at the Uniontown Public Library. The library is housed in a former bank building in downtown Uniontown. There we led local children in activities involving reading, writing, crafts, games, songs, videos, and, of course, refreshments. And, thanks to our having a dentist in our group, we were also able to provide some dental hygiene instruction!

We will never forget the children who came to the camp; there shined in many of their eyes a bright hope that I believe will lead to good things in their lives.

Second, we spent the week painting the interior of the Robert C. Hatch High School cafeteria, including the bathrooms. Some of our team spent all day every day painting; those working in the literacy camp went to the cafeteria to paint in the afternoons. The school’s principal selected the colors and she chose the school colors of purple, gold, and white, which coincidentally happen to the be the colors of our hometown Fitzgerald High School. When the students return to school at the end of the summer they will have a bright newly painted cafeteria in which to eat breakfast and lunch; our hope is that they will find that encouraging and even inspiring.

Two of our team members also spent some time in the afternoons tutoring high school students in Marion.

Here at the end of the week we are tired and ready to go home but we leave with great hope and trust that the love of Christ that we have shared through the work we have done will be of help to somebody somehow.

This much we know: it has been a privilege to serve.

When we get home we will have, I hope, a different perspective through which we will view our own community and the role that our church family can play in addressing the needs that are right in our backyard. I hope that this group will also be the vanguard of many such efforts in the future.

A church grows in spiritual health, I believe, as we tend to our own spirits through spiritual formation, particularly Bible study and prayer, as we tend to the real needs in the real lives of our church family members, and as we reach out to share the love of Christ in the world beyond our walls in places both nearby and far away.

A mission trip can be an important component in the process.

This one was.

Can the Sun Set on our Dependence on Fossil Fuels?

It is 8:00 on the last night of my Panama City vacation and I am sitting on the balcony of our borrowed sixth floor condominium watching the sun set on this day, on my time of rest, perhaps on the pristine beauty of the scene before me, and, hopefully—and with hope is the way that I have slowly come to realize I must think about it—a way of life that is as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and, yes, Chevrolet.

I have been here for five days and I have seen no direct sign of the ruinous oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill that is probably heading this way. I have seen indirect signs, though, including much smaller than expected crowds on the beach and at the restaurants and workers, travelling three to a group, walking up and down the beaches quite nobly, so far as I could tell, trying to keep their eyes off the bikini-clad sun worshippers and on the sand of the beaches onto which the tell-tale tar balls could at any time wash, and not too far to the west of where I sit, have washed, ashore.

News outlets have offered us images—although probably not enough images—of the devastation that is being wrought even farther west down the Florida Panhandle and into Alabama and Louisiana. Only God knows--and maybe the experts, at least those who don’t work for the oil companies, can make fairly educated guesses-- just how much damage this oil spill is going to inflict on the environment and on the economy and for how long that damage is going to be inflicted.

The environmental damage that has already been caused and that is still to take place is uppermost in my mind tonight as I think about the beautiful white sand beach on which I have walked and the gorgeous blue and green water upon which I have gazed and that I can in the darkness hear breaking on the shore below me. My heart breaks as I think about how that could change should—and I hope and pray it does not—the plague of oil that has struck other areas strike this one.

But as I have driven up and down Thomas Drive and Front Beach Road this week I have been struck by the thousands upon thousands of motel rooms and condominiums that line those thoroughfares along with numerous shops and restaurants and it is not hard to imagine, given how the economy of this area that is in danger of being affected by the oil spill is obviously being affected, just how devastated the economies of those areas west of here that have already been affected must be.

How can BP or anyone else possibly adequately compensate all of the businesspeople and their employees whose livelihood has been negatively impacted by this terrible event? How can BP or anyone else make up for what is going to be lost this year and in the years to come?

Meanwhile, back in the place of my daily reality to which I will return tomorrow, the debate over a planned coal-fired power plant to be built out in our county near the Ocmulgee River rages hot and heavy. I am no more an expert on coal-fired power plants than I am on deep-water oil rigs but it doesn’t take an expert, it seems to me, to realize a few things, and one of those things is that it is way past time for somebody to take the lead in planning, adopting and implementing an energy policy that will move not only the United States but the world away from our addiction to fossil fuels and toward the use of renewable energy sources.

I would like to think that the United States could take the lead in showing the world the way and I would furthermore like to think that Christians in America could take the lead in encouraging our elected leaders and our industrial captains and our scientists and anybody else who could help to get us moving in the direction of sustainable and renewable energy use to do what has to be done to get us there.

Again, I’m no expert, but I have read experts who insist that, while it would require a mobilization and retooling effort on the scale of fighting a world war, such a transition could be successfully navigated if we have the will to do it.

Why should Christians care? I can think of several reasons.

First, Christians should care about peace and the dependence of nations on oil is the cause of much geo-political instability and will in the future be the cause of even more conflict.

Second, Christians should care about the well-being of people and the human cost of obtaining fossil fuels for our consumption is high.

Third, Christians should care about the earth that God in God’s grace has given us as a home and the damage done to our home in the process of securing fossil fuels is severe.

The experts I have read say that the way forward is found in solar, wind, and wave power. Again, they say that the way forward is difficult and that tremendous will and effort will be required to make it happen.

As a Christian, as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, and as a resident of the Earth, I believe that we need to begin now to move toward national and then world-wide dependence on renewable energy sources and away from a dependence on fossil fuels.

I know it will be hard and tough and challenging and demanding and controversial.

Keeping pretty beaches and pretty water pretty is reason enough to take on the challenge.

But there are even better--and much more substantive--reasons.

So let us begin.

Preacher Boy

A document called a “Certificate of License” hangs on my study wall; it reads, “This is to certify Michael Lee Ruffin who has given evidence that God has called him into THE GOSPEL MINISTRY was Licensed to preach the Gospel as he may have opportunity, and to exercise his gifts in the work of ministry” (capitalization and punctuation reproduced exactly as they appear). The document goes on to say that the License was presented to me by Midway Baptist Church of Barnesville, Georgia on the 21st day of April, 1974.

I was born on the 24th day of September, 1958, so I was five months shy of turning sixteen when I received my “license” to exercise my preaching and other ministry gifts so frankly I am uncertain as to exactly how I had “given evidence” of my call or of much of anything else except maybe raging adolescence and the gumption to get up in front of a crowd of folks and talk.

The folks at Midway of course assured me that I had a tremendous preaching career ahead of me but they had after all helped to raise me and so were more than slightly biased in their appraisals of my abilities.

The signature of Rev. Herman J. Coleman is on my license, although we all knew him as “Preacher Bill.” One thing you had to say for Preacher Bill was that he would give budding or blossoming or dead on the vine preachers the chance to preach if they wanted to preach.

I remember my father, who was serving a life sentence as Deacon Chairman at Midway, coming home once sniffing that sniff that he sniffed when something was bugging him and when Mama asked him what was wrong he said, “(Sniff) Sometimes I think that Bill would license a dog to preach if he said he’d been called.”

Apparently some guy who had just repented of his sins and turned from his reprobate ways and gotten baptized had decided after a couple of days of euphoric discipleship that God had called him to preach and Preacher Bill was ready to give him the piece of paper. “Seems to me like (sniff) we ought to wait a few months to see how he pans out before we go giving him our seal of approval,” Daddy opined.

Daddy didn’t object when Preacher Bill wanted to license me to preach and, to be fair, by the time I had reached the age of fifteen years and seven months I had already done a fair amount of preaching, although all of it was at Midway. That was mainly because of the way that Preacher Bill used our Wednesday night prayer meetings to “showcase” the preaching talent in our church. I once heard our pastor brag that he had not spoken on a Wednesday night at Midway in over three years. That was because he kept a calendar on the bulletin board in the church foyer on which one could, if one so desired, sign up to preach on a Wednesday night.

I was thirteen the first time that I put my name on the calendar.

Somewhere I still have the notes from that “sermon” that was entitled “The Danger of the Tongue”; I took my text from the book of James. After writing a detailed outline of what I wanted to say, I rehearsed the message over and over, timing myself each time until I finally satisfied myself that I had twenty minutes worth of material. When my Wednesday night to preach rolled around, I thundered prophetically against every bad use of the tongue of which I could think, thankfully restricting myself to its verbal misapplications like gossiping, lying, and singing “Jesus Christ Superstar,” until, after about five minutes had passed, I ran out of things to say.

Between the night of my debut and the Sunday morning of my licensing I spoke on a few more Wednesday nights and in one or two Sunday morning youth-led services; in fact, it was during the invitation hymn following one of my youth Sunday messages that I responded to my own altar call and accepted the call to preach.

After I was licensed I got a lot of opportunities to preach at other churches in the area; I guess that a teenaged preacher was enough of a novelty that it seemed a pretty good show to bring in. Besides, I was a convenient speaker for youth-led services in churches that were not fortunate enough to have their own resident preacher boy. Over the next couple of years I preached in several Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal churches, for all of which I to this day feel much appreciation because of the opportunity they gave me to begin the process, which continues to this day and will continue to the day I die, of honing my preaching skills.

Just before I entered Mercer University in September 1975, my high school English teacher’s father-in-law, a fine gentleman named Rev. William Key, called and asked me to come see him. So I did and, while we sat sipping iced tea in lawn chairs in his back yard in a suburban area of Milner, he offered me my first preaching job.

He was officially retired, he told me, but he was serving as Interim Pastor at a rural church in the Jugtown community somewhere between Thomaston and Meansville and Barnesville called Pritchett Memorial Baptist Church and he was pretty sure that he could get them to call me as Associate Pastor. The deal would be, he said, that I would visit the sick and the lost with him on Saturdays and then on Sundays, we would alternate—he would preach on Sunday morning and I on Sunday night this week and then the next week I would preach on Sunday morning and he on Sunday night.

They could, he said, pay me $25 per week.

And so it came to pass that for the next eighteen months or so I preached to those poor saints every Sunday. It was an opportunity that not too many seventeen/eighteen year old college freshmen/sophomores get and I will always be grateful to Preacher Key and the folks at that church for giving it to me.

Indeed, I will always be grateful to Preacher Bill and the Midway Baptist Church and to Preacher Key and the Pritchett Memorial Baptist Church and to all of those other churches in and around Barnesville, Georgia, that gave this preacher boy a chance.

For that matter, I am grateful to those churches that later gave this preacher man a chance—and to the church that even now gives him the opportunity to exercise his calling and to practice his craft.

I thank them that they did—and that they do—take a chance on me.

Reunion

[On Saturday, June 12, I was privileged to get together with friends with whom I attended Gordon Grammar School some 40 years ago; most of them I had not seen for a long time and some of them I had not seen for 40 years. Being the minister in the group, I was honored to be asked to offer a eulogy in memory of our childhood friends who have already left us. These are the remarks I prepared.]

There is a very old song, a song that’s even older than the songs we think of as old, that says, “Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.” In the case of we who were students at Gordon Grammar School as the 1969-70 school year ground to its conclusion, it was not wedding bells that were about to break up that old gang of ours—it was school bells, by which I mean that beginning that fall we would all be hearing the school bell at many different schools rather than at the one school that we had all attended together through our growing up years.

We would, in a very real way, not be together anymore, and so we would not, in a very real way, be “us” anymore.

We all lost something in that experience. That loss—the loss of that school and of the close-knit community that we enjoyed there—was for me at least, although I didn’t realize it at the time, the first significant loss of my young life and I suspect that was the case for most of us.

What do you do with such a loss? Well, you miss that which you have lost, you incorporate it into your life, you try to hold on to the good and to let go of the bad, and you move on with the rest of your life. And that is more or less what all of us have done; after all, here we are, having lived our lives to this point, being busy living the lives that we have at this moment, and looking forward to living the lives that God in God’s grace still intends to give us.

It has been a long time since June 1970 when that first significant loss hit us and in the forty years between now then we have all experienced other losses. We must all note for ourselves what those losses have been and who those losses have been and in some cases why those losses have been but you know as well as I that we are, when it comes to loss, all in this together, even if we have not all been together for a very long time.

In some ways we lost each other way back then and I am so grateful for this opportunity to find each other again and to be together again. But we want—we need—to remember those claimed by death over the years and in remembering them to say that they were part of us and that we miss them, and to express the hope that, just as we have come back together after all these years, we will all be together again someday.

I want to close with some words from the song “North of Leaving, South of There” by Michael Kelly Blanchard, who is about our age. I think that he speaks to us in our place in life and in our sense of loss and grief when he sings,

Don’t feel old but I’m not that new,
neither pink nor gold—kind of steely blue.
Not much I know, but this I do—
if you need me, I can be found.

Not that fast but I know where to go,
I might not last, but you never know.
It’s true the glass is less than half full,
but there’s still enough to go around.

I’m wider now than I used to be,
spreadin’ out like some old tree;
branches bowed, losing leaves,
but the sap still flows with the thaw.
……………….

In between some laughs and tears,
north of leaving, south of there;
gently grieving the death in here,
north of leaving, south of there.
………………..

Change of key don’t end the song,
finally see where I belong
is in the lee of a love so strong—
the mercy of a cross.

These days more goodbye than hello--
first parents die, then friends you know;
you don’t ask why; you let ‘em go.
but their grain is in your wood.
…………………

In between some laughs and tears,
north of leaving, south of there;
gently grieving the death in here,
north of leaving, south of there.

Those of us who left Gordon Grammar School in 1970 are far north of leaving and most of us--but not all of us--are still south of there. We thank God for the journey and for those who have walked with us and for those with whom we are still walking.

The Wounded Healer

(A Sermon for the Ordination/Installation of Deacons based on Numbers 13 and preached on Sunday, June 13, 2010. I borrowed the title and acknowledge the inspiration I received from Henri Nouwen's book.)

The church needs leaders.

In the way that our church functions, we look to our deacons to be spiritual leaders among us. Note, please, how I put that. We look to our deacons to be spiritual leaders among us, not over us; we need and expect our deacons to be here with us, sharing in the good and the bad and the middling of our lives.

When the Lord told Moses to send spies into Canaan to scout out the land, he instructed him to send one man from each of the twelve tribes. So those who were sent were not some elite who had no contact or experience with the people; they were of the people. They had shared in the sufferings of the Hebrews in Egypt and in their glorious liberation from bondage; they had been there when God established the covenant with the people at Mt. Sinai and they had been there when the people violated the covenant before Moses even got off the mountain.

In similar fashion, our deacons are called out from among us; you are like us and from us and with us. You have been with us and among us in all of the positive and negative experiences that we have had. We don’t expect you to be superheroes—we expect you to be someone who has experienced life like we have and to have gained experience in life that enables you to go before us effectively.

It was the Promised Land to which the Israelites were trying to get and that’s where we’re trying to get, too, but we will learn as they learned that even the Promised Land is fraught with difficulty and that even if you’re there constant vigilance is required to keep it a good and healthy place.

Along the way, though, we need a vanguard; we need a group of people who will probe and prod and take chances and step out and give us an idea of what it’s like in the next phase, what it’s like in the future.

We need our deacons to be that vanguard. We need you to be the ones that we send out to find out what’s over yonder and what we will face as we try to move over yonder. We need you to go first.

Is it an honor to be asked to go out ahead of us? Yes, in a sense, it is, because for a Christian there is no higher honor than being asked to serve. But be very clear about this: for a Christian there is also no greater risk than that which comes with being asked to serve. It’s dangerous out there.

And you might get hurt.

That should be no surprise to you, though, because you have already been hurt and you are presently carrying the wounds resulting from your hurts. If you have been faithful to the Lord, you have been hurt; if you have been faithful in your service, you have been hurt; if you have been a Christian leader, you have been hurt; if you have lived a normal balanced human life, you have been hurt.

You don’t need to mask those hurts. You do need, though, to learn from them and to let your experience inform your leadership. Only as you get in touch with your own hurts and wounds and understand how God has worked through them to make you who you are can you help us with our hurts and wounds.

We need you to be a healer, but we need you to be a wounded healer. Wounded healers are the most effective because they are the ones who are honest and who have the most integrity and who have the most compassion—and we need your honesty and integrity and compassion.

It’s a challenge to be the vanguard. Moses sent the twelve spies into the land and commissioned them to come back with an honest and accurate appraisal of the situation; that was necessary because the Israelites were about to enter the land and they needed to know what faced them. So the twelve went into the land, traveled all over it, and then came back to Moses and the people to make their report. It was a good land, they all agreed; it was everything that they had hoped it would be.

But when it came to offering a risk assessment, disagreements arose.

Oh, they all agreed on what the risk was—there were mighty people with mighty armies in the land and so taking it was going to put the people into a dangerous, risky situation.

Ten of the twelve said, “They’re too powerful; we can’t fight them.”

Two of the twelve said, “Yes, they’re powerful. But the Lord is on our side and we can overcome in the power of the Lord.”

Therein lies much of the risk and the challenge that you face as spiritual leaders in the church: based on your past experience, based on your relationship with the Lord, based on your spiritual maturity in the moment, you will be asked to scout out the territory and then lead us in the way we should go.

We remember the names of the two, Joshua and Caleb, because they trusted in the Lord and believed that the Lord would overcome any opposition so long as the people were faithful. We don’t remember the names of the other ten—even though the Bible gives them to us—because they were judged to be disobedient and the people—all of the people—followed them.

Remember: it is easier for people to follow you when you lead out of fear than when you act out of faith and so it will be easier for you to lead out of fear rather than out of faith.

It is better for you to get hurt—and for you to lead us to get hurt—out of faithfulness than to avoid hurt—and to lead us to avoid hurt—out of fear.

It is better to get healed---and to help us get healed—when we have been hurt out of faithfulness than to just keep us comfortable and to lead us to play it safe.

So to our new deacon and to our returning deacons and to all of our deacons I say: be a wounded healer and a wounded leader among us; you will thereby lead with compassion and you will thereby lead us into a future in which we are willing to serve faithfully, to take risks for the sake of service, and to be hurt and healed for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom.